-Caveat Lector-
an excerpt from:
Other Altars - Roots and Realities of Cultic and Satanic Ritual Abuse and
Multiple Personality Disorder
Craig Lockwood©1993
CompCare Publishers
3850 Annapolis Lane, Suite 100
Minneapolis, MN 55441
612.559.4800/800.328.3330
ISBN 0-89638-363-6
255+pps — out-of-print/one edition.
-----
A very interesting and excellent book.
Om
K
--[9]--
Chapter 9
Sorcerers, Cults, And Black Magic
"The greatest danger to life is the fact that man's food consists entirely of
souls."
-Eskimo shaman, cited by K. Meuli, 1946
Survivors of cults, satanic or otherwise, frequently describe activities,
rituals, and behaviors that closely parallel con-cepts of Western sorcery and
black magic—as opposed to those of contemporary witchcraft.
Sorcery, as humankind's prototechnology, was our earliest way to control the
world of terrifying random forces, to harness those things that we could not
see or understand.
Today, paying homage to sorcerers, valuing them as superior ethnic/cultural
personalities without fully understanding their sometimes lethal complexity,
is fashionable in certain circles. Inherent in this kind of cultural
obsequiousness is the denial of the more brutal and violent acts that were,
and often continue to be, an important part of the technology of sorcery.
Ritual abuse at its foundational base is a form of social sorcery. Drape it
in the robes of Dionysus, disguise it with Druidry, camouflage it as
Christian heresy, perpetrate it as magical pornography, satanize it with the
trappings of the black mass, smother it with any form of traumatizing
spirituality-it is still abusive social sorcery.
Sorcery—Motivated by Power
Sorcery's antecedents are ancient. Many accounts of black magic can be found
in Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Greek, Roman, and early European literature.
Today, some form of sorcery is practiced in nearly every human society.
Some languages, such as French, from which the word sorcerer—sorcier—comes,
have only one word for witch and sorcerer. Although English makes a
distinction between the two, the words are often used interchangeably.
Contemporary Western witches, conscious of the potential for the negative
misuse of witchcraft, and in an effort to distance themselves from what they
believe to be the evil potential of some magical practices, prefer to make a
careful distinction between the two activities by referring to their practice
as "The Craft."
"Witchcraft, and magic," notes Colin Wilson in his book The Occult, "depend
on the higher levels of consciousness, a wider grasp of reality ... they are
closely related to mysticism. Sorcery may depend upon supernormal powers but
... characteristic ... is its will-to-power: the desire for money,
possessions, sexual conquest, position."
Wilson believes that cities and urbanization, and "mankind's sexual
obsession," caused sorcery to outstrip shamanism and create an "independent
existence."
Sorcery, in its most traditional individually practiced guise, often deals in
calling up either the spirits of the dead or supernatural powers or entities,
who are then requested to perform the magical task at hand.
Anthropologist Frank Vivelo offers a somewhat different model of the two
activities. In his Cultural Anthropology Handbook, Vivelo maintains that
sorcery requires "esoteric training," while witchcraft depends more on "a
psychic gift by which [practitioners] can produce effects with a minimum of,
or no, paraphernalia."
Sorcerers not only possess the evil-intentioned esoteric knowledge that sets
them apart from shamans and witches, they also possess the will and unbending
intent to use the knowledge to do harm. Psychopathology may well be an
important element in a sorcerer's makeup.
Sorcerers seem to view themselves as the traditional researchers of the
occult. For this reason, sorcerers in almost any society are considered
dangerous among themselves and evil by outsiders.
Sorcerers charge for their services. This may be due to the perception that
they are more dangerous and more effective than witches. However, those who
practice white magic also have the ability, at least technically, to practice
sorcery.
Since a working knowledge of ritual, spell, propitiation of spirits and, in
some societies, the use of drugs or psychotropics is the only physical
requirement to be a sorcerer, many tales tell of it white" magicians who
turned "black."
Sorcerers share certain characterstics with those who permform nonharmful
ceremonial magic. T. M. Luhrmann in Persuasions of the Witch's Craft lists
these assumptions as 1) "conflation of the self, the thin divide which
separates subjectivity from an objective world"; 2) assumption that "the
world is nonrandom, patterned, meaningful and often intentionally compelled";
3) analogy as inferentially valid ... analogies provide both "insight, land]
knowledge of an unknown physical reality."
Sorcerers epitomize the magic-believer's tendency to ego, centricity.
Conversation with a sorcerer leaves the impression that the strange and
subjective nature of sorcerers' experiences makes distinguishing between
objective and subjective reality difficult for them. This quality, in fact,
may be an important part of the sorcerer's technique.
When Carlos Castaneda in A Separate Reality asks Don Juan, the Yaqui
sorcerer, what he means by "will," Don Juan points to a place just below his
navel. He tells Castaneda that the sorcerer's will, a series of luminous
fibers, emanates through a psychic gap in the lower abdomen. "It's an
opening. It allows a space for the will to shoot out like an arrow."
Puzzled, Castaneda presses Don Juan to explain "will." Don Juan replies:
"Will is what sends a sorcerer through a wall; through space; to the moon, if
he wants."
Skilled sorcerers mix a peculiar charisma with a compelling and sometimes
frightening intensity. They "rearrange" reality so that what they see is what
you get.
Sorcery, Certitude, and Science
Individuals and cults who practice sorcery create their own world. Within
that world, experimentation is constant. New techniques and rituals are
learned, created, or synthesized. When desired results are not achieved, the
ritual itself or elements within the ritual are rearranged or modified.
Little is discarded.
Sorcery is based on certitude, as opposed to fakery or sleight-of-hand,
though sorcerers will use anything to make their sorcery appear
successful-including trickery. Successful sorcery requires firm,
single-minded, unhesitating belief, functioning beyond morality's and, on
occasion, sanity's boundaries.
Ethnobotanist Wade Davis, working on his doctoral degree at Harvard, received
a commission to research vodoun cults and the gruesome way in which Haitian
sorcerers, bokors, created zombies—men and women believed to be dead, but
magically resurrected and under the bokor's control. Davis soon noted the
extent to which extemporizing often accompanied the preparation of the
antidote to the highly poisonous tetradotoxin—containing zombificant—a
French-creole word for the toxic powder used to create a zombi.
While the antidote might be important, states Davis, "It was strictly the
power of the bokor that revived the dormant zombi" and allowed him or her to
actually rise from the grave. This required certitude about the dose and
administration of the zombificant and faith in the bokor's absolute personal
power to raise the corpse.
Davis's scientifically documented breakthrough in under, standing vodoun
technology came when he was able to establish that the bokors' sorcery in
raising the zombi was a social action far more potent than the generally
inert compounds they prepared as antidotes to the zombificant.
Though certain bokors compounded antidotes that contained the plant Datura
stramonium as an active ingredient, Davis's research led him to believe that
it was the potent use of not only the drug, but resocialization that
eventually produced the complete zombi.
Exhuming the body, which had been buried several days before, after being
pronounced dead by doctors in a hospital, the bokor recited spells and
violently beat the soon- to-be-zombi, then bound him tightly. This was a
magical act, done to prevent the victim's soul, his ti bon ange, from
reentering the body.
Traumatized from the experience of realizing he had been poisoned, "died,"
been buried, and then exhumed, with an important element of his soul now the
property of a bokor, the bound victim is shoved before a cross and rebaptized
with a new name.
Soon thereafter the victim is fed a "paste containing a strong dose of a
potent psychoactive drug, the 'zombi's cucumber,' which brings on a state of
disorientation and amnesia."
What has happened is that a profound chemical reaction has caused an almost
total loss of any ego-state. The brain works, but the "mind" has been
absented.
Chemically and psychologically, the victim has also been dissociated from
society. He no longer knows who he is or what he is doing. He is alive, but
"dead"—a zombi.
Vodoun is a closed belief system that permeates the fabric of Haitian
society. Cults and cult-like secret societies exist everywhere. As opposed to
the ritual cults reported in the United States and Europe, who use the
technology of dissociation to produce a labor pool, Haitian sorcerers use
zombification to impose social order and a rough form of justice upon
community members who cannot be dealt with through normal legal channels.[1]
A Sense of Proportion
While it seems an individual must possess sociopathic tendencies to be a
successful sorcerer, a careful sense of proportion is also required to make
the sorcery work.
Axiomatic to sorcery is the understanding that the complex forces of black
magic are subject to the same laws of proportion as any other kind of force.
This means the target must be less powerful than the sorcerer. Sorcerers who
tackle subjects more powerful than themselves are reputed to have little
effect.
Sorcery's failure rate is legend. As with automobile drivers, not all who
practice sorcery are great behind the wheel. Variations in skill,
intelligence, and knowledge of technique affect the outcome of any endeavor.
Adequate materials are needed to produce adequate effects. "You cannot
produce a thunderstorm," wrote Aleister Crowley,
" unless the materials exist in the air at the time, and a Magician who could
make rain in Cumberland might fail lamentably in the Sahara."[2]
Appropriate energy is another requirement. Nuclear isotopes, which will drive
a submarine, won't power a jet aircraft, or produce intoxication.
The Tao of Sorcery
Central to all technologies is the description of how they work; sorcery is
no exception. Any good French sorcier, Mexican nagual, Puerto Rican santero,
Chilean machi, Cuban mayombero, Peruvian yatiri, Haitian bokor, or Brazilian
quimbandero is capable of explaining the complex workings of his or her own
magi-cal practice. A nonmagician, however, would find the terms as confusing
as an explanation by a physicist on the behavior of sub-atomic particles.
Here sorcerer and physicist have something in common. Sorcerers and
physicists act as insightful technicians who possess a special language that
describes the way they can control unseen forces.
Sorcery and physics may be mutually exclusive, but sorcerers and physicists
believe with absolute certainty in the power they accrue through their
various methods of obtaining knowledge. As evidence, a physicist can point to
Hiroshima; a sorcerer can point to the survival of magical practices
throughout history.
While spells and incantations may differ from formulae and equations, all are
formed of a human need to control environment and explain events. The
greatest differences between physics and sorcery lie in their ability to
produce observable results. But sorcerers, since they also control language,
can get around their failures by deeming the results of the sorcery
effective—in their own terms
Sorcery's Pancultural Material Bases
Proper material bases for sorcery, according to Crowley in Magick in Theory
and Practice, are needed to produce results. Blood, bone, hair, and nails are
widely regarded as traditional it vehicles of animal force," used to do harm
to other humans. To these are added implements and symbols, depending on the
tradition and on the ritual.
In Witchcraft in Western India, Sohaila Kapur says that in his country
sorcerers require many of the same kinds of objects as Western sorcerers,
including sacrificial knives; specially shaped ritual vessels made from
precious metals, human skulls, or certain clays; lamps and candles; robes or
ritual garments; human bones; and one idiosyncratically culture—specific
item, a portable furnace—shaped like a yoni, a vagina.
Corpses, body parts, and brains of children and adults are used in much the
same way as in Western sorcery, for a variety of purposes from divination to
the creation of compounds, potions, ointments, and poisons. Afro-Caribbean
sorcerers, practitioners of Tibetan Bon sorcery, and various eastern European
traditions, require many of the same ritual items.
Cult Sorcery
While sorcerers traditionally tended to act alone, evidence in ethnographic
accounts from other societies—as well as in the literature of Western
magic—suggests that they can act in concert.
Today, with cults of sorcery and black magic in evidence, the trend toward
malefic group action seems to be gaining popularity.
Many survivors' accounts claim that severe traumatic abuse, generally of a
sexual nature but frequently including acts of either simulated or actual
sacrifice, occurs during rituals.
Survivors frequently mention the use of "material bases" such as blood,
urine, feces, or other kinds of physical matter. Most maintain that the
rituals seem to be "scripted" and proceed along a predetermined course.
Another element of technique is important to the creation of power during the
ritual. Sorcerers "are impelled by their emotions and desires to work
themselves into their part, rather like actors on the stage, except that
theirs is a deeper involvement. Dramatization is essential."[3]
Rituals are deemed effective when the sorcerer perceives that the energy
created in the ceremony is transformed into power or that an independent
"power" or an "entity" attracted by the energy of the ritual is brought under
control, and can then be directed. First, however, the energy must be
possessed.
Possessing released magical energy, as a concept, is difficult to understand.
Magical literature treats the subject at some length.
Aleister Crowley, who practiced magic and wrote at length about this kind of
energy, believed it could be produced during a ritual's "dramatic climax."
According to Crowley, when the ritual peaks and "excitement becomes
ungovernable," the sorcerer's "entire conscious being" undergoes a "spiritual
spasm." At this moment the "supreme adjuration" is given.
Activity such as this seems to be limited only to practitioners of black
magic.
Perhaps Crowley, who used both drugs and sex in his ceremonies and rituals,
may have had more than spiritual spasms.
In an interview, Jolene, a survivor who had been used by her aunt's cult as a
child prostitute, and at thirteen was thought to be too old, relates how she
was put through a ritual in which she was forced to have sex with a dog. Note
how she uses the first person.
It's supposed to be my initiation into the next degree. I'm switched into
Poodle (a canine alter), and I'm in the middle (of a magic circle drawn in
ashes) on my hands and knees. There's people here I've never seen before. I
think they're charging money. The other priestess rubs my behind with
something, sort of an ointment I guess, something they've made from one of
the kennel bitches who's in heat.
They shot me up [injected with drugs] before and I'm not supposed to feel
anything. Then they bring in this Rottweiler, and I can tell he's already
been given the bitch's scent. He's big and they can't hold him back and he
grabs my neck with his teeth. He's humping on me and then the head priestess
just reaches out 'n grabs his collar, pulls his head up, and opens up his
neck with this obsidian knife. The blood's everywhere, they're trying to
catch it in this urn they use. I'm covered with blood. Then she hands me the
knife and says I got to cut off his [testicles] and
Testing or quantifying the magical power of these types of rituals is not
possible at this time. So nonsorcerers may choose to accept claims that some
kind of power is released, or not, on face value.
If hearing an account of this brutal ceremony produces a strong emotional
response in listeners, it can be assumed that the ritual's participants feel
those emotions on a far deeper and more frightening level.
Consensus and Reality
Becoming supernaturally powerful as a sorcerer requires giving up the outer
society's consensual agreement about what constitutes reality. Some
traditions insist it is achieved by giving up, severing, or ritually
"killing" that unidentifiable, unlocatable, immaterial human dimension of an
organism which Western cultures call "soul."
Killing the soul, so that it may journey to the land of the dead, be reborn
or substantively changed, is accomplished in a variety of ways in different
cultures. Vodoun initiates practice a rigorous and strict ascetic training
that includes fasting, ritual illness, the use of pain, isolation, ritual
death, spirit possession, and, in some instances, drugs to bring on or
intensify the dissociative state that would produce the death of soul.
During the initiation the initiate is told that his soul, displaced during
the process of possession by a loa, a spiritual deity, will be taken from
him, placed in a special container on the houngan's (priest's) altar, and
kept safe for a year.[4]
Spiritual traditions differ, but common to all is the concept of transition,
either physical, or mental, or both. This "place," where nothing previously
agreed upon is operative, has many names: "lowerworld," "land of the dead,"
"place of the ancestors," "dreamtime."
Each human culture has developed, adopted, or modified spiritual or magical
traditions that include these elements. Sometimes transition is achieved by
combining religious tradi-tions in a process called syncretization.
Sorcerers from non-Christian cultures, having encountered Christianity as
subject peoples, often appropriate what the perceive as powerful "Christian
forces" to their own uses.
Anthropologist Johan Reinhard in a National Geographic article, "Sacred Peaks
of the Andes," cites an example: "For the perfect joining of Christian and
Pagan beliefs it's hard to beat what one villager in southern Peru told me:
'Saint Peter holds the key,' not to the Christian heaven but rather 'to enter
the world of the dead in Nevado Coropuna.'"
Sorcerer's Secret
Entering "the world of the dead" can be achieved by a variety of
methods already mentioned, but there is a shortcut: blood sacrifice.
Highly skilled sorcerers, who in some societies possess all the credentials
of shamans and witches, may deal specifically in larger kinds of animal
sacrifices, and in some cultures, human sacrifice. Human sacrifice is imbued
with the greatest degree or level of power, and, because of this, sacrificial
sorcerers are the most feared.
But even human sacrifice can be taken one step further. This is the
sorcerer's ultimate secret: the most profoundly power-inducing act a human
being can participate in is the combination of sex and human blood sacrifice.
One MPD patient described in an interview with Beyond Survival magazine how
this happened during a biker-cult sacrificial ritual:
They had thirteen guys picked as part of the ritual. My legs and arms were
tied down ... First they cut me, here. [Shows scars on both thighs and arms.]
There's a lotta blood everywhere.
Each one took turns raping me. The dude who was marked for the sacrifice was
the last one. He knew he was marked. He'd, like, seriously fucked up; the
cult was totally pissed at him, and he was facing heavy prison time, maybe
even a death sentence ...
"So, they're in a circle, and he's raping me, and they're, like, chanting.
just as he came, one dude yanks back his head and sticks his knife into the
big artery next to his collar bone, he's dead in seconds. Then they cut off
his arms ... That's how they took his power, so he wouldn't lose it getting
shanked [knifed] ... in the joint [prison]."
If events such as these are true, to witness them surely leads the human
psyche into crisis; to participate in this kind of ritualized evil forces the
mind through the dark doorway beyond rationality.
Those who have not witnessed such events cannot imagine the horror; those who
have, and survived, can never truly describe them. If the intent of this kind
of sorcery is to accrue power, it must be as dangerous as handling exposed
high-voltage wires. Dissociation may well be the only effective insulation.
For those who practice these kinds of rituals, the objective is to come back
from the brink with knowledge. To do this is to master life and to accrue
power. But such power is as dangerous to the human mind as raw electricity.
To drop the shield of dissociation, to succumb to this power, is to risk
insanity and death. So potent are even the memories that they can destroy the
survivor who remembers.
Mystery surrounds just how sexual sacrifice creates harnessable power. Short
of initiation into a cult that performs this 'kind of evil magic, it is
impossible for an outsider to know. The key is believed to be found in the
terrifying moments just before, during, and after death.
Throughout history, to harness that power, individuals, families, clans,
tribes, secret societies, temples, cults, religions, criminal organizations,
governmental institutions, and even nations have sacrificed other human
beings.
pps. 99-111
--[cont]--
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
