Satanism and Witchcraft – The Occult and the East – Death

By: Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon; ©2003

The wide acceptance of eastern religions in the world today has serious implications, including the potential for human sacrifice. It’s not as far-fetched as you might wish.

Satanism and Witchcraft: The Occult and the East – Death

Along with a number of modern Eastern gurus (e.g., Rajneesh—see Tal Brooke, Riders on the Cosmic Circuit), the end point for Charles Manson was a preoccupation with death:

The experience provided by Zen is sometimes called cosmic consciousness. This is the second level of consciousness from which Charles Manson acted…. Once you have reached the stage of the eternal Now, all is One, as Parmenides taught in ancient Greece. “After all,” Manson said, “we are all one.” Killing someone therefore is just like breaking off a piece of cookie.^[1]

Manson was merely driving Eastern principles to their logical conclusions:

The end and goal of both Hinduism and Buddhism is to pass into a form of existence in which time andspace and all the opposites that bedevil human existence are totally transcended and in which one is literally“dead” to the world but alive in a timeless eternity. This ritual death Charlie had already experienced, and, asa result of the experience, he had taught his disciples that they must kill themselves in this way in order to kill others and be free from remorse.^[2]

One of the earliest scriptural texts that seems to justify Manson’s philosophy of killing and being killed is found in the Katha Upanishad (2:19); “Should the killer think: “I kill,” or the killed: “I have been killed,” both these have no [right] knowledge: he does not kill nor is he killed.” So too Charlie Manson draws his conclusions: “There is no good, there is no evil…. You can’t kill kill” and “If you’re willing to be killed, you should be willing to kill.” In terms of Indian religion this makes sense as we shall see: if all things are ultimately One, as Heraclitus in our own tradition said, then the individual as individual does not really exist. So, according to his disciples, Charlie had transcended all desire: qua Charlie, then, he was dead. “It wasn’t Charlie any more. It was the Soul. They were all Charlie and Charlie was they.”^[3]

Thus, Manson was not really crazy; he was acting “rationally” in accordance with the meta­physically insightful “wisdom” of the East.

Charles Manson was absolutely sane: he had been there, where there is neither good or evil….

“This is not I: this is not mine: this is not the self: this has nothing to do with self.” This refrain runs throughout the whole Buddhist tradition in all its multifarious forms. Your ego does not exist in any shape or form that you could possibly identify with yourself. This is indeed the essence of the gospel according to Charles Manson too.^[4]

The fact that Manson had also perverted the book of Revelation to his own ends underscores an important point. R. C. Zaehner subtitled his book “the perverse use of Eastern thought.” But what is clear both from his text and monistic Eastern religious philosophy in general is that the perverse use of Eastern thought is also “the logical use of Eastern thought”—no matter how many of the romantically inclined may assert otherwise. The justification of any and all evil is indeed a logical, permitted conclusion flowing from a monistic, amoral premise—whether Hindu, Buddhist, or occult.

But such is a logical conclusion which cannot be extrapolated from biblical Scripture because of 1) the holy and good nature of its God, 2) the inherent value and dignity of man who is cre­ated in God’s image, and 3) the logical connection that exists between the prohibitory com­mands against murder (“Thou shall not kill”) and the holy, loving nature of the God who issued the commands.

On the other hand, in Hinduism and Buddhism or in the occult, the lesser gods are often evil and God or ultimate reality itself is impersonal and amoral—hence unconcerned with human actions of any type.

As Mircea Eliade observes in The Sacred and the Profane, “What demands emphasis is the fact that religious [pagan] man sought to imitate, and believed that he was imitating, his gods even when he allowed himself to be led into acts that verged on madness, depravity and crime.”^[5]

Thus, literally every perverse act—orgies, murder, human sacrifice, rape, sex with demons, copulating with and then eating human corpses, and other things vile—became justified by pagan religion. Indeed, such religion has always justified its own evils. What is so disconcerting today is the extent to which the West is turning to paganism and perhaps preparing the soil for ancient practices to be resumed.

Dr. Nigel Davies is an archaeologist and anthropologist who has written The Aztecs, The Toltecs, and an important subsequent text called Human Sacrifice in History and Today (1981), which dispels certain scholarly biases. Davies documents that human sacrifice is not a historical anomaly. Rather, it is an “Aztec Specialty,” a natural component of pagan religion, and far more common than most persons think. Indeed, it is

…part of the common heritage of mankind, present in practically all societies in every era—among higher civilizations just as much as among primitive peoples—and with surprisingly universal similarities…. Human sacrifice continues today.^[6]

One thing is clear. It was the twisted logic and demonism of pagan religion which justified murder for a variety of religious motives. “In essence human sacrifice was an act of piety. Both sacrificer and victim knew that the act was required, to save the people from calamity and the cosmos from collapse. Their object was, therefore, more to preserve than to destroy life.^[7] And, “Ancient gods… expected flesh and blood, obtained through the medium of a ritual, without which the gift had neither worth nor meaning. Ritual and religion are inseparable from human sacrifice; indeed, we may define the term as killing with a spiritual or religious motivation, usu­ally, but not exclusively, accompanied by ritual.”^[8]

The reasons for the murders were numerous, because the “gods” needed appeasement to stay the endless problems of humanity. Thus, men were murdered for the satisfaction of their own deities or to secure their supposed help.

In the course of many millennia, legions of men have been offered up to the gods…. In return the gods were expected to ward off famines, stay the course of plagues, guard buildings, care for the departed, enrich harvests and win battles. These were the favors man needed from his gods. The latter usually responded in the end; it was merely a question of waiting or, if necessary, of making bigger offerings; given time, the rains came again, the floods subsided, or the pestilence ran its course.^[9]

Sacrifices were even necessary in order to “sanctify” new buildings or other structures, al­ready presumed to be the domain of a potentially offended spirit:

Another very common form of human sacrifice was the rite of interring adults or children in the foundations of new buildings under city gates and bridges…. A new building is also a form of intrusion on the domain of the local spirit, whose anger may be aroused and who therefore has to be appeased….

Foundation sacrifice was as widespread in Europe as in Asia…. The Druids also practiced this rite.^[10]

Crop fertility and human procreation also demanded the murder of the innocent:

In their most basic forms, fertility rites required the sprinkling of human blood or the burial of pieces of human flesh in the fields before sowing; the practice survived into the nineteenth century among certain tribes of India, who reared and fattened victims specially for the purpose. Sacrifices to river gods belong to the same category since the waters that they brought were needed to make plants grow…. Barrenness was often held to be an act of God, who deliberately kept back children who would otherwise have been born. The best remedy was to send him other infants to take the place of those he had withheld; slave children usually served the purpose. In some places, in India, for example, the practice was carried to such lengths that if a wife had one son and wanted more, the first-born was slain on the supposition that the gods would then provide a series of children to take his place. In certain Australian aboriginal tribes, the mother would kill and eat her first child as a means of obtaining more.^[11]

Men were even killed to supply the gods with “attendants” in the next world.^[12] But there are also other motives for sacrifice that are found in some Tantric and occult sects operative today. The goal is to achieve a mystical union with the gods for a variety of purposes.^[13]

In conclusion, considered historically, human sacrifice was absent only where a high view of man himself prohibited the taking of life:

The gods continued to exact the highest gift, that of a fellow-being, as the price of meeting man’s pressing needs. They were only forced to settle for less when human beings ceased—in a handful of societies—to be regarded as mere chattels or a means of exchange like any other.^[14]

What is difficult to accept is the apparent conclusion of Davies’ text. After surveying millennia of ritualized slaughter, he gives a rather novel suggestion. In light of the modern-day penchant for killing other people merely for “mundane” reasons (e.g., anger, jealousy, or money)—he says it might be preferable to return to the ritualized slaughter of the past. This would help exchange one form of slaughter for another, as it were. This would allegedly reduce the number of victims or help “balance” a society so unbalanced that murder and violence are commonplace.

That such a recommendation is even suggested is perhaps a symptom of our times. But it ignores a host of accompanying issues whose collective consequences would be far worse than our current problems with violent crime—not the least of which is pagan religion in general. Of course, we already legalize gambling and abortion to suit our whims. Why not legalize religious murder? Why not, indeed? Why not instead propose a return to Christian values rather than pagan ones? Why sympathize with paganism? Yet this is the author’s approach. After all, can we not at least understand the “necessity” for religious murder in the past, given the people’s beliefs, however horrified we may be over what are in effect modem religious pagan sacrifices of a slightly different nature?

Both Manson and Jones had a diabolical hold over their flock, and at times used sex as a weapon to maintain this hold. Under Manson’s hypnotic spell Sandy Good was able to declare, “I have finally reached the point where I can kill my parents.” Equally Jones mesmerized his people to the degree that they were ready to kill themselves and their children….

So if today a single demonic will can drive hundreds to self-slaughter, it becomes less surprising that in ancient times people were ready if not eager to be slain on the god’s altar, when the whole fabric of society and the whole weight of religious tradition demanded this of them.^[15]

Thus, lamenting our daily exposure to violence on TV and in real life, and our “ambivalent” attitude toward death, Davies suggests that a return to the past is perhaps worth considering:

Faced with the mass brutality of our century, real as well as simulated, one may ask whether in its place, man might not do better to revert to the ritualized killings of the past…. If violence is endemic, sacrificial violence is at least a more restrained form.^[16]

So many people have been sacrificed in so many ways in so many places throughout the world! Will a pagan America offer its own children in sacrifice in the next century? If it adopts pagan religion, it certainly could. We are already seeing the groundwork being laid. For ex­ample, in The Sacrament of Abortion neo-pagan Ginette Paris, author of Pagan Meditations and Pagan Grace, argues that abortion should be accepted and interpreted as a sacrificial religious act, as a sacrament to the pagan goddess Artemis. By sacrificing unborn children to the god­dess, we prevent them from living unwanted lives here, Paris alleges. The unborn baby is sacri­ficed to Artemis, the goddess of childbirth, because unless the gift given to her is pure (in this case, symbolizing a wanted child), she supposedly will refuse to aid in giving birth and life. Therefore, abortion is the proper religious sacrament and sacrifice to Artemis, according to Paris.

Yet the theme of human sacrifice is so universal, one is almost tempted to suggest the devil has instituted his own form of religious sacrifice merely to mock God. Has the devil perverted the idea of a singular divine sacrifice and twisted it into an endless religious evil—a necessary “sacrament” for allegedly securing human welfare and salvation? Is an impotent, ritualistic, demonic murder mocking a loving, divine self-sacrifice—as do the deliberate perversions of the “divine” acts common to Satanism?

But most people today simply turn their heads. A report in the calendar section of the Los Angeles Times (“The Bloody Reality of the Maya”) is a good illustration of the tendency to be­lieve what we wish. The report by William Wilson discusses translations in a Mayan art exhibit, “The Blood of Kings,” organized by the Kimbell Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. Wilson indicates the scholarly will to disbelieve in demonic “blood-soaked” rituals covered up the fact that some Mayan practices even made the Aztec ritual excision of human hearts “seem downright hu­mane.” Yet typically, the Maya were convinced that their brutalities were necessary to the pres­ervation of their society.^[17] Wilson concludes: “Mayan ways were visible in chilling graphic detail long before the translations. Why didn’t Mayan experts of the past see these people clearly? The answer is always the same. They didn’t want to.”

And with the will to disbelieve we also reject the warnings around us. Manson, Berkowitz, and other mass killers have said they are by no means alone in their “holy” quest.

Sometimes, late at night, one can know the truth of their words. Through the darkness, a foreboding wail can be heard. Faintly at first, then more insistent and nearer, the reverberations ring through urban canyons, roll across the shadowed byways of Scarsdale and Bel Air, and are carried on the night wind to the remote reaches of rural countrysides.

It is a mournful, curdling cry.

It is the sound of America screaming.^[18]

Notes

1. ↑ R. C. Zaehner, Our Savage God: The Perverse Use of Eastern Thought (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1974), pp. 66-67.
2. ↑ Ibid., p. 60.
3. ↑ Ibid., p. 47.
4. ↑ Ibid., p. 71.
5. ↑ Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1959), p. 104.
6. ↑ Nigel Davies, Human Sacrifice in History and Today (New York: William Morrow, 1981), cover jacket.
7. ↑ Ibid., p. 13.
8. ↑ Ibid., p. 15.
9. ↑ Ibid., p. 23.
10. ↑ Ibid., pp. 21-22.
11. ↑ Ibid., p. 22.
12. ↑ Ibid., p. 24.
13. ↑ E.g., ibid., p. 26.
14. ↑ Ibid., p. 27.
15. ↑ Ibid., pp. 288-289.
16. ↑ Ibid., p. 289.
17. ↑ Los Angeles Times, Jun. 15, 1986.
18. ↑ Maury Terry, The Ultimate Evil: An Investigation of America’s Most Dangerous Satanic Cult (Garden City, NY: Dolphin/Doubleday, 1987), pp. 511-512.