Christian Nationalism a Theological Error

That was the determination made by the latest General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. It's about time mainstream Christians started saying this out loud. There is literally no way to reconcile the Christian Nationalist project with the actual teachings attributed to Jesus Christ. I could go through a whole bunch of Bible citations to support that point, but let's just say I wholeheartedly agree with this determination.

Commissioners to the 227th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted overwhelmingly to declare White Christian nationalism and similar ideologies “a theological error” incompatible with the teachings of Jesus Christ, advancing a proposed constitutional amendment that would add that language to the denomination’s Book of Order.

Erica Nelson speaks on behalf of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy The Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP). Photo by Jonathan Watson. The assembly also approved a denomination-wide policy statement condemning White Christian nationalism, directed church leaders to expand public opposition to the movement through ecumenical partnerships and public witness, and declined to commemorate Presbyterians’ role in the American Revolution, citing concerns that such a celebration could elevate nationalism over the church’s gospel witness.

By a vote of 458-18, commissioners approved RUS-01, which asks the denomination’s 164 presbyteries to ratify new Book of Order language affirming the church’s commitment to justice, peace, mercy and human dignity while rejecting “any ideology that seeks to establish Christianity as a privileged or dominant force through the power of the state, or that conflates religious identity with national, racial, or ethnic supremacy.”

The apparent lack of faith shown by Christian Nationalists is utterly bizarre to me. If you honestly and sincerely believe that everybody who disagrees with you will be tortured for all eternity, why do you care about making their brief time on Earth harder by weaponizing the legal system against them? The easiest answer I can think of is that maybe they don't have faith at all, so they're doing everything they can to punish their supposed enemies here and now.

What We Occultists Have to Deal With

I keep coming back to this idea of how fundamentalist Christians consider occultists some sort of existential threat based on made-up nonsense about who we are and what we do. A friend forwarded this video to me and it's a perfect example. The story is absolutely ridiculous, and it's nothing any occultist would ever do - for reasons I will get into.

It's obvious to me that this woman suffers from sleep paralysis and dreamed most of this, at least if I give her the benefit of assuming she's telling the truth. She could be making this all up, of course, since that's pretty much what fundamentalists do whenever they get into any details about magick, but let's just take the account on its face. If we do, it becomes clear that this is something no magician would ever bother with.

First of all, why is this "warlock" spending so much time and effort to attack this woman? Is she important? Like, at all? I have no idea who she is and apparently she has enough of a media presence somewhere to get interviewed. But just cursing random Christian people for no reason is stupid. It's a waste of time. There are better things you can do with magick to improve your life, so you should save your curses for those who are actively impeding your will or threatening your loved ones.

Second, the setup for this spell is ludicrous. You have a whole group of witches "flying around" to create a perimeter? If she's talking about physical flying that's flat-out impossible. If she's talking about some sort of "astral flight" why bother? I can see where you could use a physical perimeter to target a spell - I've done that personally - but the whole point is that the physical perimeter serves as an anchor for the spiritual force you are sending. It would do no good to have a bunch of witches astrally flying around the house so that a "warlock" could astrally project inside.

As astral perimeter for astral work does nothing. You need something physical, but that's easy enough to do with a set of talismans. You can make them out of ordinary objects like coins and place them at key points around your target. You don't need people to do any of it. Now let's talk about astrally projecting with an "astral knife" to attack someone. To cast a curse you don't need to any of that, and it makes little sense to me why anyone would do it. Once you have your perimeter, that's a magical link that you connect with your containment structure and then just use a targeting link like a photo.

So a magician would have to be really, really bad at magick to think something like this would work. Appearing to your target is silly. Curses work much better without warning, which is also why a good magician will never threaten. They just act. And anyway, a target wouldn't be able to take an astral object from you and use it. Their hand would slide right through it. There are way too many problems with this account for it to have anything to do with real occultism. It's basically made-up fundamentalist nonsense about what magicians - oh, I mean "warlocks" - actually do.

Persecution makes Christians feel important, and the best persecution is made-up persecution because it poses no actual threat and involves no actual risk. If the Poor Oppressed Christians even encountered real oppression, I wonder if they would even know what to do with it. They certainly wouldn't charge at real oppressors yelling "Dominion! Dominion! Dominion!" That would just get them killed.

So... sleep paralysis. This is caused by the body partially waking up while dreaming. Much of the dream content is present and the dreamer usually perceives a sense of threat or dread. They initially can't move, which means they try to exert effort to do so to no avail. This is because we have a physiological mechanism that impedes movement while we dream, to prevent things like sleepwalking. Then, when the mechanism finally turns off, the person can thrash around and bruise themselves without remembering anything but what they were dreamining about.

If this woman is being honest, that's what happened. And, of course, if she's making it up maybe none of it did. This is one more case where if people had a real idea about what magicians do, they would understand that not only do we not bother with such things, the mechanism described is also entirely unworkable.

Another Cabal Update

I never have been very skeptical regarding the idea of an elite, wealty cabal trying to rule the world. I've mentioned this many times before here on Augoeides. There's plenty of evidence that all sorts of plots to dominate society are devised by people with more money than they could ever spend and way too much time on their hands. The part that I have always been skeptical about is that the cabal has anything to do with occultism.

The idea that occultists and/or Pagans pose some kind of existential threat to "regular" people is ridiculous. It is nonetheless the mainstay of much fundamentalist Christian musing about what they fear is going on in the world. Their enemies can't just be garden-variety ultra-rich money-grubbing sociopaths - you know, the kind of people who actually pose an existential threat to everyone outside their income bracket. No, their enemies must somehow be metaphysically evil and depraved. As if starving the world just to amass unlimited wealth isn't evil enough.

Here's a new update on who these folks really are, or at least one particular subgroup of them. The original article was published in Wired but it is behind a paywall, so I am instead linking to this summary from Esquire that includes a link to the original piece. The cabal or sub-cabal in question is called "Dialog" and is led by perennial super-villian Peter Thiel, founder of uber-surveillance firm Palantir. And as usual, there's not an occultist in sight. Thiel himself appears to be some odd variety of fundamentalist Christian obsessed with the End Times and the Antichrist, which South Park parodied quite effectively in its latest season.

A source separately provided Wired with the registration list for Dialog’s 2026 retreat, which names 222 people and records what the list describes as each registrant’s membership status and attendee type, including “active member” and “guest.” The retreat is scheduled for August 12–16 at a venue near Dublin, Ireland.

The same data lays out a program of off-the-record sessions, including: “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness,” “Bring Back Nuclear,” “Navigating WWIII,” “Battlefield Technologies,” and “How’s Your Sex Life?” Other talks include “Build-a-Cult,” moderated by the founder of the Christian networking site Pray.com, and “Build-a-Party,” run by a former White House national security official.

Together, alongside the mundane fare of a typical thought leadership conference, the documents show an extraordinary convergence of power. The registration records list General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s supreme allied commander of Europe and the head of U.S. European Command, who took the post in July 2025 and is recorded on the leaked list as having attended Dialog gatherings since 2021.

The website directory names sitting Trump administration officials, two U.S. senators, six members of the Paypal Mafia, a former Middle East chief of intelligence, and a sitting ambassador to the United States, along with the founders and directors of many of the country’s largest surveillance, data-broker, and advertising-data companies.

Now at first I wondered about that Build-a-cult thing, because that at least sounds like it could be occult adjacent. But no, it's being put on by a Christian organization. That means that either (A) it's about how to create a Christian cult, or (B) it's going to be full of the usual fundie nonsense about occultism that has no basis in reality.

As a point, "Bring Back Nuclear" is a good idea in my opinion. It's emission-free and new reactor designs are incredibly safe. But that's likely about where my agreement with these folks is going to end. This sort of concentrated political and financial power is always going to be dangerous, and these are the same folks pushing artificial intelligence, the end of personal privacy (for everyone but them, naturally), and accelerationism.

So it's not that the conspiracy theorists are wrong, exactly. They just wander too far into the realm of fantasy regarding the cabal and its members. People don't need to be aliens or lizards or demons or wizards to be dangerous. Massive concentrated wealth and lack of accountability can do are plenty of harm all on their own.

The Cabal is Not Shadowy

Over and over again, I keep hearing online conspiracy theorists go on about the "shadowy cabal" of "satanists" who run the world. Some people go so far as to think they are literally shape-shifting lizards. Others insist that they're magicians, occultists, or pagans. In all these cases, though, they're secret. Nobody knows who their members are, and constant speculation goes back and forth over who might or might not be a member.

If you're one of these people wondering about the truth, do I have news for you! It is no mystery whatsoever who these people are, at least in the United Stats. As a matter of fact, a list of them is published every year. It's called the Forbes 400. Don't believe me? You should. Billionaires run nearly every aspect of the modern world, especially in the United States.

Being a billionaire is not just being rich. I'm willing to bet that hardly anybody reading this has an accurate sense of how much money a billion dollars actually is. People seem to feel like a billionaire is somebody a fair amount richer than a millionaire. But a millionaire is a thousand times closer to being entirely destitute than they are to being a billionaire. The real difference in scale is staggering.

A million dollars is a sum that a lot of people will wind up earning over the course of their careers. If you work for 40 years and average $25,000 per year you will earn a million dollars. You'll need to spend most of it on expenses, of course, and won't have anywhere near that amount in savings. But a billion dollars? You would have to make 25 million dollars per year over that same span to earn a billion.

Not April Fools

For quite awhile the tradition here on Augoeides for April Fools Day has been to find an article with some relation to religion, spirituality, conspiracies, or whatever from satirical outlets like The Onion. This year, though? Satire seems tame. Both of the stories mentioned in the meme accompanying this article are apparently true. Former congressman Matt Gaetz is alleging that the United States Military is engaged in breeding human-alien hybrids. I suppose that might explain all the probing, and while outlandish it does make more sense than an alien race expending all the energy required for interstellar travel just to grab random humans and molest them - still not much sense, but a little more.

Gaetz made the shocking statement during a guest appearance on the "Benny Show" while speaking with host Benny Johnson. "I had someone come and brief me, wearing a military uniform, worked for the United States Army, that was briefing me on the locations of hybrid breeding programs, where captured aliens were breeding with humans to create some hybrid race, that could engage in intergalactic communication," Gaetz said.

This of course ignores the fact that the universe we live in is not Star Trek, where seemingly every humanoid alien race can cross-breed with each other. The odds of aliens and humans being capable of interbreeding is vanishingly small, given how different the biology of real aliens would have to be. And Vice President J. D. Vance has his own theory that would seem to contradict the idea of hybridizing aliens. He thinks that UFOs are demons. I suppose the only way to combine these two claims is to argue that the US Military is actually hybridizing humans and demons, for which some folklore does exist. Still, it seems pretty unlikely that a corporeal human and an incorporeal demon (or spirit of any kind) could produce a child.

“Well, look, I think that celestial beings who fly around, who do weird things to people. I think that the desire to describe everything celestial, everything is otherworldly, to describe it as aliens,” Vance said. “Every great world religion, including Christianity, the one that I believe in, has understood that there are weird things out there, and there are things that are very difficult to explain. And I naturally go, when I hear about sort of extra-natural phenomenon, that’s where I go, is the Christian understanding that, you know, there’s a lot of good out there, but there’s also some evil out there. I think that one of the devil’s great tricks is to convince people he never existed.”

Now the interesting thing here is that Vance may not be entirely wrong. I do think that some UFO sightings might actually be the result of spirit activity. Where he's wrong, though, is jump immediately to the ridiculous Christian idea that spirits are automatically evil or "of the devil." From personal experience I can tell you that most of them aren't. Chthonic and Celestial spirits get erroneously classified as "evil demons" and "good angels" by Christianity, when the reality is a lot more complex. Spirits of both realms have their own unique personalities, and how friendly or hostile they are depends on circumstances.

Folks, I just can't come up with a satirical April Fools joke that tops this, so it will have to do. It's at least as unhinged as any of the other fake stories I've covered on this date.

All Hail the Prophet!

The prophet in question, of course, being me. Last week I posted my prophetic prediction that the current war in Iran would not bring on The Rapture or the return of Jesus. Apparently some of the "Jesus dorks" mentioned in the meme accompanying that article predicted that the Rapture would happen on March 22nd or March 23rd of this year. Today is March 24th, which means I'm right again. Still a true prophet, folks!

As this is the Thelemic Holy Season, our lodge is doing the Office of the Readings at this time. Our version of the Office of the Readings include not just the Holy Books of Thelema and the writings of Aleister Crowley, but also additional texts from some of the saints named in the Gnostic Mass. Regarding prophecy, one of our readings is from Saint Hippolytus, an important early Christian thinker. The reading from Christ and Antichrist, includes the following:

For as the blessed prophets were made, so to speak, eyes for us, they foresaw through faith the mysteries of the word, and became ministers of these things also to succeeding generations, not only reporting the past, but also announcing I the present and the future, so that the prophet might not appear to be one only for the time being, but might also predict the future for all generations, and so be reckoned a (true) prophet. For these fathers were furnished with the Spirit, and largely honoured by the Word Himself; and just as it is with instruments of music. so had they the Word always, like the plectrum, in union with them, and when moved by Him the prophets announced what God willed.

For they spoke not of their own power (let there be no mistake as to that ), neither did they declare what pleased themselves. But First of all they were endowed with wisdom by the Word, and then again were rightly instructed in the future by means of visions. And then, when thus themselves fully convinced, they spoke those things which were revealed by God to them alone, and concealed from all others. For with what reason should the prophet be called a prophet, unless he in spirit foresaw the future? For if the prophet spoke of any chance event, he would not be a prophet then in speaking of things which were under the eye of aIl.

In other words, every "End Times" prophet in all of history was and is a false prophet. They all predicted that the world would end on a specific date, and the world is still here. I, on the other hand, have made fun of those folks every time and predicted that they would be wrong every time. They were wrong, which makes me a true prophet - at least according to Hippolytus!

Obviously I have no desire to be regarded as a Christian prophet since I'm a Thelemite, but anybody taken in by one of these predictions should take a long hard look at all the times I've called out End Times predictions on this blog. They're always wrong, every single time. I genuinely feel for folks taken in by scammers like Harold Camping years ago. Some of them gave up their entire lives to become full-time evangelists because they believed he was a real prophet and the world was ending - and then nothing happened.

My next prophetic prediction is the same one I made in the previous post - no Rapture or Apocalypse or End Times will take place because of the ongoing stupid war in Iran. When the war ends without any such event, you can bet I'll go ahead and make fun of the "Jesus dorks" one more time!

No Rapture for You

Since the United States attacked Iran at the end of February, I have been seeing statements like the ones in this article floating around the Internet about how Evangelical Christians believe that the war is part of a divine plan that involves the End Times, the Rapture, and the return of Jesus. Citing references to the Book of Revelation regarding Persia and the lands of "Gog and Magog," they assert that the attack is a key event that will lead up to the "Battle of Armageddon" and bring back their savior.

This is not a new story. Back in 2003 when the United States attacked Iraq many similar sentiments showed up online. The fall of Babylon - modern day Baghdad, Iraq's capitol - is referenced in the Book of Revelation, and Christians found it reasonable to think that the text might refer to the country's military defeat. Iraq was defeated on the battlefield, but we all know that no magical Rapture followed. Clearly the war was just a war.

Understanding why this is should not be that complicated, but in the minds of Rapture believers it nonetheless is. Their entire theological model is based on the works of John Nelson Darby's system of dispensationalism, which was formulated in the 1830's. As such, it is an entirely modern system of Biblical interpretation that would not be recognized by Christians of even 300 years ago. And yet, today it is a foundational teaching of many Evangelical churches.

Wait, It's Today?

This story shows just out of the loop I have been on weird and religious news of late. According to this one guy on TikTok the Rapture is today! Or tomorrow! Apparently it's the end of the world, folks. Again. Because it's not remotely like these predictions come out all the time, the world never actually ends, and all involved wind up looking ridiculous. I could be wrong this time, though, seeing as one guy on TikTok is such a authoritative, unimpeachable source.

The viral claim by Joshua Mhlakela, who says Jesus personally revealed the date of his return in a divine vision, has led some followers to sell possessions and prepare for what they believe is the end of days. The Rapture is a belief held by many evangelical Christians in which Jesus returns to take true believers to Heaven before a period of tribulation on Earth.

The one thing I will say I appreciate about this prediction is that it apparently is not another re-hashing of William Miller's calculations. Miller was responsible for predicting the end of the world in the mid-1800s based on a highly contrived method of interpreting scripture. Most pastors who come up with dates start with Miller and then tweak the calculations to arrive at some future date which becomes their prediction. At this point, though, it's been done so many times and has failed so many times that the logical conclusion should be that Miller was just wrong. Unverified personal gnosis is not necessarily better, but it's refreshing to see.

The term "rapture" does not appear in the Bible, but the concept is largely based on interpretations of passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 and 1 Corinthians 15:51-52. Some Christians believe the Rapture will occur before a period of global tribulation (pre-tribulationists), while others expect it to follow that period (post-tribulationists).

The phenomenon, which has gained momentum through TikTok under the hashtag #RaptureTok, centers around Mhlakela's assertion that the Rapture, when faithful Christians will be taken up to heaven, will align with the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah, which falls on September 23 and 24 this year.

Rosh Hashanah does happen every year, so the question immediately becomes why this year. Nothing in the article really goes into that. Maybe there are reasons, but maybe it's just part of the alleged vision with no other support offered for why it's happening this specific time around.

The prediction has prompted a wide range of reactions, from genuine spiritual anticipation to open skepticism from religious scholars and mainstream pastors. Mhlakela first shared his prophecy in an interview with Centtwinz TV and on YouTube, claiming that Jesus appeared to him and declared he would "come to take my church" on September 23 or 24, 2025, aligning with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

This assertion, though not grounded in any definitive scriptural timeline, resonated widely, particularly among evangelical TikTok users. Some pointed to signs in Revelation 12 and various astrological alignments involving the constellations Virgo and Leo as evidence that prophecy was being fulfilled.

So as always, we'll see. And by see, I mean that when the world is still here after the 24th with no sign of Jesus' return, we'll rack up one more wrong prediction by yet another pastor who somehow thought that they had the answer. Either that, or I suppose we won't be here to rack up much of anything. I mean, are random guys on TikTok ever wrong?

Talk With Jesus!

You know how I go out of my way explaining to people that praying for a specific thing is the same damn thing as magick? I do that because the sort of Christian that generally goes around praying for things like a new car is also the sort of Christian obsessed with how evil magick is. As you can see browsing through the rituals on this site, the way I usually do magick is to call on angels by the corresponding godnames, conjure them, and charge them with specific tasks. This is literally no different than calling on God and his angels to bring you something. "I pray to get [a certain thing] in the name of Jesus is a spell, albeit a sloppy and inefficient one.

I bring this up thanks to this ridiculous new product, the "Holy Spirit Board." It's ridiculous because it's a freaking Ouija board with so Christian iconography. This is not the first time I've talked about a Christian Ouija board here on Augoeides, such as this article from 2019. It is the first ioteration of a Christian Ouija board, though, that actually advertises itself as talking directly with Jesus. I would expect the folks who actually know the Ten Commandments and understand the meaning of the word "idolotry" should have something to say about that, and I expect some of them do. I just haven't seen it so far.

Because the "Holy Spirit Board" is literally idolotrous. Ouija boards work because a phenomenon called the ideomotor effect. This consists of small, unconsicous movements in the fingers. Those movements make the planchette slide, and if you have a bunch of people working the board together, the motion can seem mysterious. In fact, the inventor of the Ouija board and other spirit communication devices from the same period likely wouldn't disagree with any of that. When a Ouija board works - that is, provides you with accurate information - it's because your psychic senses are activated and your psychic impressions are translating into those small, unconscious finger movements.

It's not impossible that a person could use a Ouija board to communicate with the Christian God, Jesus, or angels. Deities can be contacted in this way. The problem is that without psychic development, psychic senses are usually likewise undeveloped. That means that what is translating to the board is usually not viable psychic information, but rather one's own thoughts. And THAT means that anyone using this device to talk with Jesus might be getting legitimate communication some of the time. But the rest of the time they are literally communicating with their own thoughts and treating those thoughts as if they were those of Jesus. The latter case is practically the definition of idolotry - which they accuse us magicians of all the time.

Personally I'm a Thelemite and honestly couldn't care less if Christians want to make use of magical or psychic technology. Good for them! I just wish they would wake up and realize what they are doing when they use the tech, but then rail against people of other religions for doing the same. Either Ouija boards are evil or they're not. Idolotry is idolotry, no matter who's doing it. Most of all, I wish they would just leave us alone to practice as we will. We are perfectly happy to extend them the same courtesy, so long as they don't enact their beliefs in a way that threatens our basic human rights.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Actually, That's Ra-Hoor-Khuit

Here's a weird vaguely Thelema-adjacent news article from Texas. A woman was struck by a snake that fell from the sky. She called out to Jesus for help as the snake attacked her, and then a hawk came at her, grabbing the snake and flying off with it.

Peggy Jones was mowing her lawn in Silsbee, about 100 miles northeast of Houston, on Tuesday when out of nowhere, a snake plummeted from the sky before landing on her arm and wrapping itself around her limb, she told Houston-based NBC affiliate KPRC-TV. As the snake tightened around her arm, a hawk suddenly swooped down from above and started attacking Jones as it tried to pry the serpent away from her.

“The snake was squeezing so hard, and I was waving my arms in the air. And then, this hawk was swooping down clawing at my arm over and over,” Jones, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News, told KPRC. “I just kept saying, ‘Help me, Jesus. Help me, Jesus',” she said. She said the hawk came at her at least four times before it finally managed to get hold of the snake and fly away.

In Thelema, the serpent is Apep or Apophis, the god of darkness and disorder. The falcon is both Ra and Horus, who are merged together as Ra-Hoor-Khuit or Ra-Horakhty, the solar god who was the sworn enemy of Apophis and did battle with him on a nightly basis.

So this bizarre event essentially re-enacts this mythic battle between light and darkness. Jones was attacked by Apophis, but the serpent was defeated by the falcon, Ra-Hoor-Khuit. It also strikes me as relevant that when she called on Jesus, it was Ra-Hoor-Khuit who answered. After all, folks, we're living in the New Aeon now.

Not Even Christian Anymore

In hindsight, I suppose the trajectory Evangelical Christianity has been on for many years now was always going to come to this. That doesn't make it any less sad, though, and also pretty scary for everyone involved.

Political movements tend to highjack religious movements, twisting them to serve their own political ends. And right-wing politicians in America love Evangelical Christian. It is no exaggeration to suggest that Evangelicals are probably the single largesty block of voters that support right-wing causes.

But in recent years, the influence of right-wing politics on Evangelical Christianity has become so pronounced that Christianity itself has become problematic to the movement. Not only do Evangelicals support Donald Trump, one of the least pious presidents to ever serve in office, but some even dismiss the actual teachings of Jesus as "liberal talking points."

Russell Moore resigned from the Southern Baptist Convention in 2021, after years of being at odds with other evangelical leaders. Specifically, Moore openly criticized Donald Trump, whom many evangelical Christians embraced. Moore also criticized the Southern Baptist Convention’s response to a sexual abuse crisis and increasing tolerance for white nationalism in the community.

Now he thinks his religion is in crisis. Moore told NPR in an interview released Tuesday that multiple pastors had told him they would quote the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the part that says to “turn the other cheek,” when preaching. Someone would come up after the service and ask, “Where did you get those liberal talking points?”

“What was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak,’” Moore said. “When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.”

No Rapture for You!

Things have been a little quiet here on Augoeides with respect to current events. But this week's news merits a mention - televangelist Pat Robertson has died. Robertson is one of the handful of individuals with their own tags on the blog, and he has held his since 2017. Older Robertson posts are also tagged with his name, but that was done after the tag was created. Few people have been the source of as much nonsense as Robertson, who believed things like you could be attacked by thrift store demons and that all denominations of Christianity besides his own were of the devil and therefore hopelessly evil.

Pat Robertson, the prominent televangelist who founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, made the Christian right a powerful political force and unsuccessfully ran for president in 1988, died on Thursday, the network said in a news release.

“Pat Robertson, longtime TV host, religious broadcaster, educator, humanitarian, and one-time presidential candidate died at his home in Virginia Beach early Thursday morning. He was 93,” the release said. Regent University in Virginia also released a statement saying it was mourning the loss of Robertson.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of our beloved founder,” Regent University Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs William L. Hathaway said. “Dr. Robertson was a globally-renowned leader, broadcaster, philanthropist, educator, author, accomplished businessman, and – most importantly – a faithful servant of God who dedicated his life to glorifying the Lord and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Robertson's "faithful service" included blaming feminists and liberals for 9/11, attacking Dungeons and Dragons as demonic, and using miraculous powers to perform miracles - what he called "prayer" and many of us call "magick." Most of those attempts failed, but it's less about competence than hypocrisy on Pat's part. Calling on deities and angels to make things happen is a big part of ceremonial magick, but it's good when he's doing it and evil when it's us.

Robertson's death also means that he won't be Raptured, hence the title of this article. To be Raptured, you have to be alive when the End Times start. The whole Rapture idea is silly anyway. The epistle where the responsible quote comes from is badly translated as "we will rise up to meet Him in the air." Literalists contend that this means that believers will float up into the sky. But in Greek, "air" and "spirit" are the same word, similar to what we see in Hebrew. Doesn't it make more sense to say that when Jesus returns, believers will rise up to meet him in the spirit

I mean, because the idea is so goofy it wouldn't be true anyway, regardless of how the text reads. But that it's based on a bad translation makes it all the more wrong. The Revelation of Saint John most likely refers to events that happened around and after the time it was written. 666 is probably a reference to Nero, and in fact the whole narrative can be read as a prophecy regarding the Roman Empire's conversion to Christianity. The "End Times" narrative we have today originated with William Miller in the early 1800's, and everybody who has used versions of his method to caculate a date has gotten it wrong.

Whatever the "real" End Times narrative - if it ever even comes to pass - turns out to be, the one thing that's clear is that Pat missed it. So no Rapture for him. I also hope fervently that he wasn't rewarded in the afterlife for his work on Earth, since that work has hurt so many people. He was instrumental in the rise of theocratic fascism that punishes anyone different from the mainstream, the overturning of abortion rights, and preferential treatment for Christians in all areas of the public sphere. He deserves no reward for doing any of that.

Good News for Christian Furries

An article from Religion News Service about Christian furries has been making the rounds lately on the Internet. Apparently, Christian furries worry about their religious communities rejecting them because they are furries, and at the same time fear the furry community rejecting them because they are Christian.

All the same, Christians in the furry community are cautious about who knows about both their furry and faithful selves. Christian furries interviewed for this story, including leaders of the group that calls itself the Christian Furry Fellowship, asked to be anonymous, fearing “doxxing” from within the largely secular furry community for their Christian identity and ostracization from their professional lives for their furry hobby.

“My furry friendships are a blessing,” said one CFF organizer with a red fox fursona who asked to be called “F.” “And for that reason, I am sad to see so much grief within the fandom that could be helped by the knowledge of the Lord.”

Founded in the late 1990s on internet chat forums, CFF is a ministry that views furry fandom as a mission field. In 2010, CFF members converged on Anthrocon in Pittsburgh. Another leader, who asked to be referred to as “AD,” described the 10 days he spent picking up members in their hometowns to share the event with 4,000 other furries in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center as one of his “most dear memories.”

While I'm not that familiar with furry fandom, from the perspective of being an occultist I think that have some good news for these Christian furries. A similar dynamic exists in the magical community. There are occultists who are down on Christianity, and others who point out that much of the Western Esoteric Tradition is rooted in Christian ideas - even though it generally rejects Christian orthodoxy.

So here's the good news as I see it - nobody really cares that you're Christian. If you've explored various spiritual traditions and have decided that Christianity is right for you, that's great. Go for it. Practice your religion as you see fit. But there is a caveat - nobody wants to be evangelized or preached at or have to deal with conversion attempts. That's as true for occultists as I imagine it would be for furries.

When you are "sharing your faith" with others and that faith happens to be conservative Christianity, what you are literally saying is "I can help you, but only if you follow all the rules of my religion." According to the article, many furries are LGBTQ+ folks, which means that those rules are going to require them to reject who they are. And I'm sorry, but nobody is going to be down for that. As a Christian, the best thing you can do in those situations is nothing at all.

The basic problem with conversion-oriented Christianity is not that it's Christian, but that it's annoying. If you really feel like a fundamental tenet of your faith is to recruit everybody, those beliefs essentially turn you into that friend who's in an MLM and wants you for their downline. And just like with MLM's, most of us who aren't already involved really aren't interested.

Blood of Christ

Europe is littered with alleged relics from early Christianity. While it is hard to say how many of them are genuine, one that is considered among the most holy is an ornate box contgaining two vials that are supposed hold the blood of Christ from the crucifiction. Recently the Dutch church that housed the box was robbed, and the relic were stolen along with a collection of other atrifacts. But the box was soon returned with the vials intact.

On June 1, thieves stole ancient artifacts from the Fécamp Abbey, a historic church in France. The artifacts included dishes, a gilded copper box covered in religious art, and most notably, two vials supposedly holding the blood of Christ, collected during his cruxifiction, Artnet reported.

After the artifacts were stolen, detective Arthur Brand told Artnet that he began receiving anonymous emails from a person saying they were in possession of the valuable relics.

The thieves most likely hid the art at a friend's house after learning that it was bad luck to steal religious artifacts, Brand told ArtNet. The friend then emailed him asking to return the artifact, Brand deduced. "To have the ultimate relic, the blood of Jesus in your home, stolen, that's a curse," Brand told AFP.

Brand told the email sender to leave the art at his doorstep and waited in his home for a week until he heard the doorbell ring. He told Artnet News that he didn't see anybody outside, but saw the box on the ground and ran downstairs. He then notified Dutch authorities.

Whether stealing the vials actually cursed anyone is not known. I can see where the thieves might have taken the box because it looked valuable, and only later discovered that they had a priceless religious relic they could never sell. Curse or no curse, I can also see where a Christian would fear some sort of judgment for stealing the literal blood of Christ. Then again, maybe it did take something paranormal to get the thieves to return the relic, and finding out what that was mioght show whether the relic actually has some sort of cursing power.

At any rate, the relic is a piece of history and I'm glad to hear it was returned rather than disappearing or turning up destroyed. I'm sure the church is happy about it too. As for the other stolen artifacts, though, the thieves remain at large. When they're caught, I hope that Dutch police ask them about curses, since I would be very curious to hear why they decided that the box had to be returned and what led up to that decision.

Baptism Fail

I often have noted here on Augoeides that religions who claim to be opposed to magick use magick themselves, all the time. The simple act of praying for a particular outcome is exactly the same as what we do when we call on deities to accomplish particular things, and in some situations that can involve intercessory entities like saints and/or angels. That's magick, and as far as I can tell the only reason religions are opposed to magick is that they want to uphold their monopoly on it.

But here's a really weird story out of Phoenix, Arizona. Apparently, Roman Catholic ritual isn't just magick, it's basically Harry Potter magick. That is, one wrong word and it doesn't work. I have noted on a number of occasions that this isn't true at all about ceremonial magick, horror movie tropes notwithstanding, so it's surprising to find it in the Catholic system.

A Catholic priest has resigned after a church investigation found he performed invalid baptisms throughout most of his more than 20-year career, according to Bishop Thomas Olmsted of the Diocese of Phoenix. Father Andres Arango, who performed thousands of baptisms, would say, "We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." But Olmsted explained the words "We baptize" should have been "I baptize" instead.

"The issue with using 'We' is that it is not the community that baptizes a person, rather, it is Christ, and Him alone, who presides at all of the sacraments, and so it is Christ Jesus who baptizes," Olmsted wrote in a message to parishioners posted last month. The error also means that because baptism is the first of the sacraments, some people will need to repeat other sacraments, according to the diocese webpage for frequently asked questions. CNN has reached out to the diocese for comment on other sacraments.

Arango resigned as pastor of the St. Gregory Parish in Phoenix as of February 1. "It saddens me to learn that I have performed invalid baptisms throughout my ministry as a priest by regularly using an incorrect formula. I deeply regret my error and how this has affected numerous people in your parish and elsewhere," Arango wrote in his own message on the site.

I guess he needed to say it levio-SAH, you know? This seems to me to be a pretty fine distinction. We-singular has been used by royalty for a very long time, and isn't Jesus supposed to be the King of Kings in the Christian system? That would certainly imply that the word doesn't necessarily have to connotate the community. "We" could also refer to Jesus doing the baptism and the priest making the motions. For example, I use "our" in the elixir rites even when it's just me working, because "our" still refers to myself and the conjured angel.

My guess is that this isn't actually a magical problem, but a bureaucratic one. I am highly confident that any Thelemic baptism I might perform would be an effective ritual even if a few of the words weren't the same as the official script. Real magick is actually pretty tolerant that way. Spirits can read surface thoughts, after all, and divine your intent, and this is just as true if not moreso with respect to deities. In fact, in the Christian system, Jesus as one member of the trinity is officially omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. So there's that.

This demonstrates a big problem with the idea of trying to standardize magick - and I say that as someone who has devoted a fair amount of time to developing modular templates and so forth for both Thelemic and Enochian magical work. As with anything, it's possible to go too far and the real test of any operation should be whether or not it works and how impressive the results are. While I do understand that "works" is a difficult thing to measure with a ritual like baptism, it seems to me that it's ridiculous for a single pronoun to negate the whole thing.

Still Against Fiction

Christian book-burners are at it again. Do they ever stop? For a little while there it seemed like the more dramatic stunts had dropped off, even if schools were still receiving plenty of requests to have books removed from libraries by a lot of the same folks. But controversial Tennessee pastor Greg Locke held a book-burning event just last week, in an effort to save his religious beliefs from the scourge of fictional magick.

Greg Locke, head pastor at Global Vision Bible Church, held a book burning event Wednesday night, and urged followers to burn “evil garbage” like young adult fantasy books, tarot cards, “voodoo dolls and crystals.”

“Bring all your Harry Potter stuff. Laugh all you want haters. I don’t care. IT’S WITCHCRAFT 100 PERCENT,” Locke said in an Instagram post Monday. “All you ‘Twilight’ books and movies. That mess is full of spells, demonism, shape-shifting and occultism.”

In a video livestreamed on Facebook, churchgoers hurl books and other items deemed associated with “witchcraft” into a massive bonfire on the church’s parking lot in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. The burning begins about an hour into the livestream. At least one counterprotester claimed to throw a Bible into the flames, Nashville Scene reported.

“We have a constitutional right and a Biblical right to do what we’re going to do tonight,” Locke said in the livestreamed video. “We have a burn permit, but even without one a church has a religious right to burn occultic materials that they deem are a threat to their religious rights and freedoms and belief systems.”

Now J. K. Rowling has shown herself to be problematic of late, and Twilight is just plain bad. Still, I'm absolutely and unswervingly opposed to book burning regardless of content, and as a practicing worker of magick I can also assure everyone out there that both the Harry Potter and Twilight series are fiction. The "spells, demonism, shape-shifting, and occultism" portrayed in those books has nothing to do with magick in the real world.

And these folks honestly have to know that the magick in these books is actually 100% fake and poses no real occult threat. The reason they persist in this nonsense is that to some kinds of Christians - to be clear, the wrong kind - there's nothing more dangerous than imagination. It's no wonder that so many young people who grow up in those churches leave. I have trouble contemplating an existence in which no one is safe even in their own thoughts, and can think of few things more existentially depressing.

Obviously, a belief system that awful is under threat from anything fun. It's not just fantasy fiction, which remains popular because people like it, but anything at all enjoyable. As I see it, joy and spirituality should go hand in hand, and any belief system that can be destroyed by something as trivial as fantasy fiction should just be destroyed and get it over with.

Promise?

If Jim Bakker doesn't get a million dollars, his show is going to be cancelled in a week. The televangelist recently made this announcement on his program. Given Bakker's history it's hard to say whether or not he's actually telling the truth, but we can hope. Bakker has been a wild-eyed conspiracy monger (and potato soup monger) for years, and his nonsense isn't helping anyone.

In a somewhat frantic tone on The Jim Bakker Show this week, televangelist Jim Bakker begged his followers for money, saying that if he didn’t pay his bills, his show would soon be taken off the air.

“I’ve been told that the network is gonna cancel our broadcast within another week,” Bakker said. “We’ve got to catch up on the bills, and that’s about a million dollars.”

“We’ve lost millions in finances due to the legal battles we’ve fought, losing our ability to receive donations by credit cards for over a year — has left us in a desperate state,” he continued. “But what the Devil has tried to do is silence our voice.”

So to translate - "I'm fiscally irresponsible, but you all have to bail me out because my irresponsibility is the Devil's fault." Anybody who remembers the 1980s shouldn't be even remotely surprised that Bakker is fiscally irresponsible. But I guess it must have been the Devil's fault back then too - or maybe it was witches. Whoever it was, "anybody but me" seems to be his general answer regarding who's responsible for his personal failings.

Some commenters on social media asked where they could send money to make sure Bakker's show was really cancelled - still no word on that. While there isn't necessarily anything wrong with religious programming, Bakker is a complete kook. He's peddled all sorts of conspiracy nonsense on his show, some of which has been covered here on Augoeides.

The misinformation Bakker spreads about all sorts of things, from magical practice to discredited COVID cures, is profoundly wrong and sometimes dangerous. And that doesn't even include his predictable ramblings about how the world is going to end any day now.

Eating Their Own

I suppose in hindsight something like this was inevitable. The QAnon conspiracy theory derives much of its support from conservative Evangelical Christians, which I'm convinced is where the whole "Satanism" angle comes from. It's a holdover from the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s (which, as you might recall from the other day, comes from porn) that at some point was basically shoehorned into the earlier Pizzagate trafficking narrative. And as I've mentioned, the minute somebody proposes that massive groups of Satanists are doing anything, you can know that it's false because there are no massive groups of Satanists anywhere. I don't think there are even tiny groups of Satanists that do the things QAnoners accuse them of.

But for once, today's post isn't about that. It's about QAnon turning on the same Evangelical Christian leaders that have given the movement some validity in Christian circles. This has happened with pretty much every "blood libel" conspiracy throughout history, and that adenchrome nonsense definitely places QAnon among those. Conspiracies that rely on flat-out demonization are dangerous things that are hard to handle, even when you are on their good side. The idea that political opponents are unspeakably evil instead of just being political opponents is not just unrealistic. It engenders a level of paranoia that can easily be turned against anyone, including onetime political allies.

Earlier this week, Right Wing Watch noted how MAGA pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, who is running a primary campaign to unseat Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, has openly embraced QAnon conspiracy theorists as part of his campaign, only to become a target of their conspiracy theories. QAnon activists accused the pastor of pedophilia and child sex trafficking in July after he posted a photo of his young daughter wearing red shoes.

Similar allegations are now being leveled against several high-profile evangelical leaders. Late last month, self-proclaimed “prophet” and QAnon conspiracy theorist Johnny Enlow posted a “prophetic alert” on his Facebook page in which he warned that “many of our most famous pastors and Christian leaders are about to be exposed as sexual deviants, pedophiles and worse.” We had no idea what that meant at the time, but now it appears to be related to allegations being put forth by a woman going by the name Madyson Marquette, who claims to have been a former adult film actress who was sexually abused and trafficked by several well-known evangelical leaders, including Kenneth Copeland, T.D. Jakes, Rick Warren, and even the late Billy Graham.

This is Where it Comes From!

I've posted and posted here on Augoeides about fundamentalist Christian ideas about what "witches" and "Satanists" do, and how it has hardly any bearing on how real witches, magicians, and even Satanists practice. I've argued that making magick less mysterious and increasing magical literacy among the general population would help people see the ridiculousness of those ideas. The supposed "black magic" of fundamentalist imagination is mostly fiction, and doesn't even consist of workable or effective magical methods.

Fundamentalists have been insisting for decades that this fake magic is out there and very real. It was one of the big motivators behind the "Satanic Panic" that sent hundreds of innocent people to prison in the 1980s and early 1990s. At the dawn of the Internet, primers on that same fake magic were circulated first on UseNet news groups and later on Christian websites. Even today, it has managed to fold itself into the QAnon network of conspiracies. The latest crop of Satanists is described the same way as the last one - evil people doing evil things for no other reason than to be evil.

The sheer perniciousness of this particular urban myth has always made me wonder where it came from. Some of the ideas, like "blood libel" sacrifices, are very old accusations commonly made to persecute marginalized groups. But some of the others seem bizarre even from an occult standpoint. "Being evil" isn't something that gives you magical power. It might make you more willing to engage in unethical applications of the power you have, but that's it. Really, it gives you no more advantage than a garden variety psychopath, so the idea that it serves some magical purpose is laughable.

But I'm burying the lede a bit here. What I wanted to bring to your attention is that I think I found the origin of at least some of these silly ideas about witches and Satanists. They come from porn. I suppose it makes sense - most porn these days that has plot or structure is a parody of some sort. If that's the origin, it's entirely reasonable to consider "fundie Satanism" a parody of real magick. That fits nicely, and explains why when you look into these alleged practices it's clear that most of them would never work.

Gay Satan an Abomination

Conservative Christians have been up in arms lately about a rap video by Lil Nas X, in which he seduces Satan and makes himself King of Hell. The video checks a lot of boxes - most conservative Christians don't like rap to begin with, and imagery of Hell and Satan in music usually attracts their ire. But one conservative Christian, tracked down by the crack reporting staff at The Onion, explained the real outrage behind it all - the music video dared to accuse Satan of the abomination that is homosexuality.

Decrying the depiction as “sacrilege,” local conservative Christian Elizabeth Dillon told reporters Tuesday she was deeply offended by a music video from rap artist Lil Nas X that implied Satan was a homosexual. “Nowhere in the Bible does Satan receive a lap dance, least of all from another man,” said Dillon, who was just one of thousands of worshippers across the country outraged by the depiction of the fallen angel as anything other than a devout Christian. “Satan embraces sin, but not that sin. He has a wife, you know, and three young demonic children. And sure, he tempted Christ, but never in a sexual way. Satan simply couldn’t be any straighter.” At press time, a horrified Dillon had realized that Satan was bisexual.

It simply is amazing to me that even the Prince of Darkness doesn't get a break from these folks. Who cares if Satan is gay? It seems to me that if you're not looking to date someone, their sexual orientation is none of your business. So are conservative Christians really wanting to boink the Devil? It seems to me that would be a much bigger story than an allegedly offensive music video, and when it breaks I'll be reporting it for you right here on Augoeides.

Happy April Fools Day, folks!