Argentine Werewolf Hysteria Unfounded

Here's another of those viral stories that has become garbled in the telling. In Argentina, there is a century-old tradition that the president of the country serves as the official godparent to the seventh son or daughter born into a family. The adoption of such a godchild wouldn't be a particularly significant world event, except for this outlandish story published by the Independent.

The President of Argentina has adopted a young Jewish man as her godson to "stop him turning into a werewolf", according to tradition. President Christina Fernández de Kirchner met Yair Tawil and his family at her office last week to mark the unusual ceremony, which dates back more than 100 years.

What?!?

The story recently went viral on the Internet thanks to the Independent article, but it later came to light that the article conflates the adoption tradition and a piece of local folklore that have nothing to do with each other, except that both involve seventh sons.

It seems there is another Argentine tradition called "El Lobison"; a belief that a family's seventh son turns into a werewolf starting on the first Friday after the boy's 13th birthday, and every full moon thereafter, according to the New York Daily News. The belief was allegedly so widespread in the 19th century that parents would kill the seventh son to prevent a future teenage werewolf.

It's a great story, but the two customs are not related, according to Argentine historian Daniel Balmaceda. “The local myth of the lobison is not in any way connected to the custom that began over 100 years ago by which every seventh son (or seventh daughter) born in Argentina becomes godchild to the president,” Balmaceda told the Guardian. That detail didn't stop the Independent from blending the two separate customs and reporting that Kirchner adopted Tawil to prevent him from becoming a werewolf.

It should be noted that nowhere in the myth of "El Lobison" does it say anything about adoption by the president or any other political official breaking the curse. There's nothing particularly spiritual or magical about holding office in a modern democracy, so even in the context of magick it strikes me as a pretty dubious remedy. I mean, if some dark force were really out there preparing to turn Tawil into a werewolf, there's no reason to think it would care whether the boy's godparent is a sitting politician.

That's some sloppy reporting on the part of the Independent. Perhaps if they want to run a story like this in the future, they should run it by an actual occultist to see if what they're alleging makes any sense at all.

More "Flying Saucers" Revealed

Back in 2012 I covered the release of classified documents detailing attempts by the United States Air Force and a Canadian company to construct a supersonic saucer-shaped aircraft. At the time, I speculated that the goofy-looking prototype saucers might have been responsible for some of the UFO sightings in the 1950's, and that perhaps the project got further than the released documents implied. Nothing like that has come to light, but recently the Central Intelligence Agency took credit for many of the sightings during that period.

According to documents recently released by the agency, the culprit was the U-2 spy plane, which entered service in 1955 and remained a closely guarded secret. It flew higher than any other aircraft of the period, and operated out of the Groom Lake facility in Nevada, better known as "Area 51" among UFO enthusiasts. This facility was also used to test the U-2's successor, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the F-117 stealth fighter. Both of those look different enough from other aircraft that they could easily be mistaken for alien spacecraft.

"Reports of unusual activity in the skies in the '50s? It was us," the agency tweeted.

The document the tweet links to is a previously confidential report on the testing of the U-2 spy plane at altitudes of over 60,000 feet. It says half or more of supposed UFO sightings were actually times when they were flying the plane at high altitudes, which people didn't realize was possible at the time.

Though they realized people were spotting the plane by cross-referencing the sightings with when and where the plane was flying, the agency couldn't inform the public of that knowledge. The agency says the document explaining that scenario was the most widely read document released this year from their database.

It may very well be that when Project Blue Book released the statement that "there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as 'unidentified' represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present day scientific knowledge" the investigators were well aware the people were seeing the U-2, but were unable to offer any comments to that effect due to the plane's classified status.

Satanic Temple Holiday Display Destroyed

They whine and they whine about being oppressed, but here's another incident that shows the Poor Oppressed Christians are the real oppressors. On Tuesday the holiday display put up by The Satanic Temple in Florida was destroyed by a Christian woman who claimed she was "taking a stand against Satan."

The controversial display — in which an angel can be seen descending into a pit of fire — stood alongside both traditional Christian Nativity scenes and an 8-foot-tall “Festivus pole” made of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans until 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday, when Susan Hemeryck walked up to two Florida Department of Law Enforcement Capitol Police officers and told them that she was “sorry, but I have to take this down.”

Hemeryck, who was wearing a “Catholic Warrior” t-shirt at the time, told the Associated Press that “it’s just wrong, when you remove baby Jesus two days before Christmas and put Satan in his place? I was there at the right time and the right moment and I needed to take a stand against Satan.”

The Florida director of American Atheists, John Porgal, said “the angel’s dead. We’ve been tolerant of their [Nativity] display. We didn’t like it, but we tolerated it. You see what they did to our display.” He called the damaged display “a sign of what the religious right’s idea of tolerance is.”

Hemeryck’s only regret is that she was unable to do further damage to the display before Capitol Police arrested her on criminal mischief charges.

Can you imagine the uproar if this were a member of a minority religion "taking a stand against Jesus?" Condemning such an action would be totally justified, too, because it would be completely out of line. But we're not the ones doing it and they are, so tell me again who's being oppressed? Minority religions deserve representation in the public square too, and have just as much of a right to be there as Christians do.

It seems to me that rather than "criminal mischief" this woman should be charged with a hate crime. But she won't be, because Christians are not oppressed in the United States - in any way, shape, or form.

Zombie Nativity Scene Must Come Down

When Jay Dixon, the manager of a popular Ohio haunted house attraction, wanted a nativity scene for his front yard, he used what he had available - lots of Halloween decorations. The result was what Dixon called the world's first zombie nativity scene. Zombie enthusiasts loved it, but his neighbors and local officials were not amused. Dixon was recently ordered to dismantle the scene, with officials citing a rarely-enforced statute.

“The neighbors don’t like it. My father hates it and anything bad that happens he blames it on that,” Dixon pointed out. “On the average we probably get 30 or 40 cars stop and taking pictures, getting out with their camera. People that follow zombie movies and stuff like that love it,”

But just days after WXIX spoke to Dixon, Sycamore Township township ordered him to take it down or face legal action. Town officials claimed that Dixon was breaking the rules with a structure on the front side of his yard, and a display that took up more than 35 percent of the area. But Dixon said that he wasn’t buying the explanation.

“I’ve lived here for 15 years and I’ve never had a violation of any kind,” he insisted. “It’s a holiday decoration. I know if it was a real pretty nativity scene they wouldn’t be saying anything.”

The good news is that Dixon has until the 26th to take down the scene, so it will remain up through the Christmas holiday. The story has also likely generated a lot of notoriety for his haunted house. But it just goes to show that when it comes to Christmas, anything alternative tends to be targeted by the political establishment using whatever means they have at their disposal. I'm sure Dixon's town has others who put up huge displays, but it seems that as long as the displays are Christian they get a pass.

Poor Oppressing Christians?

Yeah, that title pretty much sums up this story from Phoenix, Arizona. A Poor Oppressed Christian there recently assaulted a Salvation Army bell ringer for saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." This may not be the stupidest thing I've ever heard, but it's certainly up there. I can't even get my mind around a worldview in which this would be a reasonable course of action.

Kristina Vindiola says a woman hit her outside the Wal-Mart on 91st Avenue and Thomas Road after she said "Happy Holidays."

"The lady looked at me," said Vindiola. "I thought she was going to put money in the kettle. She came up to me and said, 'Do you believe in God?' And she says, ‘You're supposed to say Merry Christmas,' and that's when she hit me."

The bottom line is that this is just never okay in a civilized society. Some media commentators have suggested that fundamentalist Christians want to return America to the middle ages, and while I generally consider such statements hyperbolic incidents like this make me wonder. It suggests the attacker believes that violence is an appropriate response to anyone failing to privilege her religion above all others, which is completely messed up.

American Christians are not a minority and the mere existence of inclusion does not mean that they are under attack. Incidents like these clearly demonstrate that those who go around bleating about persecution are really the oppressors, and just need to knock it the hell off.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

A New Solar Evocation Ritual

Lately I've been playing around with a few new magical techniques for planetary evocations. Years ago I posted a collection of planetary rites, and since then my methods have continued to evolve. I still am working with the intelligences and spirits from Agrippa along with the planetary angels and godnames from Liber 777 and the basic ritual structure remains the same, but I've added several new pieces that seem to work well and add to the effectiveness of the rites.

This is a solar evocation that I performed over the weekend that highlights some of this new material. At some point I'll be putting together and posting the rest of the set to update my planetary rites.

0. Setup

The temple is arranged with the table of practice in the center. The banishing dagger, invoking wand, and bell chime are present on the altar. On the table of practice is placed the tablet of the Sun and a talisman depicting the character of the Sun conjoined with the sigils of Nakhiel and Sorath, the solar intelligence and spirit from Agrippa. An orange seven-day candle dressed with solar fluid condenser and cinnamon serves as an offering to the intelligence and spirit. The ritual shall be performed in the day and hour of the sun.

I. Opening the Operant Field

Officiant performs the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram.

Officiant performs the Comselh Ananael Lesser Invoking Ritual of the Hexagram.

All perform the Prayer of the Aeon, followed by Bell Chime.

A Sea Monster in New Zealand?

Google Earth has provided us with views of the world that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. The combination of sattelite photography and mapping software means that there are now few places that can't be viewed over the Internet. Cryptozoologists have made extensive use of the software in their search for unknown sea creatures, such as the Loch Ness Monster. Recently a strange shadow was captured in the ocean near New Zealand, which some observers believe might be a sea monster.

Engineer Pita Witehira, who first spotted the dark mass using Google Earth, told the Daily Mail that he doesn't think it's a boat because there's no white wake. Other people think it's a floating tree trunk.

It isn't the first cryptozoological sighting in the region. In 2013, witnesses snapped a picture of a strange shape off the coast of Australia's Magnetic Island.

First off, it's not a tree trunk and it's not a whale. If you compare the shadow to objects on the shore it clearly is too large to be either of those. It also doesn't look anything like a boat. Not only is there no wake, but the shape is all wrong as well. A large American or Russian nuclear submarine would be big enough to cast such a shadow if it was running close to the surface, but the problem there is that the shadow would be straight rather than curved at one end.

So all things considered, it's probably just a glitch in the Google Earth software. But if it's not, there's something very weird going on in the ocean off New Zealand.

"Satanic" Murder Trial Underway

The case sounds like something out of a horror movie. Two high school students murdered a young woman they both knew so that one of the perpetrators could "sell his soul to the devil." Or at least that's the scenario Houston prosecutors are pushing in the killing of 15-year-old Corriann Cervantes. Opening arguments in the trial of Jose Reyes began last week for the crime, which took place last February. Victor Alas, who also is alleged to have taken part in the slaying, will face trial at a later date.

Reyes is accused of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing 15-year-old Corriann Cervantes earlier this year with another teenage boy in a bid to sell their souls to the devil.

"Whether or not the devil was involved, what happened in that apartment was sadistic and inhumane," Assistant Harris County District Attorney John Jordan told jurors. "He said he had no regrets."

Jordan told jurors Cervantes and two other teens went to a vacant apartment to have sex after a late night of alcohol and marijuana at a friend's apartment.

In horrific and grisly detail, Jordan said the scene descended from consensual sex to a brutal beating with the heavy porcelain lid of a toilet tank.

From the crime scene reports there's plenty of evidence that Reyes and Alas killed Cervantes, so it's pretty clear to me that Reyes is guilty and should be convicted. What gives me pause about the report is that the occult angle is coming from the prosecution, and seems based on pretty flimsy evidence. For whatever reason, prosecutors love to bring up anything involving "Satanism" and will go so far as to coerce such details from suspects during interrogations.

The prosecutor's chief piece of occult evidence seems to be an upside-down cross carved into Cervantes' body. But that sounds more like something from an album cover than rather than from a real ritual. In fact, there is no occult technique for "selling your soul to the devil," at least none I've ever come across. Some of the techniques from the Solomonic grimoires involve pacts with spirits, but the details of such pacts differ substantially from this particular urban legend.