Saturday, September 1, 2018

They're Not Casting Spells - We Are!


Note that by "we" I don't necessarily mean me personally. I mean occultists in general.

In the bizarre, possibly smoke-filled world of conservative conspiracy theories, the idea that prominent liberals are occultists refuses to die. As I've written here on numerous occasions, the idea that high-ranking politicians (A) are occult practitioners and (B) have somehow managed to keep that fact entirely secret is absolutely laughable. And to be clear, this is true of both liberals and conservatives.

Opposition research is a science these days, and being an effective occultist requires among other things a solid daily practice regimen. How could somebody, over all those years of intense scrutiny, not find out? A related question is how anyone who decides to devote his or her life to politics would have the time to become an effective magician, let alone enough secret time to do so.

And here's why I'm bringing this up again. Liz Crokin, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, lost the tips of two of her fingers in a (kind of weird) surfing accident. She explained in a YouTube video that she was sure her fingers were severed due to a spell cast by Hillary Clinton, or maybe performance artist Marina Abramović. In the video she claims that Abramović and Bill and Hillary Clinton are all occultists. Spoiler alert - they're not.

Last night, Crokin posted a video on YouTube recounting her accident, which happened when the surfboard that she was holding by a rope was forcefully pulled away by a crashing wave, severing parts of two fingers.

While she realizes that it was probably “just a freak accident,” that didn’t stop her from also asserting that it may have been the result of a curse that had been placed on her by Hillary Clinton or artist Marina Abramović or some other “witch” that is targeting her due to her efforts to expose the secret satanic cannibalistic pedophile cult that supposedly runs the world.


“These people that I expose engage in witchcraft,” Crokin said. “You know, the people like Marina Abramović, the people like Hillary Clinton, [the people] from the deep state articles that are getting ready to write a hit piece on me right now. Well, look it up. Look it up. Do research on Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton and their trip to Haiti and how—I think it was on their honeymoon—they admitted to doing voodoo there together. Research Marina Abramović; she talks about the rituals she does, she’s an occultist.”

“All these people dabble in witchcraft and spirit cooking,” she added. “So, do these people do witchcraft against me? Of course they do. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they were casting spells on me the night before. These people do engage in witchcraft, they do cast spells on people,” Crokin insisted. “So I’m sure there was some spiritual stuff going on.”

Now occultists do engage in some secretive practices - it's right there in the name. "Occult" means "hidden." And some occultists do consider themselves Satanists, though I personally don't. But occult practices are not cannibalistic and not pedophilic, and we sure as heck don't run the world. It's the politicians and the people running big multi-national corporations who do that. Few if any of those people are practicing occultists.

The "spirit cooking" thing is about a performance art session that unfortunately shares a name with something that sounds spiritual or occult - and, by the way, one of my big gripes about magick these days is people who seem to think there's no difference between spiritual technology and performance art. But that deserves its own post.

At any rate, one of the things I find most remarkable about Crokin's statement is that she ignores an obvious source of any "spiritual stuff" that might have been going on - the actual occultists who have been casting spells against Trump and "all who abet him" for over a year. There's nothing secret about it. It's published on the Internet, along with dates and times.

And while I did post a while back that there are some design problems with that spell and it probably didn't really do anything to Crokin, it's a much better theory than proposing that a couple of non-occultists somehow cast an effective spell - despite having no magical background whatsoever. At least we know the anti-Trump and anti-Trump-abetter spell is a real thing that is happening in the world.

As usual with these sorts of cranks, they're more interested in slagging on the Clintons than doing any investigation of real occultism. From an opportunistic standpoint it makes sense, since understanding what the occult is really about doesn't confer any real political advantage and there's nothing the base loves better than ridiculous horror stories about the Clintons. But from the standpoint of critical thinking it's a complete disaster.

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2 comments:

Watcher of the Dawn said...


There is a fair bit of narcissism involved the concept. It is saying “I am so important that Hillary Clinton will do a ritual to attack me.” I doubt anyone really knows who she is (I had to look her up). The other issue is that a person who can cut off two of your fingers by doing magic is not someone you want to piss off, it also seems that her god Jesus did sod all to protect her.

Scott Stenwick said...

Yeah, the idea that some random liberal might have cursed her does not even seem to cross her mind. It must have been someone famous!

I will bet she still thinks Jesus magically protected her without her doing spiritual practices or really anything, because that's how fundies like her think. If Jesus hadn't been there, she might have been killed! Right???