Coexisting With the Occult

The Truth about the Occult

How it both is and is not compatible with other faiths,

And the dangers thereof.

By Michael Trudeau

[Note: A few years ago I was asked to write an article about the occult for a magazine-length tract on the Coexist stickers, because of my former life as a satanist.  This draft was as far as it went until it was revealed that the project would have to be abandoned.  And so it has been sitting around in a box all this time waiting for me to decide what ought to be done with it.  If it were possible the subject might well become a book, but there are already too many books in the world, and numerous that treat with this one.  (And we know that the western attention span has been reduced to roughly the equivalence of a goldfish's.)  But there is still much that it needs: explanations, evidence, references, and most of all, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, including a discussion of its uniqueness among all the religions of the world, with which it is not only mutually incompatible but diametrically opposed.  Perhaps in time those absent necessaries can be included and a decent work made of this; but for now it is good for it to be here, that the Holy Spirit can use it as He will.]

Background and premise.

     There was a time, a period of about six years, in which I called myself a Satanist; and apart from my studies in Freemasonry and some casual reading in traditional witchcraft and demonology, as well as a brief time that I considered myself a Gnostic Christian, this was the whole of my personal experience in the occult.  And I speak of the larger subject of the occult because this is the tree upon which is the branch of modern paganism – in all of its expressions of faith – and it is paganism to which I must attempt to relate.

     And this is not so much a stretch of reasoning as certain philosophers would like to have us assume; for the occult is the occult, and it matters not a wit into which of its cults one places oneself, for to separate them at all from one another is to split hairs.  Many neopagans and other occultists will try to deny this.  To admit any relationship with the Satanist would, in many eyes, cast their craft under a bad light.  Yet it is a relatively simple matter to show on three levels how they are the same.

     At the same time, there is today a movement called the New Age (or the Age of Aquarius) which would like to convince us that the pagan and occult spiritual expressions are indeed in-line with all the other world faiths, including Christianity – the holy book of which expressly and emphatically prohibits the practices engaged in by these cults.  This new metaphysical-theophilosophical theory of everything is an absolute reversal of the truth.  And this New Age movement with all of the cults under its umbrella is, in fact, not new at all, but merely a recrudescence of old-world devil worship.

Modern day Satanism (as popularly recognized).

     Now there are generally recognized two basic varieties of Satanism.  The first is called “Spiritual Satanism”.  Under this faith, the adherent literally worships the Biblical angelic being, Lucifer.

     The most common reason that a person becomes convinced this is the proper form of religion, is because they are deceived into believing the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches: in a clause, that Lucifer is really a good god who wants to help mankind and that Jehovah is the deceitful enemy who wants to enslave us.  This is the creed that such famous Masons as Albert Pike and Manly P. Hall have believed in and espoused in their extensive writings.  The only other reason for spiritual Satanism that I am able to discover is sheer insanity of the participant.

     Now this branch of spiritual Satanism is practiced in the following ways, depending upon the means and brazenness of the cult.  Most of the small groups, comprised of “common” folk will worship with ceremonies that may or may not be supposed to reflect traditional witchcraft, but invariably contain some rendition of the medieval Black Mass, in which blasphemies are spoken and performed, favors are asked, drugs (and often blood) are consumed, and deviant sexual practices take place.  But then there are also the more dangerous elite, particularly the Illuminati and their brethren agents within the Catholic Church, who, because they are able, will go to such extremes as sacrificing children or abducted girls sold into slavery.  The focus of these rituals is always upon one of three things: gratifying the self in diverse ways, assuming magical power to the self, or initiating others to be used in the ranks to further empower the self.

     But most groups and individuals fall under the second kind of Satanism, which is called “Symbolic Satanism”.  The symbolic Satanists are then divided into two categories: First, there are those who do not truly believe in Satan, but use (sometimes only the word) “Satanism” as an act of rebellion against our societal institutions and norms, as a means to worship the self, and often as a [broke-down] vehicle for their spiritual/intellectual evolution.  Under this division falls the Church of Satan, the Church of Thelema, the Ordo Templi Orientis and its Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the Temple of Set, the Ordo Draconis et Atri Adamantis.  Also under this division grows a plague of misguided individuals who – having been deceived in their reasoning just as those spiritual Satanists outlined above – have concluded that the God they don’t believe in is a tyrant and the devil they don’t believe in is their only ally.  They see the story of Lucifer’s fall as a metaphor that they can relate to – usually because they have come to feel personally alienated from their culture and take a dim view of authority.  Thus they look upon Satan as the grand underdog of mythology, the leader of those who had the courage to stand up to the established authority, even though he must have known he could not prevail.  These symbolic Satanists live as hedonists, only to please themselves.  The second division of symbolic Satanists is made up of extraordinary individuals that DO believe in the Biblical Satan, and DO revere him as an important and benign character, and yet (as far as we can know without rising to their upper echelons) DO NOT worship him.  Under this division falls the Rosicrucians, the Theosophical Society, the Order of the Golden Dawn, and (even though several of them may best be placed as out-and-out Lucifer worshippers) the ever popular Freemasons.  There must be other infamous groups that belong with this category, though the lines blur with the ebb and flow of complicated individuals, making classification difficult to determine.  Doubtless there are members of groups named above who would object to being placed where I have them.

     Now let me conclude the matter by saying that there is, in essence, only one functional difference that separates the Spiritual from the Symbolic Satanist: one believes in the power he is serving, and the other does not.  This is also the only difference between a Satanist and a pagan.

The first connection: gnosis to apotheosis.

     Now as a Satanist, I did not myself realize that I had much in common with the pagan (of whatever cult).  One reason for this illusory degree of separation is language.  The pagan may call out in a different name to his deity than does his fellow pagan, but in truth they are both calling upon demons of Hell, the same as was I.  (This will be discussed in the following segment.)

     Another reason for the confusion is intent.  A practitioner of Wicca may have noble intentions of improving their life, helping their neighbor, and doing all things to make the world a better place; or a Freemason may have the intention of acquiring “Light” (or knowledge about the divine); or a psychic may intend to help the police solve a crime; all of which are perfectly fine intentions on their surface.  Nevertheless, all of these are seeking in their pride to become more powerful, to solve their own problems supernaturally, apart from the total reliance upon God characterized in devout monotheism; in essence, to be their own god, even to the point of resolving the problem of death.

     They may know intellectually, and consciously accept the fact that some day they will die; but to boil down the matter to its most basic naked fact, all of these spiritual approaches to life are in the end approaches to solving the issue of death by their own power; and as natural human power is insufficient, they all seek to acquire for themselves an higher power.  [Should we wonder at the explosion of interest in comic book super heroes?]  This is an attempt at apotheosis (or deification), and this is the common thread that weaves throughout the occult in all its manifestations, and ties all forms of paganism inextricably to Satanism; for true Satanism (or Luciferianism, as it has oft been termed) is nothing if not the exaltation of the human will above the will of God.  It is commonly recognized that this is portrayed in Genesis 3:5, when the tempting serpent said to Eve, “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”  Is it a coincidence that the serpent figures prominently in most pagan mythologies, and is venerated by some?  And does the modern day witches’ and warlocks’ creed “To know, to will, to dare, to keep silent,” sound so very out of step with the original sin and the heart of Satanism?

     Thus, outwardly persons of occult spirituality may differ in their intentions and nomenclature, but inwardly they are seeking to make themselves worthy (enlightened enough) to continue their existence in the afterlife, in which they might perhaps even continue evolving toward godhood.  [Note that this is also comparable to Mormon doctrine, and that Joseph Smith was himself involved in the occult even apart from his Masonic membership.]  At the heart of it, as in Satanism, the focus is on the self.

     But where does the power come from?  Some would like to think that it comes from within, by the proper exercising of the “limitless human potential” to tap and utilize the “infinite ethereal resources” of the cosmos; (which would mean that humans are gods).  Some would say that the spirits/gods/what-supernatural-power-have-you are willing to do the bidding of man if properly worshipped, or that these same can be forced to do the bidding of man if properly evoked or incanted.  And these which say these things will attest that the spirits or an “ascended master” told them it was so, or that their master said it was so, or that there own spirit senses it is so.  But is it impossible that they should be deceived by any of these: spirits, masters, or their own desires?  What if these spirits are not truly benevolent?  What if they are all demons?  If that is the case, then the pagans are serving the same entities as was I.

The second connection: parallel pantheons.

     The basic underlying reason that most neopagans will adamantly deny any connection between their cult (and/or coven) and Satanism, may be that they simply do not want anything to do with the “Abrahamic religions”, which – the general consensus indicates – were foisted upon their ancestors, primarily by Catholicism.  They will say that this or that system and pantheon is original to their ethnic background, but their claim to originality goes to nothing more than ancestral tradition; and those pagans who have studied other mythologies must (and frequently do) turn and admit that their myths and legends are nearly identical to those of dozens of other ancient cultures.  Now if, for example, Celtic, Teutonic, Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Canaanite, Babylonian, Assyrian, and Akkadian paganism can be shown to share so many common factors that they would appear to be virtual copies of each other (and they can), then an empirically-minded student would be forced to conclude that they must have had a common influence, a common ancestor, or both, and therefore it is impossible that more than one of them can correctly be said to be original.

     There is not space in this article to properly show by certain proofs the ties that unite the aforementioned groups and other mystics.  One must examine the famous figures of the occult and read their teachings, and one must carefully compare the symbolism, folklore, and mythology of the various “spiritist” faiths; otherwise it is a simple matter to be misled.

     But to make some attempt, in so small a space, to show that Satanism and the varieties of paganism are indeed calling upon the same powers of darkness, let us look at the example of one myth common to various ancient cultures, which still has much truck within our societies today.

     I hold up for your examination the cults of Easter…

     Supposedly, in Babylonian times, King Nimrod took a certain Semiramis as queen.  Efforts have been made to show that after Nimrod was slain in battle, Semiramis labored to identify her husband with their god of the earth and creator of mankind, Bel).  Naturally, if her husband was Bel then she must have been Ishtar, the Queen of Heaven and mother of mankind (and hence a fertility goddess).  She was a moon goddess.  He was a sun god.  And their child, Tammuz (Duzu to the Akkadians and Dumuzid to the Sumerians), the god of food and vegetation, was observed to die and resurrect with the changing seasons.

     Now I have read several different versions of the story of Ishtar: In one she descends to the Euphrates River from the moon in a giant egg; in another, after descending she demonstrates her power by causing a rabbit to lay eggs; in another, her worshippers dye these eggs in the blood of the children they have sacrificed to Bel; in another, she is impregnated by the sun god’s rays of light and gives birth to Tammuz; and in still another, Tammuz is not her son but her brother and lover, and he dies every autumn equinox and is resurrected at the spring equinox.  Whichever of these claims hold a kernel of historic truth, I cannot say, but I do know that the cults of Ishtar and Bel represent an ancient form of worship that has been played out in numerous cultures.

     Ishtar has been identified with Aphrodite of the Greeks, Astarte of the Philistines and Sidonians, Atargatis of the Syrians, Demeter (also) of the Greeks, Eostre of the Anglo-Saxons, Freyja of the Norse, Inanna of the Sumerians, Isis of the Egyptians, Ostara of the Germans, and Venus of the Romans, to name but a few.  A statuette of Astarte has even been found near Granada, dating back to the Sixth or Seventh Century BC.   Bel has been identified with the many Baals of the Semitic cultures, Mars of the Romans, Molech (under various spellings) of several Semitic cultures, both Poseidon and Zeus of the Greeks, and some would astutely say Marduk.  Tammuz has been identified with Iacchus: the “morning star” and the “dog star”, the light-bearing “divine child” of the Goddess, born in the underworld, who correlates with Sirius, Sothis, Set, Horus, Bacchus, Bromius, and Dionysus; but Christians would identify him either as Lucifer or perhaps as Lucifer’s coming anti-Christ child.

     In the old pagan faiths, these deities were commonly worshipped as follows: In the sundry temples of Ishtar, women performed the function of priestess-prostitutes, and were supposed to embody their queen and receive worship.  Men who would come to worship the deity incarnated would also receive carnal worship from the priestesses as the embodiment the “divine male principal” symbolized by the bull.  In the Canaanite cities, women were required to go to the temple and serve during the spring festival.  In Babylon a young woman was required to go to the Temple of Ishtar and lie with a stranger before her marriage.  In several cultures, children of these unions were sacrificed in fire to the Bel deity in honor of the Tammuz deity.

     Finally, to briefly mention but a few other points of connection to familiar things: In the Celtic traditions, druids dyed eggs red to honor the Sun (the Bel deity).  This is likely for the same reason as in the Semitic mystery religions: because it impregnates the moon that gives birth to the morning star.  It was the tradition of Anglo-Saxons to give colored eggs as offerings to Eostre during their Spring Equinox.  And in many of these traditions you will find Ishtar and Tammuz appearing in their various incarnations as the Madonna with child archetype, seen today in Catholic temples.

     Libraries could be filled with the stories of these entities, but as they are all similar in so many ways, volumes of material have been written to show their correlations.  And I think that would be very hard for an honest pagan of even modest intelligence to make any claim to originality on behalf of their ancestors.

     Finally, considering the deep connections that exist between the figures of Lucifer, Sirius, Iacchus, and others, it should be difficult for anyone to argue that Satanism has no connection with paganism.

The third connection: theological foundation.    

     Perhaps better than any particular proof by example is the proof of principle.  And at the heart of all paganism is one underlying, all-pervasive principle: pantheism.  Pantheism is the idea that literally everything is a part of the divine, or that anything can correctly be worshipped as divine.  This is summarized by the common phrase, “All is god and god is all.”

     Now I know that I can (because I have, in the days prior to my descent into Satanism) enter a pagan chat room and make it known that I am a Gnostic “Christian”, and I will be treated with the same respect as a Wiccan or a worshipper of Marduk; and then begin sharing the particulars of my brand of occultism.  One might think that this is an ideal circumstance for peace and harmony, but the principle which props it up is nothing short of dangerous.  You see, in order for pantheism to work, all human judgment must be forestalled.  The outmoded concepts of right and wrong must be eradicated from the conscious mind.  The notions of truth and lie must be abolished; otherwise, sectarianism would return and someone might be offended.  This is the work of the world-class New Age philosophers utilizing the political correctness trend; and the pagan communities have swallowed it, whether they realize it or not.  Because they have accepted pantheism as truth, in the spirit of tolerance, all the pagan faiths are, in reality, laboring toward the same end.

     With the doctrine of pantheism firmly in place, by an incredible hypocrisy of logic, it is assumed that if there is no right or wrong answer, then everyone is right and no one is wrong; and if any intolerant fundamentalist Christian, Jew, or Moslem dared say that theirs’ is the only right religion, then they are wrong.  This is the spirit of the New Age, which seeks to “elevate” all creeds to the lowest common denominator.  This is spiritual communism.

     It’s a nonsensical philosophy that recalls one’s memory to the credos of Big Brother’s party.  “WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH,” wrote Orwell.  Or in this case, no truth is truth.

     Now if the distinction between true and false is removed, if two plus two is equal to any number one wishes to put in place of four, does this state elevate the human spirit or dampen it?  What about morality?  Does the absence of truth leave us with any support for morals, or do they too become subjective?  The Satanist knows the answer, for he intentionally abandons all morality, thinking to spit in God’s eye.

     [If a society were to adopt this mode of thinking, might we rationally suppose that it would destroy itself?  This is exactly what is happening.  Day by day, the entire western world is unwittingly joining the life of the Symbolic Satanist, telling God to “take a hike” and seeking only to please themselves.]

One religion to rule them all … and in the darkness bind them.

     The slogans all say peace and harmony, but the truth is that the movers and shakers of the New Age are seeking to bring about a global religion with which to rule humanity.  They say coexist, but what they mean is: coalescence.  In order to achieve this end, they promote pantheism thinly disguised as “tolerance”.  Getting the majority of people on earth to accept this misnamed tolerance isn’t easy; it requires a good measure of duplicity and duality.

     This work is so important to them that they are ready to rewrite history, philosophize endlessly about the hidden “nature” of reality, and even bring into question the validity of our moral traditions for as long as is necessary to so confound the average person that they feel they must abandon all hope of ever knowing the truth.  And they manipulate not only history and philosophy, but also the media [note that “holly wood” was once used by witches to make magic wands] and even our language itself, to thereby erode the foundations of the paradigms of human moral thought.

     They really are master magicians.  They use their right hand to attempt to remove the occult from any negative connotations (namely Luciferianism) in public opinion, while with the left hand they attempt to remove the line between good and evil.  So for example, with the right hand they bring back Celtic paganism by popularizing Wicca, marketing it as a peaceful, earth friendly spirituality that pays homage to the forces of nature.  The only trouble is that Wicca has something that traditional Celtic religion does not: witches.  Here we see how with their left hand they were also popularizing the false idea (largely with the help of fellow Freemason, Walt Disney) that there is some distinction between “white” and “black” magic; making it possible for witches to be okay.

     They’ve been working a similar trick with the promotion of positive thinking.  With the right hand they popularize the power of the mind, teaching that you can think your way to health and wealth through “visualization techniques”.  [Spirit healers have been made from faith healers by telling them that when they pray for the sick, they should visualize them well, and send out the visualization to them as a “good vibration”.  One can almost imagine a teacher of this discipline saying, “And by the way, here’s a crystal to help you focus those vibrations.  And by the way, it also helps to visualize a spirit guide who can assist by directing you where to focus those vibrations.  And by the way, you are now an honorary pagan; welcome to Mystery Babylon.”]  Meanwhile with the left hand, they give currency to the idea that because we can supposedly change reality by changing our mind, everything that exists is therefore only relative, each observer creates his own parallel universe, and so there’s actually no such thing as reality.  There cannot, therefore, be anything morally wrong with shaping the “matrix” to suit ourselves.  This is to give mind control (sorcery) a pass as well.

     Since Carl Jung’s day the neoplatonist thinkers have been steadily using a not so dissimilar replacement philosophy tactic among New Age devotees and the curious.  To them they have promoted the idea that the character of Satan is but an archetype (an innate essential idea inherited from the race) of the collective unconscious, which represents a great, esoteric human truth, and which we need not be afraid of and dare not suppress if we are going to transcend our current state of being and evolve to higher planes of consciousness to become New Age christs.

     No matter the cult or the example, the same efforts are made across the board: the lines are blurred, black and white becomes grey, good becomes evil, evil becomes subjective, and the truth is always pushed further into the realm of myth.

     As evidenced by their writings, the elite New Agers know that there is no difference between the ritual degree work of the good Freemason (who, by the way, are at the hub of all the New Age), the necromancy of the medium, the card reading of the fortune teller, the nativity casting of the astrologer, the positive visualization of the sorcerer, the juju making of the witchdoctor, the wanga making of the hungan, and the overt worship of Satan, etcetera, because at their heart they share a central theme, and in their practice they are all pulling together in the same direction, as planned out long in advance: namely, toward the pantheistic anything-goes religion of the New Age.

Can they coexist?

     In my experiences speaking to people about Jesus, it seems like one out of every two will tell me what a great moral teacher or guru Jesus was, sometimes even what a great christ He was [lower case c intentional].  Right up there next to Buddha, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and Barack Obama.  They’re comfortable with Jesus the man.

     But obviously, they are talking about a different Jesus than Him of the Bible; for regarding the Biblical Jesus, the apostle Luke writes, “Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”  [Acts 4:12]

     However harmonious it may sound to say that everyone is right about the most important subject in the world, it is nevertheless a great deception that the pagan can coexist with all of the other religions, because if there is but one thing the committed pantheist cannot tolerate, it is that the fundamentalist monotheist should practice his faith.  The pantheist may profess that the Christian God is as valid as Gaia or dharma or ancestor worship … as long as the Christian will change his idea of his God to conform to theirs.  In other words, the Christian too must believe that the truth is found in everything except his own Bible!  For if he conforms then he is indeed worshipping another god, another christ, another Jehovah than the deity of the Bible, and he might as well worship at every alter just as the Freemason, for he has entirely abandoned his faith.  It is the same for the Jew who actually believes that God is not a liar, and I suspect the situation is the same for the devout Muslim.

     So long as there are still fundamentalist believers from the three large monotheistic faiths who refuse to fold under peer pressure, the argument with pantheism will continue; they are irreconcilable and cannot be merged.