End Times and Current Events

General Category => Wicca/witchraft/paganism => Topic started by: Mark on October 31, 2013, 07:48:18 am



Title: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on October 31, 2013, 07:48:18 am
The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft

What is the fastest growing religion in the United States?  If you said Christianity, you would be way off.  In fact, the most recent numbers show that Christianity is in a serious state of decline in America.  If you said Islam, you are much closer to a correct answer.  Islam is the fastest growing major religion in the United States.  But there is a faith that is growing even faster than Islam.  It is called Wicca, and it is currently growing at an astounding pace.  Wicca emerged as a faith in the middle of the 20th century, but the origins of many Wiccan practices actually go back for thousands of years, and some researchers believe that certain aspects of Wicca can actually be traced all the way back to ancient Babylon.  According to Wikipedia, Wicca “is a modern pagan, witchcraft religion”.  It has been estimated that the number of Americans that are Wiccans is doubling every 30 months, and at this point there are more than 200,000 registered witches and approximately 8 million unregistered practitioners of Wicca.  And it is important to remember that Wicca is just one form of witchcraft.  There are many other “darker” forms of witchcraft that are also experiencing tremendous growth.
 
This is a trend that didn’t just start a few years ago.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, Wicca experienced an average annual growth rate of 143 percent in the United States between 1990 and 2001…
 

The American Religious Identification Survey gives Wicca an average annual growth of 143% for the period 1990 to 2001 (from 8,000 to 134,000 – U.S. data / similar for Canada & Australia).  According to The Statesman Anne Elizabeth Wynn claims “The two most recent American Religious Identification Surveys declare Wicca, one form of paganism, as the fastest growing spiritual identification in America“.
 
A press release from Witch School also claims that Wicca is the fastest growing religion in America, and that organization projects that Wicca will soon become the third largest religion in the United States after only Christianity and Islam…
 

Wicca is America’s Fastest Growing religion, and it is anticipated by some Christian religious experts that it will become the third largest religion in the United States early in the 21st century, behind only Christianity and Islam.
 
Witch School claims that it has trained more than 200,000 students by itself so far.  And of course Witch School is just one of thousands of prominent occult websites on the Internet.
 
A Christian Post article from a few years ago claimed that the number of Wiccans in America is doubling every 30 months…
 

“Wicca is the fastest-growing religion in America, set to be the third largest religion by 2012,” claims Marla Alupoaicei, who co-wrote the recently released book “Generation Hex” with fellow Christian author Dillon Burroughs.
 
“The numbers of adherents are doubling every 30 months,” she says.
 
Furthermore, every major city in the United States has networks of Wiccans, adds Burroughs.
 
“Certain parts of the country, such as the Pacific Northwest, the mountain states (New Mexico and Colorado) and areas near Salem, Mass., are the strongest in the U.S.,” he says. “However, I live in Tennessee and have found pockets of Wiccans in Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia to interview. I didn’t have to travel far or even outside of the so-called Bible belt to find Wiccans.”
 
Are you starting to get the picture?
 
There is a huge fascination with the occult in the United States right now.  We can see this on television, in our movies and in popular novels.
 
But this is not just happening in America.  According to the Guardian, there is also an explosion of interest in witchcraft going on in the UK…
 

When Ryan Murphy, the creator of American Horror Story, announced that the third season of the American TV series would focus on witches, he was riding the crest of a wave. Not since the 1990s – the era of Buffy’s geek goddess, Willow Rosenberg, and a scowling Fairuza Balk in The Craft – have witches been so much in demand.
 
In the young-adult section of bookshops, shelves that recently groaned under the weight of tales of tormented vampires and lovelorn werewolves, are now stuffed with stories of witchcraft and magic, from Ruth Warburton’s much-praised Winter Trilogy to Jessica Spotswood’s Cahill Witch Chronicles. Lower down the age range, last month the most recent in Jill Murphy‘s long-running Worst Witch series was published, while among the predictions for this Christmas’s bestselling toys are the Bratz spinoff, House of Witchez. For adults, next year will mark the climax of Deborah Harkness’s All Souls Trilogy, centring on the relationship between a vampire and a feisty American witch.
 
And right now is one of the most important times of the year for Wiccans.  According to Raiders News Network, the Wiccan year begins just after Halloween…
 

According to the Celtic Almanac, the Wiccan year begins following Halloween. The seasonal scenario that follows is reminiscent of the earth goddess and dying-god cults of ancient civilizations.
 
* Yule is on December 20 and celebrates the goddess giving birth to the Sun god.
 
* The next season is Imbolc and marks the recovery of the goddess after giving birth to the god.
 
* The Spring Equinox (Ostara) marks the first day of Spring. The goddess awakes as the days grow longer and the light overtakes the darkness. The goddess fills the earth with fertility.
 
* Beltane celebrates the transformation of the boy god into manhood. He is filled with lust for the goddess and lies with her in the grass. The earth becomes pregnant with her vitality. Crops begin to grow. Flowers bloom.
 
* Litha (midsummer) arrives as the powers of nature escalate. The Earth Mother is filled with fertility. Wiccans practice numerous kinds of magic during this season.
 
* The next season is Lughnasadh, the time of the first harvest. The Wiccan god begins to lose his strength as the Sun rises higher each day. The nights grow longer. The god begins to die.
 
* Mabon is the completion of the harvest. The Wiccan god suffers death, draws back into darkness, and waits to be reborn at Yule.
 
Wiccans were celebrating this holiday (Samhain) long before anyone else started celebrating it.  This year Americans will spend about 6 billion dollars on Halloween celebrations, but most of them have absolutely no idea that many “Halloween traditions” can be traced directly back to ancient Wiccan practices.  The following is from a recent Business Insider article…
 

Black cats, spiders, and bats are all Halloween symbols because of their spooky history and ties to Wiccans. All three were thought to be the familiars of witches in the middle ages, and are often associated with bad luck.
 
Bats are even further connected to Halloween by the ancient Samhain ritual of building a bonfire, which drove away insects and attracted bats.
 
As a Christian, I do not celebrate Halloween.  I do not want anything to do with witchcraft, black magic, white magic, vampires, werewolves, wizards, warlocks, zombies, evil spirits, ancient pagan religions or anything else along those lines.
 
But more Americans than ever are embracing the darkness, and each year this comes to a fever pitch on Halloween night.  For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “The Dark Side Of Halloween: The Kind Of Stuff That Real Life Nightmares Are Made Of“.

http://thetruthwins.com/archives/the-fastest-growing-religion-in-america-is-witchcraft


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 31, 2013, 11:27:53 am
Well, you can't deny witchcraft has infiltrated the modern-day church in America - largely since the NIV bible hit the market in 1978. No surprise as CCM/Christian Rock, Emergent/Postmodernism Theology, Prosperity Gospel, etc has infiltrated their walls.


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on November 03, 2013, 06:26:35 am
Out of the Broom Closet: Witch Joins Cast of Real Housewives

Former actress and interior designer Carlton Gebbia has joined the cast of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. In a promotional trailer for the 4th season Gebbia says, "I'm a witch."
 
Gebbia told The Daily Beast, "Well, there’s a lot of debate about what I supposedly practice, because Wicca and other religions are covered under the umbrella of Paganism. I’m Celtic, which is my ancestry. And I practice witchcraft. My grandmother was a Pagan."
 
Some of Hollywood's most popular actresses have portrayed witches: Sandra Bullock, Melissa Joan Hart and Mila Kunis to name a few.
 
Actresses and singers are less likely to confirm involvement in wicca, paganism or satanism. Instead rumors abound.
 
In a 1992 TV interview Karla LaVey, the daughter of Anton LaVey (author of the Satanic Bible), claimed that actress Jayne Mansfield was a witch. The Lady Lazarus blog contradicts the "Mansfied is a satanist" story: "As with many legends, this one was most assuredly manufactured."
 
Singer Stevie Nicks has also been accused of being a witch because her music is copyrighted by Welsh Witch Music.

http://blogs.christianpost.com/hollywood-lights/out-of-the-broom-closet-witch-joins-cast-of-real-housewives-18518/


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on November 03, 2013, 09:33:01 am
If anything, they work in secret(like the Masons).


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on September 01, 2015, 08:33:03 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ8h4Xg4swE


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on September 15, 2015, 06:56:48 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYGws2mLwh0


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 11, 2015, 09:12:56 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2LACPmpvGU


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on October 14, 2015, 06:45:48 am
Halloween Is The Biggest Day Of The Year For The Fastest Growing Religion In America

If you are a witch, Halloween is not just another holiday.  For Wiccans, the festival known as “Samhain” is the time when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest, and so communication with the other side is the easiest.  And as you will see below, it is also the time “when the god dies, to be reborn again on the Winter Solstice”.  Many Americans are still very unfamiliar with Wicca, but the truth is that it is rapidly growing in popularity.  In fact, it has been projected that Wicca will soon become the third largest “religion” in America after Christianity and Islam.  According to the American Religious Identification Survey, the number of self-identified Wiccans in the United States grew from 8,000 in 1990 to 134,000 in 2001 to 342,000 in 2008.  The New York Post recently ran an article which stated that some experts have estimated that the number of witches in the U.S. is doubling every 30 months, and that there may now be “8 million undeclared practitioners” of “the craft” in this country.

So needless to say, this is a group of people that is very much growing in numbers and in influence.  And of course not all of them believe the exact same things.  Among various Wiccan groups there is tremendous variation in doctrine and practice.

One common thread that you will find among many of them, however, is a disdain for “Halloween”.  They tend to consider most Halloween traditions to be distorted Christianized versions of ancient pagan practices, and most of them are not really too thrilled with the mixing of the two.

For most Wiccans, the proper name for the day is “Samhain”, and it is a celebration that they take very seriously.  The following comes from a piece that was authored by a self-described “modern-day pagan and real-life Wiccan“…

    Today, the holiday is still celebrated in the non-standardized, revived witchcraft tradition known as Wicca, and in the even less standardized group known as neo-pagans. In these circles, Halloween is called Samhain (pronunciations vary; I go with Sah-wen). Its significance and celebrations are rooted in traditional, pre-Christian practice, though they are by no means exact replicas.

    October 31st is the midway point between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice. As such it is considered the end of the harvest time, when everything has stopped growing and the earth goes back to sleep. On the Wiccan calendar, known as the “wheel of the year” it is also the day when the god dies, to be reborn again on the Winter Solstice. Samhain is therefore the day when the veil between the living and the dead is considered thinnest, and is a time to remember people in our lives who have passed away.

Here is more on what Wiccans believe about Samhain from wicca.com…

    Samhain, (pronounced SOW-in, SAH-vin, or SAM-hayne) means “End of Summer”, and is the third and final Harvest. The dark winter half of the year commences on this Sabbat.

    It is generally celebrated on October 31st, but some traditions prefer November 1st. It is one of the two “spirit-nights” each year, the other being Beltane. It is a magical interval when the mundane laws of time and space are temporarily suspended, and the Thin Veil between the worlds is lifted. Communicating with ancestors and departed loved ones is easy at this time, for they journey through this world on their way to the Summerlands. It is a time to study the Dark Mysteries and honor the Dark Mother and the Dark Father, symbolized by the Crone and her aged Consort.

    Originally the “Feast of the Dead” was celebrated in Celtic countries by leaving food offerings on altars and doorsteps for the “wandering dead”. Today a lot of practitioners still carry out that tradition. Single candles were lit and left in a window to help guide the spirits of ancestors and loved ones home. Extra chairs were set to the table and around the hearth for the unseen guest. Apples were buried along roadsides and paths for spirits who were lost or had no descendants to provide for them. Turnips were hollowed out and carved to look like protective spirits, for this was a night of magic and chaos. The Wee Folke became very active, pulling pranks on unsuspecting humans. Traveling after dark was was not advised. People dressed in white (like ghosts), wore disguises made of straw, or dressed as the opposite gender in order to fool the Nature spirits.

That all sounds very complicated.

So why has Wicca become so explosively popular in America and elsewhere around the world?

Well, there are certainly a lot of factors, but in the end a lot of them are very basic.  According to the New York Post, Wicca “is practiced by a growing number of lapsed Christians seeking easy gratification for life’s most pressing needs: sex, hot clothes, relief from rotten marriages.”

That is very sad for me, because as a dedicated Christian it pains me to hear that so many of my brothers and sisters are being pulled from the faith so easily.

But there are those that are going the other direction as well.  In fact, the Daily Mail recently profiled one such individual…

    A ‘recovering’ witch who says she was deceived by the Wicca religion has revealed why she abandoned the dark arts and returned to Christianity after years of casting spells for her own good fortune.

    Selah Ally Tower, who goes by her middle name, joined a coven in her home state of New Jersey after taking a correspondence course in witchcraft in 1989. However, after a decade of casting spells, reading tarot cards, wearing capes and flowing skirts, and enjoying an extramarital affair at the suggestion of her coven’s leaders, a pastor convinced the 58-year-old mother of three give up on witchcraft for good.

Tower has authored two books about her experiences.  One is entitled “Taken from the Night: A Witch’s Encounter with God“, and the other is entitled “From the Craft to Christ: The Allure of Witchcraft and the Church’s Response“.  Like many people, she was drawn to Wicca because she found that it could produce real results for real needs in her life.  Here is more from the Daily Mail…

    ‘Casting spells, I saw results. Usually, it was like – maybe I needed money or I needed a car. I needed love in my life,’ she said of the allure of witchcraft. ‘It was very selfish. It was all about what I wanted. I was really satisfied with my life.’

When most people watch television or they go to the movies and they hear about “the power of magic”, it isn’t something that they take too seriously.

But for most Wiccans, magic is something that is very real and that has a tremendous amount of power.  The following is what Wikipedia has to say about Wiccans and magic…

    Many Wiccans believe in magic, a manipulative force exercised through the practice of witchcraft or sorcery. Many Wiccans agree with the definition of magic offered by ceremonial magicians,[41] such as Aleister Crowley, who declared that magic was “the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will”, while another prominent ceremonial magician, MacGregor Mathers stated that it was “the science of the control of the secret forces of nature”.[41] Many Wiccans believe magic to be a law of nature, as yet misunderstood or disregarded by contemporary science,[41] and as such they do not view it as being supernatural, but a part of what Leo Martello calls the “super powers that reside in the natural”.[42] Some Wiccans believe that magic is simply making full use of the five senses in order to achieve surprising results,[42] whilst other Wiccans do not claim to know how magic works, merely believing that it does because they have observed it to be so.[43] Some spell it “magick”, a variation coined by the influential occultist Aleister Crowley, though this spelling is more commonly associated with Crowley’s religion of Thelema than with Wicca.

    During ritual practices, which are often staged in a sacred circle, Wiccans cast spells or “workings” intended to bring about real changes in the physical world. Common Wiccan spells include those used for healing, for protection, fertility, or to banish negative influences.[45] Many early Wiccans, such as Alex Sanders, Sybil Leek and Doreen Valiente, referred to their own magic as “white magic“, which contrasted with “black magic“, which they associated with evil and Satanism. Sanders also used the similar terminology of “left hand path” to describe malevolent magic, and “right hand path” to describe magic performed with good intentions;[46] terminology that had originated with the occultist Helena Blavatsky in the 19th century. Some modern Wiccans however have stopped using the white-black magic and left-right hand path dichotomies, arguing for instance that the colour black should not necessarily have any associations with evil.[47]

But even for the vast majority of Americans that are not into Wicca, this time of the year has increasingly become known as a time to focus on “magic”, evil and horror.

For instance, one hot new trend is to photograph little children as they are dressed up to perfectly resemble characters from horror films, and another hot new trend is to hold something called “a blood rave”…

    Put on by BBQ Films and tied to the weekend-long ruckus that is NYC Comic Con, the Blood Rave featured a live action performance of scenes from the film, with ticket-buyers encouraged to dress the part of hemoglobin-craving vampires. Also adding to the ambiance was electronic music legends The Crystal Method, who headlined the evening.

    But the star attractions were Blade… and all the (fake) blood. Just before midnight, a squadron of technicians suited up with body-mounted sprayers surrounded the crowd and, on cue, soaked the writhing masses with synthetic blood. No leather corset or bare tattooed back was spared as the ravers seethed with fanged glee beneath the crimson rain. For a few hours, it was truly weird and wonderful to see a sea of giddy daywalkers living out fantasy bloodlust.

Approximately 70 percent of all Americans will participate in Halloween festivities once again this year, and they will spend somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 billion dollars celebrating the holiday, and most will believe that it is just a bunch of innocent fun.

But the minority of Americans that take this holiday very, very seriously is growing, and that is not a good thing.

On page 96 of the Satanic Bible, Anton LaVey wrote the following…

    “After one’s own birthday, the two major Satanic holidays are Walpurgisnacht (May 1st) and Halloween.”

Halloween is the biggest day of the year for Wiccans, white witches, black witches, Satanists, neo-pagans and occultists of all stripes.

When you participate in traditions and practices that are rooted in that world, you also risk opening up a door for supernatural forces that you do not understand and will not be able to control.

As a Christian, I do not want to have anything to do with Halloween, Samhain or whatever else they may want to call it.

So what about you?

What is your perspective on this holiday?

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/halloween-is-the-biggest-day-of-the-year-for-the-fastest-growing-religion-in-america


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 14, 2015, 08:51:04 am
Personally, I quit celebrating this day once I got into junior high school.(the 6th grade was the last time I went "trick or treating") And come to think of it, since I moved to New Orleans(and back to North Texas), we only opened our doors to give out candy once.(and that was when we moved into a new house back in 2001, but found no interest afterwards)

With that being said - even throughout my junior high school and (Catholic)high school years, teachers were more or less lenient on us in terms of homework, tests, etc on this very day. I remember in my senior year in HS, my computer lit teacher ended up postponing a test b/c he knew we would celebrate this very day.

No, this is not just a "kids" celebration day at all - it's more "bread and circuses" to keep the masses fat and happy.


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 14, 2015, 03:06:19 pm
DEMONIC HALLOWEEN DISPLAY FRIGHTENING CHILDREN IN PARMA, OHIO
10/12/15
“WE JUST WANT TO DO THE HALLOWEEN FUN OF IT AND, YOU KNOW, BUT DEFINITELY NO ILL INTENT, NO.”

“… but this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” Luke 22:53 (KJV)

EDITOR’S NOTE: The woman in this story says she had “no ill intent” and was just looking to create some “Halloween fun” when she filled her front yard with lifelike corpses decorated as though that had been gruesomely murdered. And just to let you know who the real “spirit” behind Halloween is, she felt led to display an upside crucifix holding a corpse that had heroin needles sticking out of the victim’s jugular veins. The Devil just couldn’t enjoy himself on his holiday without taking a slap at the Lord Jesus Christ.

PARMA, Ohio — “I felt scared cause I thought they were real people,” said a young girl. At least one nine-year-old was frightened by a life-like Halloween display less than a block from Dentzler Elementary School she attends in Parma, Ohio. Jackie Anselmo is the child’s mother. She says they noticed the display on the way to school. “Shock. You take a double take because it is a very realistic display.

Almost horrified that somebody would think that it’s ok to put it that close to an elementary school,” Anselmo said. She says her daughter thought they were real bodies. The Parma resident said she and several other neighbors are bothered by how graphic the display is and that its so close to the elementary school. Anselmo was so troubled by it that she took a picture and emailed the city to try to get the display taken down. But, the city says there’s nothing they can do about it because it’s freedom of expression. Vicki Barrett says she and her husband haven’t had any complaints since they put up the display. “We don’t want to scare kids,” Barrett said. “We just want to do the Halloween fun of it and, you know, but definitely no ill intent, no.”

should-a-christian-celebrate-halloween-all-souls-days-hallowed-eve-bible-believer

She says she even has a two-year-old and a teenager with special needs and would never do anything to purposely frighten children. “If it’s scaring some kids and we knew they’re having a hard time leaving school, yeah, we may have toned it down. We don’t want to scare kids,” Barrett said. Tone it down or take it down says Anselmo. Her daughter even offered up some suggestions of other Halloween displays. “Like fake plastic sculls or little tiny skeletons or blow up pumpkins.


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 23, 2015, 11:41:10 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U0nb6xJKJk


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on October 27, 2015, 10:40:09 pm
Florida Senate Candidate Admits to Sacrificing Goat, Drinking Blood in Pagan Ritual

A U.S. Senate candidate in Florida is raising eyebrows after he admitted to sacrificing a goat and drinking its blood two years ago as part of a pagan ritual.

Augustus Sol Invictus, 32, is a candidate for Marco Rubio’s seat under the Libertarian Party and also works as an attorney.

His moniker means “majestic unconquered sun,” similar to the sun god that was worshiped in the Roman empire in the first few hundred years following Christ’s death and resurrection.

However, reports state that he chose the name in following Thelema, a philosophy created by Satanist Alestair Crowley. Invictus’ real name is not known.

This week, Invictus admitted to reporters that in 2013, he walked to the Mojave Desert from Orlando and spent a week there fasting. After his return, he killed a goat and drank its blood to give thanks for surviving the journey.

“I did sacrifice a goat. I know that’s probably a quibble in the mind of most Americans,” Invictus told the Associated Press. “I sacrificed an animal to the god of the wilderness. … Yes, I drank the goat’s blood.”

The Daily Beast also notes that in a letter he wrote he wrote that year, Invictus renounced his U.S. citizenship, his part in the Roman Catholic Church, his legal license, and all of his physical possessions.

“To those who believe that this great renunciation is evidence of mental illness rather than the initiation of a spiritual journey: If my example stirs nothing in you, if you can see no further than the confines of what your secular humanism & its hallowed psychiatry allow, then there is nothing I can say to you that would wake you from your slumber,” he wrote. “You are less than the beast in man. You are fungi. Would to God that you pass quickly from this Earth.”

He said that he was going to the desert to prepare for a civil war.

“I have prophesied for years that I was born for a Great War; that if I did not witness the coming of the Second American Civil War I would begin it myself. Mark well: That day is fast coming upon you. On the New Moon of May, I shall disappear into the Wilderness. I will return bearing Revolution, or I will not return at all,” Invictus wrote.

The Senate candidate told reporters that he doesn’t “go on [his] lunch break and start hacking chickens to death,” but is an avowed pagan.

If elected, he said that he wants to tackle issues such as immigration, the federal budget and U.S. intervention in foreign countries. Libertarian Party Chairman Adrian Wyllie resigned last Thursday due to disagreements with Invictus’ candidacy. Invictus has remarked that Wyllie’s vocal opposition has been just to “smear” his campaign.

http://christiannews.net/2015/10/08/florida-senate-candidate-admits-to-sacrificing-goat-drinking-blood-in-pagan-ritual/


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 27, 2015, 10:52:11 pm
Not only are they openly admitting it, but the masses just don't care anymore. 20 years ago, he would have been thrown in jail.


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 27, 2015, 11:56:44 pm
https://www.yahoo.com/health/whats-happening-in-your-brain-and-body-when-you-141207775.html

What’s Happening in Your Brain and Body When You Watch Your Team in the World Series

Jenna Birch
October 27, 2015
The New York Mets and the Kansas City Royals face off this week in the World Series — but it’s not just the players who are feeling the heat.

With each pitch and passing inning, fans experience the joy and the pain, too, says Art Markman, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas, Austin. “The more strongly we are engaged with a goal, the stronger the emotions we feel,” Markman tells Yahoo Health. “Because we are such a social species, humans are able to engage goals both related to our self, as well as to extend that self to social groups to which we belong.”

According to Diane Robinson, PhD, a neuropsychologist at University of Florida Health Cancer Center - Orlando Health, becoming a fan of a particular sports team is sort of like adopting the whole group into your family.

“This is something we call ‘social identity theory,’” she tells Yahoo Health. “As humans, we’re all animals, and we like to belong to a pack. A sports team gives you an immediate identity. You can be alone in a city at a bar, and people will interact with you based on your team affiliation, which helps overcome feelings of isolation. It’s your tribe. And that’s powerful — you may experience the same neural responses to pain as if it was happening to your loved one.”

Sports give us the opportunity to indulge a broad range of positive and negative emotions, strong as they may be, in a safe environment. “There are few opportunities to experience joy and sadness on this scale, but sports allows it to happen,” Markman says.

How exactly does it all happen? Here, we break down all the emotions, along with how your brain and body is processing them.

(https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/ylTHeQ661Kn9lw1hhdmjYw--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjtzbT0xO3c9MTIwMDtoPTE2ODk-/http://33.media.tumblr.com/6d36297a382794cde845e2ec360ddd3c/tumblr_inline_nwvtouraij1tyi01g_540.gif)

Pleasure… as your team scores the first run.

As a social species, we’ve adopted our team as our own, which means: Whatever they feel, you’ll be feeling, too. “We experience emotions when our motivational system is engaged in some goal,” says Markman. “The more strongly we are engaged with the goal, the stronger the emotions we feel.” This includes the pleasure and excitement characteristic of good plays and earned runs.

If your team jumps out to a lead, expect a burst of dopamine — the “happy” chemical — as your brain’s reward centers are activated. “The brain’s pleasure pathway is the ventral striatum,” says Robinson. “If you feel a burst of giddiness, or the German term ‘schadenfreude’ — it’s the brain’s response to the abject pain of the other team. Those pleasure areas are activated at the pain of a rival.” According to Robinson, the more competitive the game, the greater rush of endorphins (the chemical responsible for that pain-masking euphoric feeling) you’ll receive after every big play.

Disappointment… as a hitter strikes out.

At the same time, sporting events are usually up-and-down affairs, so you can also experience the flipside of pleasure: disappointment. “It’s a neurometabolic cascading rollercoaster,” Robinson says. “This is all about your self-esteem. Their loss is your loss, and the pain areas of the brain light up.” These areas include the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex. At the same time, says Robinson, “the neurons in the brain are putting you out on the field, stepping up to the plate like it’s happening to you.”

Your brain’s mirror neurons are engaged and, yes, your muscles might just be twitching to get in that batter’s box yourself. In a 2008 study, researchers found that muscle systems involved in shooting a basketball — or perhaps, swinging a bat — switched on while watching another perform that action. When a player was about to miss a shot, there was the greatest increase in “muscle evoked potentials” that indicate you’re about to participate in an action. Why the spike? You’re trying to correct the shooter’s form — or the hitter’s swing, in a World Series context — because you want to win. The more you know about the sport, the greater this micro-muscle engagement, according to the study. And the shifts are so small, they may not even be noticeable to the naked eye.

Rage… as the opposing team hits a home run (and you down another beer).

The moment your team’s momentum stalls when your opponent executes a great play, your autonomic nervous system is triggered. Cortisol levels rise, and adrenaline begins to pump through your system, according to Karla Ivankovich, PhD, an adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Illinois, Springfield. “This also incites the fight-or-flight response, where you are ready to stand with your team and fight for the win,” she tells Yahoo Health. Research conducted in 2014 shows testosterone rises during competition, as well, which can lead to those intense feelings of rage and aggression.

Meanwhile, you may have tipped back a couple beers at this point in the game, which will only make any sting worse. “Alcohol affects emotions and inhibitions,” says Robinson. “The part of the brain that says, ‘Calm down, don’t do that’ starts to shut down.” What you see next, she explains, is undiluted passion. “The frontal cortex, which allows us to complete complex social situations, is what separates us from the apes,” Robinson says. “The visceral parts of the brain start to take charge when you’ve consumed alcohol, and the reasoning and modulation of emotion is taken away.” So if you get into an argument with your friend after the ump makes a bad call? Blame the bad call and the booze.

Related: What Happens to Your Body Within an Hour of Drinking a Beer

Anxiety as the opponent loads the bases… then relief as your ace strikes out three in a row.

Notice how your anxiety levels shoot up when your team’s lead is threatened? According to Ivankovich, that’s because every true fan starts the game assuming their team will score a victory. “But at some point, if you begin to think otherwise, fear and anxiety can creep in and you can cycle rapidly through the entire emotional continuum.”

This is the autonomic nervous system at work, explains Robinson — where the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems work in tandem within. The sympathetic system responds as warning bells go off; cortisol rises during that nail-biting inning, your lungs expand, your heart pumps faster, and your body enters fight-or-flight. When your team finally sits down three batters without a run, the parasympathetic nervous system tells your body to cool off; your pupils will undilate and heart rate will stabilize as your body breathes a sigh of relief.

All game, you might notice these back-and-forth shifts. “When your team takes the field up a run in the bottom of the ninth, there are still many bad things that can happen,” Markman says. “Until the final out is recorded, there is anxiety.”

Crying… as your team finally wins (or loses).

You can think of crying as the ultimate energy release. Likely, your stress level has been inching up and up throughout the game — or even a whole season — as you encounter bad plays, close calls, and a back-and-forth lead. Markman says anticipatory emotions like hope and anxiety generally build in intensity as time passes. Robinson calls this the “climax of tension,” which is greatest during the most competitive games.

Ivankovich says that emotions are regulated in such a way that the brain is constantly trying to reach an equilibrium — and sometimes, you need a release of stress to do it. “Even tears of joy are a way of bringing a sense of balance back to the mind, especially when one is overwhelmed with emotion,” she explains. (In the early 1980s, biochemist William Frey discovered the body rids itself of problematic, stress-related chemicals through its tears.)

Those tears serve a psycho-social purpose, too.  “When the goal is either achieved or not achieved in a game, at this point, the energy built up in this anticipation period is released,” Markman says, “and that can be accompanied by tears that communicate the extremity of the emotion to others.”

There’s a practical purpose for tears, potentially evolving as a signaling device to show others we’re experiencing an emotion. One psychological theory is that tears produced through strong emotions, in part, bond us through shared experience and empathy. So, you may cry at either a big victory or a big loss — either way, the other members of your tribe will likely gather around and feel all the feels right along with you.

Even in defeat, you can think of it as relationship-building.


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 30, 2015, 04:45:53 pm
http://news.yahoo.com/alabama-version-skull-bones-publicly-exposed-163633150.html
Alabama version of 'Skull and Bones' publicly exposed
10/30/15

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — The fabled Skull and Bones society is the stuff of lore at Yale University. Harvard University has Final Clubs, known as a grooming place for the rich and powerful.

In Tuscaloosa, a group called "The Machine" may not rise to Ivy League heights of prestige or mystique. But it's a powerful force at the University of Alabama, functioning within the shadows of what is billed as the largest community of fraternities and sororities on a U.S. college campus.

Machine members don't acknowledge its existence, and the university doesn't recognize it as an official group. Yet the homecoming queen and student government president generally are elected through bloc voting run by the group, and alumni of Machine-affiliated Greek organizations have gone on to hold offices including governor and U.S. senator.

Knowing of the group since high school, 19-year-old Alex Smith was happy to be elected to the campus Senate as a representative of her Machine-aligned sorority earlier this year. Her excitement turned quickly to uneasiness, and it ended this week in the most unthinkable of ways: She publicly exposed The Machine in a first-person article published by the campus newspaper and she resigned from the group.

Smith, a sophomore honors student from Huntsville, wrote that she no longer could be part of an organization that uses pressure and intimidation to control campus for the benefit of fraternity and sorority members, who comprise about 25 percent of the university's 36,000 students.

"It is a corrupt system. It suppresses people's opinions and they use a scare tactic to keep people on their side," Smith told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday.

The fraternity president who serves as Senate speaker did not return an email seeking comment on Smith's resignation.

University spokeswoman Deborah Lane said administrators investigate all alleged violations of the student conduct code, which bans intimidation and coercion. She cited privacy laws in refusing to say whether any formal complaints had been filed but said school officials can investigate potential problems on their own.

Student government President Elliot Spillers — an independent elected without the support of the Machine — praised Smith for being brave enough to go public.

"She truly spoke truth to power," Spillers said.

Composed of the most prestigious, traditionally white fraternities and sororities on campus, The Machine is said to date back a century or more. Through the years, stories of nefarious Machine actions aimed at opponents have become numerous — a burglary, a cross-burning, vandalism, social blackballing, to name a few.

The student government association was temporarily disbanded two decades ago after a non-Machine presidential candidate claimed she was assaulted in her home, and a former Tuscaloosa school board member is currently suing over claims The Machine improperly swayed a city election by plying students with booze, concert tickets and other perks. But allegations of wrongdoing are generally tough to prove because of the Machine's secrecy.

In her article in The Crimson White, Smith recounted attending a cloak-and-dagger Machine meeting earlier this year in the basement of the Old South fraternity Kappa Alpha — which reveres Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. She also received directions by text messages on how she was supposed to vote on issues before the Machine-controlled Senate.

Smith wrote of being distraught last week as she left a Senate meeting where she said she was denied permission to speak in favor of a resolution that could mandate greater openness by the Machine. Smith said the experience pushed her over the edge.

"I walked out in tears," she said. "I felt like I had purposely been not allowed to speak. I was the only Machine senator who had their hand raised in affirmation of the resolution."

Spillers said Smith's revelations have made a difference.

"People are dialoguing and discussing what had happened," the student body president said.

Smith said she began having misgivings after her election last spring when the student government's Machine-affiliated members refused to approve Spiller's choice for his chief of staff simply because he was independent.

Smith remains a senator, and she said she's received mostly positive feedback since her resignation although some people she considered friends are giving her the cold shoulder. She doesn't know whether her actions will help change the university.

"Even if no one joins me, even if people who once spoke to me turn their backs on me, even if no one whose mind can be changed reads this article, I won't regret writing it," Smith wrote. "Because I'm finally doing the right thing. I'm finally free."


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on November 16, 2015, 01:13:59 pm
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/paris-concert-crowd-was-singing-kiss-the-devil-the-moment-terror-attacks-began/
PARIS CONCERT CROWD WAS SINGING ‘KISS THE DEVIL’ THE MOMENT TERROR ATTACKS BEGAN
As those people bled and died on the dance floor of the Death Metal concert, they went from singing about the Devil to meeting the Devil face to face.

11/16/15

MERE MOMENTS AWAY FROM SLAUGHTER, PARIS FANS AT EAGLES OF DEATH METAL CONCERT SANG SONG GLORIFYING THE DEVIL

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:” 1 Peter 5:8 (KJV)

With their hands raised high in the air, as you see in this photo taken moments before the attacks began, Paris fans at the Eagles Of Death Metal concert made the Satanic “devil horns” salute without seemingly a care in the world. Amazingly, the song that was playing the moment the shooting started was called ‘Kiss The Devil‘, and here are some of the lyrics from that tune:

“KISS THE DEVIL” – BY EAGLES OF DEATH METAL

WHO’LL LOVE THE DEVIL?
WHO’LL SONG HIS SONG?
WHO WILL LOVE THE DEVIL AND HIS SONG?

I’LL LOVE THE DEVIL
I’LL SING HIS SONG
I WILL LOVE THE DEVIL AND HIS SONG

WHO’LL LOVE THE DEVIL?
WHO’LL KISS HIS TONGUE?
WHO WILL KISS THE DEVIL ON HIS TONGUE?

I’LL LOVE THE DEVIL
I’LL KISS HIS TONGUE
I WILL KISS THE DEVIL ON HIS TONGUE

As the French death metal fans were singing along with those lyrics, offering their love to Satan, the Devil responded as the Devil always does. With death and destruction. Now, you go ahead and spin that any way you like, any way that makes you feel comfortable. But as a Bible believer, I know exactly what happened Friday night at 9:40PM GMT in Paris, France. People asked for a manifestation of the Satan, and guess what? They got one.

It is safe to say that there were just about no Christians at the concert that night, that the vast majority of those people were lost, unsaved people. I wonder how many of them were offered the life-saving gospel of Jesus Christ and turned their nose up at it? Probably more than a few of them. We see it all the time as we street preach in St. Augustine. To most lost people, the Devil is a joke and Hell will be a beer and sex infused party. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;” Hebrews 2:14 (KJV)

As those people bled and died on the dance floor of the Death Metal concert, they went from singing about the Devil to meeting the Devil face to face. Hell is no joke, it is absolutely not a party, and you do not have to end up there. Click here to read all about a place called Hell that you can avoid by trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ.

Friday night they “kissed the Devil”, and the Devil kissed them right back. Don’t let it happen to you.

“And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” Acts 16:30.31 (KJV)


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on November 26, 2015, 08:15:01 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIbF0Ouc6YM


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on November 27, 2015, 04:33:32 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLgbBT0z56c


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on December 18, 2015, 01:06:39 pm
https://www.yahoo.com/makers/letters-santa-claus-beautiful-compilation-230233375/photo-letters-to-santa-claus-a-1450315097118.html
100 Years of Kids’ Letters to Santa: Comedy, Bribery, and Tragedy
Liz Biscevic
December 16, 2015
Move over, North Pole. The town of Santa Claus, Ind., has a good claim to the title of No. 1 address for Christmas letters. The little town has received over a million Christmas letters from all over the world in the past 100 years.

From that enormous stack of mail, 250 letters have been chosen and published in a new compilation from Indiana University Press. “Letters to Santa Claus” features epistles ranging from standard Christmas lists and funny anecdotes to tales of heartbreak and tragedy.


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on January 25, 2016, 03:23:04 pm
https://www.rt.com/news/330092-devils-fire-correfoc-festival/
Devil’s advocate: Correfoc demon festival lights up Mallorca, Barcelona
Published time: 25 Jan, 2016 17:04

The Spanish cities of Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona drew massive crowds for the spectacular demon-themed ‘Fire Run’ at the weekend.
As part of the annual event locals don devil costumes and dart around with sparklers, flares and fireworks while spectators are encouraged to ‘run the gauntlet’.

The festival, which has its roots in medieval times, is a high-octane occasion with a constant drumbeat as its soundtrack.

Correfoc [Fire Run] 🔥 pic.twitter.com/UwSk9wdlZ2

— Brittany Yaxley (@BrittanyYaxley) January 24, 2016
Gallery: What the devil! Sparks fly at Spain's most explosive fiesta https://t.co/G5xVhk0iih#correfoc#Mallorcapic.twitter.com/LDaKp5SXyK

— The Local Spain (@TheLocalSpain) January 25, 2016
While cultural events such as these are often seen as the embodiment of identity for communities throughout Spain, an EU law passed seven years ago threatened their very existence.

Brussels passed legislation to curtail use of pyrotechnics and indeed fire at carnivals such as Correfoc, but Spanish lawmakers intervened to scrap the regulations.

Today #correfoc#Palma#Mallorca#SantSebastiapic.twitter.com/cPwOLm920T

— ROIG Mallorca (@ROIGMallorca) January 23, 2016
Sparks are flying at the correfoc from last year's fiesta mejor in Sitges. Catalunya. Spai… https://t.co/XAd4Gq2Ldypic.twitter.com/sJP8DOStdp

— Insta Sitges (@InstaSitges) January 23, 2016
When you look at last year’s festivities in Barcelona, it's easy to see why injuries remain a risk. Indeed, revellers are advised to keep themselves covered up to avoid burns.


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on April 19, 2016, 04:16:08 pm
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/the-satanic-temple-opening-chapters-all-across-america-to-battle-christianity/

100K Member Satanic Temple Opening Chapters All Across America To ‘Battle Christianity’

The Satanic Temple believes that the separation of church and state is currently under attack by radical religious conservatives. They also believe there is a silent majority that opposes this agenda, but remains too apathetic to do anything about it.

4/19/16

Since its founding, The Satanic Temple has waged a highly active campaign to demand greater separation between church and state, and to challenge the privileged relationship Christianity has with government.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” Ephesians 6:12,13,16 (KJV)

“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;” 2 Thessalonians 2:3 (KJV)

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the Laodicean Christian church continues on it’s self-defeating path of preaching the powerless ‘love gospel’, and looking for their ‘blessing’ promised them by charlatans like Joel Osteen, Lou Engle, Rick Warren, and Kenneth Copeland, the Satanic Temple is on the rise. The prophesied darkness is coming as the Church of Jesus Christ continues it’s falling away into apostasy. The war is real, the battle is hot and the time is short, to the fight, Christian!

Robert Eggers’ period horror film “The Witch” has been one of the surprise hits of 2016. It’s even gained a second wind since its February 23 release: the first weekend of April it played on 666 screens around the country, raking in an additional USD$465,000.

The tale of a Puritan family turning on each other as they attempt to root out the supernatural evil plaguing their farm, the film won Eggers the award for best director at Sundance – and even frightened horror master Stephen King.

The Satanic Temple of Detroit: Unveiling of Baphomet

GRAPHIC WARNING: This is HARD CORE Devil worship, and it took place in Detroit on July 25, 2015 at the unveiling of the Baphomet monument. This is the spirit that is now rising in America as Laodicean Christianity is powerless to stop it. Please be prayed up before viewing this.

But neither of these accolades has generated as much buzz as an endorsement from The Satanic Temple (TST), a satanic political movement that first appeared in 2013.

In December, TST and A24 studios began collaborating on a four-city tour called The Sabbat Cycle, which consisted of screenings of the film followed by politically driven satanic rituals. The stated goal of The Sabbat Cycle was to inspire a “satanic revolution.”

TST believes that the separation of church and state is currently under attack by radical religious conservatives. They also believe there is a silent majority that opposes this agenda, but remains too apathetic to do anything about it.

The Sabbat Cycle was an attempt to raise political awareness by piggybacking on “The Witch”’s appeal. This is part of larger PR model the group has used since its inception, in which the shocking and the frightening are used to lure media attention to their cause.

As a religion scholar, I find TST fascinating. Not only do their campaigns raise serious questions about the First Amendment and religious pluralism, they also challenge the public to think about what counts as a “religion.”

To learn more, I attended the Sabbat Cycle at its Austin stop, and spoke with attendees about their religious and political views.

Political movement, religion or both?

Since its founding, The Satanic Temple has waged a highly active campaign to demand greater separation between church and state, and to challenge the privileged relationship Christianity has with government.

A cornerstone of their campaign has been tongue-in-cheek “stunts” intended to show how government institutions favor Christianity in ways that would never be tolerated for other religions.

Pastor Joel Osteen’s Full Sermon “The Power of ‘I Am'”

Pay attention, Christians, this is the Christian CRAP being preached to people that think they are going to take on the forces of darkness and win. In a battle between powerless Joel Osteen and his followers against the Satanic Temple and their followers, who do YOU think would win?

TST first made headlines in 2013, when it held a rally in Florida, ostensibly to congratulate Governor Rick Scott for passing a bill that would allow students to read “inspirational messages of their choosing” at assemblies and sporting events.

While Scott probably envisioned the law permitting Christian students to offer public prayers and Bible readings, it could not, constitutionally, specify what sort of “inspirational messsages” were allowed – including satanic messages. And so the rally featured a sign declaring, “Hail Satan! Hail Rick Scott!”

Whether or not TST is a “real” religion has been a subject of debate. But some members insist that while the movement is atheistic, the group, like other religions, has a shared set of values, concerns and symbols (like Satan as a symbol of rebellion).

Religion or not, no one can question TST’s appeal or its sincerity about its political goals.

Today TST has 17 chapters in the United States and Europe and claims an estimated 100,000 members – a figure based on the purchase of membership cards and various forms of online support.

Masters of media attention

TST chapters across the country have launched campaigns demanding the same religious rights and privileges afforded to Christianity.

These have included the creation of satanic coloring books for distribution in schools in Florida and Colorado; bids to erect satanic “nativity scenes” on government property in Florida, Michigan and Indiana; offering prayers to Satan at a high school football game in Seattle; and demanding that a monument to the Ten Commandments at the Oklahoma State Capitol be accompanied by a monument to Baphomet (a goat-headed idol associated with witches’ sabbaths).

The 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) reinforced the religious freedoms outlined in the First Amendment. When the Supreme Court ruled that RFRA applied only to the federal government and could not be applied to the states, many states passed their own versions of RFRA. Several of TST’s campaigns involve using RFRA laws to claim religious accommodations for satanists.

For example, since 2014 TST has invoked state RFRA laws in Michigan and Missouri to demand a religious exemption from laws dictating that those who seek an abortion need to review literature or endure a waiting period.

In January, TST’s Tucson chapter demanded that the Phoenix City Council include them in public prayers offered before their council meetings. The council responded with a new rule that only chaplains from the police and fire departments may offer the prayers before meetings. (TST has threatened to sue.)

Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman has argued that James Madison would have supported the Tucson satanists. Madison was concerned that individual rights could be threatened by a “tyranny of the majority,” and saw laws guaranteeing individual rights as “paper barriers” that offered no real protection. Only a diverse coalition of minorities could effectively check a majority and protect individual freedom.

“We do not seek followers, but collaborators”

It was exactly this sort of coalition that TST spokeswoman Jex Blackmore hoped to forge through events like the Sabbat Cycle.

In Austin, Texas, Blackmore took the stage before a screening of “The Witch” at the Alamo Drafthouse and explained that the film was a “microcosm of a patriarchal theocratic society that results in satanic revolution.” In Blackmore’s reading of the film, the titular witch was driven to witchcraft by Puritan oppression.

Afterward I got to chat with Drafthouse employee and film buff Laird Jimenez about this assessment. He noted that “escaping patriarchy” is currently part of a cultural zeitgeist that includes films like Oscar-winner “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which depicts women escaping – and then overthrowing – a patriarchal warlord.

Following the screening, everyone migrated to a bar and music venue called The Sidewinder, where TST held their ritual. Members from the Detroit and San Antonio chapters began setting up and handing out satanic American flags painted in only black and white. I mingled with a small crowd of Satanic sympathizers and the curious. Leather jackets, tattoos and pentagrams were in abundance.

During the ritual, a speaker played an excerpt from a speech by Baptist pastor Dr. Jeff Owens, in which Owens warned his congregation, “Satan does not want you to do what he wants you to do. Satan wants you to do what you want to do.” (Other eyewitness accounts of the ritual can be found here and here.) Owens had been warning that Satan uses people’s pride and selfish desires against them, but the ritual imposed its own interpretation onto his message: To TST, Satan represents moral autonomy and personal responsibility.

Blackmore eventually appeared from beneath a hood and took to a podium to deliver what can only be described as a “satanic jeremiad.” She warned that Christian theocrats were taking over America and that those present – atheists, satanists, fans of heavy metal and punk music – were allowing it to happen: “There’s too much apathy and not enough resistance!”

She told the audience, “We do not seek followers, but collaborators.”

Afterward I spoke with some young people from the crowd. One explained that he was attracted to Satanism because “It’s about knowledge,” not dogma.

Another, Jonathan – who identified as a witch – seemed the most likely to be sympathetic to TST’s politics. He said that when he attended high school in Virginia Beach, his classmates targeted him for openly identifying as a Pagan. Someone even pretended to be him and called in bomb threats to his school. The events attracted the attention of Detective Don Rimer, a notorious “occult crime expert,” who confiscated all of Jonathan’s books on witchcraft as evidence. There was an attempt to forcibly commit Jonathan to a mental institution.

I asked Jonathan if he thought TST was really a religion.

“Definitely,” he said, “Some people treat Christianity as a hobby. But no one thinks it’s not a real religion.”

Can the satanists win?

As the event wound down, I was able to interview Blackmore. Like Marx, Blackmore saw her revolution as inevitable: the Christian Right would naturally drive people to rebel against it.

She told me that she’d recently met a French journalist who said that nothing like TST could happen in France. The French model of laicité – a much more ingrained version of America’s professed separation of church and state – leaves nothing to rebel against. By contrast, TST wants to challenge the popular belief that America is a “Christian nation.”

Many TST members and allies I spoke to described strict Christian upbringings. In Blackmore’s assessment, progressive cities like Austin are paradoxically the most apathetic about resisting the Christian Right because people in progressive cities feel they are unaffected by religion-influenced laws. Blackmore saw “The Witch” as an opportunity to get more people involved and hasten their political revolution.

But Jonathan pointed out that this dialectic can swing both ways: revolution begets counterrevolution. For example, in the 1970s, the New Christian Right formed, in part, as a response to the perceived excesses of the 1960s.

Likewise, there is a risk that an openly satanic presence in American politics will energize the very forces TST opposes. Right wing news sites such as Breitbart.com and LifeSiteNews have given TST heavy coverage precisely because their rhetoric can be used as fodder for antiabortion activists.

Conservative voices have claimed TST “proves” what they have said all along – that God is with them and their political opponents are literally demonic.

In many ways, TST is the heir to the “New Left” of the 1960s and such figures as Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg. Events like the “exorcism” of the Pentagon in 1967 demonstrated an understanding of ritual and semiotics: the strategic use of religious symbols could change what the Pentagon represented to the public.

But the New Left also intentionally straddled the line between prank and sincerity in order to draw media attention to their cause. It is contested today what effect the New Left actually had toward the goal of ending the Vietnam War and it is similarly unclear what effect TST might have on America’s political center of gravity.

Nonetheless, millennials now outnumber baby boomers. They’re a more diverse generation than their predecessors, and major changes to the political landscape seem inevitable.

Still, supporters like Jonathan remain skeptical of TST’s true viability.

“It’s not that they’re wrong,” he said, “But this is Austin, and look how many people came out? And how many people here are actually going to do anything?” source


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on April 20, 2016, 06:37:59 pm
Satanism as a new political movement in America

Did you know that when Barack Obama began his presidency with his mother-in-law (Mooch’s mom) inviting a voodoo priestess to perform a Santeria ceremony in the White House? (See “Under Obama, demons have entered the White House“)

It is therefore not surprising that since 2008, self-described Satanists increasingly became active in America — holding Black Mass in public places, making invocations at city council meetings, setting up satanic (Christmas) holiday displays at city halls, and erecting a statue to Satan in Detroit. See:

‘Minion of Satan’ asks to give devil invocation at Florida county commission meeting
Florida city council summons Satan
Florida State capitol approves Satanic ‘holiday’ display
Florida Senate candidate drank goat’s blood in satanic ritual
Detroit goes to the devil
Harvard goes satanic with Black Mass
The organization behind many of the Satanic activities is the New York-based Satanic Temple that first showed up on our political radar in 2013 when, in the name of “religious parity,” the satanists demanded their “right” to erect a 7-foot tall monument to Satan next to one of the Ten Commandments outside the Oklahoma State Capitol building. (Satanic Temple’s project eventually fell through when a man drove his car into and shattered the Ten Commandments monument.)

Satanic Temple's proposed statue outside Oklahoma State Capitol building
Satanic Temple’s proposed statue outside Oklahoma State Capitol building
In an article for The Conversation, April 19, 2016, Joseph P. Laycock, an assistant professor of Religious Studies at Texas State University, points out that The Satanic Temple (TST) is more than a religion, it is a burgeoning political movement that is bent on and is effecting political change.

Laycock notes that a horror film, “The Witch,” has become “one of the surprise hits of 2016” in part because of an endorsement from The Satanic Temple (TST), which is collaborating with the movie’s A24 studios on a promotional four-city tour called The Sabbat Cycle, in which screenings of the movie are followed by politically driven satanic rituals. The stated goal of The Sabbat Cycle is to inspire a “satanic revolution.”

Promotional poster for "The Witch"
Promotional poster for “The Witch”
The Sabbat Cycle is part of the Satanic Temple’s PR model since its inception 2013, in which the shocking and the frightening are used to lure media attention to their cause, which the Temple claims is the “separation of church and state.” But the Temple has no objections to non-Christian religions, certainly not to Islam or Judaism, but focuses its attacks on Christianity. That tells us that its cause isn’t really the separation of church and state, but rather the undermining of Christianity and Christian culture — all in the name of the First Amendment and religious pluralism. As Laycock puts it:

Since its founding, TST has waged a highly active campaign to demand greater separation between church and state, and to challenge the privileged relationship Christianity has with government.

TST first made headlines in 2013, when it held a rally in Florida, ostensibly to congratulate Governor Rick Scott for passing a bill, Senate Bill 98, that would allow students to read “inspirational messages of their choosing” at assemblies and sporting events, which the Temple twisted to include satanic messages. And so the rally featured a sign declaring, “Hail Satan! Hail Rick Scott!”

Satanic Temple spokesman Lucien Greaves at a Satanic Temple rally on Jan. 25, 2013, on the Capitol Steps of Tallahassee in support of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s Senate Bill 98.
Satanic Temple spokesman Lucien Greaves at a Satanic Temple rally on Jan. 25, 2013, on the Capitol Steps of Tallahassee in support of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s Senate Bill 98.
Today, Satanic Temple has 17 chapters in the United States and Europe and claims an estimated 100,000 members – a figure based on the purchase of membership cards and various forms of online support.

Invoking the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Satanic Temple chapters across the U.S. have launched campaigns demanding the same religious rights and privileges afforded to Christianity, including:

Distributing satanic coloring books in schools in Florida and Colorado;
Erecting satanic “nativity scenes” on government property in Florida, Michigan and Indiana;
Offering prayers to Satan at a high school football game in Seattle;
Demanding that a monument to the Ten Commandments at the Oklahoma State Capitol be accompanied by a monument to Baphomet, a goat-headed representation of the Devil;
Demanding a “religious” exemption from laws in Michigan and Missouri dictating that those who seek an abortion need to review literature or endure a waiting period.
Satanic Temple at Michigan State Capitol, Dec. 2015

The Satanic Temple performs a satanic ritual at the Michigan State Capitol in December 2015. The Satanic Temple/Facebook

Laycock attended a Sabbat Cycle screening of “The Witch” in Austin, Texas. He writes:

Following the screening, everyone migrated to a bar and music venue called The Sidewinder, where TST held their ritual. Members from the Detroit and San Antonio chapters began setting up and handing out satanic American flags painted in only black and white. I mingled with a small crowd of Satanic sympathizers and the curious. Leather jackets, tattoos and pentagrams were in abundance. […]

During the ritual, a speaker played an excerpt from a speech by Baptist pastor Dr. Jeff Owens, in which Owens warned his congregation, “Satan does not want you to do what he wants you to do. Satan wants you to do what you want to do.” (Other eyewitness accounts of the ritual can be found here and here.) Owens had been warning that Satan uses people’s pride and selfish desires against them, but the ritual imposed its own interpretation onto his message: To TST, Satan represents moral autonomy and personal responsibility.

[Satanic Temple spokeswoman Jex] Blackmore eventually appeared from beneath a hood and took to a podium to deliver what can only be described as a “satanic jeremiad.” She warned that Christian theocrats were taking over America and that those present – atheists, satanists, fans of heavy metal and punk music – were allowing it to happen: “There’s too much apathy and not enough resistance!”

She told the audience, “We do not seek followers, but collaborators.”

Afterward I spoke with some young people from the crowd. One explained that he was attracted to Satanism because “It’s about knowledge,” not dogma. […]

As the event wound down, I was able to interview Blackmore. Like [Karl] Marx, Blackmore saw her revolution as inevitable: the Christian Right would naturally drive people to rebel against it.

She told me that […]  TST wants to challenge the popular belief that America is a “Christian nation.” […]

In many ways, TST is the heir to the “New Left” of the 1960s and such figures as Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg. […] it is […] unclear what effect TST might have on America’s political center of gravity.

Nonetheless, millennials now outnumber baby boomers. They’re a more diverse generation than their predecessors, and major changes to the political landscape seem inevitable.

all links: https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2016/04/20/satanism-as-a-new-political-movement-in-america/


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on April 20, 2016, 07:44:17 pm
Can a burgeoning satanic movement actually effect political change?

Robert Eggers' period horror film “The Witch” has been one of the surprise hits of 2016. It’s even gained a second wind since its February 23 release: the first weekend of April it played on 666 screens around the country, raking in an additional USD$465,000.

The tale of a Puritan family turning on each other as they attempt to root out the supernatural evil plaguing their farm, the film won Eggers the award for best director at Sundance – and even frightened horror master Stephen King.

But neither of these accolades has generated as much buzz as an endorsement from The Satanic Temple (TST), a satanic political movement that first appeared in 2013.

In December, TST and A24 studios began collaborating on a four-city tour called The Sabbat Cycle, which consisted of screenings of the film followed by politically driven satanic rituals. The stated goal of The Sabbat Cycle was to inspire a “satanic revolution.”

TST believes that the separation of church and state is currently under attack by radical religious conservatives. They also believe there is a silent majority that opposes this agenda, but remains too apathetic to do anything about it.

The Sabbat Cycle was an attempt to raise political awareness by piggybacking on “The Witch”’s appeal. This is part of larger PR model the group has used since its inception, in which the shocking and the frightening are used to lure media attention to their cause.

As a religion scholar, I find TST fascinating. Not only do their campaigns raise serious questions about the First Amendment and religious pluralism, they also challenge the public to think about what counts as a “religion.”

To learn more, I attended the Sabbat Cycle at its Austin stop, and spoke with attendees about their religious and political views.
Political movement, religion or both?

Since its founding, TST has waged a highly active campaign to demand greater separation between church and state, and to challenge the privileged relationship Christianity has with government.

A cornerstone of their campaign has been tongue-in-cheek “stunts” intended to show how government institutions favor Christianity in ways that would never be tolerated for other religions.

TST first made headlines in 2013, when it held a rally in Florida, ostensibly to congratulate Governor Rick Scott for passing a bill that would allow students to read “inspirational messages of their choosing” at assemblies and sporting events.

While Scott probably envisioned the law permitting Christian students to offer public prayers and Bible readings, it could not, constitutionally, specify what sort of “inspirational messsages” were allowed – including satanic messages. And so the rally featured a sign declaring, “Hail Satan! Hail Rick Scott!”

Whether or not TST is a “real” religion has been a subject of debate. But some members insist that while the movement is atheistic, the group, like other religions, has a shared set of values, concerns and symbols (like Satan as a symbol of rebellion).
Baphomet, a goat-headed idol, is a satanic symbol. The Satanic Temple/Facebook

Religion or not, no one can question TST’s appeal or its sincerity about its political goals.

Today TST has 17 chapters in the United States and Europe and claims an estimated 100,000 members – a figure based on the purchase of membership cards and various forms of online support.
Masters of media attention

TST chapters across the country have launched campaigns demanding the same religious rights and privileges afforded to Christianity.

These have included the creation of satanic coloring books for distribution in schools in Florida and Colorado; bids to erect satanic “nativity scenes” on government property in Florida, Michigan and Indiana; offering prayers to Satan at a high school football game in Seattle; and demanding that a monument to the Ten Commandments at the Oklahoma State Capitol be accompanied by a monument to Baphomet (a goat-headed idol associated with witches' sabbaths).

The 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) reinforced the religious freedoms outlined in the First Amendment. When the Supreme Court ruled that RFRA applied only to the federal government and could not be applied to the states, many states passed their own versions of RFRA. Several of TST’s campaigns involve using RFRA laws to claim religious accommodations for satanists.

For example, since 2014 TST has invoked state RFRA laws in Michigan and Missouri to demand a religious exemption from laws dictating that those who seek an abortion need to review literature or endure a waiting period.
The Satanic Temple performs a satanic ritual at the Michigan State Capitol in December 2015. The Satanic Temple/Facebook

In January, TST’s Tucson chapter demanded that the Phoenix City Council include them in public prayers offered before their council meetings. The council responded with a new rule that only chaplains from the police and fire departments may offer the prayers before meetings. (TST has threatened to sue.)

Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman has argued that James Madison would have supported the Tucson satanists. Madison was concerned that individual rights could be threatened by a “tyranny of the majority,” and saw laws guaranteeing individual rights as “paper barriers” that offered no real protection. Only a diverse coalition of minorities could effectively check a majority and protect individual freedom.

“We do not seek followers, but collaborators”

It was exactly this sort of coalition that TST spokeswoman Jex Blackmore hoped to forge through events like the Sabbat Cycle.

In Austin, Texas, Blackmore took the stage before a screening of “The Witch” at the Alamo Drafthouse and explained that the film was a “microcosm of a patriarchal theocratic society that results in satanic revolution.” In Blackmore’s reading of the film, the titular witch was driven to witchcraft by Puritan oppression.
A promotional poster for ‘The Witch.’ A24

Afterward I got to chat with Drafthouse employee and film buff Laird Jimenez about this assessment. He noted that “escaping patriarchy” is currently part of a cultural zeitgeist that includes films like Oscar-winner “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which depicts women escaping – and then overthrowing – a patriarchal warlord.

Following the screening, everyone migrated to a bar and music venue called The Sidewinder, where TST held their ritual. Members from the Detroit and San Antonio chapters began setting up and handing out satanic American flags painted in only black and white. I mingled with a small crowd of Satanic sympathizers and the curious. Leather jackets, tattoos and pentagrams were in abundance.

During the ritual, a speaker played an excerpt from a speech by Baptist pastor Dr. Jeff Owens, in which Owens warned his congregation, “Satan does not want you to do what he wants you to do. Satan wants you to do what you want to do.” (Other eyewitness accounts of the ritual can be found here and here.) Owens had been warning that Satan uses people’s pride and selfish desires against them, but the ritual imposed its own interpretation onto his message: To TST, Satan represents moral autonomy and personal responsibility.

Blackmore eventually appeared from beneath a hood and took to a podium to deliver what can only be described as a “satanic jeremiad.” She warned that Christian theocrats were taking over America and that those present – atheists, satanists, fans of heavy metal and punk music – were allowing it to happen: “There’s too much apathy and not enough resistance!”

She told the audience, “We do not seek followers, but collaborators.”

Afterward I spoke with some young people from the crowd. One explained that he was attracted to Satanism because “It’s about knowledge,” not dogma.

Another, Jonathan – who identified as a witch – seemed the most likely to be sympathetic to TST’s politics. He said that when he attended high school in Virginia Beach, his classmates targeted him for openly identifying as a Pagan. Someone even pretended to be him and called in bomb threats to his school. The events attracted the attention of Detective Don Rimer, a notorious “occult crime expert,” who confiscated all of Jonathan’s books on witchcraft as evidence. There was an attempt to forcibly commit Jonathan to a mental institution.

I asked Jonathan if he thought TST was really a religion.

“Definitely,” he said, “Some people treat Christianity as a hobby. But no one thinks it’s not a real religion.”
Can the satanists win?

As the event wound down, I was able to interview Blackmore. Like Marx, Blackmore saw her revolution as inevitable: the Christian Right would naturally drive people to rebel against it.

She told me that she’d recently met a French journalist who said that nothing like TST could happen in France. The French model of laicité – a much more ingrained version of America’s professed separation of church and state – leaves nothing to rebel against. By contrast, TST wants to challenge the popular belief that America is a “Christian nation.”

Many TST members and allies I spoke to described strict Christian upbringings. In Blackmore’s assessment, progressive cities like Austin are paradoxically the most apathetic about resisting the Christian Right because people in progressive cities feel they are unaffected by religion-influenced laws. Blackmore saw “The Witch” as an opportunity to get more people involved and hasten their political revolution.

But Jonathan pointed out that this dialectic can swing both ways: revolution begets counterrevolution. For example, in the 1970s, the New Christian Right formed, in part, as a response to the perceived excesses of the 1960s.

Likewise, there is a risk that an openly satanic presence in American politics will energize the very forces TST opposes. Right wing news sites such as Breitbart.com and LifeSiteNews have given TST heavy coverage precisely because their rhetoric can be used as fodder for antiabortion activists.

Conservative voices have claimed TST “proves” what they have said all along – that God is with them and their political opponents are literally demonic.

In many ways, TST is the heir to the “New Left” of the 1960s and such figures as Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg. Events like the “exorcism” of the Pentagon in 1967 demonstrated an understanding of ritual and semiotics: the strategic use of religious symbols could change what the Pentagon represented to the public.

But the New Left also intentionally straddled the line between prank and sincerity in order to draw media attention to their cause. It is contested today what effect the New Left actually had toward the goal of ending the Vietnam War and it is similarly unclear what effect TST might have on America’s political center of gravity.

Nonetheless, millennials now outnumber baby boomers. They’re a more diverse generation than their predecessors, and major changes to the political landscape seem inevitable.

Still, supporters like Jonathan remain skeptical of TST’s true viability.

“It’s not that they’re wrong,” he said, “But this is Austin, and look how many people came out? And how many people here are actually going to do anything?”

http://theconversation.com/can-a-burgeoning-satanic-movement-actually-effect-political-change-57619


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on April 22, 2016, 12:33:31 am
Satanic 'Black Mass' in Oklahoma opposed by 100,000

A Satanic group is set to verse a "black mass" at the Oklahoma City Civic Center Music Hall this August, but 100,000 people have signed a petition to have the gathering canceled.

Conservative Roman Catholic organization Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) has forwarded the said petition in the hopes that the Satanic "black mass" could be stopped, just as Catholic protests have prevented a similar ritual from being carried out at Harvard before. The petition calls for the cancellation of the Aug. 15 event, which is deemed as offensive to Catholics all over the world.
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"With my whole heart and soul, I express full, complete and vehement rejection of the satanic black mass scheduled at the Oklahoma City Civic Center on Aug. 15," the petition reads. "I urge you to cancel this event which offends more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide, 200,000 Catholics in Oklahoma and countless more God-loving Americans. Sacrilege is simply NOT free speech," the petition further states.

The upcoming "black mass" will be led by Satanic group Dakhma of Angra Mainyu, which was co-founded by registered sex offender Adam Daniels. The event will involve two rituals — the black mass and the "consumption of Mary by Jai Kali Maa."

For TFP Student Action Director John Ritchie, the black mass is a "double attack" against Catholics because it targets both God and the Virgin Mary. He also questioned the nation's direction when the government has now started allowing an event that offends God.

As of Apr. 19, the petition has managed to gather 104,700 signatures for the call to have the Satanic black mass in Oklahoma canceled. TFP Student Action is aiming to garner a total of 200,000 signatures for the petition.

Meanwhile, Colorado middle schools and high schools have started allowing atheists and Satanists to distribute their literature on April 1. The move came after parents complained about Christians distributing Gideon Bibles to their children in December, The Huffington Post reports.

Among the literature handed out to the Colorado students is a coloring book titled "The Satanic Children's Big Book of Activities," created by The Satanic Temple.

https://youtu.be/45S9hdxOtvI

http://christiandaily.com/article/satanic-black-mass-in-oklahoma-opposed-by-100000-petitioners/51480.htm


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on April 25, 2016, 09:51:17 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNpyapin0yI


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on April 26, 2016, 04:46:20 pm
Watch: Satanists Interrupt Pro-Life Protest

Satanists in Michigan decided to interrupt multiple pro-life protests outside Planned Parenthood facilities Saturday.

#ProtestPP, a coalition of state and national pro-life groups, held its first annual nationwide protest at Planned Parenthood facilities last weekend.

The same coalition held protests last year following the release of undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress that raised allegations Planned Parenthood is trafficking aborted fetal body parts. Planned Parenthood has denied wrongdoing.

In a press release from the Satanic Temple of Detroit, the organization called the accusations against Planned Parenthood “a fabricated, fictional story” pro-lifers are using to “impose the moral opinions of some upon a diverse community.”

(http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Screen-Shot-2016-04-26-at-2.03.21-PM-620x410.jpg)

The group added that they were going to stage a counterprotest in support of Planned Parenthood using “BDSM Babies” to convey “eroticism and powerful imagery as a tool to communicate complex ideas.”

The satanists dressed as babies in masks and diapers. They brandished whips and sprayed milk and baby powder.

Citizens for a Pro-Life Society posted video of the incident in Detroit on YouTube.

The video description said that the counterprotest was “bizarre and hideous street theater, with grotesque imagery and convoluted symbolism.”

“Planned Parenthood should be very embarrassed to have these sorts of people defending their organization. Quite obviously Satanists are on the side of the killing of unborn children,” the pro-life group added.

https://youtu.be/Ubfv2x6mN2U

The satanists also staged a counterprotest in Ferndale, Michigan.

Barb Yagley, one of the three organizers of the #ProtestPP event in Ferndale, told TheBlaze that as the satanists began their “skit,” her group “shifted away from them to pray.”

“I did not feel threatened by them at all,” Yagley said. “We felt that they needed prayer.”

Yagley said that the counterprotesters were there “to mock religion and to mock the pro-life movement” and that one of the satanists dressed up as a Catholic priest.

“The satanic ‘priest’ was there at the same time as the Catholic priest with the Eucharist,” Yagley said.
Mat 12:26 And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself; how shall then his kingdom stand? just saying..

Yagley said her group plans to keep protesting despite the counter protests.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/04/26/watch-satanists-interrupt-pro-life-protest/


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on May 06, 2016, 05:21:34 pm
Out of the Shadows: Wicca Grows in Austin and Beyond

Mary Caldwell has spiky pink hair, tattooed arms and works in customer service for a software company. She’s also the leader of a Wicca meet-up that gathers every other Monday at Monkey Nest Coffee on Burnet Road.

On a recent Monday evening, she led the group in a discussion of numerology – the belief that numbers have mystical meanings – as well as rituals and personal experiences with spirits. Recently, some members of the group had visited a local cemetery to commune with spirits.

“Some of the people in the group just see them, some just hear them and some of them just smell them,” said Caldwell, 44.  “It was great fun.”

Wicca is a modern version of ancient pagan religions, created in England and brought to the United States in the 1960s. Its followers worship a goddess and a god, honor the Earth and practice ritual magic. They follow the Wiccan Rede, a statement of principles that stresses the importance of doing no harm.

“We believe that everything is part of the One,” said Ed Fitch, 80, a Wiccan senior high priest and a member of Caldwell’s meet-up group, one of several Wiccan or witches’ groups in Austin. “Everything in the universe is linked to everything else in the universe.”

Because Wicca is a highly decentralized religion with no central authority, it’s hard to get a tally of its members. The American Religious Identification Survey, which periodically surveys 50,000 Americans, said the number of self-identified Wiccans increased to 342,000 in 2008, up from 134,000 in 2001. The 2008 figures are the most recent available.

Wicca’s growth tracks the changing religious landscape in the U.S., as a growing number of people leave established religions and become either unaffiliated or switch to alternative religions. About 5.9 percent of Americans followed a non-Christian faith in 2014, up from 4.7 percent in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center,

“The number of people who have institutional affiliation are declining in general, so [Wicca] is part of a larger trend,” said Jennifer Graber, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Texas at Austin. “People are not aligning themselves in traditional religious ways.”

Wiccans come from all walks of life, including in the military. Fitch is a former Air Force officer and a retired technical writer and engineer. There are Wiccan covens on military bases, including at Fort Hood. The Pagan Student Alliance at UT includes Wiccans and followers of Paganism and other nontraditional faiths.

Philip Elmore, 22, an alliance member, said he was attracted to Wicca because of the equality in its theology.

“Traditional religion is very hierarchical, or even patriarchal at times, while paganism has always been focusing on everyone is equal,” Elmore said. “We don’t just have god, who in Christian values is a white male. We’ve got a goddess. They are equal to each other.”

Fitch said he’d been interested in alternative religions for many years, and was initiated into Wicca in 1967. He’s part of the Gardnerian Wicca tradition, one of the earliest branches, created by Gerald Gardner in England in the 1950s.

“There is not a fixed order of authority in Gardnerian Wicca,” Fitch said. “Anyone who gets trained can become a high priest.”

Unlike other versions of Wicca, the Gardnerian tradition requires that people be formally initiated by a high priest. Initiation separates “plastic Wiccas,” or people who claim to be Wiccan but aren’t serious about it, from true believers, Caldwell said.

“If I run into a person who claims to be a Gardnerian Wiccan on the street, I will ask him ‘Who’s your high priest?’” Caldwell said.

“We like to know who initiated who,” Fitch added.

Caldwell dabbled in Wicca when she was a teenager, but said her interest faded as she grew up and had children. It was not until eight years ago that she became fully devoted the religion.

“My kids were a little bit older and I could actually get more time for myself,” said Caldwell. “So I got back to my spirituality.”

Both she and her husband, Joe, are third-degree Gardnerians, meaning they are serious students of Wiccan theology and have the ability to lead a coven.

With Wiccan signs hanging on her office wall, she said her coworkers know and accept the fact that she’s Wiccan.

“It’s funny, because I’ve got people who are devoted Catholics coming to me and saying, ‘I’ve got a problem, and can you do a spell for me?’ ” she said.

http://reportingtexas.com/out-of-the-shadows-witchcraft-expands-in-austin-and-beyond/


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: christistruth on May 06, 2016, 09:01:23 pm
Quote
“Traditional religion is very hierarchical, or even patriarchal at times, while paganism has always been focusing on everyone is equal,” Elmore said. “We don’t just have god, who in Christian values is a white male. We’ve got a goddess. They are equal to each other.”

 ;D ;D :D :D :D

bahahaha


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on May 08, 2016, 09:21:00 am
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=57161035182
Wizard Craft for Kids Exposed: Sorcery, Sufism, Astral Projection, Druids (pastor Jason Cooley and bro Nate Marino)
Series:  STBC Radio  · 61 of 61
5/7/2016 (SAT) 
Audio: http://www.sermonaudio.com/playpopup.asp?SID=57161035182


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on July 26, 2016, 07:04:03 pm
Proverbs 10:27  The fear of the LORD prolongeth days: but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/telephone-psychic-miss-cleo-died-190834099.html
Telephone Psychic Miss Cleo Has Died At 53
7/26/16

By Mark Shrayber

Miss Cleo, the embattled telephone psychic famous for turning the phrase “call me now for your free reading!” into a cultural meme, has died at 53 after a battle with cancer.

According to TMZ, which has confirmed with Cleo’s rep, the clairvoyant, entrepreneur, and actress — if you didn’t know, her accent was fake — died on Tuesday after fighting colon cancer that tragically spread to both her liver and her lungs. The rep told TMZ that Youree Dell Cleomili Harris (Cleo’s real name) was a “pillar of strength” until her untimely death and passed while in the presence of those who knew and loved her.

While Miss Cleo will be fondly remembered by anyone who has ever seen one of her commercials, Harris’ life became increasingly difficult in 2002, when the FTC filed a complaint against the company the psychic worked for — The Psychic Readers Network — for unethical business practices (including the fact that all those free readings Miss Cleo offered were never really free). While she was later dropped from the suit, Harris never regained her footing in the cutthroat world of psychic healing and quickly dropped out of the limelight.

In 2006, Harris made headlines by coming out as a lesbian in The Advocate, telling the publication that she made the difficult decision to go public when her godson came to her when struggling with his own coming out:

“He and I started talking when he was concerned about coming out. He was 16. When he made the decision I told him I’d be there to support him 100%, and he embraced [coming out] wholeheartedly,” Harris says. “It’s a different vibe than when I was his age, being raised Catholic in an all-girls boarding school. But he was afraid of nothing, and I thought, I can’t be a hypocrite. This boy is going to force me to put my money where my mouth is.”

In an interview with Vice in 2014, Harris revealed that she really was psychic, that she’d never been in jail, and that while others on the hotline may have been making “14 cents a minute,” she’d barely made more, telling the interviewer that her cut was “24 cents.” She also discussed the struggles she faced in the court of public opinion, including conflict with members of the Jamaican community, who railed against her for being a “bad representative”:

According to some articles, I’m still in jail. I never went to jail; I didn’t own the company. It’s taken ten years for me to move through all of that, because in the Jamaican culture—especially with the way my father was—all you have is your word. So it hurts for people to go around and be able to tell a lie to the point where it becomes fact on a [computer] box. So I struggle with it.

Harris will undoubtedly be missed. If you’re feeling nostalgic, you can check her out in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, watch her discuss the reality of the phone psychic business in the 2014 documentary Hotline, or light some incense in her memory and relive all that time you spent watching her commercials on late night TV, where her voice was enough to put anyone into a trance that made you forget what you were doing and really think about getting that free reading and your life in order.





Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on July 27, 2016, 06:00:33 pm
Proverbs 10:27  The fear of the LORD prolongeth days: but the years of the wicked shall be shortened.

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/telephone-psychic-miss-cleo-died-190834099.html
Telephone Psychic Miss Cleo Has Died At 53


Do you think she saw that coming?


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on August 29, 2016, 07:22:02 pm
“Mysticore” is the new norm: Inside the trend that’s casting its spell over the culture
Laura Bolt

Welcome to the season of the witch. Recently, the Brooklyn Academy of Music hosted a Witches Brew film festival, which included the acclaimed new film “The Witch.” Lately it isn’t uncommon to see glossy magazines like Nylon with headlines that start “The Witches’ Guide to…”, while new publications like Sabat, an aesthetically driven magazine that explores contemporary witchcraft, are attracting attention from readers and design snobs alike.

Stores specializing in metaphysical sundries (think ritual candles, blended oils, sacred herbs) like Spellbound Sky and House of Intuition in Los Angeles, while not brand-new, are suddenly crowded. In Brooklyn, Witches of Bushwick has evolved from a venue on the underground party circuit to a social collective that celebrates witchcraft as a feminist art and collaborates with fashion companies like Chromat. Of course, for those who prefer whipping up potions at home, several new witch- and occult-themed subscription boxes deliver the magical arts to the doorstep.

Not just witches are enjoying a cultural renaissance, though. All manner of magic is in the air, as the New Age movement’s lighter granola-and-Zen fare has given way to the practice of a more modern mysticism, where conversations about conjuring, personal shamans and powerful potions can be intense as they are ubiquitous. While social media and feminism have brought witchcraft to the fore, the new kaleidoscopic array of spell casting, ritual observing (from pagan holidays to full moons) and crystal charging draws from traditional mysticism, magic and paganism. Served buffet style to an eager audience of open-minded converts, it’s shining a white light on everything from fashion and health to politics.

This may be the most prevalent, hidden-in-plain sight trend that you couldn’t quite put a finger on since “normcore.” Last fall the folks at trend-forecasting firm K-Hole — which coined the term “normcore” — looked into the cultural crystal ball to release a paper dubbed “A Report on Doubt.” Normcore, that infinitely hashtag-able trend that tapped into a “post-authenticity coolness that opts into sameness,” stood against style clichés and aggressive street-style peacocking — it promised freedom through assimilation. After an endless stream of articles about how wearing dad jeans was indeed the ultimate hipster power move, time had come for the cultural pendulum to swing. K-Hole’s new prediction was that logic and “sameness” were becoming relics and people were about to head into the mystic.

Call it post-reason or pro-intuition, this new phase rejects the positively beige normcore values in favor of highly personal, emotional responses to fashion, culture and politics. (Donald Trump’s rise certainly reads as more of a manifestation of personal desire than a reasonable course of action paved by logic and solid judgment.) Dubbing this new philosophy “Chaos Magic,” a term that’s been bantered about in the postmodern Magick community for decades), K-Hole prophesied, “The fundamental element of magic is the ability to manifest or sublimate things.”

Plus, K-Hole observed, “Chaos Magic lives in the same realm as the cult of positive thinking. But it goes beyond making mood boards of high end apartments you’d like to will into your possession. . . . You opt into whatever belief system you think will help you reach your intended goals.” Put simply, K-Hole’s version of Chaos Magic is the antidote to overthinking, a means of manifesting individual desires onto the universe — a “radical DIY.”

VIDEOSocial media gets fashion front row

http://videos.tout.com/dry/mp4/93a4c2bcb28ac776.mp4

The report has been cited by Vogue, which found Chaos Magic in the personal imprints of designers like Nicolas Ghesquière (who penned a letter to accompany his debut Louis Vuitton show) and of Riccardo Tisci (who for Givenchy’s spring 2016 show brought in Marina Abramovic to craft a spiritual mood). Meanwhile, designer JW Anderson has evoked the trend more literally, sewing celestial symbols into his knitwear.

Check social media: A search for #witch on Instagram yields about 2,375,000 posts — whereas one for #kardashian scores only 1,630,000. Search next time at a boutique: Tarot decks are coming back in high style, thanks to retailers like the Wild Unknown — its artful cards are in stores across the country, from upscale meccas like ABC Home in New York City to indie hot spots like Skylark in Venice Beach, California. K-Hole was right, “mysticore” is the new norm.

But why? In an editorial earlier this year, N+1 recalled the postwar era’s suspicion of New Age thinking, heralded by Theodor Adorno’s criticism of horoscopes, based on his reading of the Los Angeles Times’ astrology column in 1952. In Adorno’s mind, astrology was a superstition that encouraged political passivity.

Maybe he was onto something. Consider the simple maxim: In uncertain times, people turn to religion to make sense of the world around them.

Today, however, as traditional Western religion loses some of its appeal (a recent Pew survey found that as of 2014, fewer adults, especially millennials, describe themselves as religiously affiliated), mysticism, witchcraft and magic are stepping in to fill the spiritual void.

“It correlates with nature, clean living movements, and earthy values,” said Elisabeth Krohn, Sabat’s founder and editor. “Whether you blame it on Trump, global capitalism or Internet culture, I feel many crave a less cynical world, something non-linear, even mystical.”

The current surge of mystical thought is also directly tied to the sense of personal empowerment that modern feminism works toward. “The witch as an icon is resonating right now because we’ve entered a fourth wave of feminism,” said Pam Grossman, author of What Is a Witch and co-founder of the Occult Humanities Conference at New York University. “We are redefining what power, leadership, beauty and value look like on our own terms. And the witch is the ultimate symbol of female power. Doing witchcraft is a way to connect to that energy, which is so needed right now, as we’re beginning to collectively course correct thousands of years of sexism and oppression.”

A visit to the temple of Instagram (and Tumblr and Snapchat) makes it easy to see how mysticore appeals to the generation of internet autodidacts that grew up on Harry Potter. In social media, the idea of tapping into something ancient is suddenly accessible, personal and highly individualized, which is very much in line with the idea of Chaos Magic itself (even in its original, non-trend-spotting incarnation).

“I don’t believe that those who dabble in mysticism because it’s a trend or passing curiosity actually take anything away from more ‘serious’ practitioners,” Grossman said. “For some people, that tarot deck that they bought just might be the gateway to a road of deeper inquiry. Or it may be something they toss aside in a month. It doesn’t hurt anyone in either case.”

Whether individuals are searching for obscure Aleister Crowley texts while planning an equinox ritual or just matching their nail color to the crystals the choose-your-own adventure nature of mysticore gives it a flexibility almost unmatched in the world of trends — except for maybe athleisure, which is flexible by nature. And for those looking for a place to start, the Hoodwitch’s Bri Luna, another Vogue favorite, recently collaborated on a nail-polish line with Floss Gloss.

Grossman, for one, doesn’t see mysticore going away anytime soon. “Magic is a shape-shifter,” she said. “It doesn’t care what form it takes. It just wants to flow and be known.”

http://www.salon.com/2016/08/23/mysticore-is-the-new-norm-inside-the-trend-thats-casting-its-spell-over-the-culture/


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on September 23, 2016, 08:29:08 pm
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/seattle-elementary-school-being-forced-to-allow-after-school-satan-club-operate/
Seattle Elementary School Being Forced To Allow ‘After School Satan Club’ To Operate On Campus

The temple's application proposes renting space at Centennial for about an hour after school one day a month during the school year. "This is going to be infectious and widespread," said Mike Cheek, who has grandchildren in the district. "I know that if there is anything to do with Satan, it is dark and it is evil."

9/23/16

Lawyer: After School Satan Club must be allowed to proceed

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Ephesians 5:11 (KJV)

MOUNT VERNON — A so-called “After School Satan Club” proposed by the Satanic Temple of Seattle to be held at Centennial Elementary School should be allowed to proceed, an attorney hired to represent the Mount Vernon School District said.

“I think that if the school district denied that application, you would face costly litigation that would be distracting from your mission,” said Duncan Fobes of the Seattle-based law firm Patterson, Buchanan, Fobes and Leitch during a Wednesday meeting of the Mount Vernon School Board. “And would ultimately be unsuccessful.”

Fobes was hired by the district’s risk-pool insurance group to assess whether the district had legal standing to deny the temple’s application.

“We believe that it’s clear that, because the district has a policy and procedure that encourages the use of community groups to use your facilities, because you do that, you must open it to this group,” Fobes said. “You don’t have to sponsor the group, you don’t have to help the group.”

A 2001 Supreme Court ruling, Good News Bible Club vs. Milford Central School District, stated that if schools allow any organization to use school property, they must allow all organizations — religious and secular — to have access.

The Mount Vernon district is one of nine throughout the country that has been chosen by the Satanic Temple to host a pilot After School Satan Club program because the districts also host a Good News Bible Club, which is run by the Child Evangelism Fellowship.

“We didn’t invite them to the school, they put our name on a website,” Centennial Principal Erwin Stroosma said. “We feel like we’re pawns in a game — someone else is manipulating us.”
The temple’s application proposes renting space at Centennial for about an hour after school one day a month during the school year.

“This is going to be infectious and widespread,” said Mike Cheek, who has grandchildren in the district. “I know that if there is anything to do with Satan, it is dark and it is evil.” When asked by a parent to raise their hands if they didn’t want the After School Satan Club to take root at Centennial, nearly every community member in attendance did so.

“They say they’re not going to teach anything bad, but we don’t know,” Moises Pacheco, whose grandchildren attend Madison Elementary, said through a translator.
Other parents were less concerned.

“It feels like we’re all reacting with fear,” said Melissa McPhaden. “I’m not afraid of what this church can do, because I have a relationship with my children.” The temple claims to worship no deity, but previously told the Skagit Valley Herald it uses Satan “as a metaphor for fighting religious tyranny and oppression.”

“I think the reason the (temple) is here is because they wanted a reaction,” McPhaden said. “And they got the reaction. I don’t think they want to start a Satanic club in Mount Vernon.”

A representative from the Satanic Temple of Seattle did not return calls Thursday by the Skagit Valley Herald.

Fobes said the district has the right to review the proposed curriculum for the club, but it cannot prohibit the club from school property unless that curriculum uses hate speech, incites violence or includes pornography.

“What this group purports is they support rational thinking activities,” Fobes said. “I don’t know what they actually do because no one’s done it yet. This is a pretty new undertaking by this group.”

“And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.” Revelation 16:10,11 (KJV)

The district cannot ban all after-school groups in an effort to keep the temple out, Fobes said, and even if it could, doing so would likely open it up to lawsuits. “I think it’s not an option here,” Fobes said. “I believe in this particular case you would still face some litigation, not only from the Satanic Temple, but also from the Good News club.”

The district would also lose out on whatever revenue is generated by allowing groups to use its facilities.

“Very unfortunately, our hands are tied in this question,” Board President Rob Coffey said. “We must make our facilities available — and in many cases we are eager to make them available — to Boys & Girls Clubs, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts. We must make them available whether we like the group or not. There really is no opportunity for us to say no to the Satanic Temple or the After School Satan Club.”

Superintendent Carl Bruner said Thursday he intends to meet again with Fobes. source


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 07, 2016, 05:40:39 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJqndes8q-4


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 17, 2016, 05:01:02 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs8266rVMjk


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on October 25, 2016, 04:59:10 pm
http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/24/technology/virtual-reality-sexual-assault/index.html
10/24/16
She's been sexually assaulted 3 times--once in virtual reality

Jordan Belamire has been sexually assaulted three times. Twice in real life, and once in virtual reality.

Belamire who goes by a pseudonym to protect her privacy, was playing a game called QuiVr on her brother-in-law's HTC Vive VR system. She was shooting zombies with strangers in QuiVr's multiplayer mode when another player began to virtually rub her chest.

"I've been groped in real life, once in a Starbucks in broad daylight. I know what it's like to happen in person," Belamire, 30, told CNNMoney. "The shock and disgust I felt [in QuiVr] was not too far off from that."

Another user, BigBro442 had apparently caught on that she was a woman because her mic was on and her voice was streaming through to the virtual world.

Belamire yelled "Stop!" as BigBro442 grabbed her. That made things worse.

"He chased me around, making grabbing and pinching motions near my chest. Emboldened, he even shoved his hand toward my virtual crotch and began rubbing," she wrote in a Medium post about the incident last week.

Belamire's post caught a lot of attention online, the most disturbing being strangers who told her she was making a lot of fuss about nothing.

"Please explain how someone can be assaulted in any form using VR. This seems to be someone whining just to whine" was a common refrain on Twitter. Belamire temporarily suspended her Twitter account as a result.

Belamire said she's "more disturbed by the backlash than the VR incident itself."

Related: 4chan, a popular hub for offensive posts, shows signs of distress

"It's not real, therefore it's OK; this is the amoral substructure of gaming culture. This, far more than anonymity, is the source of much gender and racial harassment on the internet," wrote sociologist and gaming critic Katherine Cross in a paper titled "Ethics for Cyborgs."

Other women have described similar experiences while immersed in foreign virtual lands. One woman wrote about her experience being groped virtually last March: "I still tensed up and felt uncomfortable, and removing the headset didn't take that feeling away."

No, sexual assault in the virtual world isn't the same as in real life -- but that doesn't mean it doesn't have an effect. Video games are largely developed by men, which makes it less likely that they're designed with a woman in mind.

Entrepreneur and activist Cindy Gallop likened it to Twitter's trolling problem. "Men in tech #vr, don't make the mistake Twitter did. DESIGN THIS **** OUT RIGHT NOW," she tweeted.

"The men that make these games genuinely don't seem to understand that it's sexual assault," game developer Brianna Wu told CNNMoney. "Women barely work on these teams, so there's no voice of conscience."

Wu cited Playstation VR's Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 as an example; the game lets users grope a bikini-clad virtual woman who is protesting, glorifying sexual assault.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board assigns age and content ratings for video games, apps and games sold at retail, but it's voluntary and isn't required through virtual reality portals.

"No one wants to see the government regulate the game industry. But the truth is, VR is such a powerful experience, your brain feels like it's real," added Wu.

Related: Trump supporters counter assault claims with #NextFakeTrumpVictim

"Subjects sometimes feel as if the body that they see in front of them is their own," write researchers Michael Madary and Thomas Metzinger from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

Madary and Metzinger suggest that there needs to be a code of conduct in VR since its psychological effects are still unknown.

Indeed, Belamire told CNNMoney that the hand that stroked her felt "very lifelike. You can make the fingers move in really realistic ways."

AltspaceVR, a VR chatroom, introduced a personal bubble feature as a means of combat harassment in the virtual world. If users enable it, others in the virtual world have to stay at least one foot away. Blueteak, the developer of QuiVr, said it was also rolling out this feature.

"It's a gameplay solution to one problem. But we need industry standards," said Wu.

Oculus, HTC and Microsoft did not immediately respond to request for comment.


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on December 04, 2016, 07:12:49 pm
Forget all of the demonic stuff that's outwardly and blatantly going on presently - THIS I believe is a MAJOR end times, albeit very subtle sin that is really rampantly going on now (and had people on this very message forum doing such for a long time). This is 2 hours long (rare for sermons nowdays), but a MUST listen!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S1uYPLslOY


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on February 15, 2017, 11:19:45 pm
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=215172233310
Seduced From Simplicity - Sleight Of Man, Subtility Of Satan
2/15/2017 (WED)
Audio: http://www.sermonaudio.com/saplayer/playpopup.asp?SID=215172233310


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on March 10, 2017, 11:23:01 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BvFqfcVSEY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG0J4BmierE


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on March 13, 2017, 06:03:16 pm
Many Young Adults Are Turning to Witchcraft as a Way to Rebel Against Their Conservative Christian Upbringings

Young adults in America are far less likely to identify themselves as "Christians" than previous generations of Americans, but that does not mean that they have given up on searching for spiritual meaning in their lives.

According to Wikipedia, one very popular form of witchcraft known as Wicca has been growing at a rate of more than 100 percent annually in recent years, and this has been happening at a time when Christianity has been in decline in the United States. Of course, other pagan and occult groups have been exploding in popularity as well, and as you will see below, one of the primary reasons for this is because many young adults are seeking ways to rebel against their conservative Christian upbringings.

I have written much about how young adults in this country are far more politically liberal than their parents and grandparents, and this enormous cultural shift in values has a spiritual dimension as well.

A recent Barna Group study found that only 4 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 have a biblical worldview.

Only 4 percent.

The shocking truth is that the values of most millennials fit much more easily fit into pagan spirituality than they do into most evangelical Christian churches.

If you want to sleep around with as many people as possible, that is OK in witchcraft. If you want to take drugs and get high every day, that is OK in witchcraft. If you want to be a radical pro-abortion feminist, that is OK in witchcraft. If you want to be a gay transsexual exhibitionist, that is OK in witchcraft.

Essentially, one of the great draws of witchcraft is that nobody holds you accountable for anything, and you can do so many of the things that the Bible commands you not to do.

So for those who wish to rebel against their conservative Christian upbringings, getting involved in witchcraft can seem quite natural:

Witchcraft in this context is a "counter spirituality to the religious conservatism that defined many [queer people's] childhoods," as game developer Aevee Bee puts it. The visual novel Bee co-created, We Know The Devil, explores what it means to embrace witchcraft through three queer teens who attend a Christian summer camp, where they spend a night in the woods awaiting the devil. "What [the protagonists] encounter in the woods they understand and perceive as the devil because that is what they have been taught to understand their desires, identity, and love as," Bee says. By embracing the devil, the protagonists find liberation from their religious upbringings, just as someone might by realizing it's acceptable to be queer.

Alex Mar is one prominent author who became deeply involved in the world of witchcraft, but she was not raised that way. In fact, Mar is very open about the fact that she was raised as a Christian:

I was born and raised in New York City, but my roots are more exotic: between my Cuban Catholic mother and my Greek Orthodox father, family religion involved the lushest, most high-drama strains of Christianity. The elaborate clerical robes, the incense and tiers of prayer candles, the stories of the martyrs cut into stained glass, the barely decipherable chants—as a child, these were embedded in my brain. To this day, despite my liberal feminist politics, I still imagine the world as overseen by a handsome, bearded young white man.

She says that once she learned "to think for myself", her liberal political views took her away from the church, and those same political views eventually sparked a curiosity about witchcraft:

Once I was old enough to think for myself, I broke with the church on issues of sexuality, marriage, the right to choose and the concept of "sin"; I also couldn't swallow the thin reasoning behind excluding women from the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox priesthoods. At the same time, however, I was haunted by the memory of high Mass, the sense that there are mysteries in the universe. When I learned that there was a living, growing American witchcraft movement—one that is radically inclusive, that views women as equals to men, and in which God is just as likely to be female—I was instantly curious.

This is why what we feed our minds with is so vitally important.

Our public schools have become liberal indoctrination centers that are teaching our young people to adopt an anti-Christian way of viewing the world, and all of that propaganda is being backed up by the thousands upon thousands of anti-Christian entertainment that our young people are constantly consuming.

So it is actually not a surprise when many of our "Christian young people" end up like this guy:

Dakota Hendrix, a non-binary trans witch based in New York—an identity Hendrix jokingly refers to as "goat femme," describing their combination of body hair, a smoky eye, and talons for nails—says the practice of witchcraft is a way to take control in a world that can be both metaphysically and mortally threatening.

It's a supernatural form of self-defense that Hendrix says includes amulets that fight off mis-gendering, rituals that provide protection when walking down the street, and paying honor to queer and trans ancestors who don't have descendants of their own paying homage. Not to mention—since, Hendrix says, contemporary witchcraft is connected to social justice work—a hex or two on the NYPD for good measure.

But while the rituals are plentiful, the rules are not, and Hendrix says being a witch is all about choosing one's own path: "Being a witch is being autonomous; that's the whole point. That's how we draw power. We are defying the patriarchy, we are defying the submissive norm."

Allowing our children to immerse themselves in popular culture is doing far more harm than most of us originally realized.

Popular culture is trying to take the next generation away from Christianity, and it is imperative that we start to understand this. And actually, many of the "stars" our young people idolize are actually into the occult themselves, and once in a while they even admit this openly:

"I'm really a witch," rapper Azealia Banks quipped last January, shortly before all hell broke loose on her Twitter account.

Banks is known for her online rants. She tends to share fairly dense ideas, spontaneously spun out in punchy lines liberally interspersed with curse words. I don't know a person on this earth who can agree with every one of them, but her opinions are smarter than she usually gets credit for.

Still, even by Banks' standards, the witch thing was weird. It came out in the middle of a run about black Americans and their relationship to Christianity:

I wonder if most of the black American Christians in the U.S. know WHY they are Christian. I wonder if they even consider for a SECOND that before their ancestors came to the Americas that they may have believed in something ELSE.

As a Christian, it deeply alarms me that we are losing an entire generation of Americans.

If we keep doing the same things we have been doing, we will continue to get similar results. That is one of the reasons I laid out a recipe for spiritual renewal in my latest book,  entitled The Rapture Verdict, and my hope is that the church establishment will embrace what watchmen such as myself are saying instead of fighting it.

If we continue on with business as usual, the evangelical church in America will continue to shrink and multitudes of our young people will continue to seek out other outlets for their spirituality.

At the same time that interest in witchcraft is growing, interest in Satanism is skyrocketing as well. I recently wrote about how the Satanic Temple has experienced a huge surge in membership since Donald Trump's election victory in November, and at Clemson University students are reportedly going to hold a "lamb sacrifice" and a "Bible burning" to celebrate the opening of a new campus chapel:

The poster contains imagery associated with Satanism, like pentagrams and an illustration of the goat-headed Baphomet.

It goes on to state that a live lamb will be provided for sacrifice by "[their] friends" at the Clemson Collegiate Farm Bureau. A Bible-torching ceremony is listed as part of the proceedings, with a cash prize for the student who burns the most Bibles. Finally, attendees are invited partake in a pentagram completion event, where they will "help summon Baphomet to celebrate the new Clemson Chapel."

There was a time when it would have been unthinkable to put up a poster like that in America, but unfortunately those days are long gone.

Christianity is on the decline in this nation, and witchcraft and Satanism are on the rise.

We desperately need a major spiritual renewal, so my hope is that the church in America will wake up soon.

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/63584-many-young-adults-are-turning-to-witchcraft-as-a-way-to-rebel-against-their-conservative-christian-upbringings


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on May 11, 2017, 07:45:34 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPST71GB_9E


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on July 17, 2017, 11:20:39 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE3tP0P7cGs


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on August 25, 2017, 03:13:25 pm
World’s Largest Pagan Festival, ‘Burning Man’, Set To Start This Sunday In The Black Rock Desert In Nevada
The event's website says: 'Burning Man is permeated with rituals. These rites speak of soulful need; the desire to belong to a place, to belong to a time, to belong to one another, and to belong to something that is greater than ourselves, even in the midst of impermanence. 'Throughout all ages temples have been built in order to induce these feelings.' The festival is erecting a temple commemorating the Golden Spike and participants are invited to visit the shrine and make offerings that embody what Burning Man's culture means to them.
8/25/17
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/worlds-largest-pagan-festival-burning-man-set-start-sunday-black-rock-desert-nevada/

Organizers of the iconic Burning Man festival have begun setting up shop with massive art installations as they prepare for tens of thousands to descend upon the Nevada desert.

“And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place. Ye shall not do so unto the LORD your God.” Deuteronomy 12:3,4 (KJV)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Every year, in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, the world’s largest pagan religious festival known as ‘Burning Man’ is held for a week. What can you expect to find at Burning Man? You will find everything from hippies rolling in the dirt all the way up to elite tech billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk living like kings on safari in ancient India. It is a religious festival for people who see themselves as their own god, or see no God at all. It is biblically ironic that the main theme of the fest is a, enormous wooden statue of a man burning in flames, and the people cheer wildly as the smoke of his torment ascends up forever and ever. Hmm, now where have I read that before? I think the Bible refers to them as ‘burners’, too.

Before hordes flock to the makeshift city from Sunday until September 4, Black Rock Desert has to be transformed into a ‘metropolis dedicated to community, art, self-expression and self-reliance’. Every August the barren landscape shifts to a world of art, and preparation is already underway as photos reveal large structures being constructed.

A towering temple and ‘The Man’ were seen half completed, as the works are expected to be focal points of this year’s festival theme of Radical Ritual.

According to the event’s website, dozens of art installations are expected to be constructed before the end of the weekend, some made from wire, others as patterns on the ground and some as immersive experiences.

more


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on August 30, 2017, 07:22:03 pm
Witchcraft's popularity on the rise in Hudson Val

Despite its fearsome legacy, witchcraft is rising in popularity in New York state and especially in the Hudson Valley.

News 12's Tara Rosenblum spent four months exploring and gaining access to a mysterious, secretive world that most people don't even know exist: a thriving underground community of witches.

Watch "Speak No Evil," only on News 12, starting Tuesday to learn about the modern-day magic and ancient rituals at the center of their faith. Tune in to meet some of the most powerful witches in New York and see what happens when they come together to perform a white magic ritual and summon sacred spirits.

Part one of the series airs Tuesday starting at 4:30 p.m., and part two airs on Wednesday at 4:30 p.m.

http://westchester.news12.com/story/36227191/speak-no-evil-witchcrafts-popularity-on-the-rise-in-hudson-valley


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Psalm 51:17 on September 03, 2017, 05:16:19 pm
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/worshiper-pagan-burning-man-festival-stuns-crowd-throwing-flames/
Worshiper At Pagan Burning Man Festival In Nevada Stuns Crowd By Throwing Himself Into The Flames
Approximately 70,000 people from all over the world have gathered for the annual Burning Man festival, which is taking place in the Black Rock Desert. But crowds were horrified when one reveler made a beeline for the giant wooden effigy and was engulfed by the flames. He had to dodge a number of rangers and law enforcement personnel in order to reach the fire, which stretches approximately 50 feet into the air.  It is believed the man died in the shocking incident, although this has not yet been confirmed.


by Geoffrey Grider September 3, 2017
Emergency services bravely tried to rescue a festival-goer who ran straight into the Burning Man during Nevada’s famous arts and music festival.

“And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” Mark 9:43,44 (KJV)

EDITOR’S NOTE: New Agers get mad when I call Burning Man the world’s largest pagan festival, but guess what? It is. And like all paganism, it celebrates the accomplishments of man outside of any relationship with the God who created man, but with a twist. Burning Man is a festival celebrating unregenerate man as said man burns in eternal flames of torment, kinda like how the Bible says unsaved people wind up after they die rejecting the salvation of Jesus Christ. I wonder what this man who threw himself into the fire thought when, after he presumably died in the flames, he opened his eyes in a burning Hell from which there is no escape? Get saved and avoid the smoking section.

Approximately 70,000 people from all over the world have gathered for the annual Burning Man festival, which is taking place in the Black Rock Desert. But crowds were horrified when one reveler made a beeline for the giant wooden effigy and was engulfed by the flames.

burning-man-worshiper-throws-himself-into-flames-pagan-festival-nteb-01

He had to dodge a number of rangers and law enforcement personnel in order to reach the fire, which stretches approximately 50 feet into the air.

It is believed the man died in the shocking incident, although this has not yet been confirmed.

The festival issued a statement through its website to say that at ‘approximately 10.30pm Saturday evening, a male participant at the annual Burning Man event in Northern Nevada broke through a safety perimeter and into into a fire. Black Rock City fire personnel rescued him from the fire.’

‘The individual was treated on scene, transported to the on-site medical facility and airlifted to a burn center’. source


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on September 15, 2017, 06:48:46 pm
 NOTR - The Washington Post & Satanism - 9.7.17
Thursday, September 7, 2017 at 11:54AM

Today's Show: THE WASHINGTON POST & SATANISM - 9.7.2017

The Washington Post has published an article in which the author (a founder of a Satanic temple) is clearly promoting Satanism.  Is this the natural progression of the Marxist movement in our country?  We consider the connections between Karl Marx and the early Communist revolutionaries who often promoted Satan as the original rebel against God.  While Marx himself is often viewed as an Atheist, the reality is that he used Atheism only as a weapon to fight against "the One Who rules above."  Will the radical left now begin promoting the open acceptance of Satanism in their pursuit of undermining the free world?

http://www.noiseofthunderradio.com/noise-of-thunder-radio-show/2017/9/7/notr-the-washington-post-satanism-9717.html


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on September 27, 2017, 09:58:12 pm
A witch-themed store opens in eastern Lawrence to serve a growing pagan population
5-6 minutes

I’ll let you determine what “miracle” the once popular Miracle Video store at 19th and Haskell was promoting. But the new store that has taken its place also is in a business where the topic of miracles comes up. It is a religious supply store, but perhaps not the type of religion you are thinking of.

The store sells supplies for Wicca and other pagan religions. And it is not new at it, either. The store is the Village Witch, which previously was located in North Lawrence in a stone building a couple of doors down from Johnny’s Tavern. Owner Kerry Johnson said the store had been in the North Lawrence location for about 10 years. Pagan religion, it seems, is not a passing fad.

But what type of supplies do you need for it? I know in my religion two of the most important are a pillow to make the pew softer, or, conversely, a clock for the pastor. I’m not sure it is quite the same in the pagan religions. Johnson said the store sells a lot of candles and incense, which can be used in ceremonial rituals, including the casting of spells. Yes, spell casting is part of the religion, and Johnson said it makes sense if you think about it in the proper context.

“A spell is very much like a prayer,” said Johnson, who said she enjoys explaining the religion to people. “It is a petition to the gods to act in your favor. We bump it up a bit by burning incense.”

Other supplies sold at the store include books, tarot cards, statuettes of gods and goddesses, cauldrons and ritual knives. I’m not entirely versed in how the knives are used, but you shouldn’t assume the worst. As a reminder, some religions use staffs and rods as part of their rituals.

Johnson said not everyone who comes into the store is a practicing pagan. She said the store has a large jewelry selection, which brings in many nonpagans, as does its incense inventory. With the move, Johnson has expanded by bringing in daughter-in-law Ashlie Christianson, who operates the Green Goddess. That business sells a variety of herbal products, including homemade soaps, essential oils, bath and body products, herbal teas and other such items.

Johnson said she decided to move the business to 19th and Haskell after the other woman she was sharing the shop with in North Lawrence decided to go in a different direction. Plus, the new location is convenient for her family’s other business. Her family operates the Cosmic Cafe that also is located in the 19th and Haskell shopping center.

Johnson said she is confident her customers will find her in the new location. She said customers come from throughout the region. Although Kansas City has several pagan-based religious stores, she said many Kansas City residents frequently come to Lawrence to check out her shop. Johnson said there are fewer pagan-based stores west of Lawrence, so Lawrence ends up being a shopping destination for those folks.

As for the future, Johnson said the number of pagans in Lawrence seems to be on the rise. In particular, the pagan branch known as Wicca is a fast-growing religion. Johnson has been part of the Wicca religion for many years and now is a high priestess of one of the covens that meet in Lawrence.

Yes, Wicca does involves several pieces of terminology associated with witches, as the store’s name implies. Practitioners are commonly called witches. But Johnson said there are quite a few misunderstandings non-Wiccans have about the religion.

Probably the biggest is an assumption that Wiccans are Satan worshippers. Johnson said the Wiccan religion actually doesn’t believe in a Satan figure.

“If you did something bad, it is on you, not on Satan,” she said.

The religion does believe in Karma. Female figures play a central role in the religion, and practitioners of Wicca generally don’t proselytize, believing that religion is a very personal decision.

Johnson said Lawrence has been a great location for the store because the community is open-minded about ideas outside the mainstream.

“We’ve never had a problem with people being respectful in Lawrence,” Johnson said.

UPDATE: In reporting this story I’ve learned that Johnson’s old business partner has a similar venture operating in North Lawrence. Kacey Carlson is operating Third Eye Sadie’s at 311 N Second Street.

The store also sells supplies for Wicca and pagan religions. But Carlson said the store plans to be a little bit wider in its reach.

“We’re aiming the space a little more toward global spirituality,” she said.

That means the store doesn’t just have jewelry and items from the Nordic or European regions, which are popular in Wicca, but also has some Tibetan and African jewelry too. Carlson thinks the store’s inventory will appeal to a lot of people regardless of whether they are interested in the items for their religious purposes.

“Sometimes I call it a shiny object girl store,” Carlson said. “There is a lot of emphasis on gemstones here.”

http://www2.ljworld.com/weblogs/town_talk/2017/sep/27/a-witch-themed-store-opens-in-eastern-la/


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on October 21, 2017, 12:48:57 am
Why millennials are ditching religion for witchcraft and astrology

When Coco Layne, a Brooklyn-based producer, meets someone new these days, the first question that comes up in conversation isn’t “Where do you live?” or “What do you do?” but “What’s your sign?”

“So many millennials read their horoscopes every day and believe them,” Layne, who is involved in a number of nonreligious spiritual practices, said. “It is a good reference point to identify and place people in the world.”

Interest in spirituality has been booming in recent years while interest in religion plummets, especially among millennials. The majority of Americans now believe it is not necessary to believe in God to have good morals, a study from Pew Research Center released Wednesday found. The percentage of people between the ages of 18 and 29 who “never doubt existence of God” fell from 81% in 2007 to 67% in 2012.

Meanwhile, more than half of young adults in the U.S. believe astrology is a science. compared to less than 8% of the Chinese public. The psychic services industry — which includes astrology, aura reading, mediumship, tarot-card reading and palmistry, among other metaphysical services — grew 2% between 2011 and 2016. It is now worth $2 billion annually, according to industry analysis firm IBIS World.
An image from a market hosted by Catland, where customers can buy occult accessories.

Melissa Jayne, owner of Brooklyn-based “metaphysical boutique” Catland, said she has seen a major uptick in interest in the occult in the past five years, especially among New Yorkers in their 20s. The store offers workshops like “Witchcraft 101,” “Astrology 101,” and a “Spirit Seance.”

“Whether it be spell-casting, tarot, astrology, meditation and trance, or herbalism, these traditions offer tangible ways for people to enact change in their lives,” she said. “For a generation that grew up in a world of big industry, environmental destruction, large and oppressive governments, and toxic social structures, all of which seem too big to change, this can be incredibly attractive.”
Co—Star, a new app for millennials

Like the existence of God, however, there’s no actual scientific proof. Astrology has been debunked by numerous academic studies, but Banu Guler, co-founder of artificial intelligence powered astrology app Co—Star said the lack of structure in the field is exactly what drives young, educated professionals to invest their time and money in the practice.

“It’s very different from the way we usually work and live and date, where everything is hyper-mediated and rational,” she said. “There is a belief vacuum: we go from work to a bar to dinner and a date, with no semblance of meaning. Astrology is a way out of it, a way of putting yourself in the context of thousands of years of history and the universe.”

Case in point: Co—Star’s servers were so overwhelmed by demand after it launched on October 12 that the app crashed three times in its first week.

Astrology isn’t the only spiritual field overwhelmed by demand: Danielle Ayoka, the founder of spiritual subscription service Mystic Lipstick, said her customer base is growing exponentially. The self-described astrologer sells a “mystic box” subscription, which includes crystals, “reiki-infused bath salts,” and incense customized to the unique energy of the current moon cycle for $14.99 a month. She says she’s seen 75% increase in her audience in the past year.

“When I started my journey in 2010, I was the weirdo,” she said. “Now it is becoming more and more normalized, and I believe it is because more people are looking to heal. Millennials are much more open-minded.”
One Mystic Lipstick box, which is $14.99 a month.

With this overwhelming demand comes a rise of products claiming metaphysical benefits, not all of which take the cultural context of the occult into account, notes Layne. Urban Outfitters sells sage, a product that has its roots in indigenous cleansing ceremonies, for $18 a pop and a crystal mobile for $32.

Actress turned CEO Gwyneth Paltrow sells a variety of spiritual wares on her website, many of which are borrowed or “inspired” by other cultures. A jade egg that costs $66 has its roots in ancient Taoist practice. Her $85 “Goop Medicine Bag” is “inspired by the Shaman’s medicine bag from various indigenous traditions,” and a $59 Tarot card deck features “mystical artwork” that mirrors Native American patterns.

But Layne, whose interest in Eastern medicine is rooted in her Taiwanese heritage, said white women are often able to profit from ancient practices that are not theirs to sell.

“It is really important to give credit to who is doing the work,” Layne said. “There is a whole culture of white women who capitalize off of spirituality, but it all comes from people of color. People need to do their homework: being in touch with your spiritual side is a natural, human thing to do. To be able to connect yourself is essential to healing not only your own wounds, but healing together.”

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-millennials-are-ditching-religion-for-witchcraft-and-astrology-2017-10-20


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on October 31, 2017, 11:47:20 pm
More students, young Americans turn to paganism

As millennials continue to leave traditional Christian religions, interest in Wiccan and pagan practices have seen increased interest in recent years, a trend also spotted among young people and on college campuses. Pagan or Wiccan student groups are present on a number of college campuses — both secular and religious — across the nation. The growing normalization of such practices, albeit still a minority, corresponds with the decline in Christian believers, some observers note.

https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/38436/


Title: Re: The Fastest Growing Religion In America Is Witchcraft
Post by: Mark on December 17, 2017, 07:58:45 pm
#MagicResistance: The Rise of Feminist Witchcraft

From organizing mass hexes to setting up witch-themed Etsy stores, the feminist movement and witchcraft are becoming increasingly entwined.

In an article this week, feminist and author Laurie Penny documented the “boom in online occultism” and why feminists are so attracted to witchcraft.

“Days after Donald Trump won the U.S. election, videos of women ‘hexing’ Trump went viral around the world, encouraging budding magical practitioners to burn images of the president-elect to bring his works to ruin,” reported Penny on Wednesday. “Meanwhile, an entire explosive industry of witch-paraphernalia is boiling out of the cauldron of digital consumer culture.”

“You can buy your crocheted bat-bunting and your broomstick-decals on Etsy, while a couple of clicks away anonymous web artisans peddle laptop stickers declaring the owner, with more or less accuracy, a daughter of the witches they weren’t able to burn,” she explained. “Commodification is usually a poisoned apple for movements like this, but there’s a proud legacy of repurposing the witch-aesthetic for radical ends.”

The two scenes have become so intertwined that the term “witch” has even started to become synonymous with “feminist,” as online stores such as Witchsy sell feminist witch-themed goods.

Dozens of witch-related products, ranging from pentagram-decorated clothing to “I’m a witch, you’re a ****” pins, can be found on Witchsy among more typical feminist merchandise, while searching “feminist witch” on Etsy returns over 750 results.

Though a large percentage of “feminist witches” undoubtedly limit themselves to the aesthetic alone, an increase in political mass hexes shows a portion of the movement delves deeper.

Following President Trump’s inauguration, witches, covens, and even A-list celebrities started to hex the president with frequent “spells.”

In July, Lana Del Rey admitted to casting a spell on President Trump, and in October, Vox reported that thousands of members of the “resistance witches” had been casting spells against the president each month.

“On a typical Wednesday, by the light of the waning moon, Kate Doucette joined several thousand strangers on the internet in casting a spell to ‘bind’ Donald Trump,” Vox declared. “Doucette — which is her married name, not her legal name — is one of the ‘resistance witches,’ an at least 13,000-strong umbrella group of internet neo-pagans, Wiccans, solo practitioners who self-identify as ‘hedge witches,’ longtime magical practitioners in various traditions, and committed activists.”

“They’ve come together each month since Trump’s inauguration with one goal: to perform a spell — equal parts quasi-religious ritual and activist performance — to ‘bind’ the president, forming a collective known as the #MagicResistance,” they explained.

So what’s binding feminism and witchcraft?

According to Laurie Penny, “A general sense of powerlessness in a chaotic and competitive society, along with a revived interest in forms of feminism that don’t care who they frighten, may explain the growing appeal of hedge magic as a cultural aesthetic as much as a practice.”

    The craze for witchery displays an encouragingly wide understanding that for social change to happen someone has to feel threatened. The paraphernalia of skulls and guts and ravens are merely a uniform that declares intent. I am not a nice, compliant creature, not a princess in training. I am something else. Something darker. There are more like me. Best beware.

    Pissing off your overpious relations is as good an excuse as any to dabble in magic—and a good many modern practitioners are spiritual refugees of one sort or another from patriarchal, monotheistic religions as practiced in, for example, large parts of the United States. I’m convinced that part of the reason I first started getting interested in tarot and cartoon spellcraft at a tender age was to annoy my grandmother, who would have made a formidable witch herself had she not got married too young, as so many of her generation did, to some layabout called Jesus Christ who left her to raise six kids with nothing but the promise of salvation.

The feminist witches also see those women persecuted during the 17th century Salem witch trials as their late comrades — tortured and murdered by the patriarchy.

Still, the increase in feminist witchcraft hasn’t led to entirely receptive reactions from others in the witch community.

“The ‘witchblr’ community appropriates non-white cultures (Native American, Yoruba, Hindu, Caribbean, Romani, and so on) and comes up with a lot of shitty excuses for that,” complained one witch to the Verge, who wrote an article about “how witches took over Tumblr in 2017.”

And the community hasn’t been without its controversies; most notably 2015’s “Boneghazi,” where witches fought over the ethics of grave-robbing.

But the trend doesn’t appear to be declining anytime soon, with one follower of the late Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan claiming “the Trump era is an era of an occult renaissance.”

“Occultism keeps becoming more socially relevant in times of economic hardships and political strife,” the user proclaimed.

On the other hand, maybe witchcraft is just an excuse for feminists to pretend to be Hogwarts students from their beloved Harry Potter series.

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/12/17/rise-feminist-witches/