"Prophet" Dave Daubenmire Suing NFL

Dave Daubenmire has been mentioned here on Augoeides before. He's one of those Christian talk radio personalities who claims to be a prophet and then spouts a bunch of nonsensical crap. Over the years he's covered weather terrorists, drinking fetus blood, and aborting babies for Satanic rituals. As you can probably guess, none of those things are true or real. Daubenmire's latest cause is suing the NFL because the Super Bowl halftime show was too sexy and therefore "endangered his immortal soul."

The halftime show at this year’s Super Bowl, featuring Shakira and Jennifer Lopez dancing in daring outfits onstage, drew fury from right-wing Christians — as two middle-aged women of color showing skin is apparently more shameful to them than the president of the United States bragging about assaulting women.

But according to Right Wing Watch, one Christian activist, Dave Daubenmire, is taking things even further. On his “Pass the Salt” podcast, Daubenmire said that he plans to sue the National Football League because the halftime show threatens to prevent him “from getting into the kingdom of Heaven.” “I think we ought to sue,” said Daubenmire.

“Would that halftime show, would that have been rated PG? Were there any warnings that your 12-year-old son—whose hormones are just starting to operate – was there any warning that what he was going to see might cause him to get sexually excited?”

Well, signs point to "yes," because every year Christian activists complain that the halftime show is too racy. Everybody knew up front it was going to be female pop stars singing and dancing, and anybody who knows anything about such performances knows that they are going to be at least a little suggestive no matter what. So it seems to me that he totally should have known and not let the kid watch, if he really believes what he says.

Football Magick

European football - that is, soccer in the states - has a long history of magick and spells used by players and teams to increase their odds. American football, on the other hand, does not. That might explain the continued success of the New England Patriots and quarterback Tom Brady, who finally admitted in a recent interview that his wife, model Gisele Bundchen, has been casting spells on his behalf.

New England Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady is now a six-time Super Bowl champion and, despite being 41 years old, he doesn’t appear to be slowing down at all. So, whatever he’s doing – both on and off the field – is clearly working. Brady revealed earlier this week something his wife, Gisele, has taught him that’s kept him going late in his career.

“So she put together a little altar for me that I could bring with pictures of my kids,” he explained this week, “and I have these little special stones and healing stones and protection stones and she has me wear a necklace and take these drops she makes. I say all these mantras.”

I don't have any problem with players using magick to win games, but I will say that at this point I'm pretty sick of the Patriots winning Super Bowls. It's no surprise that if one team is using magick and the others aren't, that team is going to win consistently. Clearly, other teams need to get in on the action and hire their own spellcasters. They could work to level the playing field by making sure every team has paranormal forces at their disposal.

And for those who are skeptical, keep in mind that it often comes out that top players or top teams are the ones using spells. For example, back when Tiger Woods was so dominant in golf he had an online "church" of fans praying (that is, casting spells) for him. After he was caught having affairs and the "church" disbanded, he kept playing and was still good - but not nearly as outstanding as he had been with paranormal assistance.

That's because spells work, full stop. In professional sports the differences between individual players is tiny. There's no such thing as a bad professional athlete, contrary to what angry fans might tell you after key losses. It comes down to each individual play, on which everybody involved is a great player but somebody has to wind up being the greatest player. The player on the field with probability weighted in his or her favor by spells will always be more likely to come out ahead.

So let's get with it, National Football League! Let's see some sorcerers on the sidelines. They could cast their spells right there, and make every game extra-interesting.

Psychic Animals Here to Stay

A few years ago, World Cup Soccer went wild for "psychic animals" that seemed to possess the ability to predict the outcomes of matches. The animals would be offered two bowls or containers of food, one bearing the flag of each country. Then the one they selected would be deemed the winner - and a few of those animals proved quite accurate. This year, a Russian cat named Achilles has been selected ahead of the 2018 World Cup tournament as its official "animal psychic."

Achilles, a white-furred deaf cat who lives at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, has been selected to predict the 2018 FIFA World Cup winners.

The male clairvoyant cat was also picked as the official oracle to forecast the traditional pre-match predictions for last year’s Confederations Cup, where he correctly predicted three of the four-match outcomes, reported Russian News Agency Tass.

Hermitage cats press secretary, Maria Khaltunen, claims the feline was chosen for the role because he demonstrated "capabilities for choice, analysis and unusual behavior.” In addition, Achilles is deaf, which means he will not be easily distracted by surrounding noises.

For the 2017 Confederations Cup, the white cat was made to choose between two bowls of food, each with a different country’s flag. “This decision has been made, the papers have been signed,” Khaltunen told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency on Monday.

According to Khaltunen, Achilles will receive a fan identification card (otherwise known as a fan passport). He will also go down in history as the only animal to have attained the prestigious documentation. "Animals are not given [Fan IDs,] as there are questions concerning photos," Khaltunen said.

Now here's where this gets interesting. The main skeptic claim about psychic animals is that what's really is going on is that hundreds of people have animals doing this, and simply by chance some of them will turn out to be right. Over time, this creates a sort of "sifting process" where the only animals left in the pool by the end of the tournament are the ones that chose correctly. So the most successful animals are not psychic, just lucky.

But when you pick an "official" psychic animal ahead of time, that whole dynamic changes. Since one of the basic tenets of probability theory is that each subsequent pick in cases like this should be entirely independent of past picks. So if this is all due to chance, the odds that Achilles will be able to pick successful matches again should be pretty low. If he's successful this time around as well, I would say that warrants further paranormal investigation.

Rupert Sheldrake has provided some evidence of rudimentary psychic abilities in animals, and has proposed his morphic resonance hypothesis to explain it. If Achilles can repeat his performance this year, with all the experimental variables declared ahead of time, it means that at the very least what is going on is probably not sheer luck.

Weirdness Versus "The Simulation"

Weirdness is everywhere. This past year has seen a couple of unusual events that were considered highly unlikely. Donald Trump was elected president, despite most the polls leading up the election showing him behind. The Super Bowl featured the biggest comeback win in the history of the game. And recently, the Oscars ceremony screwed up the award for Best Picture by handing the presenters the wrong envelope. The New Yorker has an article up that claims this weirdness supports the "simulation argument." That is, the scenario explored in the film The Matrix is true and we are all components in an elaborate computer simulation. I've complained a number of times in the past about how dumb this idea really is. And, I have no problem whatsoever doing it again.

And so both of these bizarre events put one in mind of a simple but arresting thesis: that we are living in the Matrix, and something has gone wrong with the controllers. This idea was, I’m told, put forward first and most forcibly by the N.Y.U. philosopher David Chalmers: what is happening lately, he says, is support for the hypothesis that we are living in a computer simulation and that something has recently gone haywire within it. The people or machines or aliens who are supposed to be running our lives are having some kind of breakdown. There’s a glitch, and we are in it.

Once this insight is offered, it must be said, everything else begins to fall in order. The recent Super Bowl, for instance. The result, bizarre on the surface—with that unprecedented and impossible comeback complete with razzle-dazzle catches and completely blown coverages and defensive breakdowns—makes no sense at all in the “real” world. Doesn’t happen. But it is exactly what you expect to happen when a teen-ager and his middle-aged father exchange controllers in the EA Sports video-game version: the father stabs and pushes the buttons desperately while the kid makes one play after another, and twenty-five-point leads are erased in minutes, and in just that way—with ridiculous ease on the one side and chicken-with-its-head-cut-off panic infecting the other. What happened, then, one realizes with last-five-minutes-of-“The Twilight Zone” logic, is obvious: sometime in the third quarter, the omniscient alien or supercomputer that was “playing” the Patriots exchanged his controller with his teen-age offspring, or newer model, with the unbelievable result we saw.

And actually, that's a great big nope. Who says the "real world" isn't weird? Certainly not magicians. We mess with this stuff all the time. It may even be that as more of us work out how to do more effective magick, the weirdness is going to multiply. There were a whole bunch of people who bragged about doing magick to get Trump elected. I've been asked a number of times how to do magick to influence sporting events, so there must be people out there doing it, probably on all sides. And is it really such a stretch that magicians might want to mess with the Oscars? I mean, I personally think the whole thing is silly, but there are apparently a lot of people out there who consider them incredibly important.

Nothing Magical About It

Lady Gaga's performance at Sunday's Super Bowl has been hailed by music critics as quite impressive. The singer performed a medley of some of her most popular hits, along with a coordinated dance number that included a wire flying harness and pre-programmed drones. And she sang the whole thing live while dancing (and flying above the stage) energetically, without any lip-syncing and without missing a beat.

But for conspiracy nut Alex Jones, the performance was far more sinister than an excellently executed musical number. Because Jones doesn't actually know anything about magick, he decided that the performance had to be a Satanic ritual and an act of "lesser magic." You know, whatever the hell that's supposed to be.

However, before the match started, infamous alt-right spokesperson and InfoWars founder Alex Jones took to Facebook to warn followers not to watch Gaga’s show because she’s the spawn of Satan and part of the ‘New World Order’.

After claiming Gaga “does rituals” and pointing out she once wore a meat suit, Jones said the Super Bowl “organisers are deciding to defile America and break our will by having us bow down to this.”

“They say she’s going to stand on top of the stadium, ruling over everyone with drones everywhere, surveilling everyone in a big swarm,” he said. “To just condition them to say ‘I am the Goddess of Satan’ ruling over them with the rise of the robots in a ritual of lesser magic.”

He continues to rant about the ‘New World Order’, how Trump has ruined Gaga’s Satanic plan to dominate the world, and slapping himself on the back for being a ‘free thinker’.

I'm convinced that a big part of where all this comes from is that Alex Jones is literally too stupid to recognize a magical ritual if it came up and bit him. Remember his ranting about the "Satanic Magical Ritual" performed by the Bohemian Society at their Bohemian Grove retreat? Here's what that bit of "magick" actually entails.

A group of people dressed in robes carry a fake body on a stretcher. They place the body inside a giant stone owl that speaks with the recorded voice of Walter Cronkite. It used to be the real voice of Walter Cronkite, who was a member, but after he died they have had to make due with a recording. All stand solemnly while the fake body burns inside the owl. The name of this ceremony is "The Cremation of Care." Its intent is to dramatize members setting aside their material and mundane concerns and just hang out with their brothers - and be, you know, Bohemian.

Maybe He Is Psychic After All

Mike Lee, the Chicago man who predicted that the Chicago Cubs would win the 2016 World Series back in 1993, has finally issued a statement to the media. Apparently, the prediction was not a random joke, but rather came to him in a dream in 1983. So it's possible that this could be a genuine case of psychic perception that happened to be preserved in his 1993 high school yearbook.

But Lee, now a 41-year-old software engineer living in the Chicago suburbs, kept a low profile by design. “My attitude was, ‘You have to play the games,’” he told The Huffington Post. “I didn’t want to be a distraction. The players shouldn’t be asked about my prediction.”

Ah yes, the prediction. It may have been printed in the yearbook 23 years ago, but Lee said it actually came to him in a dream in 1983. “I saw the words, ‘Cubs World Champions 2016’ on the Wrigley Field sign and I heard Harry Caray calling home runs,” he said.

Lee may have predicted it, but he actually forgot about it until former classmate Marcos Meza reminded him, according to WGN TV. “When [Lee and I] connected on Facebook in 2009 I sent him the photo and told him we were nearing 2016. He posted the photo of his prediction on August 8th,” Meza told the station. “After my Dodgers lost it was time for me to make this go viral and BeLEEve in the Cubs for 2016.”

It's not clear if Lee has had any other psychic dreams besides this one, which tends to be the big problem with random psychic ability. It sometimes gives you information that's accurate, but not in a form that is particularly useful. It's possible Lee bet on the Cubs and made himself some money, but my guess is that he probably didn't.

One of the reasons we work magick in the first place is gain more control over these otherwise mostly random events. When you can induce a psychic vision, rather than just waiting around for them to happen, you will find many more opportunities to take advantage of them.

Billy Goat Curse Officially Broken

The sporting world is one of the few places where people publicly give credence to the idea of curses. One of these, the famous "Curse of the Billy Goat," was allegedly placed upon the Chicago Cubs baseball francise in 1945. For seventy-one years, the Cubs won no pennants and never reached the World Series. This year, though, the Cubs at last broke the curse. Wednesday night, they defeated the Cleveland Indians in Game 7 to win the World Series. From Wikipedia:

The Curse of the Billy Goat was a sports-related curse that was supposedly placed on the Chicago Cubs Major League Baseball franchise in 1945 by Billy Goat Tavern owner William Sianis that lasted in a 71-year period from 1945 to 2016. Because the odor of his pet goat, Murphy, was bothering other fans, Sianis was asked to leave Wrigley Field, the Cubs' home ballpark, during game 4 of the 1945 World Series.Outraged, Sianis allegedly declared, "Them Cubs, they ain't gonna win no more," which has been interpreted to mean that either the Cubs would never win another National League (NL) pennant, or that they would never again win a World Series.

The Cubs lost the 1945 World Series to the Detroit Tigers, and did not win a World Series championship again until 2016. After the incident with Sianis and Murphy, the Cubs did not play in the World Series for the next 71 years until, on the 46th anniversary of Billy Sianis' death, they defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers 5–0 in game 6 of the 2016 National League Championship Series to win the NL pennant. The Cubs defeated the American League (AL) champion Cleveland Indians 8–7 in game 7 (which lasted 10 innings) to win the 2016 World Series, thus ending the curse.

It's hard to say whether an offhand remark from a tavern owner could really conjure a curse that would last for more than seventy years. Effective practical magick is not something everyone does routinely, all the time, without knowing it, but rather a discipline that requires dedication, practice, and often some amount of training.

So Is He Psychic?

Recently the Internet has been buzzing with the story of Michael Lee, who predicted that the Chicago Cubs would win the 2016 World Series. Lee's prediction was made in 1993, in his high school yearbook. At first everybody assumed that the quote was fake and the accompanying image photoshopped, but subsequent research has determined that the quote appears to be genuine and may actually date back to 1993.

Some background - the Chicago Cubs haven't won the World Series since 1908, and have been considered "cursed" by many fans ever since. But this year, after a remarkable turnaround, the Cubs are in fact playing in the World Series, and as of this writing are tied 1-1 with the Cleveland Indians. If they do go on to win the series, the prediction will be fulfilled. So is Lee psychic, or is it all a big coincidence?

Admittedly, faking a yearbook pic is well in the realm of a capable photoshop hoaxer. However, one Reddit user named number1makeitso claims to have found four other copies of the same yearbook, and that Lee’s prediction is in those yearbooks as well. The user posted them on Imgur as evidence:

And Lee’s former classmate Marcos Meza never forgot the prediction, according to WGN TV. “When [Lee and I] connected on Facebook in 2009 I sent him the photo and told him we were nearing 2016. He posted the photo of his prediction on August 8th,” Meza told the station. “After my Dodgers lost it was time for me to make this go viral and BeLEEve in the Cubs for 2016.”

The station has been in contact with Lee, who, fittingly, lives in the Chicago area and is waiting to see if his prediction comes true.

So it's hard to say if Lee might have had some special insight, or if this is simply a case where one out of potentially millions of predictions happens to have matched the data. The Cubs' playoff losing streak has been a running joke among sports fans, so it's likely that they would be the subject of a humorous prediction. I also don't know if similar yearbook predictions have been made for them in other years as well, since as far as I know nobody has bothered to look.

But assuming the the prediction is genuine, the more unique it turns out to be, the more unlikely it is that Lee would just happen to get the year exactly right. Psychic abilities can be maddeningly unpredictable - somewhat ironically, especially when they involve predictions - and it might just be that when he let his mind wander in search of what sounded like a good year, he actually connected with something.

Religious Freedom Means All or None

Here's one more case where a Christian demanding special privileges has attracted the attention of The Satanic Temple, who continue to do good activist work in advancing the cause of real religious freedom, not the Poor Oppressed Christian version in which their religion is more equal than all the others. I'm at the point where I no longer believe that this incidents have anything to do with ignorance, as the concept that official recognition of religion must include all religions has been repeated over and over again in both the online and mainstream media.

So here's the latest. Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach in Washington, has refused to quit leading Christian prayers during games, despite complaints from students and orders from school district authorities. Since formal complaints have done no good, one of the students contacted the Seattle branch of The Satanic Temple, who promised to show up for the game and deliver a Satanic invocation following the game should Kennedy continue to lead prayers. All of this is completely legal - since Kennedy is leading Christian prayers, every other religion has the right to perform their own in the same context.

A student at Bremerton High School in Washington has asked the local Satanic Temple to deliver an invocation — and the semi-satirical devil worshipers told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson they would show up. “We will be at Thursday’s game doing a postgame Satanic invocation on the field if Coach (Joe) Kennedy continues to pray,” said Lilith Starr, head of The Satanic Temple of Seattle. “We won’t step on the field if he is stopped or doesn’t pray.”

Bremerton High School coach Joe Kennedy has defied orders from school district officials to stop his tradition of leading team prayers. The school says the prayers violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits public officials like Kennedy from promoting religion.

“School staff exercising their right to silently pray in private on their own is fine,” Washington state Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn said in the statement. “But leading a prayer isn’t. School officials are role models; leading a prayer might put a student in an awkward position, even if the prayer is voluntary. For students who don’t share the official’s faith, prayers the official’s public expression of faith can seem exclusionary or even distressing.”

I've pointed out many times that I favor the "All" approach rather than "None." If a Christian wants to lead a prayer I think that's great - so long as every other religion is given the same opportunities and access. As a spectator, I would rather see a diverse display of religious expression rather than nothing at all. Unfortunately, though, the problem there has been that the Poor Oppressed Christians are basically hopeless - they want their special privileges, and to their way of thinking if everyone is special than no one is.

Hopefully someone will record the "Satanic invocation" that the temple will performing and post it. I'm curious to see what they come up with, since their presentations usually turn out to be pretty amusing.

NASCAR Sorcery?

This year NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick has had more than his share of bad luck. Despite having ostensibly solid, fast cars and driving well, he has won fewer races than he should because little things keep going wrong. According to this article from Sporting News, last week a fan of rival driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. was spotted casting some sort of spell involving a monkey skull on Harvick's car, which encountered technical problems that cost him the race. So maybe the problem really is that he's being cursed.

“Last week, we had a Dale Jr. fan with a monkey skull with some sort of witchcraft standing behind our car,” Harvick said. “There’s some weird things happening. The skull had a 2 and a 4 on it so I guess that was meant for myself and (Brad) Keselowski.

“So I guess she got us last week at Dover. I don’t know that she will be able to show up for every race.”

Harvick isn't convinced that the bad luck will necessarily go away. All he knows is that he had a great car at Dover only to have a lugnut fall onto a valve stem and snap it on a pit stop, causing a flat tire that ruined his chances.

It was just another instance where Harvick saw a chance to win slip away. Harvick, who has just two wins this year despite leading 96 more laps and 247 more miles than any other driver, knows that circumstances need to go right as he enters the second round of the Chase for the Sprint Cup this weekend at Kansas Speedway.

This is exactly how curses work in the real world. They don't produce tons of special effects like in the movies, but rather they slant the odds against their target. And when you're under an effective curse, if something weird is even remotely likely to go wrong, it will. Harvick may have been cursed during other races as well, since many such spells don't require direct contact or even line-of-sight.

I don't personally know any curses off the top of my head that involve monkey skulls, but the most basic rule of magick is that if it works, it works. I'm thinking that if Harvick wants to turn his luck around, he should probably find his own sorcerer to cast counter-spells on his behalf.

Christian Wrestling?

Some of you probably remember my old joke about Christian music, "What do you call Christian music that's good? Music." Can the same be said for professional wrestling? As part of their quest to create their own inferior-but-less-tainted version of every regular consumer product and form of entertainment, evangelical Christians now have their own professional wrestling league. And according to this article from Salon, it's just as weird as you might expect.

Christian wrestling’s mission is to reach kids who don’t go to church but enjoy professional wrestling, so they will come to matches and meet Christ. Typically, at every wrestling show, 10% of the crowd will make a move to give their life to Christ.

Sounds like a game of holy-roller smoke-and-mirrors, delivered with a mighty piledriver, where fans can take in their vision of a lovable Jesus opening a big can of whoop-ass.

Checking out Christian wrestling videos on YouTube, it’s the ultimate battle of good vs. evil (in terms of the ongoing clash with Satan). Southern wrestling alone is weird. Throwing in the element of Jesus brings it to a whole new surreal level.

A girthy wrestler flies off the ropes and delivers a crushing Hangman’s Neckbreaker to his unfortunate opponent. THUD! Like a plague of locusts, or a fatal kiss from Judas, the champ then falls victim to the best finishing move in wrestling—the Guillotine. Adding insult to injury, the hero is handcuffed to the ropes by a pair of rogue thugs then stomped, chocked, and kicked. Clearly, this wrestler is getting crucified. Moments later it gets gravely serious.

“Hold on, we got a little more,” says announcer.

The hero points to the handcuff still locked around his wrist; “As I’m looking at this chain wrapped around my wrist, handcuffed, as I was handcuffed to this, I’m reminded of a message I want to share with you: the only purpose we are here is to serve God!”

Given the simplistic good-versus-evil storylines of regular professional wrestling, a Christian version isn't that much of a stretch. But the ham-handedness here is typical of many "Christian" products. Instead of making it clear that, say, one wrestler represents the side of Jesus and the other the side of the Devil (although the Archangel Michael and Lucifer might be more authentic) and then just having them wrestle, they can't keep themselves from engaging in superfluous evangelizing.

This is a problem with Christian music, too. It's not enough to write a song about dealing with some aspect of life from a Christian perspective; you have to make sure that every single song is about nothing but how cool and awesome Jesus is, full stop. In fact, one of the differences between the good Christian music that just gets called "music" is that it does address other aspects of life while remaining grounded in Christian principles.

Maybe the limited dramatic format of professional wrestling doesn't make its Christian principles very clear without a lot of earnest exposition, but it still seems pretty strange to me. It's kind of like a bait-and-switch - you show up for a wrestling match, but have to sit through a sermon.

Super Bowl a Disaster for Psychic Animals

This year's Super Bowl wasn't just a disaster for Denver's top-rated offense, which was shut down by Seattle's top-rated defense. Most analysts had predicted a close game, but in fact Seattle won one of the most lopsided Super Bowl victories in a long time with a final score of 43-8. The game was also a disaster for psychic animals, most of whom picked Denver to win. Ever since Paul the psychic octopus successfully predicted the outcome of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, there's been something of a psychic animal craze going on. The usual method is to offer psychic animals two pieces of food, with one representing each team. The piece eaten first then represents the winner - except that most of the psychic animals out there picked Denver to come out on top.

• Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl players decided a Denver cake looked more delicious than a treat representing Seattle, choosing incorrectly for the second year in a row.
• More puppies, this time on Jimmy Fallon, also foresaw a Broncos win.
• Tyke the raccoon was all over a Denver Bronco’s box.
• After 45 minutes of intense pondering, Pepper the Octopus decided on Denver.
• Thanks to Kiano, a 3-year-old rhino who favored the Broncos, the Blank Point Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa, ended its four-year streak of correct predictions.
• ZooMontana’s Ozzy the grizzly bear almost went for a banana cake with a Seahawks logo made of Nutella, but ended up devouring the Broncos cake instead.
• Two komodo dragons, new to Moody Gardens in Texas, agreed that the Broncos had the game in the bag.
• Orange, a harbor seal at the Maritime Aquarium in Connecticut, was given a chance for a “best of three” prediction — and went for the Broncos twice in a row.
• Le Le, a panda at the Memphis Zoo, was so excited about the Broncos’ chances that he rolled around in the team’s banner for a while after making his pick.
• After six years of correct predictions, Buffett the manatee failed big-time with a Broncos prediction. (His half-brother Hugh, despite his less accurate record, managed to get it right this time.)

Football Magick

In the past I've covered a number of incidents from Africa in which magick was used or thought to have been used to influence soccer matches. Given that belief in magick is widespread in Africa, it's not terribly surprising that a substantial percentage of fans, players, or team owners might try to make use of it in order to increase the odds of victory. More unexpected is a new study that shows even here in the supposedly materialistic United States, half of all American football fans likewise believe supernatural or paranormal forces are at work determining the outcome of games.

Two weeks ahead of the Super Bowl, half of American sports fans say they believe God or a supernatural force is at play in the games they watch, according to a new survey. That percentage includes Americans who pray for God to help their team (26 percent), think their team has been cursed (25 percent) or more generally believe God is involved in determining who wins on the court or in the field (19 percent). Overall, half of Americans fall into one of these groups, according to the survey Public Religion Research Institute released Tuesday.

“As Americans tune in to the Super Bowl this year, fully half of fans — as many as 70 million Americans — believe there may be a twelfth man on the field influencing the outcome,” Public Religion Research Institute CEO Robert Jones said in a statement. “Significant numbers of American sports fans believe in invoking assistance from God on behalf of their favorite team, or believe the divine may be playing out its own purpose in the game.” Football fans were the most likely to pray for their own teams to win, with 33 percent saying they ask God to intervene in games, compared to 21 percent of fans of other sports. They were also more likely to think their teams were cursed (31 percent compared to 18 percent) and to take part in rituals before or during games (25 percent to compared to 18 percent).

The reality of professional sports is a harsh one, in which the difference between the best and worst players in any position is tiny at best. The structure of games and matches amplify those differences, such that even a player's passing bad mood can make the difference between a game-winning performance and a dismal one. Such tiny, imperceptible events that make so much difference in the final score primes fans for all sorts of superstitious behavior. On the other hand, I did once try an experiment to see if I could influence football games with magick and the team went from a losing record to a winning streak that lasted for the duration of the spell. So I suppose you never know.

Runner of the Beast

The latest harbinger of the apocalypse manifested this last weekend at a cross-country meet in Kentucky, where runner Codie Thacker was randomly assigned the number 666. Fortunately for the rest of us, Thacker refused to play out her role in the cosmic drama by declining to race, once more sending the forces of evil on their way.

Runner Codie Thacker said she was assigned a bib Saturday with the number, “666,” which many Christians associate with the biblical Antichrist or Satan. The Whitley County High School student said she asked for another number, but officials with the Kentucky High School Athletic Association declined.

“I just don’t believe that 666 should be a number that’s anywhere on your body, and I did not want that number associated with me,” Thacker said. “It kind of made me sick.” The number is mentioned as the “mark of the beast” in the Bible’s Book of Revelations, and some Christians believe it’s a harbinger of the apocalypse and try to avoid it.

Now I have a couple of more serious thoughts about this. First off, it seems to me that if somebody has a religious objection to wearing the number 666 it's no different than Thelemites being attracted to numbers like 418 and 93. But what's odd about this case is that according to race officials the numbers were assigned and issued to the runners in advance, and they only refused to give Thacker a new one because she asked on the day of the race rather than ahead of time.

That makes the situation hard to evaluate. On the one hand, if Thacker knew all along what her number would be, she may have made her request on the day of the race with the specific intention being refused, just so that she could get into the media as the latest supposedly oppressed Christian victim. However, if the race officials are lying about the numbers being issued ahead of time, they are failing to honor their stated policy of allowing number changes based on religious objections.

Fake Illuminati Meets Real Super Bowl

Following Sunday's Super Bowl the conspiracy theorists were out in force, claiming that during her halftime performance Beyonce Knowles made the "Illuminati sign" which is apparently given by forming a vaguely triangular diamond shape with the thumbs and forefingers. I suppose this is supposed to resemble the eye in the triangle logo associated with the shadowy cabal, though it really kind of doesn't. Naturally, this is a gesture that in all my years of studying esotericism I have never once seen linked to the Illuminati, even in fiction. I say naturally because really, like the supposed modern Illuminati themselves, this is a complete pile of nonsense. It doesn't matter that this "sign" previously had nothing to do with the Illuminati myth; it's a gesture that a celebrity made, so of course it must be suspect. One wonders how frantic true believers in the Illuminati conspiracy must be just going about their daily lives, given that celebrities make gestures all the time - you know, just like everybody else.

During Beyonce’s performance, she unmistakably made the triangular sign of the Illuminati which set conspiracy theorists’ tongues wagging and their online keyboard fingers keying. There are those who believe the sign was flashed on purpose by the famed singer while believing that she knows all about the suggestion of the sign.Then again, there are others who simply think Beyonce was sending a secret message to her entrepreneur-entertainer husband Jay-Z who uses a somewhat triangular-shaped diamond as his logo for his Roc-A-Fella Records endeavor.

Trademarking Religious Expression?

New York Jets backup quarterback Tim Tebow is a controversial figure in the National Football League. This is not due to his ability on the field, as Tebow is a decent but not amazing player. Rather, it is because of his highly public Christian beliefs. While most football players are Christian, just like most Americans, Tewbow is incredibly over-the-top about it. Last season with the Denver Broncos he took to kneeling down and praying after successful plays, which sports commentators began describing as "Tebowing." Debate raged over whether Tebow was merely an especially devout Christian or in fact a grandstanding narcissist, and now Tebow himself appears to have answered that question - by trying to trademark his own name as a term for prayer.

A management and consulting firm representing New York Jets back-up quarterback and evangelical sports icon Tim Tebow has moved one step closer to holding the trademark "Tebowing" for use on things as widespread as clothing, pencil sharpeners and holiday ornaments.

Tebow has long been very public about his Christian faith. In college, he sported Bible verses on his eye black, which the NCAA went on to ban after his graduation. Tebow invoked God frequently at news conferences and wrote at length about his faith and growing up the son of evangelical missionaries the Philippines in an autobiography.

"Tebowing" became part of the American lexicon when Tebow, then a second year player for the Denver Broncos, was photographed bowing in prayer in the end zone on one knee, helmeted head bowed a top a clenched fist. It quickly became an Internet meme.

Topless Protester Accosts Psychic Pig

Admit it - you clicked on this one just for the headline.

In the tradition of Paul the Psychic Octopus, who showed a remarkable ability to pick winning teams during the 2010 FIFA World Cup, various animals have been enlisted to help predict the winning teams for this year's Euro 2012 Tournament. One of these animals is Funtik, a Ukrainian pig who predicts the outcomes of matches by eating out of a bowl bearing the winning team's flag. Last Friday, as preparations were being made to feed Funtik so that he could predict the result of a match between Portugal and the Czech Republic, a protester burst into his pen. She proceeded to remove her shirt and began shouting slogans denouncing the tournament.

Funtik is given two bowls daily to eat from, each marked with the national flag of two teams playing each other at the finals. Those who have faith in his psychic powers say the bowl he eats from first will prove to be the winner on the night.

But even before a fan zone steward could bring in his food - a bowlful each for Portugal and the Czech Republic - an activist from feminist group Femen barged into the pen. Olexandra Nemchinova, 31, threw off her blouse to reveal the words "F... Euro 2012" on her torso and began shouting slogans denouncing the tournament, being co-hosted by Ukraine and Poland. Stewards led Ms Nemchinova out of the pen and handed her over to the local police.

The group carries out topless protests to highlight the growth of the sex industry in Ukraine and has targeted the championship - which it says feeds sex tourism - and UEFA president Michel Platini.

Funtik seemed unmoved by the protest, and the display apparently did nothing to blunt his psychic powers. He ate from the bowl representing Portugal, and Portugal did indeed go on to win the match. It remains to be seen whether or not his predictions remain accurate throughout the tournament, topless protesters notwithstanding.

Now That's A Spell!

In the past I've mused on how possible it would be to summon a lighting bolt to strike a specific target, and commented on how something like that would probably be the closest a real magician could get to replicating fantasy-novel class magick. You need to have the right underlying condition, an ongoing thunderstorm, but circumstances in which lightning is going to strike somewhere nearby the required probability shift to make it strike where you want is a lot lower than what you might initially think - to the point that on a good day a good magician could probably make it happen. According to this story out of Congo, such a thing might have actually happened recently during a soccer match.

Accusations of witchcraft have been launched after a blast of lightning reportedly struck dead an entire football team in Congo, whilst their opponents were unharmed.

Daily Kinshasa newspaper L'Avenir explained: "Lightning killed at a stroke 11 young people aged between 20 and 35 years during a football match. The athletes from Basanga [the home team] curiously came out of this catastrophe unscathed."

According to the Congolese newspaper, 30 other people had received burns at the weekend fixture.

Suspicion of nefarious magic was aroused not just because one team was untouched but because the games was in the balance with a one-all scoreline.

Now this always could have been a coincidental freak accident, but it's a remarkable enough one that I know I would suspect a spell if I had been there and watched it happen. Soccer magick is quite common in Africa, as I've covered on this blog a number of times. If the score of the game was a factor it suggests that the spell was cast not long in advance of the strike, which makes it all the more impressive. Since weather magick relies on something akin to the butterfly effect of chaos theory to work, the more immediate the spell the more powerful the magician. I'll have to see if I can replicate a controlled lightning strike with my methods one of these days, though hopefully I can find a situation to test it on that won't involve the loss of life.

Muggle Quidditch Invasion of Britain Continues

Back in March I covered the first Muggle Quidditch match played in England. As Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is British, it might seem strange that this version of her fictional game was invented in America. However, as I noted in my previous post, creating sadder, more watered-down versions of cultural treasures from other nations is pretty much what we Americans do. In the eighties it was the Croissan'Wich, and today it's Muggle Quidditch. And don't even get me started on the chow mein sandwich, invented in Fall River, Massachusetts. Given that chow mein is a sad American substitute for real Chinese food to begin with, putting it in a sandwich is a whole other level of suckage. But I digress.

Julia Rivera is a die-hard Harry Potter fan, and she is a natural athlete. So she decided to combine the two and formed the first Quidditch league at Kennett High School.

“It’s so much fun,” said Rivera, a Kennett sophomore. “There’s a lot of laughs to see everyone get so into it. After people play, they realize it’s more difficult than they were expecting.”

I don't think anyone who's ever tried to run holding a stick between their legs would expect this version of Quidditch to be easy. See, that's why the brooms are supposed to fly...

NBA Goes Supernatural

It seems like television series dealing with the paranormal are a dime a dozen these days. Due to their continuing popularity, even sports franchises are now getting into the act. Back in January the National Basketball Association announced a new paranormal investigation series which was original scheduled to start in mid-March, but should be starting up any day now. The name of the show? NBA Nights.

According to show insiders, Kobe Bryant will become suspicious that certain Minnesota players may be a different sort of wolf altogether when Darko Milicic checks in to the game unshaven, haggard, and playing with an unusual ferocity. After the final buzzer, when the Lakers discover deep gouges on the basketball—apparently sinister claw marks that "weren't made by the dribbling of anything human"—it's up to a trench-coated Kobe to chase down Milicic as a full moon casts ominous shadows across L.A.

"Will Darko be friend or foe?" a press release for the half-hour postgame teaser read in part. "Can the commanding but shadowy figure known only as 'the Commish' turn a league of unruly on-court rivals into an elite midnight squad of monster hunters? Who can be trusted, and who is hiding what? Alliances will be forged and shattered, team loyalty will be tested, and everything NBA players think they know about one another will change as they step across the threshold into a darker, more mysterious world."

NBA Nights will reportedly feature a broad, constantly revolving cast of characters, with weekly episodes showcasing every franchise in the league: Emeka Okafor pursues zombies in New Orleans, Andrew Bogut and Mike Dunleavy battle thawed-out vikings in Milwaukee, and Kobe and his Lakers teammates realize the entire Los Angeles crowd is a swarm of soul-eating demons. However, the NBA is promising a larger, deeper story will unfold as the season goes on.

So will it be any good? I have a hard time imagining this concept working, but then again, we do live in a "darker, more mysterious world" than most of us generally imagine. Apparently, that goes for the world of professional sports as well.