Bigfoot DNA Sequenced?

For years, bigfoot hunters have been gathering samples of biological material that they believe come from the elusive creature. Ever since the advent of DNA testing technology, cryptozoologists have also been claiming that they're about to sequence DNA from the samples and prove that the Sasquatch is a real animal - and then are never heard from in the media again. Finally, Texas veterinarian Melba Ketchum claims to have done it, and that her results prove the Sasquatch is an ape/human hybrid.

Ketchum's team consists of experts in genetics, forensics, imaging and pathology. The researcher said she believes that over the past five years, the team has successfully found three Sasquatch nuclear genomes -- an organism's hereditary code -- leading them to suggest that the animal is real and a human hybrid.

Ketchum's study showed that part of the DNA her team sequenced revealed an unknown primate species, she said, which suggests that Bigfoot is a real creature that resulted from this primate "crossing with female Homo sapiens."

"They're not any of the large apes -- they branch off as a separate lineage," Ketchum said. "My personal theory is that it probably branched off and evolved in parallel with the rest of the primate lineage."

Pat Robertson Actually Makes Sense

Here's a "man bites dog" story - 700 Club evangelist Pat Robertson giving a reasonable answer to a question about creationism. As recently as 2007, Robertson promoted the Creation Museum, which puts forth the idea that since the Earth is thousands rather than billions of years old humans and dinosaurs must have been alive at the same time in the not so distant past. But when questioned recently by a viewer, he gave a completely scientifically accurate answer. That has to be a first.

“Look, I know that people will probably try to lynch me when I say this, but Bishop [James] Ussher wasn’t inspired by the Lord when he said that it all took 6,000 years,” the TV preacher explained. “It just didn’t. You go back in time, you’ve got radiocarbon dating. You got all these things and you’ve got the carcasses of dinosaurs frozen in time out in the Dakotas.”

“They’re out there,” he continued. “So, there was a time when these giant reptiles were on the Earth and it was before the time of the Bible. So, don’t try and cover it up and make like everything was 6,000 years. That’s not the Bible. If you fight science, you’re going to lose your children, and I believe in telling it the way it was.”

Seventeenth-centurey Archbishop James Ussher famously dated the creation to 4004 BCE based on the chronology of the Bible. This date is still accepted by some young-Earth creationists. These same creationists also claim that radiocarbon dating is inaccurate because in the past the oxygen level in the atmosphere was higher (it was, based on bubbles found in amber, but (A) that was millions of years ago and (B) oxygen levels have no effect on radioactive decay). At the same time, many Christian denominations accept the real age of the Earth. Up until now, I just didn't think that Robertson's was one of them.

Ancient Vampire on the Prowl in Serbia

Eastern Europe is home to the original vampire myth that inspired John Polidori and Bram Stoker. While the modern vampire fiction canon has incorporated a number of foreign elements, such as the incredible speed that was first described in the works of Anne Rice, mentioning Transylvania still evokes the vampire in the popular imagination. Bram Stoker's Dracula is the most famous vampire of all time, having been featured in countless films, and in real life the legend lives on in that part of the world. Recently, villagers in the Serbian town of Zarozje fear that a local vampire named Sava Savanovic may resume his attacks after lying dormant for several centuries.

Legend has it he would kill and drink the blood of the peasants who came to grind their grain at his watermill on the Rogačica river. A local family bought the building in the 1950s and re-opened it as a profitable tourist attraction. But they were so terrified by what may be lurking within that they refused to go near it — even to perform repairs. Recent trouble began when the old mill collapsed due to decades of neglect.

Now that the mill lies in a pile of rotted wood, everyone is terrified. Particularly since mayor Miodrag Vujetic told Orange UK there had been numerous reports of "strange growls, neither animal nor human" coming from the mill, along with sightings of a "dark tall individual" standing next to the mill in the "dead of night." "People are worried, everybody knows the legend of this vampire and the thought that he is now homeless and looking for somewhere else and possibly other victims is terrifying people. We are all frightened," Vujetic said.

Demons are Trying to Turn You Gay

You know, like Stephen Colbert's baby carrots. According to Christian author Contessa Adams demons are coming for your sexual orientation. These foul creatures launch their attacks in the form of nightmares and erotic dreams and apparently have some sort of vested interest in turning people gay. So far nobody has come up with an adequate explanation of what cultivating gayness does for demons, even in an occult or magical sense, but many Christians like Adams are convinced that they are at it nonetheless. This belief is at the root of a number of harmful practices, such as performing exorcisms on gay people in hopes of turning them straight. The idea that maybe these nightmares and erotic dreams are just nightmares and erotic dreams never really seems to be considered plausible among these folks, though attributing them to supernatural forces strikes them as completely reasonable.

These spiritual rapists, as Adams describes them in her book, Consequences, often prey on people by performing sexual acts through nightmares and erotic dreams. Some people become so dependent upon these demonic experiences that they actually look forward to them. "Anybody that has been attacked by them will tell you ... they're worried [that] they could not find that pleasure with mortal people," says Adams, who claims she was once possessed by sexual demons.

The two most identifiable sexual demons are the incubus, which is a male sexual demon that traditionally assaults women, and the succubus, which is a female sexual demon that assaults men. Sometimes they also lure people into homosexual behavior. Adams notes that one evangelist, whose name she would not divulge, was so troubled by the sexual pleasure the succubus gave her that she even contemplated suicide. Adams says the succubus spirit that used to attack her confused her so much that she contemplated becoming a lesbian.

Rare Witch-Hunting Manual Uncovered

The most famous witch-hunting manual used by secular courts during Europe's "witch craze" was the Malleus Maleficarum, or "Hammer of the Witches." It outlined various ideas about witchcraft drawn from the popular culture of the day and detailed the general procedure used for witchcraft prosecutions. However, the Malleus, published in 1487, was not the only such book in use, but rather the most widely disseminated and thus the most well-known today. It drew on more obscure works such as Johannes Nider's Formicanus published fifty years earlier, and despite its fearsome reputation in fact rejected some of the most fanciful and ridiculous claims regarding the activity of witches.

Recently a more lurid and detailed witch-hunting manual was found in the University of Alberta library. This book was published twenty years before the Malleus in 1465 and is extremely rare, with only three other copies known. Its claims are also considerably more far-fetched. It includes descriptions of the supposed powers possessed by witches such as flying on broomsticks and conjuring lightning along with a comprehensive guide to extracting confessions from them under torture. Andrew Gow, the medieval history professor who discovered the book, admitted that he finds its contents so distasteful that he does not even like to come near it.

Entitled, Invectives Against the Sect of Waldensians — a name for a Christian sect that was confused with witches in 15th-century France — the manuscript is thought to have been written around 1465 by a monk in what is now France’s Burgundy region, possibly for England’s King Edward IV, said Gow. It is exceedingly rare — one of only four copies known to exist — and is thought to be one of the founding texts in the modern conception of witchcraft.

Angolan Catholic Church Calls for Witchcraft Ban

On the list of things for which I am thankful, one entry that keeps coming up year after year is that I don't live in Africa. In Angola, the Roman Catholic Church is calling for a new law banning "witchcraft" - that is, traditional spiritual practices. Witchcraft laws vary throughout Africa, with some countries banning related practices and others banning the witchcraft accusations that can lead to lynching at the hands of angry mobs. Perhaps the Church is worried about the accused, who usually bear the brunt of this violence. However, it seems to me that if they were genuinely concerned about innocent lives they would be calling for a ban on accusations. Such laws, while not perfect, have helped reduce violence against accused witches in other African nations. Instead, it sounds like the Church's real goal is to preserve what remains of its spiritual authority.

The Roman Catholic Church in Angola on Wednesday demanded new laws to outlaw witchcraft, claiming the practice had reached "chronic" proportions. "It is affecting more and more followers, it destroys family ties and affects relations among people," said Francisco Viti, the archbishop of the central city of Huambo.

Angola does not have laws against witchcraft, leaving communities to deal with the issue as they see fit. Suspected witches have been lynched. "There is a legal vacuum with regards to witchcraft, which does not constitute a crime -- yet the consequences are killings, violence, libel and slander," said Jose Manuel Imbamba a Church spokesman. "This is a chronic problem in Angola, but nobody has the courage to confront it," he added.

British Bigfoot Spotted in Kent

Not really Bigfoot, and not really Kent

One of the arguments for the existence of the Yeti and Sasquatch is that southeast Asia has produced some fossil remains of a creature named Gigantopithecus Blacki, a very large apelike creature that could fit the description of the enigmatic "abominable snowman." More controversially, part of a fossilized skull was found in California that some primatologists believe may have come from Gigantopithecus or a close relative. Given the "land bridge" that connected Asia and the Americas during the last ice age, it is at least plausible that this large ape could have found its way to the Pacific Northwest.

The main problem with this hypothesis, grounded as it is in the fossil record, is that the last remains of Gigantopithecus date back around a hundred thousand years ago. For the creature to have survived up to the present day a population would have to have lived for a very long time without producing any verifiable remains. Another blow to the hypothesis is the discovery that the "Yeti" relics of Asia are generally the remains of the Himalayan Black Bear, which does in fact walk upright more often than other bear species and can be mistaken for an ape at long distances. Some investigators have hypothesized that the North American Bigfoot might likewise be a kind of bear, which would imply some of the most famous evidence for the creature such as the Patterson film must have been faked. The Patterson Bigfoot might be a special effect, but it clearly is not a bear.

At any rate, none of this is really relevant to today's story because it concerns a Bigfoot sighting in England, a country that has no large fossil apes and in which wild bears have been extinct for many centuries. So what's left? Presumably it's either a guy in a suit or the real thing.

The Real Illuminati Exposed!

I've decided to try running a new feature here on Augoeides - "Magick Mondays." While I comment on a lot of weird news articles, I'm hoping to get back to writing more original pieces on various topics related to occultism in theory, practice, and history. Last Monday I posted an article on Qabalistic Ritual Construction, and this week I'm writing about the reality behind the dreaded Illuminati Order of Christian conspiracy theorists.

The mysterious secret society known as the Illuminati haunts the dreams of many a fundamentalist fanatic. According to Christian conspiracy theorists, the Illuminati are behind virtually every powerful group and celebrity in all of Western civilization and are busy at work promulgating the agenda of Satan against the true children of God - that is, the aforementioned Christian conspiracy theorists. The Illuminati are obviously involved in anything related to occultism, and my guess is there are readers of this blog out there who consider me one of their agents.

A while back I addressed this in a tongue-in-cheek manner, demanding my millions of dollars from the Illuminati for whom I supposedly work. I figured if I was doing the job, I should get paid for it. And, if the conspiracy theorists are right, the Illuminati are incredibly rich and powerful. They certainly should be able to afford to subsidize my writing and blogging - you know, like the aristocratic patrons of old. That post led to this clever practical joke that I'm fairly certain was pulled by one or more of the members of my magical working group - though none of them have ever fessed up, which I will say is a testament to their power to keep silence.