These Be Dark Times in Our Land

 

To believe that Witchcraft and Ritual Magic represent some kind of a-political perspective is foolish at best, delusional at worst kind of reasoning. This is why I feel the need to point to the politics of our time and present it from the perspective of a practicing Witch and ritual magician. What I can say is that regardless of one’s political persuasions or lack thereof, our beliefs and practices thrive when there is an overall openness and progressive bend to the social and political body of our nation. Tolerance, the acceptance of diversity, and empowered rights of the individual, including the most powerless and vulnerable of our populace, is the kind of environment in which Witchcraft both as a religion and as a magical practice can thrive. This is because we are all truly free when everyone is given the respective and dignity that they, as human beings, deserve.

What disturbs me most is when a particular religious faith within the body politic decides to impose their beliefs, prejudices and mythic thinking on the rest of the populace of the nation. I am not a Christian, Muslim nor Jew, but I respective everyone’s rights to practice their faith within a nation where the local and national government is secular and unbiased by religious prejudice. However, lately it seems as if a certain minority of ultra-conservative Christians have pushed forth an agenda that has the backing of the Supreme Court of our nation. I am, of course, referring to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, but other recent decisions have made the court a place of Christian fundamentalism, both Protestant and Catholic, instead of a secular body that respects previous decisions.

I cannot abide the mind-set that has elevated an ultra-conservative Christianity to become the law of the land. There is no one truth in regards to religious beliefs and practices, and there is no one true religion. As I have said, because of the common threads between all religions, either they are all true or none of them are true. Of course context is important to any kind of religious perspective, which means that religious truths must be placed within the context of their perspective, and no truth from one religious perspective can overturn or deny the truth of any other religion. Yet this is what we are enduring for these dark times in the nation of supposed freedoms and rights. It reminds me of the hypocrisy of the seven Christian virtues of humility, charity, chastity, gratitude, temperance, diligence and patience and how it is practiced as a divisive and sectarian creed. It would seem that the seven deadly sins are more popularly practiced in Christianity than its virtues.

There is a wonderful book that I read back in the early 1980's during the Reagan presidency, entitled “The Handmaid’s Tale” written by Margaret Atwood, and later became a series on Hulu. In that book, the U.S. has been transformed into a theocratic nation called Gideon, where the elite ruling class are the religious leaders of an aggressive and tyrannical Christian fundamentalist movement. I read this book not long after it was published in 1985, and it seemed not too far off for a fictional concept with the ascendancy of the Religious Right happening at that time. I felt at least comforted by the fact that we are a nation of many diverse faiths, with a growing percentage of non-aligned, agnostic or atheist citizens. 

Such a diverse religious population should require a secular government to fairly treat them all with the respect that they deserve, and that not one group and its creed should be placed over and above the others. What worries me is that in the course of time since the publishing of that book I have seen the planks for a foundation of such a theocratic government start to be put into place by various politicians, pundits and even jurists. The Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion and states that no law shall be passed that would violate that guarantee, but we are incrementally slipping into an abyss of autocracy and theocratic rule unless people take their liberties seriously and aggressively defend them from those who would impose on us their creed based values and beliefs.

Roe vs Wade was part of a series of judicial pronouncements from previous SCOTUS rulings that were based on the premise that laws against abortion unduly violated a woman’s right to privacy as based on the 14th amendment of the Constitution, back in 1973. That amendment guaranteed extensive due process rights to individuals. That part of the amendment reads:

“..that neither federal nor state governments can restrict fundamental decisions that affect their liberty or property rights without proving that there’s some kind of overwhelming national interest at stake”

Based on that part of the amendment and how it was interpreted, starting in the 1960's, there were five landmark rulings that defined a greater scope of legal and allowable conduct of private citizens that made them beyond the interdiction or interference of the State. These rulings included Roe vs Wade. Let me list them for you, in case you need a helpful reminder of what is at stake in our legal nation at this time.

1. Griswald vs Connecticut - the freedom to purchase contraceptives to block fertility. Yes, at one time, the pill and family planning were illegal.

2. Loving vs Virginia - the freedom to marry someone of another race. There were laws in the south that made marriage between individuals of difference races (particularly Blacks marrying Whites) illegal or at the very least, unrecognized.

3. Roe vs Wade - abortions became legal with some minor restrictions throughout the nation.

4. Lawrence vs Texas - this abrogated sodomy laws that made same sex intercourse illegal. A number of laws, including sex acts that were outside the missionary position, were forced to be abolished.

5. Obergefell vs Hodges - this started out as several legal cases brought in a number of States that argued for marriage equality, making a marriage between the same genders as legitimate as the marriage between the opposite sexes.

Many of these rulings have a particularly important value and meaningfulness to those of us who are practicing Witches and Pagans. Many of us are also members of the LGBQT community, or at least stand apart from the Christian Religious Right, realizing that anyone who is denied their basic rights puts at risk the freedoms and rights of everyone. We are not alone in seeing the risk of overturning any of these rulings and what that might do to the world we live in today.

The current 2022 ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade represented the Supreme Court’s rejection of precedence and throwing out the whole basis of the 14th amendment on which these rulings were originally based. What that does, in fact, is jeopardize the other four rulings, since they were based on the same right to privacy that allowed Roe vs. Wade to be the law of the land for almost 50 years. If the people’s right to privacy is no longer a valid and dependable right, then we are in for a very rough period indeed. It is likely and possible, with the current make up of the Supreme Court that at least three of those current rulings will possibly fall in the very near future. 

That means that contraception will become illegal, same sex marriage and intercourse will become illegal, and maybe some States will be allowed to once again outlaw marriages between people of different races. It also means that States could be allowed to force certain religious beliefs on their populations and outlaw other unacceptable faiths, such as my own. No one knows how far these precedents will push the legal domain of the Federal Government and States to make life more difficult and a lot less free than it has been. Some States won’t go in this direction, but others will happily interdict their populations with all sorts of restrictive laws on the behavior and life-style of individuals.

All of these events have me dreading the future, since there doesn’t seem to be much that anyone can do right now to push the nation in the other direction. However, there is one antidote to this pernicious slide to a theocratic autocracy, and that is to vote, and get your friends, family and colleagues to vote. We need to build liberal super majorities in States and the U. S. Congress and Senate and pass laws that will enforce the right to privacy. It is something that actually protects all of us from unwarranted scrutiny and interdiction, and we need to be motivated as if our freedom and the conservation of our life-style depends on it - because it does!

No excuses - get out and vote in November. If you don’t vote and these conservative cretins successfully gain power, those of us who are practicing non-Christian based faiths will rue the day that we didn’t act as a majority to save our nation. Keep in mind that the Religious Right represents a distinct minority, and when we act as a coalition of majority minded folks they will be out-voted and put out of power.

Frater Barrabbas

Satanic Panic is Back

So, here we are, in the year 2022, and what do I read in the news? That QAnon is pushing a Satanic child predation conspiracy to destroy the political careers of politicians who are not extreme enough in their support of the former president or who happen to be Democrats, with a big “D” next to their name on the ballot. As an elderly Witch and ritual magician with a long memory, I can recall something similar to this event happening back in the 1980's. I view this occurrence with a bit of horror and also shock at how stupid and misinformed some people are in our nation.

A Satanic Panic, also known as a moral panic, is where individuals or groups are allegedly accused of holding forbidden rites where children are ritually and sexually abused, or even murdered and cannibalized. It is a form of the persecution of stigmatized others lacking validity or any basis in fact, and it relies on the sinister effects of a conspiracy, media manipulation and public gullibility. It is the myth where people believe in the double nature of supposedly good and upright individuals who are allegedly perpetrating untold acts of evil against innocent children. Typically, such accusations are made against individuals who represent a social minority or who are unable to defend themselves. It is similar to the pogroms against the Jews, Catholics, Blacks, Irish, Mormons, Asians, socialists and communists. It represents the basest form of fear mongering and persecuting otherwise innocent individuals who are powerless to prevent their victimization.

The so-called Satanic Panic of the 1980's started with a book titled “Michelle Remembers” written by Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist husband, Lawrence Pazder, and published in 1980. In the book she luridly describes her experiences as a child being ritually abused in Satanic rituals, although it is never claimed in the book to be her own personal experiences. Her husband even coined the term ritual abuse, or RA, and began a career promoting the belief that ritual abuse was a wide-spread social phenomenon. They gave lectures and training to law enforcement agencies even though there was no real proof that such events were actually happening. The idea of a Satanic conspiracy and the horrors of ritual abuse or even the murder of children caught the imagination of some people, particularly those who were religiously conservative and intellectually compromised.  However, by the 1990's, Pazder had already assisted law enforcement agencies in the investigation of over 1,000 cases, ensuring that the seeds of these unfounded beliefs and accusations were promoted as factual truths.

This book was very likely responsible for child welfare case workers being advised to begin to more deeply investigate the possibilities of ritual abuse based on State directed guidelines, and law enforcement agencies were also keen to investigate the possibility of Satanic Ritual Abuse, or SRA, as it was called. A social phenomenon was created by this book and the seriousness of the allegations, coupled with people’s imaginations, made others come forth to admit that they had been ritually abused as children, and some parents admitted to it when pressured by police and accepting plea deals from aggressive district attorneys. Suddenly, this phenomenon became endemic in Canada, the U.S. and the UK. All of this was happening without a shred of actual evidence. It was based on dubious accusations, hear-say, and rumors. In many cases it was a modern version of the Witchcraft scares and persecutions of the pre-modern era.  

The most notable of these prosecutions was the California McMartin Preschool case, where the owner and director (Peggy McMartin and Ray Buckey) in 1983 were accused of engaging in Satanic Ritual Abuse. I recall this time quite well, and the two defendants were given terrible press and depicted as evil Satanists who were secretly engaging in the ritual and sexual abuse of the children placed in their care. This was a highly sensationalized event that got national coverage and was played in the news for months. Even author Michelle Smith got into the fray, counseling the parents of the children who had been supposedly abused. Of course, the prosecution had little hard evidence for all of the counts of sexual abuse alleged against the two figure heads (they had dropped the “Satanic Ritual” part of allegations) , and after three years they were finally acquitted of all charges. Their lives and the pre-school business they ran was utterly destroyed, and all it did was fan the fires of a sensational conspiracy that seemed to have a life all of its own. These conspiracy allegations were taken so seriously that they inspired the U.S. Congress to investigate and to promote bills to protect children against a phenomenon that had no basis in fact or reality.

Child abuse is a real factor throughout the world, but a conspiracy based Satanic Ritual Abuse underground movement is the stuff of fantasy and nightmares. It has no basis in fact. By the early 1990's the press had grown skeptical of the SRA phenomenon and some brave individuals in the psychiatric and law enforcement academic and organizations disputed the claims and argued that there was no hard evidence that SRA was actually a problem requiring legal and government intervention. The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, combined with the University of California, studied over 12,000 cases and found no evidence of an organized movement. The Satanic Panic, which had ultimately captivated and horrified many nations was based on nothing more than hysteria and superstition. The sad effect of this Satanic Panic was that it deflected from the real problem of child abuse, and abrogated resources that would have better spent on a real endemic social problem instead of a phantom menace.  

That period of time did have an impact on the Pagan and Witchcraft communities. As a means of safe-guarding our communities, some parents decided not to allow their children to attend public or pagan festival gatherings. We as a community became a lot more cautious and scrutinized potential new members to our community, fearing that some local law enforcement would target us and plant informers who would lie or distort what was happening at Pagan or Wiccan gatherings. We also became more adverse to any form of Satanism, and even barred some who were inclined to diabolatry in a gothic guise to attend our gatherings and associate with us as invited equals. It was, overall, a sad time to be a Witch or Pagan, and we were glad when it finally died out and left the public sphere.

Having enduring that troubling time, now I am reading in the news that a new group of manipulative pundits and politicians, some within the QAnon conspiracy organizations, and some in hard-core conservative news or political organizations are pushing a new and revised version of this nightmare. Although this time the moral panic is also focused on the LGBTQ community as well as the Pagan and Witchcraft communities. Politicians who are liberal or even mildly conservative are being accused of aggressively recruiting children to become queer or engage in occultism, Paganism or Witchcraft. Those of us who are actual members of these communities are seeking to avoid any controversy, knowing all too well what might happen if a new moral panic gripped the nation.

Since the political classes in the U.S. are so polarized, it would seem that a revised Satanic Panic with accusations of ritual abuse, murder and cannibalism would seem to be believed by a significant minority of religiously conservative groups. However, it is also likely that the mainstream media will find such accusations to be completely ridiculous, which will shield the general public from assuming that such accusations are anything but complete nonsense. QAnon has not found much respect or acceptance in the majority of the American public, but if the Republican party regains power in the next two years then all bets are off. We may find ourselves hounded back into the broom closet for most, and real live persecution for those of us who are published or publicly known, like myself.

Frater Barrabbas