HISTORY (OCCult, 1980s; '85-6)


[from two columns: one by Bill Heidrick ('Blood Libel', 1985), and 
  another: 'PRESS CLIPS: Son of Man Bites Dog', 1986) by the Order's 
  Frater Superior, both within 'The Magical Link' -- the periodical 
  for Caliphate OTO members, put out by Order's HQ (CA-95/NY-96); these 
  articles appear to be fairly reasonable assessments of the media 
  hysteria (the latter mainly in Britain), and contain a neutral if
  at times favorable understanding of Satanism, especially within the
  first article.  perhaps this is due a proximity to the Church of 
  Satan (OTO and CoS HQs were located fairly close, geographically, 
  during a period preceeding these writings) and/or their philosophic
  similarities (many Satanists ascribe the origins of modern Satanism
  to such writers as Crowley and Nietzsche).  the latter article 
  generally makes fun of the silly things which Christians and the 
  media that quotes them have said about the O.T.O., which 
  demonstrating a lack of substance surrounding the whole affair.]


The Blood Libel

     In the last few months, in the USA, an ancient evil 
has surfaced.  This is the infamy known as "the blood libel."  
The news media have carried stories, and one major TV
network has actually aired a "documentary" on the quaint
subject of Satanist child murder.  Beyond the fourth estate
this curious piece of emotional arson has found true
believers among investigative agencies and citizens.
Beloved Thelemites and friends.  George Santayana wrote:
"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive
it."   Here is the truth.  Here is history.

     Tens of thousands of children vanish in the world every
year.  Most return.  Some are found.  Some are prostituted.
Some are murdered.  Some are savaged.  Many just leave home
as my grandfather did at age 16.  This has been going on since
there were human children in the world.  The numbers change with
population and hard times; but like any seed there is a loss in
every generation....  

power over minds.  There are people who deliberately use the
grief of parents as an unspeakable road to power.  This is
how they did it 2,000 years ago, and how they are using it
against good people now.

     At the dawn of the last Aeon, there was a new Cult in
the Roman Empire.  It consisted mostly of unlettered persons,
of the poorer classes.  This Cult did not believe in much,
just love (Agape) and the teachings of a Magister Templi
called Joshua....

... recitation of quotations from Joshua's more personal
remarks....  One of these remarks may have had to do with
the blood-red color of wineń… and a macabre just
about human sacrifices still being occasionally performed
by poor women in the near-by Vale of Hinnom.  Typically a
lady found with child, and unmarried, had to get rid of the
baby fast.  There was a death penalty for un-wed mothers in
those days.

     The valley called Hinnom was once a place of sacrifice
to the local Baal.  Such women were allowed to expose their
babies there.  The more disturbed would sometime [sic] kill
the baby, perhaps as an act of defiance to the god who made
men immune to this particular problem....

     The Christian writers of the first 150 years refer
increasingly to the body and blood of their Jesus Christ
(this is Greek for "Joshua the Messiah").  In the earliest
instances, this reference seems to imply kinship with the
Rabbi Joshua, not any sort of ritual consumption of symbolic
flesh and blood under the guise of bread and wine....

     By the second century, a very different public view of
the actions of the Christians had formed.  Largely because
of the lack of participation in public sacrifices and an
abstinance from meat (at least meat such as was commonly
sold in those times, being meat from the temple abbatoirs),
the Christians were roundly denounced as Atheists.  The
ancient governments used public acts of worship as an
integral part of the political system.  Since these Christians
tended to keep mostly to themselves and to eschew sacrifice,
they were held to be possible traitors to the State.  Some
unfortunate things happened, notably the public execution of
Polycarp.  According to Irenaeus (c. 120 to 201 e.v.), one
particular instance occurred in a Greek community.  Suspecting
something, Greeks (Irenaeus doesn't say if they acted
officially or as vigilantes) captured some slaves of
Christians.  These slaves evidently were not Christians
themselves.  

     Under torture, the slaves were made to talk about the
religoius practices of their masters. The slaves quoted
their masters as saying that "their communion was of the
body and blood of Christ."  Official investigations of
charges of cannibalism followed.  It should be pointed out
that some Greek mystery religions of the time did have a
cannibalistic element, notably the Orphic and Dionesiac.
The Mithraic mysteries were much more widely spread, were
often practiced by Christian family members and had a "god
eating" aspect....

     The early Christians made a practice of adopting
infants left exposed and abandoned in public places.
Although this act of charity was probably intended simply
to add to the numbers of Christians and to relieve suffering,
it did seem to support the slander that Christians were
sacrificing babies to their god.  Before long disappearnces
of children left unattended in the market place were
attributed to Christians.  Runaways were said to be the
victims of Christians.  The occasional maniac who actually
did kill children was sometimes called a Christian by the
public.  Some fallen pagans actually may have emulated the
public view of what the "bad Christians do" in those times
of long ago.

... In time Christianity became confounded in the minds of
the worshippers with Mithraism; and the "Gospels" (post
100 e.v.) were written, mixing the stories of Rabbi Joshua
with the doings of Mithras.  This more practical faith
spread among the legions and the provinces until the Roman
Emperors appropriated it to the State as a valuable asset.
Suppression of the former Roman religion followed, and the
"Blood Libel" shifted off the Christians as an explanation
for child vanishments.

     Over the intervening centuries, the Blood Libel has
continued to play a major role in suppression of minority
religious and ethnic groups.  Undoubtedly the worst case
is the use of this monstrous lie to drive pogroms against
Eastern Jewish communities in the 16th and 17th centuries.
It is to that period that we owe the coining of the term
"blood libel".  Whole villages were murdered by Cossacks
on the bizarre slander that Jewish families sacrificed
Christian babies as the "lambs" each Passover.

     Gilles de Raiz, the military advisor of Joan of Arc,
was tried and convicted of child murder in Satanic and
sexual rituals, and is remembered under the name "Blue
Beard".  It is possible that Blue Beard actually did these
things, but it is known that he was taken out for political
reasons.  The court of King Louis the XIVth of France had
a scandal of "Black Masses" with human sacrifice attached
to one particular priest and some ladies seeking advantage
at court.  The Reformationsaw many instances of Protestants
claiming the Catholic nuns were harlots who bricked up
their bastard get in the walls of nunneries.  Again, there
may have been some instances of this owing to the practice
of Maria Theresa of Austria in committing "loose girls" to
life in convents.

     In every generation there are lost and brutalized
children.  In every generation the government tries to
ignore infant mortality and vanishments as a problem too
great to solve.  In ever generation the just outcries of
bereaved parents are taken up by well-meaning and by
unscrupulous alike as a crisis needing attention and a
contemptible road to power.

     Today the cry is out against witches and Satanists.
The pogrom is being mounted in the halls of the US Congress;
and you, dear reader, are the intended goat of public
sacrifice!  Because Witches in the present day are more often
middle class and above average education, it may be possible
to prevent the burning again.  Don't think that Thelemites
are safe because they aren't Satanists and need not be Wicca.
The radical Christian right does not make any such 
distinction.  

     For that matter, about 1/3 of O.T.O. members are also
involved in Wicca, abot 1/3 Jewish (these are overlapping
estimates) and an unknown but small minority of O.T.O.
members may actually believe in the Christian Devil.  I
chanced to see the other day a segment of programming in
which a video showed someone with a "Born-again Pagan"
sign.  The commentator said "atheist".  It doesn't seem to
penetrate to the average Christian that non-Christian
religions are real and valid.  The average Christian is
blind to the fact that only Christians can become Christian
Satanists.  Most non-Christians simply don't believe in
either the Christian God or the Christian Devil.  How could
they believe such things and not be Christian?

     Here's what has happened.  No organized underground of
child stealing Satanists have been found, probably owing to
no such crime organization existing.  There are isolated
maniacs and crazies who have tortured and maimed children.
There are a lot of missing children.  The radical Christian
right has decided to attack the 1st Amendment of the US
Constitution through alleging that pagans are responsible
for the missing children.  Lack of any real evidence doesn't
seem to be a problem.  Fundamentalist Christian propaganda
against pagans and wicca is providing a school for child
murders.  Violent crazies of Christian background listen to
this crap and come to think that what they do in their
sickness is "Satanism", "Witchcraft" and the like.  That is
what they say when caught.  These unfortunates assemble
doggerel ritual from movies and bible-thumper sermons.
Some of them seek us out in their quest for company.  Some
of them kill our children!

     Here was the first step.  Senator Jesse Helms, R.N.C.
introduced this 1986 Treasury and Post Office appropriations
bill: "No funds appropriated under this act shall be used to
grant, maintain, or allow tax exemptions to any cult, organi-
zation or other group that has a purpose, or that has any
interest in, the promoting of Satanism or witchcraft."  This
ammendment [sic] to the bill passed the US Senate by voice
vote.  Next came the House of Represenatives, as HR3036.  The
amendment was quietly cut from the bill on 10/31/85 e.v.,
probably as a Holloween [sic] after thought.  Representative
Walker offered HR3389: "A bill to deny tax exemptions to,
and income tax, estate tax, and gift tax deductions for
contributions to, religious organizations having substantial
interest in the promotion of witchcraft.
	503(n) Religous organizations having a substantial
	       interset in the promotion of witchcraft.

	     (1) In general...not withstanding subsections
	(c) [and] (d) of section 501, any religious or
	apostolic organization which has as its primary
	purpose the promotion of witchcraft or which has
	a substantial interest in the promotion of
	witchcraft shall not be exempt from taxation under
	sec 501(a).
	     (2) Definition of witchcraft --- As used in
	this subsection the term "witchcraft" means the
	purported used of
		a) Power derived from evil spirits;
		b) Sorcery;
		c) Supernatural powers with malicious
		   intent."

     I understand that these follies have temporarily 
failed in the House of Representatives, but they will be
back.  This interesting direction in American politics
seems to be coming from the same Senators and Represen-
tatives who are backing mandatory Christian prayer in
schools and a ban on Abortion....

     A closing note on this subject.  Thelema is as 
vulnerable as the early Christian movement to false
report and misreadings of what we say and publish.
Crowley wrote that he sacrificed a child many times.
We know that he meant contraception, but non-Thelemites
don't.  In particular, there are many people who take
Crowley to mean literal murder by this statement.
It's up to us to correct such a potentially disastrous
misinterpretation.

			Bill Heidrick, G.T.G. [O.T.O.]

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PRESS CLIPS: Son of Man Bites Dog

	Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

THE BRITISH PRESS has given  the O.T.O. some press in April,
most of it bad, some of it hilarious and all of it thought-
provoking.  In the main it was due to Christian groups
trying to defuse criticism, drawing attention away from their
own internal problems by seeking a scapegoat....  

[various Christian-related stories omitted -- very funny;
 leaving in statements about Satanism; a Mr. Knight was
 arrested, it seems, on suspicion of illegal activities]

     After his arrest, an Anglican "task force" called the
Christian Exorcism Study Group provided expert information
on the occult and "Satanism" to the press.  Self-described
"advisors on paranormal theology," they regularly issue a
book of guidelines called *Deliverance* that catalogues
the un-Christian activities of the British Isles....  They
didn't take the common-sense approach and assume that his
"Satanism" was as bogus as his conversion to Christianity.
Instead, several reporters (with the apparent assistance
of the Christian Exorcism Study Group, as we will see)
trotted out the most distorted accounts of the O.T.O. 
published in years.
  
     Mrs. Beskin of the Atlantis Bookshop in London was
interviewed by *The Guardian* concerning "satanists":
"Some of them find great difficulty reading *The Sun* but
they come looking for the most esoteric books....  They
all wear black and bite their nails, as if they really
were scared of the devil.  They can't pay their rates
and have many wives."  However, "about once a year you
get a superior being, a sort of National Fronter, who
knows what he's on about."  When queried about the O.T.O.,
Mrs. Beskin quite correctly pointed out that we were "not
Satanist."  We must thank Mrs. Beskin for that -- she was
the only responsible person to point that simple fact out
to the press.

   The presiding judge in Knight's trial intimated to the
jury that "satanism does exist in this country and that
there are satanic orders devoted to its purposes," a
prejudicial instruction that would probably result in a
mistrial in the U.S.  There were however a few voices of
reason, including the Bishop of Chichester, who warned
of Christians who were so "obsessed by the battle against
evil, they tend to see it everywhere and become unbalanced."


... the official position of the Church of England appears
to be that the O.T.O. is the largest Satanist group in the
world.  Presumably, they also believe that the rest of
nonsense [omitted] involving video-taped initiation rites
applies as well....

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