I think another strange sound is worth a brief mention. I spoke about a particular pope in a posting dealing with the story about a 1928 exorcism in Earling, Iowa. That Pope was known to suffer from hallucinations, although when hallucinations are cast in religious terms, then the person involved is believed to be hearing the voice of God, or angels, etc. Then, or so some will argue, that person is not what under any other circumstances would be considered mentally ill. I would contest that. And so, I come to

Pope Paul VI, who had been the Archbishop of Milan, and served as Pope during the years 1963-1978. The 1963 Papal Conclave was the largest in history, and despite opposition to Giovanni Battista Montini, he had enough support in the end to ensure that his hopes to be the Manifestation of St. Peter didn’t go up in smoke…or did go up in smoke…fortunately, white smoke, for Giovanni. Smoke would be a key element yet again during Paul’s time as the Vicar of Christ.

The Pope made comments in 1973 that I think were unfortunate. The pronouncements of the Pope have per se credibility throughout the Christian world, both Catholic and Protestant, and irresponsible statements, or statements based on superstition, could cause, or augment, already irresponsible views popular at any given time. And so did Paul VI. On July 25, 1968, he issued the Humanae Vitae, an encyclical that dealt with many different topics. In particular, it re-affirmed the proscription of artificial birth control, and, naturally enough, re-affirmed the sanctity of life. That meant that the Pill was still…out. The existence of a Contraception Culture, and the supposed detriments of it on the societies of the First World are associated most readily associated with him. Still, on January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling on the famous and infamous Roe v. Wade case. The effect that this must have had on Christians of all stripes, Evangelical Protestants, Mainstream Protestants, Liberal Protestants, and Catholics was intense. Many would have seen this as an escalation of the deterioration of Christian values in the United States, and if there was a Satanic Fire, this Supreme Court ruling was fuel thrown on it. One of the enduring flaws in the opposition to legal abortion on the part of religious groups is that their position on this issue is often a purely legal one…legalized vs. outlawed. Many are unaware of the fact that should the Supreme Court overturn the 1973 ruling, which, to the ultimate chagrin of the Religious Right, will not happen not matter how judges Trump is able to put on the Court, the issue of the legality of abortion will go back to the states. This would immediately generate a dramatic amount of chaos and anarchy. Perhaps that would be a good thing in the end. The greatest flaw? You don’t end abortion by banning it…you have to address the reasons for abortions. Unfortunately, the Religious Right oversimplifies issues like this by going to the lowest common denominator…ban it…outlaw it…criminalize it…put people in prison because of it, no matter what “it” is. Once that has happened, then they are no longer interested in it, no matter how much outlawing it fails…drugs are a perfect example. That means that they are not part of a solution. But if all you are interested in is scoring points with the god you have created, then meaningful solutions aren’t worth the waste of time. It is equally true that the Left falls into the same trap.     

And Paul VI was a key driver behind the belief in a Great Satanic Conspiracy at work in the United States…particularly among the youth. Rock music would get caught up in it, but I don’t believe that Rock music was the cause of it. For people to believe in a Great Satanic Conspiracy, they have to believe in Satan. And he has to be, not an odd literary character in the Bible, but real and dedicated to undermining everything as part of a war against God.

Strange sounds emanated from Rome on November 16, 1972, with a newspaper article that appeared with the title:

The title alone suggests an imminent exercise in throwing fuel on a fire.

And so we have the Great Satanic Conspiracy, and it appears that the Pope’s sudden declaration of it seems to be its having been imported into….yes…Italy. And he identified the epicenters…Northern Europe and the United States. That’s just what a Moving-Toward-Belief-In-a-Satanic-Conspiracy Movement in the United States needed. He didn’t speak of a Satanic influence…he claimed that a real Satan was dominating entire societies. Much of humanity was already being ruled by a literary Character that appeared a couple of times in the Old Testament, that then gave rise to the Maniacal Satan of the New Testament and Early Church, and finally became the Great Boogey Man of Medieval Christianity, particularly in relation to concerted efforts to stamp out practitioners of ancient folk religions…i.e. witches. He cites sex, narcotics, and doctrinal errors. Apparently, he was unaware that these things have existed from the beginning of time; well, sex certainly has. And it definitely affected Italy:

The tokens are known as Spintria, and although it isn’t known exactly how they were used, it’s a safe bet they weren’t being used for ancient Roman, i.e. Italian, pinball machines. And you can be sure that Paul VI didn’t have any of these coins in his pocket. Prostitution reaches back to mankind’s beginnings, and in the ancient world often was part of religious practices. Any attempt to say that there had been some kind of Sexual Conspiracy in 1972 is laughable. What did happen in modern America is that people’s sexual activities became more publicly known…publicly discoverable…the 1960s saw efforts to end the need to hide what people got up to in private. Adultery among the practitioners of Conservative Christians was far more common than the various groupings have ever wanted to admit. Today, there is a seemingly endless number of Family Values Conservatives whose extra-marital sexual activities are being disclosed. I think that most Evangelicals are eager to forget about…

…avery important Biblical lady. Hebrews 11:31 refers to her as a woman of faith who, because of her faith, survived while those who didn’t believe perished. James 2:25 says that she was a woman whose good works justified her. Yes, in the eyes of God. And if Matthew 1:5, in the midst of a family tree held out as the genealogical record of Jesus of Nazareth, is referring to the same righteous lady, which I believe it does, then she was one of the ancient matriarchs of what would become the lineage of the Son of God. Her name was Rahab. And she was a prostitute. That is a fact, and Hebrews and James specifically designate her as a prostitute. Some rabbis, uncomfortable with a righteous prostitute, claimed that she repented of being a prostitute, and they thereby sanitized a Biblical woman who could not simply be ignored. As much as I respect the ideas of the Great Rabbis, and I find them to be an undisputed source of Great Wisdom, they were wrong to make Rahab more palatable. It is to the great credit of the New Testament writers that they saw nothing amiss with a righteous prostitute, allowed her to remain as such, and thereby re-affirmed the fact that she had been the Most Important Person in Joshua’s conquest of the city of Jericho. In fact, it would not have happened without her. Joshua made a deal with her…and he kept it, thereby granting her a place in one writer’s Royal Genealogy of Christ.

The legacy of Paul VI is a troubled one to say the least, particularly as far as the topic of sex is concerned. The most troubling part of it is that we’re not talking about sex outside of marriage, adultery, the “free love” movement of the 1960s, or even the Most Bizarre of the Bizarre…the love-bombers of the Children of God. In fact, the topic is the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy. I have shared this element of my interpretation of the Exorcist.

Father Gerald Fitzgerald…a most important priest. He organized the Servants of the Paraclete. And they have a vital mission…treating priests who have descended into drug addiction and sexual perversion. It is fair to ask whether a net result is that actual shielding of priests guilty of one of the most heinous sins one can commit. The truth about pedophiles is that they infiltrate..become teachers, coaches, and yes, or so I believe, priests, in search of their quarry. They don’t just suddenly discover, once they’re in a position of power over children, that they are what they were before. Father Fitzgerald learned that he could not treat such priests:

I myself would be inclined to favor laicization for any priest, upon objective evidence, for tampering with the virtue of the young, my argument being, from this point onward the charity to the Mystical Body should take precedence over charity to the individual.

And:

We are amazed to find how often a man would be behind bars if he were not a priest…

He wrote to bishops, and he wrote to the Vatican expressing such views. In 1962, he wrote a letter providing a report requested by the Vatican. The subject that so troubled Father Fitzgerald was covered. In August 1963, he met with Paul VI, and discussed the matter with him. He followed-up with a letter expressing his belief that priests who sexually abused children are unlikely to be reformed. Pope Paul VI has been charged by critics with not acting sufficiently on the information made available to him. Nonetheless, the Pope had been made aware of the situation as early as 1962.

The question of sex also surfaced in 1976, when accusations were made that the Pope, while serving as Archbishop of Milan, had been sexually involved with an actor. The allegations were made by Roger Peyrefitte in Tempo magazine. Police seized the magazine in Florence, since the Pope had been granted immunity against anyone saying anything negative about him, something certain someones in this country would like to see happen here. The Pope adamantly denied the charges, and did so publicly.

The issue of drugs is another example of grasping for the lowest common denominator. Drugs were certainly a component of the Counter-Culture. This was very public. But it was because this drug use was associated with the those who many would believe were undermining traditional norms that pot and acid came under such attack. The Rolling Stones wrote a song called Mother’s Little Helper that touched upon how housewives were overusing Valium. Nixon’s war against the Counter Culture came to fruition in 1970, when the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 was passed. That created a War on Drugs that is completely unwinnable, and has cost countless trillions of dollars, and achieved something else. We all know about the failure of Prohibition…the outlawing of alcoholic beverages in the United States. Women’s Temperance groups had been critical in pushing the government to pass the Volstead Act. Women’s groups were later critical in pushing the repeal of Prohibition. Why? One of the reasons cited was that they had no idea that the attempt to eliminate alcohol from American society would create a vast Organized Crime network involved in supplying the outlawed drug. The more money…the more competition, and the more violent society was becoming. The War on Alcohol had caused far more harm than the good it could have possibly produced. And it turned otherwise non-criminal members of society became criminals as they sought a Fifth of Gin. After the repeal of Prohibition, organized crime had lost a major source of income, but many gangs made the transition into a far more lucrative product anyway…drugs. Today’s world has been ravaged by the Modern American Prohibition. And the Pope pointed his finger at narcotics. What about alcohol? Some believe it to be the most dangerous drug ever known. And how many smoke? Nicotine is one of the most addictive drugs ever known. Yet the Pope would have found a dramatic number of his priests who smoke and drank, and certainly Father Karras in the Exorcist was among them. If I need my nicotine fix, I can just go to a pharmacy like Walgreens to get it. And! If I’m an alcoholic, I can get my booze there as well. The simplistic views of the Pope and so many in American society simply overlook the widespread addiction to alcohol and nicotine because it is just as prevalent among the one generation as the other.

As for doctrinal errors…those have been around from the beginning of Christianity. One man’s Doctrinal Impurity is another man’s Doctrinal Purity. Certainly, Organized Christianity was born in a morass of doctrinal infighting and mutual excommunications that was akin to all out war between those who held different Christian beliefs. Hurling accusations of heresy to discredit and malign was a favorite pastime of Christian groups, few of whom seemed willing to let differences be differences. The orthodox created chants that believers were forced to recite to reduce the anxiety of Spiritual Dictators about Doctrinal Purity. Many didn’t, and don’t, know what these chants mean:  Light from Light is featured in the Nicene Creed, describing Jesus. I still don’t know what it means. And Very God of Very God. Being of one substance…you shouldn’t chant things the meaning of which you don’t understand. These gibberish kinds of things are meant to make the Religious Powers That Be feel that you are doctrinally pure…or impure…if choose not to chant them. Perhaps the most important foundations for doctrine were Scriptures. Most Christians have no idea just how many Gospels and other writings circulated among early Christians. At some point, a large number of these were suppressed, and many are lucky to have survived. You won’t find the Gospel of Thomas in a Christian New Testament, although it contains a very readable story about a very young Jesus…

making clay birds, that he then brought to life. The Qur’an also includes the story. You may do nothing on the Sabbath? Surely it’s ok to give life on the Sabbath. The Suppression of Arius and Arian Christianity owed much to bickering over homoousion vs. homoiousian. Was Christ of the same substance as the Father, or was he similar in substance? Was Jesus actually God himself, or a man who became the Son of God at his baptism by the indwelling of the Spirit or the Logos? The question of doctrine becomes all the more difficult once Christianity sold it itself to the Roman Government. The Council of Nicaea had been called by Constantine, usually regarded as the first Christian emperor.

Even if he wasn’t, he was a supporter of Christianity, and certain religious leaders were enticed by the possible sharing of political power for the first time in history. As Ponifex Maximus, which made him the Chief Priest in the pagan Roman religion based around the god Jupiter, a position that Constantine saw as giving him authority over all religions, he could summon the council. Was Constantine a Christian when he called what would become known as the Council of Nicea? We all know that in 312, Constantine defeated Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. And he claimed that before this battle, he had an important vision that caused him to turn to the Christian God for support. The vision involved a strange symbol in the sky. This is usually referred to as the Chi-Rho:

And we get the Chi-Rho in the Exorcist:

Then he had a dream in which Jesus told him to use the symbol on the shields of his troops in order to defeat Maxentius and become sole Roman emperor. It has been suggested that what Constantine saw was a natural phenomenon that occurs when ice particles arrange themselves in such a way that when sunlight hits them…

And forms a parhelion, also known as a sundog. Some have suggested that some UFO sightings may be the result of sundogs. Either way, supernatural or natural, there is a problem. What is that? It may well not have happened. The bishop Eusebius of Caesarea became a close supporter of Constantine. His original account of this battle (Ecclesiastical History) strangely omits any mention of the vision. His later biography of Constantine does provide the story of the vision. Some have indicated that it wasn’t until shortly before the Council of Nicaea in 325 that Constantine first revealed the story about the vision, which would go a long way to make him credible at the meeting of the bishops. In other words, the vision of Constantine was simply propaganda designed to give the emperor religious authority. And declaring himself to be simply the moderator, he then suddenly insisted that the word homoousios be included in the Nicaean Creed, thereby forcing the issue that Jesus was God. Without his newly invented vision and dream just before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine would not have been able to pull this off. It has been proposed that Constantine was seeking to equate Jesus with Sol Invictus…his patron deity known as the Unconquered Sun... 

And like Pazuzu, who managed to transform himself into Baphomet, and then George Washington, Sol Invictus also found a way to hang around:

And so it would appear that Constantine’s Chi-Rho was really the solar crown of Sol Invictus. And images of Christ are similar:

One last interesting thing about Sol Invictus and Christ:

One last cool thing:

The Bethlehem star looks a lot like the crown of Sol Invictus and The Chi-Rho. And the Bethlehem star looks a lot like:

The design in the glass of the clock that appears in both Merrin’s dream, and in Karras’s dream. I just don’t know where to go with that…well, not yet. But if Constantine really was trying to combine Christ with the Unconquered Sun, which ultimately resulted in Sun-day being the day of rest for Christians, and December 25th being designated as the date of Christmas, that also being the day commemorating the birth of Sol Invictus…well, the subject of Doctrinal Purity is a difficult one even in the best of situations and can change suddenly depending upon who is in charge at the moment, and whether the purveyors of propaganda support that person or not.

Why couldn’t the Arians be regarded as just another Christian group? Why suppress the Gnostics? Doctrinal Purity. This difficulty with Christian groups getting along and mutually recognizing each other was present in 1968, 1973, 1982, and today. Seances? Ouija boards? Spiritualists? Spirit Trumpets and Pocket Seers? Silly 8-ball toys? These things mean nothing…have no power…and most are party games anyway. It is the heights of superstition to credit such nonsense with any palpable existence of anything real. And his description of Satan:

 A terrific reality; mysterious and awe-inspiring

What a quote! I’ll give it an Elizabethan Twist:

I came not to bury Satan, but to praise him!

Ok, Shakespeare just rolled over in his grave, though I’ll bet Caesar liked it. I’ll bet that, if he existed, Satan would say to Paul…thanks for the compliment! You have a way with words. And Paul is convinced of the doctrinal impurity of those who believe that Satan is just a myth. The Manson Family was not a Satanic cult…it was a group of mentally deranged maniacs. Or not!

Satan on the loose! That’s the name of my new band’s soon-to-be-a-hit single! It features Baal Berith on guitar, Asag on drums, Sutekh on bass, and Regan MacNeill does the vocals backwards. Oh, I play cello.

Still, a group of maniacs who committed murder….I’m sure that was a novel thing in human history. Perhaps one of the Pope’s pronouncements to help fuel the conspiracy is his assertion that there is a vast network of Devil-worshipping cults. I will discuss this topic elsewhere, but during the 1970s, this was widely believed to be true. I believe that the cause of this belief was the organization of the Church of Satan by Anton Levay in 1966, and the publishing of the Satanic Bible in 1969. This was the great example of the belief in Devil-worshipping cults finally being given a publicly visible face. No one bothered to find out that the Church of Satan did not believe in an entity named Satan. I’ll bet very few Christians knew that Satan was, in the Old Testament, really The Satan, something I’ve discussed elsewhere, and is not a name. It’s interesting that the Church of Satan knew this, so perhaps someone in that group studied the Bible a bit more than the Christians who latched onto a group of cranks without bothering to learn the truth about them. Allegations of the existence of Satanic Cults, which the Church of Satan denote as devil-worshippers that are totally different than the Church of Satan’s secularist, natural science type of religion. LaVey declared that he didn’t believe in God! But he didn’t believe in Satan! And anyone who does is insane. At this point it should be said that the FBI investigated all manner of allegations about the existence of Satanic Cults, or perhaps I should give the Church of Satan their dues and say…the existence of Devil-worshiping cults, and have publicized their findings that they never found credible proof that they ever existed to the extent that the popular soon came to believe they did. That said, the Pope also proclaimed that Satan is aided in his Devilish Work by armies of demons. Sounds like an Ancient Great Dualism being brought out from the past to be sprung on an essentially unsuspecting world. Of course, one proof for the existence of a Satanic cult was offered to the world:

Yes! A Satanic cult was dispatched from Northern Europe or America…or both…to break into the chapel housing the Shroud of Turin, the old sheet that supposedly has Jesus’s face on it...

...to perform a Satanic rite. This wasn’t the first time that Satan made a play for the Shroud of Turin:

So, I guess that Satan made an attempt to burn up the Sacred Sheet in 1532, and then, 439 years later, having failed previously, he dispatched another bunch of guys to take another stab at it…and they failed. With 439 years to plan a second attempt, I would have thought Paul’s Bugaboo would have been able to get it right!

And spirit entities can be real bunglers! The Devil made a third attempt to burn the shroud, this time on April 11, 1997:

And he still didn’t get it right! Although one might be tempted to ask…are you sure that this wasn’t the scene of a Pazuzu vs. Lamashtu brawl? Still, the tough-as-nails Shroud survived yet again.

Now, it is true that someone broke into the facility housing the Holy Sheet in 1971, but law enforcement took a slightly different view than His Holiness:

Ah, yes…some crazy guy. And he actually walked across the roof of the royal palace! And no one heard him! Or, them. That does make a little more sense than a Satanic cult scaling a wall, making their way across the roof, and then crawling through the window to perform a Devilish Ritual that culminated with setting fire to an altar cloth and then high-tailing it back out the window.

He should have sent witches, they could have flown off on their broomsticks, making a fast get-away. Hey, Pope Paul! Maybe you should beef-up security around this chapel, at least to the point that a demented, vandalizing intruder can’t walk across the roof of the royal palace, and then crawl in through the window!

Doctrinal errors!

The Pope’s need to foist a Satanic Conspiracy on Christendom appeared again in 1973. In fact, newspapers reported on this on January 14th, eight days prior to the Roe vs. Wade decision was made public. That’s interesting timing. And we get a significant intensification of the Pope’s claims that Satan was, in effect, ruling much of the world. No one would go that far in the United States. But he said something that would resonate!

Ah, yes!

Yes! According to the Pope, he’s Enemy Number 1, an honor shared with Al Capone, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson. And it seems a little odd that the Pope didn’t seem to have a problem with all of this until it hit Italy…

One reporter made an interesting comment:

The interesting thing is that a certain group of people were blamed for helping Satan drop out of public sight:

I have now officially given up on the possibility that there is some end to the manifestations of the Devil that can be found on this website. Now we have Lucifer, Star of Vaudeville!

I just arrived from Hell, and I had a devil of a time getting here!

You think the Shroud of Turin has one hell of a house? You should see my new home on Hell’s Half-acre…it’s hot!

Fine, Saucy Sylvia is back on top. But I don’t care! Satan on the Loose is almost done! We start recording next week! But yet another manifestation of the Devil…and wait ‘til you get a load of this one:

The fun goes on and on:

Well, it is an odd play-date, I have to admit. But maybe that’s not what was meant:

Ok. What about Northern Europe? America is pretty straightword….Number 9…Number 9…Number 9, and if the Pope isn’t careful, Italian number won’t stop at Number 8. Still, I was interested in what part of Northern Europe all of this Satanic stuff is coming from. And I found it! And I figured it was them:

 
The Dutch! Of course, who else? And now we know the source of the Doctrinal Error that made its way into Italy alongside American sex and drugs. I would point out that apparently, the Pope read some Dutch theologian’s book about Biblical myths. But I would point out to the Vicar of Christ that theologians have been treating Satan as a myth for centuries. So don’t just pick on the Dutch, although I must say….I knew it was them! I guess these theologians are in dutch with the Pope! And the Pope can’t take a joke!

Ah, yes! Sex and drugs from America, Doctrinal Errors from the Netherlands, but the communists are home-grown...

Hey, Pope! Don’t blame us for that one! You’re Satanic! No, you are! I know you are but what am I? Satanic, of course. Although, blaming communists was something that appears in the Wacky World of Roy Moore who blamed an odd alliance operating in Alabama for his defeat in the Alabama senate election that frustrated God’s plan to have Roy Moore save American civilization:

Roy Moore was defeated by a strange…coalition of Muslim and Marxist-led groups.

Another example of election fraud endured by Roy More was said to have taken a very strange form:

 The State Election Board of Voting Integrity said early on that “more than a third” of Jones’ votes up to 11 a.m. looked suspicious — and with good reason. Many of them came from the small town of Bordalama, a rural community about 20 miles outside Birmingham.

According to official tallies, Roy Moore received 953 votes in the small town. Doug Jones received 5,327. If the disparity in numbers isn’t enough to give you reason to smell something fishy, the population of the town should. There are 2,256 residents there and only 1,867 registered voters. In other words, more people voted for Doug Jones than even live in Bordalama.

And Bordalama’s population is rather odd:

At least, a link in the news story takes you to hampsterdance.com. I never knew that hamsters dance, much play in cool rock bands. Actually, there is no such town as Bordalama, and there is no such thing as the State Election Board of Voting Integrity.

And I always suspected that Alabama was a hotbed of Bolshevik Revolutionaries! Still, I am disappointed that I was unable to locate the interview with Satan conducted by the Italian communists!

Of course…modern man relies too much on things that are scientific, or least, modern. What we should be doing is falling back on superstition! Then things will be better. But more signs of the Vast Satanic Conspiracy:

Ok, a few comments. First, as far as sexual orgies go, the Pope should spend more time reading Roman history books, and a little less time reading the works of Satan-denying Dutch theologians. The “orgy” was a favorite pastime in Italy for a very long time. And witches? Witches? Modern witches do exist, otherwise, if you were an American politician, you wouldn’t have take out an add like this one:

I am not a witch! Which reminds me of

I am not a witch! The American media would become awash in claims about a vast witch-oriented attempt to enthrone Satan in the midst of the Great and Good.  Were there witches? Yes. Are there witches today? Yes. Were there covens? Yes. Are there covens today? Yes. But a great deal of care should be exercised on this point. To go from such admissions to Satanic witches is either a clear sign of deception, or, at the least, ignorance. To connect witches with Satan is to fall back on black propaganda from the medieval period. If witches were really women who refused to give up the old, pre-Christian folk religions, then they were not Satanic. But Christian Tyrants were obsessed with blotting out all elements of native religions that, and this will sound familiar, they didn’t like. And Christian Tyrants were adamant that women had no place, outside of a convent, in exercising any kind of religious authority. If so, then perhaps the accusations of Satanism that are unthinkingly and automatically hurled at a “witch” are simply a means of disgracing and de-legitimatizing women who dared to exist outside the Male-Dominated System. The neo-pagan religion that is often referred to as Wicca involves groups of people organized into covens. It is not uncommon to refer to such people as witches, and they are practitioners of magic. It is a highly decentralized religious movement that came to the fore during the 1940s and 1950s, and evolved in Britain, with spiritual elements that are linked to Celtic or Druidic beliefs and elements of natural religion. It then spread to America.