Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Pope's Blood Stolen by Satanists?

Recently a reliquary containing the blood of Pope John Paul II was stolen from a church in Italy. Unsurprisingly, the coordinator of an anti-occult group has blamed "Satanists," and in the process revealed himself to be completely ignorant on the subject of the occult. Here's what I want to know - why does it seem like every single anti-occult group out there has no idea how occultism actually works? You would think that if they were serious, they would sit down and study the subject so that they could make informed statements.

“It’s possible that there could be Satanic sects behind the theft of the reliquary,” said Giovanni Panunzio, the national coordinator of an anti-occult group called Osservatorio Antiplagio.

“This period of the year is important in the Satanic calendar and culminates in the Satanic ‘new year’ on Feb 1. This sort of sacrilege often take place at this time of the year. We hope that the stolen items are recovered as quickly as possible.”

The theft of the reliquary comes as the Vatican prepares to canonise John Paul II, along with another former Pope, John XXIII, at a ceremony on April 27.

Here's the ignorant bit. There's no evidence, anywhere, for a "Satanic New Year" falling on February 1st. You can find a thorough compilation of the dates named as "Satanic holidays" by various authors here. According to the list, Teen Exorcist Squad leader Bob Larson did name Oimelc, celebrated on February 1st, as a Satanic holiday, but as usual he's simply confused. Oimelc is a Pagan holiday, and Larson is well-known for conflating Paganism and Satanism. Furthermore, even for Pagans, Oimelc is not the "New Year." So it's hard to see where Panunzio is getting his information. I suspect he's just making it up as he goes along.

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3 comments:

Nerd said...

You KNOW it was Benedict.

Nerd said...

Btw, he might mean the Chinese new year? lol

Scott Stenwick said...

Chinese New Year? I suppose that's possible, though pretty much equally ignorant. It's based on a solar/lunar calendar, so even though it usually falls sometime around the beginning of February the date varies a lot.