A pagan in a Christian Bookshop
Leave it out Leviticus by Aries

You know, I'm not too sure that it's safe for me to be associating with you guys all things considered: "We have allowed the legalising of abominations like witchcraft, homosexuality and abortion." And to think I was fooled into believing that you we're mostly harmless except for an interesting approach to sing-songs 'round the camp-fire and a strong attachment to strange jewellery. But no, my immortal soul is apparently in grave danger from "demonic powers behind the evils that we have allowed in to our land." Oh how could I have been so blind? Woe, woe and thrice woe!

I paid a visit to my friendly, neighbourhood, xtian bookshop, ("We give a Bible message to everyone who comes into the shop") and came away with a bunch of one page fact sheets warning me about the dangers that dwell in the world, and wait to entrap me in mind, body and spirit, and well warned I am. For instance: "Hallowe'en is the night when the spirits of the dead and demons visit the earth. That is why people dress up as witches and other frightening things." If these leaflets are typical of the modern xtian's world-view, then there is much to be afraid of. The first two quotes come from, "An Introduction to Intercession and Spiritual Warfare", where the believer is exalted to, "stand in all the armour of God and wrestle in prayer." It may be just a coincidence but I kept thinking of Reichian Body Armour and the joyless life its possession entails. In "Hallowe'en" we are warned against Hallowe'en parties and encouraged, "to find a wholesome alternative and to warn others of the demonic background of what is too often seen as just a harmless bit of fun." Having been raised a Puritan, I'm well aware of the dangers in harmless bits of fun, like Playing Cards. Were you aware that, "The first deck of playing cards was invented in 1392 for King Charles of France who incidentally was insane".  Oh well, say no more; anything done for a loony must be suspect. The Puritans called cards "The Devil's Picture Book", and that's all that we need to know after being told of "The Brothel Game", where people talk dirty with each other using a secret code in the cards, and how the Holy Family are blasphemed in hideous jest; we are then asked if we could then "go on playing with a sinful pack of cards?" But, I ask myself, how can 52 pieces of printed card be sinful? How do we measure sinfulness? What does it look like? What's its weight? Colour? You get my drift?

However, this is nit-picking in the face of faith, especially when, "Witches and those closely associated with the occult use cards to trick and delude men and women into vice, error, deceit, and finally into Hell." And that brings us back to Hallowe'en, doesn't it? By convincing our kiddies that this blasphemous Pagan ritual is harmless fun, you evil witches trick them into dressing up as witches and lure them thus into sin and perdition: "dressing as a witch you could open the way to being involved later with the real thing... Many young people have already been deceived in this way to their cost." I must admit that I'd always assumed that it was commercial exploitation by the business world that has added Hallowe'en to the list of religious festivals that are prostituted in the name of consumerism, and thus enter the public realm. Maybe Satan is a businessman? Why not? It seems imperative that the xtian sees the hand of Satan everywhere; "The attraction in witchcraft is the power that it offers even though this is from Satan." But how is this conclusion arrived at? Well, we know for a start that, "A witch is something that is hateful to God." and we know that God feels this way because He tells us so in  Leviticus 20:6. Now, applying the logic of "who isn't for me is against me", we arrive at the situation where if God gets the hump with someone, they are automatically against him. Remember, there is no third way with Jahweh. By all accounts Satan is some else who's had a falling out with God, and this means that, "Since a real Christian is someone 'Born Again in the Spirit of  God' (1 Peter 1:3-4, John 1:13), Satan is his enemy, and so are witches and all their activities." It boils down to saying, "All my enemies are ganging up on me in a conspiracy", which may turn out to be an existential definition of paranoid delusion. You may, or may not, be pleased to know that witches are not alone in being hateful to God. In fact, I ran out of money before God ran out of people to hate. Spiritualism really rubs God up the wrong way, and again we have this on the authority of Leviticus 20:6; but probably worse in the eyes of the xtian is the possibility that "If there is no judgement then what sort of God do we worship who would consign us to have to live in the presence of tyrants and murderers like Hitler, Stalin, Herod and the like on the other side?" The problem that we have here is our belief in the mythic Just World, where goodness is rewarded and badness punished. And if things don't work out that way, if St Augustine has Vlad the Impaler as a next door neighbour in the hereafter, then the rhetorical basis of xtianity would appear to crumble. The argument that if you are good (ie, do as I tell you) you will go to heaven, and if you are bad (ie: don't do as I tell you) you will go to Hell, no longer has any validity. It could be argued that this Just World belief underlies much of modern society which seems to be coming increasingly under threat as the arbitrary nature of reality becomes apparent. Needless to say, Satan is behind all aspects of spiritualism. Satan, the guy who "knows the Bible better than many Christians", and who sees to it that, "we remain in spiritual darkness". Spiritualism is hopelessly in error in its attempts to communicate with the dear departed; such things are forbidden by God and yet again we can thank Leviticus 20:6 for this information. As for those shades who are 'all very happy here', "Demons can impersonate the dead". Why should they bother? Simple, it's all, "to keep man as he is, and lure him into a false sense of security before destroying him." And as for those healings, "What of the healings that occur in Spiritualist meetings? Those who have experienced them will admit that they do not always last." And to round it all up we have them "trapped by the spawn of Satan's scam", those who have been deeply into Spiritualism have found it almost impossible to leave, such is its hold. People trying to do so have experienced attacks upon their lives." The "Freemason" tract struck me as a master-piece of subtlety. Satan is not directly implicated in this underground cult, although the odd dark hint is let slip when voicing concern that some xtians, "are practising Masons, who do not seem to understand the true nature of Freemasonry. Light cannot have fellowship with darkness." Masons are roundly attacked for their secrecy, their lack of "total allegiance and dependence" on Jesus, their vain presumption that they can achieve anything worthwhile in this world without cutting God in on the action. Worst of all is the hideous, blasphemous horror behind the secret of the Great Architect of the Universe, JAHBULON; that sacrilegious inversion of the Holy Trinity, where JAH=Jehovah, BUL=Baal, and  ON=Osiris. But I always thought that the guy lurking behind burning shrubbery and bossing Moses about went by the name of Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews? Never mind that. With "The New Age of Aquarius" we are on firmer ground, with no need for pussy-footing around. "Christians who know their Bibles will recognise the New Age as only the old deception by Satan, who tempted Adam and Eve... Adam and Eve disobeyed God and let in a new age of evil in which Satan could invade their lives on earth." Apparently the New Age of Aquarius was kept a secret until 1975 when it was formally announced. The Theosophical Society gets implicated here, but exactly how is left a little vague. Clearly this is because, "The New Age has no visible head or organisation (although the Illuminati are probably behind it.) It is a network of Godless ideas such as humanism, pacifism, interfaith religion, feminism, abortion, holistic health, homeopathy, acupuncture, yoga and witchcraft." Goddam! I just knew that foul Illuminati had to be behind anything so Godless. (Ref my "The Aquarian Conspiracy Revealed", Children of Sekhmet Vol 3 No 2). Having said all that, it's claimed that the aim of the New Age is to unify the world under the Lord Maitreya, and centralising world food stocks and finance, "in a credit system, allocating a personal number to everyone." Those who know their Bible (or who watched Omen III) will know that Revelation 13 tells of the Anti-Christ who gives his followers a mark (serial number?) which entitles them alone to buy or sell, and coincidentally, "New Agers consider the number 666 to be spiritually very powerful."

In case you haven't completely gotten the picture yet, we'll put it a little more clearly: "The Bible description of the time of the Anti-Christ and his one world government is beginning to be realised in our lifetime, and it fits the New Age closely ". Whilst the good xtian is born again through the power of Christ and with a little help from a Priest, "New Agers are expected to be re-birthed and receive Luciferic initiation, by their own efforts." In order to combat this Satanic deception the good xtian is urged to be vigilant for New Age terms like: networking; holistic; planetary vision; and finding one's higher self. But enough, I don't think I can take much more of this hate and horror. When I entered that xtian bookshop I also deliberately entered the xtian reality tunnel, and have ended up feeling like Marvin (the Paranoid Android) who wonders how anyone can live in anything so small. He was referring to Arthur Dent's brain; I refer to the xtian reality tunnel, which appears to me to be rather dark and narrow. To be a good xtian I would have to see Satan everywhere; world peace, inter-faith harmony, the good life; anything that threatens to bring happiness is sinful. As a xtian I would be expected to suffer, to sacrifice, to struggle constantly, to accept heavier and heavier burdens, to accept calamities as a test of my faith, to give unthinking obedience, to never once rejoice in the world as it is, never count my blessings, and always, always see myself as fallen and sinful. And after all this, to accept that I may not get rewarded in this life, but have to wait for a putative afterlife for the just rewards for all that I have given up. As mentioned above, this belief in a Just World is a core construct of Christianity, and apart from all that suffering, the only other pleasure of the xtian is gloating over the fact that their opponents will, "have to face God's judgement in the hereafter." Spiritualism of course, "is a dangerous deception from Satan, from which it is extremely difficult to escape. Its end is destruction." As for the little deluded dupes of the New Age, all their efforts are in vain, because, "Even if the New Age does achieve a measure of success, its work will all be destroyed by fire at the end of the world." As for the witches who get their power to harm others direct from Satan on Hallowe'en, eventually they, "are themselves destroyed by the one who gives them this power." Everyone comes to a sticky end, and the xtian caught in a web of guilt, fear and passive sadism, gets a real kick out of knowing that. Leviticus, who gets referred to as an authority on what God does and doesn't like, is 27 chapters of commandments, and shows the basis of many of our current social attitudes; women are of lower value than men; bodily functions that describe women are unclean, ie, child-bearing and menstruation, although to be fair, the emission of semen does make a man unclean for the rest of the day. Coitus, according to God, is for procreation only, in much the same way it is for the beasts of the field. After all, coitus with a woman who is menstruating can only be for the reason of enjoyment, which as far as procreation matters are concerned is a waste of semen. Needless to say, our concept of "sin" comes from the "crime" of wasting semen. Be that as it may, most interesting of all is Leviticus 16, where description of the scapegoat is given, and how "all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites – all their sins" are put on the head of the goat, who is sent out into the desert to die for their sins. Much like the later scapegoat, Jesu Christos. Of all the curious details in Leviticus, the one that the xtians took to their hearts is that of the scapegoat, and there seems to be no sign of a let-up.

Long live Pan!