Alex Jones Is Toast

Or at least that's the outcome I'm pulling for, and a recent screw-up by his attorney has now made that outcome more likely. Jones is on trial over promoting the ridiculous conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged. His remarks prompted his fans to harrass and threaten parents grieving over the loss of young children, which is flat-out deplorable. While I understand that mass shootings are politicized on both sides of the gun control debate, that has little bearing on the nuttiness of suggesting that these parents murdered their own children as part of a government plot, or that their obviously-dead children were somehow still alive.

Cracked has a surprisingly good overview of the events in question, which you can find here. Jones was sued by the parents and lost the case, and now a jury is trying to determine how much he should pay. His case was not helped when his inept attorney accidentally sent important evidence of Jones' pattern of lying about, well, everything really. He previously claimed under oath that he had no text messages about Sandy Hook, but his attorney sent all his cell phone records to the plaintiffs. The records prove that Jones lied.

Jones, who was the sole witness for the defense during the trial, did not fare well Wednesday as he was cross-examined by the plaintiffs' attorney, Mark Bankston. In a remarkable moment, Bankston disclosed to Jones and the court that he had recently acquired evidence proving Jones had lied when he claimed during the discovery process that he had never texted about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.

Bankston said that Jones' attorney had, in an apparent mishap, sent him two years of cell phone records that included every text message Jones had sent.The cell phone records, Bankston said, showed that Jones had in fact texted about the Sandy Hook shooting. "That is how I know you lied to me when you said you didn't have text messages about Sandy Hook," Bankston said.

Another Satanic Panic Source

As I have covered previously here on Augoeides, the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980's and early 1990's largely originated from porn. This is why so many of the things "Satanists" were accused of aren't real techiques of magick or occultism, and why magicians looking into those claims don't understand how their alleged rituals even worked. They didn't, because real magick had nothing to do with the panic. It was all about fabricating accounts and accusations based on material presented in "Satanic pornography" from the 1970's.

The New Yorker has an article up that explores yet another piece of the puzzle that I previously knew nothing about, a Mormon housewife named Beatrice Sparks. Sparks was a literary fraud, kind of like James Frey and other recent authors who have passed off made-up stories as memoirs or factual accounts. The New Yorker article is a review of a recent book by Rick Emerson that discusses Sparks' work.

Sparks published a book called Go Ask Alice in 1971. Sparks claimed that the book was a real diary kept by a teenage girl and that she merely "edited" the text. The book was presented this way to the media and, of course, became a huge bestseller - because the market rewarding writers for fraud is practically a cliche. At any rate, the book tells the story of a young girl's descent into horrific drug addiction and ends with an author's note describing her alleged death by either suicide or accidental overdose.

Go Ask Alice provided fuel for the drug war of the 1970s, as it implied that the lurid and exaggerated events of the book were "what the kids were up to" or something like that. It was Sparks' next project, though, where this story moves into Augoeides territory. Sparks was contacted by a family who wanted her to edit and publish their son's diary, who had died by suicide at the age of sixteen.

A few months later, Sparks was back in the diary business with “Jay’s Journal.” She claimed, in the book’s introduction, that a woman had read an article about her and then called to ask if Sparks might take the journal of her son—a deceased sixteen-year-old who’d had a genius-level I.Q.—and use it to expose the dangers of witchcraft. Accepting this solemn task, Sparks sorted through the boy’s possessions, interviewed his friends and teachers, and organized his journal into more than two hundred entries. A small disclaimer on the copyright page indicated that “times, places, names, and some details have been changed to protect the privacy and identity of Jay’s family and friends.”

Ancient and Illuminated Seers of Nigeria Exposed!

I know that lately the sorts of articles I used to post here have fallen by the wayside. It turns out that it takes time and planning to put together the material for the Ritual Night Talks, especially now that I am running the workshops in-person and am also creating and posting the Tuesday night videos. I hope to get back to some content besides the Ritual Night Talks soon, and here's a bit of a preview. Have any of you ever been contacted by the Illuminati? My guess is that many of us have probably seen this particular spam email. It's been around for a long time - I even posted an article on an earlier version of it all the way back in 2014.

While I always have dismissed this as a scam (and it is), I also have idly wondered what happens if you actually reply. Back in 2019, intrepid YouTuber Pleasant Green did just that - he responded to see what would happen and recorded his results in the video embedded above. As it turns out, it's a whole lot less weird than you might expect, and is pretty much a straightforward advance fee scam that can be linked back to - you guessed it - Nigeria. Just like the spam email I mentioned in my 2014 article. The scammer did go to a little more effort than some of the others I've seen debunked, though. In order to make it look like the scammer was in New York, they were using a server farm there located that passed a cursory investigation.

There is of course no "real Illuminati" today. At this point the rumors endure because it's become something of a joke in the music industry. The real Illuminati order was founded by Adam Weishaupt in 1776 in Bavaria as an alternative to Freemasonry, and didn't even last twenty years. Far from being an all-powerful secret society, it quickly folded in the face of repression by the Bavarian government. The modern idea of the Illuminati owes a lot to Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus! trilogy than to anything historical. While it's true that there are a few very wealthy people who run a lot of things all over the world, most are simply pursuing their own self-interest rather than coordinating on some grand scale.

As I've noted here on Augoeides multiple times, the way to get power in the world is to get vast amounts of money, and people who are that focussed on getting vast amounts of money are not generally going to be occultists. You might find some interest among the super-rich who inherited their wealth, but to be a successful entrepreneur at that level requires a degree of obsession that leaves little time and energy for other interests that are time-consuming and require significant effort. That pretty much rules out super-rich magicians - or at the very least super-rich effective magicians.

Demonic Voter Fraud

If you ever are trying to track down evidence for my assertion that success in America is almost entirely attributable to luck, you need look no further than my fellow Minnesotan Mike Lindell. Lindell is the wealthy founder of the MyPillow company, a prominent media conservative and Trump supporter, and a complete idiot.

To be clear, I'm not calling Lindell an idiot because he's a conservative. Lindell promotes every bizarre conspiracy theory that supports his political beliefs, and is now working with a former occult expert who knows nothing about occultism to root out voter fraud in Arizona. I suppose if you're an occult expert who knows nothing about occultism, being a voter fraud expert who knows nothing about voter fraud is just par for the course.

The Daily Beast's Will Sommer reports that Lindell is now working with Dr. Lyle Rapacki, who pitched himself to law enforcement agencies as an expert on devil worship during the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980s, and who is now apparently pivoting toward being an expert in election fraud.

In particular, Rapacki has been working with the Arizona Republican Party in its effort to obtain ballots and voting machines from Maricopa County, which is the most populous county in the state and which delivered the state to President Joe Biden last November.

"It's been unfair, it's been unreal, it's been demonic," Rapacki said in an interview earlier this month. Rapacki has also adapted his purported expertise on Satanism to the QAnon era, as he's endorsed conspiracy theories claiming that the Democratic Party runs a Satanic pedophile ring.

Rapacki is one of those guys I talked about in this recent post, who presented themselves as "occult experts" back in the 1980's and early 1990's. As far as I can tell none of them knew anything about real occultism and were in fact experts on the various lurid and mostly made-up versions of occultism and "Devil Worship" promoted by evangelical Christians. A lot of that information came from frauds like Mike Warnke and Bill Schnoebelen who seem to have been caught up in making lots of money by telling Christians that what occultists do is exactly what they see in horror movies.

Always Pay Me First

I have to say, as much as I try not to make fun of other folks' religious beliefs, I never get tired of mocking Paula White. Donald Trump's "spiritual advisor" is a Prosperity Gospel preacher who is considered extreme even by other Prosperity Gospel preachers. Although I don't necessarily have a problem with Christianity, I have no problem whatsoever pointing out the obvious - Prosperity Gospel is basically a scam. The idea that God will reward you for sending these preachers money with a lot more money is more like a pyramid scheme than a system of spirituality, and just like a pyramid scheme, the person getting rich is the one at the top. Here's yet another example of White's ridiculousness.

Prosperity gospel minister Paula White is apparently encouraging her followers to live in the dark if necessary to keep the lights on at her church. According to a report by Mother Jones, White, who serves as Trump’s “spiritual adviser,” told followers at her Supernatural Ministry School in Miami that they could earn God’s appreciation by sending her church as much money as possible — even if that meant they weren’t able to pay their electric bills.

White specifically told her followers that if they pay their Florida Power and Light (FPL) electric bill every month in lieu of giving it to her church, then they are treating the electric company better than they are God. “Instead of writing that check to the house of God as I’m instructed to, then what I’m saying spiritually is, ‘FPL, I have now established a spiritual law that put you first,” White told her congregants. “So FPL, save my family, FPL, deliver my drug-addicted son, FPL, kill this cancer that doctors say is in my body.”

The funny thing is, this is absolutely not what people who pay their electric bill before donating to Paula White's church are doing. They are treating their electric company better than they are treating Paula White. Obviously, this heresy cannot stand. More seriously, though, this attitude is the same reason that faith healing is dangerous.

If someone is severely ill and receiving proper medical care, there's nothing wrong with praying for their recovery. When my friends are in the hospital I do healing spells for them too. But if I were to tell them that seeking medical care shows a "lack of faith" that will prevent whatever deity I follow from healing them, I'm committing magical malpractice. Magical and/or spiritual healing should complement conventional medical care, not replace it. The deal is that as with anything else, you take all the non-magical actions you can to make your recovery as likely as possible. Then you use a spell to close the probability gap and "seal the deal."

In the Paula White example, having electricity means that you can heat and cool your home, and do what you need to do to get ready for work where you earn money. Those things are important. You have to make money to be able to donate money. But Prosperity Gospel preachers invert that whole relationship solely to enrich themselves at the expense of their less fortunate followers - who are remain less fortunate than they otherwise might be because they are donating all their money hoping for a payoff that probably will never come.

Yes, They Made It Up

This really shouldn't be much of a shock for anyone even casually familiar with Alex Jones and Infowars, but I never cease to be amazed by the number of people who apparently mistook the program for serious and accurate news reporting - rather than a cesspool of bizarre conspiracy theories and manufactured outrage. Thanks to a feature article published last week, we now have a lot more firsthand evidence for the latter over the former. I can't say that I ever really doubted my assessment of Jones, even though I got some pushback in the comments here and on Facebook from folks, who I guess were fans, whenever I would make fun of him.

The New York Times Magazine published a feature online today authored by Josh Owens, who recounted experiences he had working for Infowars. (He first started to share information with journalist Jon Ronson, who has known Jones for decades, in October 2016.) In the article, Owens recounts outlandish and disturbing incidents at Infowars, including Jones firing a gun in his direction “as a joke,” Jones punching employees, Jones killing animals in cruel ways on video, and Jones driving visibly drunk to film a stunt on Election Day 2016 for his broadcast audience.

Owens often traveled to produce content for Jones and recounted two experiences in which the team fabricated content for Jones’ audience. “If it fit into the Infowars narrative, it played,” Owens wrote.

In one instance, Jones had watched a YouTube video showing a Geiger counter, an instrument used to measure ionizing radiation, “displaying high radiation readings” on a California beach and wanted the Infowars team to travel to the area to film reports and promotions for an iodine supplement sold by Infowars. Owens and his coworkers were unable to replicate the high radiation levels during their trip, which enraged Jones. In an attempt to placate him, the team scouted out a nuclear waste facility “just so we could capture the Geiger counter displaying a high number.”

More disturbingly, Owens recounted traveling to a Muslim-majority community to “investigate” what Jones believed was a terrorist-training center with a promise from Jones that the team would receive “significant bonuses” if what they turned in met Jones’ expectations. But the information the team found in Islamberg, New York, did not support the “unfounded rumors circulated around far-right corners of the internet” that the community housed a terrorist-training compound.

Fake Joel Osteen is Now a Thing

Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston has been sending out warnings about a fake Facebook account billing itself as "Joel Osteen Ministries." The account has been soliciting people to open "prayer request accounts" that are alleged to cost up to $50 per month. It's a clever scam, precisely because this is essentially what "Prosperity Gospel" preachers like Osteen imply that their parishioners should do. They just aren't quite as blatant about it.

Lakewood Church has been warning people about a Facebook account posing as "Joel Osteen Ministries," which has been asking people for donations up to $50 to activate prayer request accounts. The message has been circulating on both Facebook and Twitter, church officials told Chron.com.

"Unfortunately, your Joel Osteen prayer request account has not been activated," the message said. "In order to activate your account, you will need to add a monthly donation of $24.99, which will give you access to 3 prayer requests per month..." The message goes on to offer "platinum prayer request" account to anyone who pays $49.99 per month.

A church spokesperson said she didn't know where the post originated. She said the Lakewood social media team saw hundreds of people receiving the fake messages. The church quickly notified people that that they do not, in fact, charge for prayer requests.

So no, Lakewood Church does not charge for prayer requests and you shouldn't be sending these scammers money. But if you are donating to Osteen's church on the promise that God will give you back many times the amount of money you donate, you shouldn't be doing that either. Jesus never said anything about God wanting his followers to accumulate wealth or liking rich people. In fact, he taught the exact opposite.

Canada's Stupid Witchcraft Law

For several years now, the Canadian government has been discussing the repeal of a law prohibiting "pretending to practice witchcraft." The law may finally be going away, but not before two more people were charged with the offense. The criminal cases themselves seem sound - according to the allegations, both defendants defrauded their clients using psychic and fortune-telling scams. My problem with the law is not that it prohibits scams, but rather that it carves out a special exception for "witchcraft-related" scams when it seems to me that what is going on is more properly fraud and can be handled under the same statutes.

Two Canadian women have been charged with pretending to practise witchcraft, breaking a little-known law in Canada's criminal code that could soon be out the door. The first charge was levied against Dorie "Madeena" Stevenson, a fortune teller from Milton, Ontario on 18 October after a months-long investigation. She is accused of defrauding a client of C$60,000 ($45,700; £35,700) in cash and property.

A week later, Toronto psychic Samantha Stevenson was also arrested in a similar but unrelated investigation. Police allege she convinced a man the only way to get rid of "evil spirits" in his home would be to sell it, and transfer the proceeds into her account.The accused often advertise themselves as a psychic or religious healer, and demand large sums of money to help remove curses or evil spirits from clients, police say.

"What we typically see is a tendency for perpetrators to take advantage of persons when they are in their most vulnerable state," wrote Det Sgt Dave Costantini of Halton Regional Police, in a press release. "Victims are manipulated into believing something bad will happen to them unless they remit cash. We even see incidents where victims are required to make purchases and remit these purchases in order to be cleansed. When victims cannot be squeezed any longer, the perpetrators rely on the victim's embarrassment in not contacting police."

The charges could lead to Canada's last witch trials, as the section of the law banning pretending to practise witchcraft will soon be repealed. In June 2017, the federal government proposed a bill repealing dozens of outdated sections of the criminal code, including the law against pretending to be a witch.

To be clear, if the allegations are true I don't have any problem with these folks being convicted. What I have a problem with is that there's a special law just for those who "fraudulently pretend to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration." Fraud, as I see it, is just fraud and should be charged accordingly. An example: if I'm a confidence artist and I defraud somebody with a stock-picking scam, should it matter whether I tell them I have a computer model picking the stocks or if I tell them I have a psychic doing it? Isn't fraud just fraud?

Bible Museum Dead Sea Scrolls are Fakes

The Museum of the Bible, owned and operated by Hobby Lobby president Steve Green, recently found that five fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls that it had on display were fakes. Given the events of the Hobby Lobby smuggling scandal not that long ago, it seems to me that it pretty much serves them right. Wealthy evangelical Christians scouring the world for Biblical artifacts has created a whole market for counterfeit items, and it sounds like the Museum of the Bible was one of the latest groups taken in.

Five fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the Museum of the Bible’s most prized artifacts, were exposed as fakes on Monday and pulled from displays. The museum, the brainchild of evangelical Christian businessman Steve Green, opened last year in Washington near the National Mall. The pieces, subjected to scientific tests in Germany, were deemed to have “characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin,” the museum said in a statement.

“Though we had hoped the testing would render different results, this is an opportunity to educate the public on the importance of verifying the authenticity of rare biblical artifacts,” chief museum curatorial officer Jeffrey Kloha said. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a series of fragments from approximately 930 manuscripts discovered near the Dead Sea in modern Israel during the late 1940s and 1950s. Dating back to the late third century B.C. and first century A.D., the scrolls provided academics with insights into Judaism at the time Christianity was born.

Doubts were raised as to the authenticity of the fragments held by the museum prior to its opening, due to a soaring increase in forgeries designed to fool wealthy American evangelical Christians, such as Green. Experts estimate that as many as 70 forged fragments of scrolls have been traded on the antiquities market since 2002, according to CNN. The museum said it would swap the fakes with three other fragments (but even those may not be real).

While I don't really believe in the idea of "karma" as the New Agers explain it, this is one of the problems inherent to buying items on the black market. The people you are dealing with are already criminals, so it really doesn't seem that much of a stretch to figure that they don't care whether an item is real or not as long as they get paid. Furthermore, they might just go ahead and forge the items themselves, counting on buyer cluelessness to line their pockets.

Either the Museum of the Bible needs to get more qualified experts to validate their purchases, or better still, get out of buying black market antiquities altogether. The countries they are effectively raiding in order to build their collection will thank them.

Canada to Legalize Witchcraft

After a long process of legal review, Canada is moving towards eliminating many outdated laws. One of those laws is the prohibition on pretending to "exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration." This is an old law that was probably originally put in place to target fraud involving claims of paranormal powers, but the law is so vaguely written that it can be applied to cases where no scamming is involved. It could, for example, render any performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest illegal - because after all, any actor playing Prospero is pretending to use magick.

“One of the provisions that’s being removed in this bill is pretending to practise witchcraft,”Steve Coughlan, a professor at Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, told the House of Commons committee that studied the bill. “It probably hadn’t been prosecuted for 30 or 40 years, and about six months ago, some police officer in Toronto laid that charge. At some level, there’s an element of randomness as to when the lesser-known offences come up,” Prof. Coughlan added. “It’s somebody looking at the index, doing a search online, and trying to find it. It’s possible that the crown can then look at it and say, ‘You know what? That’s the wrong one.’”

The plan to repeal archaic laws from the criminal code was well received in Parliament. “One must wonder about the existing laws regarding the practice of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration” Wayne Stetski Kootenay, the NDP MP for Columbia, BC, told parliament. “In addition to the fact that it impinges on the rights of some religions, and would confuse the U.S. President who is certain that he is the target of a witch hunt, this might also hurt Harry Potter cosplayers; Dungeons and Dragons “larpers”, which I do not know much about but which my staff assure me is a thing; and others for whom sorcery is an entertainment. This is a good law to be rid of.”

But some opposition Conservative Party members were not thrilled with the idea. “We all chuckle and laugh, but I can understand why the party of Mackenzie King would want to make legal the practice of witchcraft, sorcery, and talking with people who have passed from this world, as Mackenzie King enjoyed doing,” Peter Van Loan, the Conservative MP for York, Simcoe, Ontario, said. “The concern is, and we have all heard stories like this, that people use these kinds of fraudulent witchcraft powers to persuade people that, for example, if they put $10,000 in an envelope, which they say will be burned but they slide it under the table instead, he or she will be saved from whatever curse they say the person is under.”

The thing is, I'm well aware that there are scammers who claim paranormal powers in order to hoodwink their targets. But shouldn't the example cited just be charged as fraud? There's no reason for Canada to have a special law for "fraud involving witchcraft" when fraud in general is already illegal, any more than there would be a reason to have a special law for "fraud involving envelopes." It's not like once this is repealed, there will be nothing left to charge these scammers with.

Furthermore, the idea that laws like this do no harm is just not true. Keeping them on the books means that law enforcement can go after Wiccan, Pagans, and anyone else who practices magick as a spiritual discipline any time they want. Canada is not necessarily as progressive as a lot of Americans think, especially with regard to religion. Wicca, Paganism, and even larger polytheistic traditions like Hinduism are not considered "real religions," and therefore have no legal protections.

A while back I covered the case of Dominique Smith, a Winnipeg woman who runs a metaphysical shop. Her shop was repeatedly vandalized by Christians, but the police were slow to take action. Technically, a police force more willing to persecute Smith could easily claim that her entire business is illegal under this law, and even though that hasn't happened, the fact that it could should be extremely troubling. Canada needs to step up and start protecting members of minority religions, and repealing this law will be a good start.

Paula White Wants Your Money

Prosperity Gospel preacher Paula White is alleged to be one of President Donald Trump's spiritual advisors. It's really no surprise that they get along. She's pretty and blond - exactly his type - and just like him she seems to have a real talent for relieving people of their money. This month, White explained to her followers that they should donate their first month's salary of the new year to her, because otherwise they would face "consequences" from God.

Each January, I put God first and honor Him with the first of our substance by sowing a first fruits offering of one month’s pay,” White writes. “That is a big sacrifice, but it is a seed for the harvest I am believing for in the coming year. And God always provides! Every year many others join us and sow a month’s pay, a week’s pay, others give a day’s pay, but everyone gives their best- The results are miraculous!”

White explains that it’s important to donate money to her at the start of every new year because it helps you get off on the right foot with the Lord. “All Firsts belong to God,” she says. “When you honor this principle it provides the foundation and structure for God’s blessings and promises in your life, it unlocks deep dimensions of spiritual truths that literally transform your life! When you apply this everything comes in divine alignment for His plan and promises for you.”

However, White also warns that bad things could happen to followers who don’t send her money this month because to not do so would contradict God’s word. “When you don’t honor it, whether through ignorance or direct disobedience there are consequences,” she writes.

Now the thing about this, though, is that if you follow this advice your first month's salary won't belong to God. It will belong to Paula White. The whole Prosperity Gospel thing is basically a scam, and it's a scam that exists only to enrich Prosperity Gospel pastors like White. She's probably just mad because Creflo Dollar has a nicer airplane than she does or something. It should be absolutely obvious to anybody who has read Jesus' teachings in the Bible that there's no way God would want anybody to enrich these charlatans.

It may be a good spiritual practice to donate significant amounts of money to the needy at the beginning of each year. That, at least, would be in line with Jesus' teachings, and if done right it can legitimately make the world a better place. But donating to a pastor who is already rich, just to help them sustain an extravagant lifestyle, is an entirely different thing that no sincere Christian should take seriously.

Ken Ham's Scam

A friend on Facebook called Ham's ark a "douchecanoe." Yeah, that's about right.

No, I'm not talking about Answers in Genesis and its uncritical promotion of the Ussher Chronology, which should strike even devout Creationists as absolutely ridiculous. I'm talking once more about Ark Encounter, Ham's Noah's Ark theme park in Kentucky. With his latest move, Ham has pretty much put to rest speculation that the park has anything to do with sincere ministry. Apparently, it is little more than a gigantic scam designed to defraud his donors, evade taxes, and extract money from the state of Kentucky.

Not satisfied enough with winning a court battle worth $18 million in tax rebates after convincing a judge that his for-profit business, which is actively using religion as a form of employment discrimination, he has now sold the land the theme park sits on, worth $48 million, to his own non-profit entity, Crosswater Canyon, for $10. You read that right, ten dollars.

This allows Ham to claim his land is a non-profit and not subject to the new safety tax passed by city officials which would have collected 50 cents of every entry ticket sold. This move also worries local politicians and residents because it sets up the park to claim exemption from all other taxes as well that includes the funding of public schools.

When asked about the park’s move, and its ability to now avoid all taxes, Williamstown city councilman Kim Crupper said, “I believe this is the first step,” adding, “The impact would be far larger than just Williamstown.” When asked about their future tax plans, Ark Encounter officials declined to comment, according to Kentucky.com.

So did you get that? In order to get the tax rebates that Ham used to build the park, he incorporated it as a for-profit non-religious business because religious non-profits were not eligible for those rebates. But now that the park is complete, he has turned around and sold it to his religious non-profit for $10 to avoid paying future taxes. The article doesn't mention it, but I expect that this also nullifies the junk bonds that Ham sold to fund part of the construction. The folks holding those bonds will now never see any return on their investment either.

It really amazes me that so many people are willing to tolerate this level of grift from their religious leaders. Ham's move here is especially sleazy, but there are plenty of other religious groups out there that seem to exist only to rake in donations and provide no spiritual benefits to their members. I think it's long past time the followers of these religious scammers showed them the door. Salvation doesn't have to be expensive, and it's pretty hard for me to believe that it can be facilitated by leaders who apparently lack any degree of personal integrity.

Killing the Devil

That's totally not Pastor Mboro up there.

A pastor in South Africa is claiming that he went to Hell and killed the Devil. No, seriously! Pastor Paseke Motsoeneng naturally made the claim on Facebook, because obviously anybody capable of such a feat is going to want to post it in their feed next to photos of what they just had for dinner. The post went like this:

“When I got to hell, there was a queue of millions of people waiting to be braaied by Satan. I even saw some prominent South African politicians.

“I was so shocked because they lived like angels here on earth. I thought they went to heaven.

“When Satan saw me, he panicked and directed his army to kill me. Like Samson in the Bible, I defeated them. Satan was my last victim.”

I don't know what "braaied" means, but since it's Satan I'm sure it must something pretty sick, maybe involving a pitchfork and a whole bottle of baby oil. Before you start celebrating, though, there are a few more things you should know about Motsoeneng, who also goes by the name Pastor Mboro. This isn't his first completely outlandish claim.

Last Easter, the pastor claimed that he “was so overcome by the spirit” that he went to heaven and took pictures on his cellphone. What did he do with those pictures? He sold them for R5000 each.

Sticking with the topic of money, Mboro told his congregants that he could get them into heaven, the cost this time? R10 000 for “guaranteed access” of course.

This pastor is so blessed that “God” once sent him a BMW i8 with a value of R2 million, all because Mboro helps the poor with his good deeds.

So yeah, this guy appears to be a total scammer. It also is kind of telling that his description of Heaven and Hell and Satan line up perfectly with oversimplified Christian metaphysics. The real spirit world doesn't work that way.

When I first read about this claim, I thought that perhaps Pastor Mboro had engaged a powerful chthonic spirit and defeated it in some fashion, and mistook that spirit for "the Devil." In Christianity, there's only one "Devil" and every evil spirit gets traced back to that single archetype. But there are many, many chthonic spirits and they can't easily be classed as "evil."

But no, it's probably not even that. Pastor Mboro is more likely just a scammer angling for donations, who knows full well that he's totally bullshitting everybody because it makes him sound impressive to his followers.

"Satanic Panic" Victims Exonerated

Back in 2013, I covered the case of Dan and Fran Keller, who were finally released after 21 years in prison. The couple ran a daycare center and were accused of "Satanic Ritual Abuse" during the "Satanic Panic" of the early 1990's. That is, the crimes they were convicted of were entirely imaginary, the product of what some therapists now call "false memory syndrome." Four years later, the Kellers have finally been exonerated of the lurid and bizarre crimes for which they were convicted all those years ago. After 25 years, it's been a long time coming.

“I still can’t believe it’s happening,” Fran, now 67, said on Tuesday morning while driving with her husband to sign the legal paperwork. She’s still wary; they’ve been waiting for this day for so long she isn’t yet sure it is real. “I guess I’m just tired of having to hang on for so long.”

Dan, 75, is slightly more upbeat — he always thought this day would come. He recalled a sleepless night in prison in 1995 when he said he heard God. “He said, ‘You’re going home, but I have some things to sort through first.’” Dan said he slept soundly that night. “We have to try to not have doubt in our life.”

The exoneration is the first for the nascent conviction integrity unit of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office under the new DA, Margaret Moore. Court documents filed Tuesday announced that there is “no credible evidence” against the Kellers. Moore said she personally reviewed the case and believes exoneration “to be a just outcome.”

Fran and Dan Keller were each sentenced to 48 years in prison for the alleged sexual assault of a 3-year-old girl who was an occasional drop-in at their home daycare center on the rural outskirts of Austin. The child initially accused Dan of spanking her “like daddy” used to, but under intense and repeated questioning by her mother and a therapist, the story morphed to include claims of rape and orgies involving children.

From there, the number of children alleging abuse increased and the accusations grew even more lurid and confounding: The Kellers had sacrificed babies; they held ceremonies in a local graveyard; they put blood in the children’s Kool-Aid; Fran cut off the arm of a gorilla in a local park; they flew the children to Mexico to be sexually assaulted by military officials.

As a point, there's no "Satanic" or even magical reason for anyone to do most of those things. You might hold a ceremony in a graveyard to communicate with spirits of the dead buried there, but that's about it. Most of the "Satanism" in these cases has to do with "evil for evil's sake," a concept that really only makes sense according to the inaccurate Manichean view of the spirit world found in Christianity. If God is good and Satan is evil, and those are the only two options, Satan might want you to be "more evil" - but seriously, that's not how any of it works.

Another Bad Psychic

In Monday's post I commented that using magick to make a living was pretty difficult. Magick can certainly help you do better and make more money at whatever you do, but it's no substitute for regular work. Now there is one exception to that rule of thumb, but I don't recommend it. You can become a fraudulent psychic. Fraudulent psychics can make big money, at least until they get caught by the authorities.

Detectives say their investigation began in November of 2016, when the first victim, a 33-year-old a military veteran, approached detectives during a fraud awareness seminar hosted by the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.

The man reported he had been scammed by 31-year-old Gina Wilson. He began seeing her in 2015 to help with “emotional distress.” According to the sheriff’s office, Wilson told the man to stop taking his prescribed medications, alter his bank accounts and to stop seeing his therapist and doctor. The victim says he paid Wilson approximately $92,000 before he realized he was being scammed.

During the investigation detectives, learned of a second alleged victim, a 61-year-old Palm Harbor woman, who began seeing Wilson for help with her grief after her husband passed away. PCSO says Wilson assured the woman that she could help her late husband “pass over to the other side.”

The victim says when Wilson asked for a large sum of money to perform a ceremony at the grave site, she realized she was being scammed and contacted authorities.

No legitimate alternative healer, let alone a legitimate psychic, is ever going to tell you to stop taking medication or ceasing conventional medical treatment. If they do, they're probably fraudulent. This applies to faith healers and the like as well. Since magick manipulates probability, it's going to work better along with mundane steps such as conventional medication. With any sort of spell, you want more avenues of probability open for it to work, not less.

Also, money has no special magical significance besides simply being money. So even for a ritual that requires cash, the amount is never magically significant. From a ritual perspective, you can do the exact same thing with ten dollars as you can with thousands. One of the classic fake psychic scams is have a client bring some large sum of money for a ritual and make a show of burning it. The psychic uses some sort of stage magic trick so that the money is not actually burned, and then pockets it after the "ritual."

For the most part I find the capital-S Skeptics annoying, but this is one area in which they do good work - exposing frauds who are exploiting belief in magick and psychic powers to scam clients. Criminals like Wilson give both psychics and magicians a bad name.

A 2015 Jersey Devil Hoax?

A friend of mine tagged me in a story about a man who claimed to have photographed the elusive Jersey Devil. At first, I decided it wasn't really timely enough to post here because it happened back in 2015. But today, I came across this article from Cryptozoology News with some analysis of the 2015 photo. It's from a couple months ago, so I figured that was at least fairly recent.

At any rate, the photo, which I include above, looks pretty good at first glance. As usual, I considered all sorts of possible explanations involving misidentification of some normal object, and the best I could come up with was a kite. But you also don't see a string or anything like that in the photo, or anybody standing on the right side of the road where they would have to be standing to fly it. So that's probably not it, which puts it in the category of photos that have to be either hoaxes or the real thing.

The image, submitted to Cryptozoology News and seemingly taken from inside the vehicle, shows a blurry and rainy highway with a few blurred cars and a dark flying animal on the top left. The alleged animal appears to be less blurry than the elements in the rest of the elements present in the photograph.

The man said the creature was very large and had “bat-like wings and goat features”. “It was extremely creepy, but we figured we must have just seen it wrong, because of the rain and darkness, but upon looking at the picture it looks like no bird or bat I have seen before,” he said about the alleged November 26th 2015 late evening encounter.

Image analysts tell Cryptozoology News that based on compression characteristics and EXIF metadata, the image initially appears to have been processed or edited with a photo editor software.

Cryptozoologists get a bad rap sometimes for being too credible about sightings and the like, but there you go. The photo is probably a fake that was edited to include the image. It just goes to show that even in some of these fringe communities, there's some real investigation and analysis going on. Interestingly enough, in October of 2015 another Jersey Devil photo was circulated on the Internet, and that story can be found here.

Alex Jones Says He's Stephen Colbert

Alex Jones' InfoWars is the epicenter of many a conspiracy theory movement. Generally speaking, most people either consider Jones to be completely nuts, or a misunderstood truth-teller who dares to call out the mainstream media. But now, according to Jones' attorney, both of those interpretations are entirely wrong. Essentially, Jones is now at least officially claiming to be a fraud. Or a fake. Or maybe a joke.

In a custody dispute with his ex-wife, Jones' legal team is now saying that he is a "performance artist" who is "playing a character." In other words, they're trying to argue that he basically is Stephen Colbert - not the Stephen Colbert who currently hosts The Late Show, but the "Stephen Colbert" who hosted The Colbert Report on the Comedy Central network for nearly a decade.

InfoWars host Alex Jones may have built his media empire off of unhinged comments — from propagating innumerable conspiracy theories to using homophobic slurs and threatening violence against California Rep. Adam Schiff — but now his lawyer in a custody battle wants us to believe that this is all an act.

“He’s playing a character. He is a performance artist,” said Randall Wilhite, Jones’ lawyer in a custody dispute with Jones’ ex-wife Kelly Jones, according to a report by the Austin American-Statesman. By contrast, Kelly Jones insists that “he’s not a stable person. He says he wants to break Alec Baldwin’s neck. He wants J-Lo to get raped.”

She added, “I’m concerned that he is engaged in felonious behavior, threatening a member of Congress. He broadcasts from home. The children are there, watching him broadcast.” According to District Judge Orlina Naranjo, this case is going to be about Jones’ capacity to be a good parent to the three children he shares with Kelly Jones, not the content of his controversial show InfoWars.

It should be noted that after this story originally broke, Jones posted a video completely contradicting his lawyer's statements - on the way to divorce court while he was allegedly under a gag order, which technically is not allowed. So which is it, Alex? Are you some sort of clown, or are you really as paranoid and messed up as you sound on your show?

A disturbing number of people in the occult community take Jones' nonsense seriously. One would like to think that sustained magical practice would lead to greater self-knowledge, which in turn would lead to better critical thinking. But much of the time, I have found that this is not the case. Maybe my error in thinking there is that I'm assuming anybody who claims to be a magical practitioner should at least be doing some work. But that's a whole other discussion.

Even as a performance artist, Jones is different than Colbert for one key reason - he's dangerous. I was a fan of The Colbert Report from day one, and one thing I never saw was "Stephen Colbert" inciting his fans to level threats and engage in actual violence against innocent people. Jones does this all the damn time. Frankly, if his whole show is a big joke, it's not a very funny one.

That's why, to my way of thinking, Jones deserves to lose this custody dispute, big time. Either he's lying in his statements to the court and really is nuts, or he's telling the truth and he's the sort of person who thinks that unleashing hundreds of fans to harass parents of the kids killed at Sandy Hook, or motivating an armed gunman to attack a pizza parlor full of children, is funny. Neither of those options says "good parent" to me.

UPDATE: On April 28th, Jones lost his custody case. My guess is that he would have been better off keeping his mouth shut and letting his lawyer push the "playing a character" argument. Then, he could have denied it on his show afterwards, rather than immediately releasing a video undermining his whole case. But nobody has ever tried to argue that the guy is smart.

Psychic Mail Fraud Shut Down

A long-running phony psychic operation that swindled its customers out of nearly two hundred million dollars was recently shut down by federal authorities. The company operated through the mail, sending fake seemingly personalized messages to millions of people. The letters claimed that a psychic had personally seen that the individual targeted would come into a large sum of money so long as he or she purchased products from the scammers.

A federal judge has approved a consent decree that bans Montreal’s Infogest Direct Marketing, Hong Kong’s Destiny Research Center Ltd and six individuals from using the U.S. mail system to send ads, promotional materials and solicitations on behalf of alleged psychics, astrologers and clairvoyants.

In a scheme dating to 2000, the defendants were accused of sending seemingly personalized form letters in which French psychics Maria Duval and Patrick Guerin predicted great wealth, such as winning the lottery, for people who bought products and services to ensure their good fortune came to pass.

One such letter touted how Duval and Guerin shared “clear visions” that recipients would come into “massive sums of money on games of chance,” so long as they paid $50 for a “mysterious talisman” and a copy of “My Invaluable Guide to My New Life.”

Authorities said people who bought products or services would be “bombarded” with additional solicitations. More than 56 million pieces of mail were sent in the past decade, they added.

One of the interesting points about this case is that this is the exact same method used by many "Prosperity Gospel" evangelists, as John Oliver uncovered in his epic takedown of the movement. If federal authorities want to crack down further on similar scammers, it should go after some of those ministries.

It's completely legal to tell someone that if they donate money, they will be seen more favorably by God and/or will be rewarded in the afterlife. There's no way to prove or disprove either of those claims. But when an evangelist tells you that when you donate money you'll get back a lot more money, the whole thing becomes a scam.

Ministers who do that should not be able to hide behind "religious freedom" laws to keep their operations going as they enrich themselves at their followers' expense.

Bend Over for the Jesus Shot

Okay, I'll admit it. This article is not as dirty as my headline implies. It's still pretty disturbing, though, in a totally different way. Just in time for Easter, an Oklahoma doctor who spent time in prison for fraud is being investigated for offering his patients something he calls "the Jesus shot." Nobody knows what's in it or how it works. But for $300, Dr. John Michael Lonergan claims that it will take away pain for life, regardless of the source.

Recent e-mails sent to News 9's newsroom claim the doctor is actively injecting people across the state with a mysterious formula called the "Jesus shot." News 9 tracked Lonergan to Full Circle Health in Edmond as well as Doorway To Health in Moore.

A receptionist at the Edmond clinic answered questions in a recorded phone call with News 9.

News 9: "Why is it called the Jesus shot?

Clinic: "I don't know why [Lonergan] calls it that."

News 9: "What's in it?"

Clinic: "You would have to sit down for a consultation with [Lonergan]. I do not know what the formula is."

Full Circle Health Clinic Director Barbie Schrick says Lonergan is a part-time employee. Schrick promises to investigate Lonergan's "miracle injection." The "Jesus shot" is described as an injection that takes away pain for life. It costs $300, according to the clinic.

"I am so glad you're telling me about this," Schrick told News 9's Michael Konopasek. "Thank God for the news that investigates and finds things out for people. Thank you."

Backing up a bit, one of the blogs I've been following for a number of years is Mike Sententia's Magic of Thought. Mike and I have similar backgrounds - we're both computer programmers with strong interests in exploring the overlap between magick and conventional science.

One of the main differences in our perspectives is that he comes from an energy healing background, and he's convinced that healing is one of the best areas to explore in terms of proving magick to skeptics. I disagree with that assertion entirely, because even in conventional science, healing is a mess. Introducing magical and/or spiritual concepts into it only makes that worse.

Pay to Pray?

So called prosperity gospel evangelists are well-known for running what is essentially a scam, claiming that donations to their ministries serves as "seeds" that will be multiplied by God many times over if only their parishioners have enough faith. Because of the way religious freedom works in the United States, they are free to make such claims because people are allowed to believe whatever they want, and donate to anyone they choose.

Seattle businessman Benjamin Rogovy, though, seems to have taken this idea a little too far. He was recently ordered by a judge to pay back millions of dollars raised by what is described as a "Pay to Pray" website that promised to pray for visitors in exchange for small donations ranging from $11 to $35.

Rogovy’s websites — christianprayercenter.com and oracioncristiana.org — offered to pray for desperate English and Spanish speakers if they paid between $9 and $35 for the service. He created fake ministers who would assist with religious ceremonies and were available for consultation. The CPC also used the name “Pastor Eric Johnson”; according to the attorney general’s office neither Pastor Johnson nor Pastor Carlson exist.

In addition, Rogovy locked his hapless victims into recurring monthly payments through a “deliberately confusing website”.

“The AGO investigation found that once consumers submitted and paid for a prayer request, they were directed to a Web page that gave them the option to receive ‘continued blessings’,” Ferguson’s statement said. “Between 2011 and 2015, CPC collected more than $7 million from 125,000 consumers nationwide. Some of these consumers were charged repeatedly, resulting in a total of over 400,000 transactions.”

Consumers must file a complaint with the Washington state attorney general’s office by 12 June to receive a refund. They can do so online, and will receive an e-mail from the Christian Prayer Center by 6 April informing them of the process.

The problem with the operation appears to be that it was built on a bunch of fraudulent claims. Rogovy's site claimed that he had ministers on staff who were actually doing the praying, except it came out that this was not true. His "ministers" were aliases created by Rogovy himself who never did any praying. Also, the website apparently operated in a confusing fashion that led to visitors being signed up for ongoing monthly charges.