Vampire Grave Found in Bulgaria

Here's a story from earlier this month that seems tailor-made for Halloween. In Eastern Europe, belief in vampirism was common in the middle ages. Individuals who died under the right set of circumstances were thought to rise from the grave and prey upon the living. Archaeologists recently discovered one such "vampire grave" in Bulgaria. A metal stake was driven through the chest, and one of the legs was removed and placed next to the body.

Archeologists in Bulgaria haved uncovered a 13th century staked "vampire" at Perperikon, an ancient Thracian site in the south of the country, Archaeology reports. The remains once belonged to a man who was likely in his 40s. An iron rod had been hammered through his chest "to keep the corpse from rising from the dead and disturbing the living," Archaeology continues, and his left leg had also been removed and placed beside the corpse.

Clearly, this man's neighbors did not trust his remains to stay put. As Nikolai Ovcharov, the archeologist in charge of the dig, told the Telegraph: "We have no doubts that once again we’re seeing an anti-vampire ritual being carried out." At the time of the man's death, vampires were perceived as a real threat in many Eastern European communities. People who died unusually—from suicide, for example—were sometimes staked to prevent them from coming back from the dead, the Telegraph writes.

Many experts think that vampirism outbreaks in the middle ages were linked to a disease with which the modern world is familiar - "consumption" or tuberculosis. As the bacteria damage the lungs, victims slowly lose the ability to breathe and seemingly fade away, as if the life energy were being sucked out of them. At the same time, coughing brings up blood which congeals around the lips as if it were being drained in some fashion.

There's no evidence that corpses ever rose from the dead during the middle ages, though maybe that's because people took special precautions like this to prevent them from doing so. From their supposed powers, I'm inclined to think that if vampires really exist they are more like ghosts, "rising" in spectral form as the dark of the year grows closer and the veil between this world and the next reaches its thinnest point.

Like tonight.

Happy Halloween, everybody! Have a great spooky weekend!

Kirk Cameron on Halloween

On the heels of last weeks comments from Pat Robertson denouncing Halloween comes a reminder that in fact not all fundamentalist Christians hate the holiday. Actor Kirk Cameron, a prominent evangelical who starred in the first film adaptation of the Left Behind series of books and who has produced some silly videos promoting creationism, issued a statement that Christians should embrace Halloween because the Pagans stole the holiday from them.

Cameron observed that mocking President Barack Obama with a Halloween mask was similar to when “Christians would dress up in costumes as the devil, ghosts, goblins and witches precisely to make the point that those things were defeated and overthrown by the resurrected Jesus Christ.”

“The costumes poke fun at the fact that the devil and other evils were publicly humiliated by Christ at His resurrection,” he continued. “That’s what the Scriptures say, that He publicly humiliated the devil when He triumphed over power and principality and put them under his feet.” But according to Cameron, pagans had tried to claim the Christian holiday for themselves.

“Over time you get some pagans who want to go this is our day, high holy day of Satanic church, that this is all about death, but Christians have always known since the first century that death was defeated, that the grave was overwhelmed, that ghosts, goblins, devils are foolish has-beens who used to be in power but not anymore,” he insisted. “That’s the perspective Christians should have.”

Given that historians agree All Saints Day, the ancestor of Halloween, was created by the Christian church to co-opt the Pagan holiday of Samhain, the problem here may just be that Cameron is irredeemably stupid.

In one of his creationist videos he argued that because the banana fits in a human hand it must have been intelligently designed - which is true, except that the intelligent designers were human plant breeders. The image above is from an appearance on Fox News where he asked the burning question, "If evolution is true, where are all the crocoducks?"

Truly, the man has a dizzying intellect. But as I see it the advice stands despite the source. Whether you're a Christian or not, if you enjoy celebrating Halloween, just go for it.

Pat Robertson Versus Halloween

Fundamentalist Christians hate Halloween. This is pretty old news, of course, and just like clockwork Pat Robertson is at it again as the date approaches. On his television program, Robertson advised a viewer not to allow her child to attend a Halloween party thrown by a relative because it celebrated "demonic spirits," even though the viewer provided no evidence whatsoever that the party was anything other than a secular get-together.

Thursday on "The 700 Club," Robertson deemed the holiday "a festival of demonic spirits" in response to a viewer's question about whether or not she should let her children attend their aunt's Halloween party. "All this business about goblins and jack-o'-lanterns all comes out of demonic rituals of the Druids and the people who lived in England at that particular time," Robertson said on the show.

He then suggested shifting the holiday toward a more Christian focus. "I think churches can have Halloween parties," Robertson said. "You can bob for apples ... and turn it into a Christian festival, and that’s what we ought to do. We need to redeem these days, but that day was given over to Satanic things.”

This is the same thing Robertson says every year, so maybe it's not quite newsworthy. Still, I never cease to find his point of view bizarre, since as an occultist I think that the mainstream celebration of Halloween is a bunch of commercialized nonsense that has nothing to do with spirits or rituals or anything magical. There's a huge difference between carving up a pumpkin and carving up a pumpkin with a particular magical or spiritual intent. Does Robertson really think that the vast majority of people who carve jack-o'-lanterns are in the latter category?

At least Robertson isn't advocating those stupid "hell houses" that were something of a fad years ago. While I think a well-done "hell house" - like a haunted house built around the journey through Hell depicted in Dante's Inferno - could be awesome, the fundamentalist version is rather tiresome. The "sins" they focus on are abortion, sexuality, drug use, and "occultism," which they distort into "Satanic Ritual Abuse."

The FBI concluded back in the 1990's that organized "Satanic Ritual Abuse" is not a real thing. While psychopaths occasionally use occult trappings in the course of abusing victims, abuse cases involving religious trappings are much more common. Drug use is not even named as a sin in the Bible, and it's pretty hard to argue that the main issue Jesus cared about was sexuality. How about a "hell house" that deals with Jesus' real top issues, like exploitation of the poor and commodification of religion?

Yeah, that would probably be terrible too. But at least it would be authentic to the text that fundamentalists claim to hold above all else, even if it cut into their revenue. A better idea would be to just let people celebrate what for most has become a completely secular holiday as they see fit.

Unimpressive Hauntings

I used to read Cracked back in the 1980's when it was pretty much a ripoff of Mad magazine. These days, though, cracked.com is a web-only publication with some pretty amusing articles. Today, for Halloween, I thought I would share this list of unimpressive hauntings. While these look like potentially paranormal events, their scope leaves a lot to be desired - especially compared to media representations of ghosts.

Movies have kind of spoiled us when it comes to ghosts. Nowadays we won't take any spirit seriously unless it's pulling little girls into television sets or pulling terrified women down staircases. But real hauntings never play out that way.

It makes sense, when you think about it. Most dead folks had to be painfully normal, boring people whose ghosts certainly may want to give this haunting thing the old college try but, bless their hearts, just don't have the imagination for it.

In the article you can read about the ghost who throws fruit roll-ups, another that moves butter dishes, and so forth. None of them would make very compelling films, but that's pretty much the point. Ghosts aren't actually that powerful in the physical realm - if they were, they would be a lot easier to detect with regular measuring instruments. So maybe, just maybe, it's in fact the unimpressive hauntings that are the most genuine.

Happy Halloween, everybody!

More Clown Shoes from Salem

Last spring I put up several posts making fun of Salem, Massachusetts' push for witchcraft-themed tourist dollars, a situation profoundly ironic because in fact Salem has no history of real witches, but rather baseless accusations that got a bunch of innocent people killed in 1692. In light of this and the ridiculous commercialism that surrounds the place, back then I went ahead and dubbed Salem "the clown shoes of magick." Things died down for awhile over the summer, but let's face it, now it's almost Halloween. The clown shoes are back, at least for the next week.

Ghouls representing two downtown Halloween attractions, the Nightmare Factory and the Witch Mansion, have been confronting each other on the pedestrian mall that separates them.

In the latest incident, a demonic representative of the Witch Mansion was accused of "bumping" the zombies from the Nightmare Factory who were strolling on the mall walkway to lure customers into the store.

That followed an accusation by the Witch Mansion that zombies from the Nightmare Factory were shouting, "Witch Mansion sucks," during the city's annual Zombie Walk on the "Night of the Living Dead" commemoration.

Police were called to the scene but an employee of the Nightmare Factory told officers they were merely mouthing "White Sox," suggesting zombies from Chicago had invaded Salem.

To understand the conflict, you need to know businesses in Salem are fiercely competitive during the Halloween season, when thousands of tourists visit the haunted houses, witch museums and costume stores.

I guess you also have to understand that in Salem the ratio of idiots to smart people is apparently almost paranormally high, at least among those loud and stupid enough to make the news. It's a wonder that the whole place hasn't imploded yet from the sheer gravitational mass of epic fail contained within its borders.

Now, keep in mind that I'm not slagging on the town itself or everyone who happens to live there. Plenty of Salem residents are fighting the good fight, trying to emphasize the city's nautical history and genuinely amazing architecture instead of all this dimestore witch crap. I can't help but respect anyone with the fortitude to keep that up, especially during the silly season, and I wish all of them the best.

Just in Time for JesusWeen!

I suppose I really should have held off on this one until next week, but seeing as the world is supposed to end tomorrow I wanted to make sure that everyone had a chance to get a good laugh out of it. A group of Christians has decided that since Halloween is too damn evil to accept, it is their sovereign duty to reclaim the day by calling it "JesusWeen." This has to be one of the dumbest marketing campaigns that I've ever seen. Reasonable Christians understand that to most Americans Halloween is essentially a secular holiday that has little to do with the devil or witchcraft aside from the plastic crap that shows up at drugstores every year. Witches do celebrate the date as a holiday, but the idea that Wiccans and Pagans, even taken together, constitute anything but a tiny religious minority reflects ridiculous paranoia on the part of those who belong to the largest religious denomination in the United States by far.

JesusWeen is a non profit organization also known as JesusWin. We are focused on helping people live better lives through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. JesusWeen is a God-given vision which was born as an answer to the cry of many every October 31st. The dictionary meaning of Ween is to expect, believe or think. We therefore see October 31st as a day to expect a gift of salvation and re-think receiving Jesus.

Every year, the world and its system have a day set aside (October 31st) to celebrate ungodly images and evil characters while Christians all over the world participate, hide or just stay quiet on Halloween day. Being a day that is widely acceptable to solicit and knock on doors, God inspired us to encourage Christians to use this day as an opportunity to spread the gospel. The days of hiding are over and we choose to take a stand for Jesus. “Evil prevails when good people do nothing”. JesusWeen is expected to become the most effective Christian outreach day ever and that is why we also call it” World Evangelism Day”.

It seems to me that this sort of thing has been going on for a very long time, certainly before anyone coined the ludicrous name. I remember that when I was a kid there were a few families who would give out Jack Chick tracts along with candy on Halloween, and I never really thought much of it. If anything, my brother and I would read through the awful comics giggling the whole time, so hopefully this group has better literature at the very least. While I find the web site's alarmist propaganda quite silly, I can't say that I think there's anything wrong with handing out religious materials as long as these folks can refrain from being jerks about their beliefs. In fact, it makes me think that I should find a good source for inexpensive tract copies of The Book of the Law so I could hand them out to trick-or-treaters myself - you know, assuming the world survives that long.

Casting Off the Clown Shoes

I recently commented on an article discussing the possibility that the City Council of Salem, Massachusetts may consider imposing new regulations limiting the number of psychic and witchcraft-related businesses. A commenter on Facebook pointed out in response that there was no real legislation on the table and what the article was reporting on was just talk and rumors. At the same time, though, there seems to be a growing movement in Salem pushing the idea that the town should be something more than a place where Halloween tourists go to see hucksters doing their best impressions of cartoon witches.

Tourism officials and business owners hope their unwitchly emphasis on other museums, sunset cruises, exceptional architecture and a rich maritime history will encourage visitors to spend more time and money in Salem.

"We estimate that tourists coming in for a day are spending about $90 per person and those tourists coming overnight are spending over $210 per person," said Kate Fox, head of the agency promoting tourism that also coordinated the latest rebranding. She said Salem sees an estimated million visitors a year.

"Tourism in Salem is a more than $99 million industry a year and when you look at all the businesses it affects, it's our largest industry in Salem, so it's very important, it's a huge piece of our economic development picture," Fox said. She said Salem has not set a target for greater tourism revenue.

This is not the first time Salem has tried to remake its image. In 2004, Salem businesses could not agree whether the new brand should lead with witchcraft or maritime history, and the process collapsed in the planning stages. In 1925, the Salem Evening News pushed for The Witch City to rebrand in an article that proposed promoting its flourishing tanneries (Blubber Hollow), shoe factories (City of Shoes) and textile industries (Where We Make Your Sheets).

Here's wishing them all the best in this new endeavor. Salem's architecture and historical sites are amazing and more people should see them. When I last visited, though, I made a point of checking out the occult stores and found them strictly second-rate. For all the witchcraft hype the town gets, the fact is that we have better shops here in Minneapolis even though there aren't nearly as many of them.

The True Meaning of Halloween

As usual, America's Finest News Source nails it. Costumes and candy may be fun, but we should never lose sight of the reason for the season - appeasing demons and evil spirits to ward off sickness and ensure a bountiful harvest.



Happy Halloween, everybody!

Just In Time For Halloween

Every year on Halloween conservative Christians publish their views on the danger of celebrating what they consider a Satanic holiday. Their basic argument is pretty straightforward - Halloween is a pagan holiday that was never co-opted by Christianity the way Christmas and Easter were, and the univalence of Christian theology means that anyone following a religion that is not Christian such as paganism is worshiping devils and demons.

While I and billions of Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims all over the world disagree with that perspective, Christians who adhere to it are entitled to their beliefs. Every once in awhile, though, one of them puts forth something that's so over-the-top it makes me wonder what sort of world they imagine themselves to be living in.

An example is this article by Kimberly Daniels. It starts out with the basic argument laid out above, like most articles of its type.

The word "holiday" means "holy day." But there is nothing holy about Halloween. The root word of Halloween is "hallow," which means "holy, consecrated and set apart for service." If this holiday is hallowed, whose service is it set apart for? The answer to that question is very easy—Lucifer's!

However, it quickly begins to drift away from a mainstream theological perspective.

Lucifer is a part of the demonic godhead. Remember, everything God has, the devil has a counterfeit. Halloween is a counterfeit holy day that is dedicated to celebrating the demonic trinity of : the Luciferian Spirit (the false father); the Antichrist Spirit (the false holy spirit); and the Spirit of Belial (the false son).

This is essentially Manicheanism, the root of the Albigensian Heresy that was stamped out during the Middle Ages. It actually originated in Zoroastrianism, which according to Christian theology is just as demonic as any other non-Christian religion.

This next bit made me laugh out loud.

During this period demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.

I've heard of seasonal employment during the Christmas season, but if this is really going on us magicians must be missing out on all those jobs praying over candy assembly lines during the Halloween season. Does anybody know what they pay? I wouldn't mind picking up some extra cash every fall. Or maybe the author has no idea what she's talking about.

Gathering around bonfires is a common practice in pagan worship. As I remember, the bonfires that I attended during homecoming week when I was in high school were always in the fall. I am amazed at how we ignorantly participate in pagan, occult rituals.

Because never in history have Christians gathered around bonfires, I suppose. The "purity" argument that is put forth by denominations like the Jehovah's Witnesses has never made any sense to me - for example, you can't celebrate birthdays because at some point in history pagans did it too.

The word "occult" means "secret." The danger of Halloween is not in the scary things we see but in the secret, wicked, cruel activities that go on behind the scenes. These activities include:

* Sex with demons
* Orgies between animals and humans
* Animal and human sacrifices
* Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood
* Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies
* Revel nights
* Conjuring of demons and casting of spells
* Release of "time-released" curses against the innocent and the ignorant.

Another abomination that goes on behind the scenes of Halloween is necromancy, or communication with the dead. Séances and contacting spirit guides are very popular on Halloween, so there is a lot of darkness lurking in the air.

I will grant that I've cast spells on Halloween and communicated with spirits. As for the rest, though, I would love to know where all of this is supposed to be going on. As with the accounts of "Satanic Ritual Abuse" from the early nineties, if any significant number of people were engaging in acts like child sacrifice there would be this little thing called "evidence" that would show up.

If Christians believe that it is sinful to celebrate what they consider a pagan holiday, as I said in the introduction they are welcome to that belief and probably shouldn't celebrate Halloween. On the other hand, it's pretty ridiculous to assert that anyone who does celebrate it must be engaging in or at least supporting depraved criminal activities that any reasonable person would condemn.

Happy Halloween!

Here's a question for you all - if Halloween is another name for Samhain, a cross-quarter day, why is it celebrated on October 31st? The zodiac moves into Scorpio around October 21st and into Sagittarius around November 21st, so if you do the math you wind up with a "real" cross-quarter day 15 1/2 days after October 21st. That's more like November 5th, which means that "real" Samhain is going to be closer to US Election Day than it is to Halloween.

At any rate, I came across this article on Slate which is a little too recognizable to anyone who has organized rituals for the Pagan community. While it's about witches organizing a ritual for Halloween, which is just about the biggest overlap between magick and popular culture that you're likely to find, I still think it's great to see some journalism in the mainstream press that touches on some of the things that actually happen in the course of practicing this sort of alternative spirituality.

Maybe one of these years we'll get an article about ceremonial magicians calling upon the cross-quarter days to power their spells and the various technical aspects that need to be considered in order to make it work, but I'm guessing something like that is a lot further down the road.