A Wiccan may indeed be called a witch, but the magic they practice is often referred to as white magic, distinguishing it from the black magic of devil-worshippers. Wiccan spells usually fall under one of the following rubrics:

1. Healing
2. Protection
3. Fertility
4. Defense against negative influences

Often, there are two central deities, one male, often times a manifestation of Cernunnos (Horned God),

and a Mother Goddess; perhaps...

 Danu. But these deities can’t be understood in the very rigid terms of Christian divine beings, although the Virgin Mary, and the God of the Old Testament, may be incorporated as aspects of the central deity. In 1968, two years after the founding of the Church of Satan, the Church of Wicca was founded in West Virginia. There was also a school associated with it, which was recognized by the U.S. government. The symbol of the five-pointed star is a key symbol in Wicca, but it is usually pointed upwards:

While, as noted elsewhere, the Church of Satan uses the inverted, Baphomet pentagram:

The goat’s head is the head of the being known as Baphomet. It is simply the case that Wicca, and its witches, organized as covens, were to be found all over the U.S. The new openness to things Not-Christian, or at least, Not-Traditionally-American, certainly created a more permissive attitude among certain elements of American youth, and consequently, resulted in more visibility. It is manifestly wrong to connect Wiccans as Satanic. As I said, that is either intentionally deceptive, and intended to help scare Evangelical America, or simply the result of ignorance.

The politician shown above is Christine O’Donnell, a Republican and Religious Extremist who found herself in political hot-water when she was found to have said the following:

I dabbled into witchcraft…I never joined a coven…I hung around people who were doing these things. We went to a movie and had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar. And I didn’t know it.

I would say that, in her defense, the statement she made doesn’t make any sense. Even the prepositions are wrong. You don’t go to a movie, and stop off for a late-night bite to eat at a Satanic altar. And if you were at a Satanic altar…you would know it. I don’t know why she said what she did…but she certainly was not a witch. Her statement seems to draw upon, in a very poor way, the discreditable and clownish connections drawn between witches and Satan. Still, when the Pope and his Protestant Echo-Chamber in the U.S. called attention to a network of witch-covens, they were correct. But they were basically, for the most part, wrong about the nature of the religion. She also misused campaign contributions to pay her rent. Why is it that the Family Values Crowd often have the worst concepts of morality? She had at one point come out against…masturbation, which, strangely enough, was a position also held by the guy who made…

How depressed was I to learn that my former favorite breakfast cereal was specifically formulated to deaden any and all sexual impulses, leading to a complete cessation of masturbation. Or so John Harvey Kellogg thought. He wasn’t alone. Sylvester Graham believed that masturbation caused blindness and early death. For him, the best prescription was…

…graham crackers. It was somewhat ironic that Kellogg’s brother and co-supervisor of the Battle Creek Sanitarium decided to alter the Corn Flakes recipe somewhat, producing…

Boy was John Harvey mad at his brother! Why? The addition of sugar would produce the opposite effect of corn flakes…making you horny as a goat. Now you know why I gave up Corn Flakes for Frosted Flakes. It is rather amazing that anyone since the very early twentieth century could actually come out against something that you couldn’t possibly stop anyway.

What an odd thing for Ms. O’Donnell…

It’s Grrrrreat! And sadism? That’s a recent thing? Hey Mr. Pope! Do you remember a little thing called the Inquisition? Do you think that inflicting horrible torture on people is sadistic? Think about it.

But my favorite part of this…the Pope is quite the fortune-teller…although that is occultic. Witchdoctors? I didn’t know that there were witch-doctors in Modern America, or in the Netherlands, although I suppose that we do have shamans here. But here we go! Pope Paul would have us disregard psychologists and psychiatrists. And do you know why? Because he had been to the:

The Barringer Clinic and Foundation! The clinic run by Chris MacNeill’s 88 Barringer Clowns! A lot of good these psychologists and psychiatrists did for Regan! Nothing! It’s too bad that Chris hadn’t spoken with Pope Paul VI! Now she believed that mental health practitioners were witchdoctors…and that proves conclusively that it was, in fact, the Americans, not the Dutch, who were importing witchdoctors to Italy. The Exorcist was released in December 1973, while the article I quoted is from January 1973. So I wonder if the Pope had attended an advanced screening. Yet another clear proof of the Satanic conspiracy is the presence of madmen and criminals, American or Dutch, those things are new! Madman? We could have asked Dr. Kebel about the madman he postulated as the one who killed Sylvia Likens, apparently forgetting that it was a woman on trial for it. What kind of madmen and criminals? That’s obvious! Those who ply the trade of murder! Just like Satan. And that gives us yet another manifestation of the guy with an unending series of manifestations….Satan the Hitman! Odd that a guy from Italy would make innuendos about a hitman….a Satanic practitioner which no good Sicilian crime family can do without!

It seems that Clerics in America were only too willing to take up the Papal Ball and run with it. How? Well, now you could add other things to the list of signs of this great Satanic Conspiracy:

Interest in spirits? Occultism? Astrology? These were all very prominent in the America of the mid-1880s through the 1920s, and continued to be ever since that time. Practitioners? One might suggest the…Fox Sisters…

They were famous mediums from New York known for spirit rappings, whereby they could communicate with spirits by decoded their rappings. One such spirit was known as Mr. Splitfoot, who was later identified as the spirit of Charles B Rosna, a peddler murdered in their home and buried in the basement. The Fox sisters helped set off the spiritualist movement. In Austria there was…

Guido von List, founder of the Pagan religion of Wotan and reader of mystical runes. And:

Marie Laveau, Creole Queen of Voodoo. And…


 

Marie Anne Lenormand, world-renowned French forture-teller and occultist.  

And does the presence of oriental religions in oriental societies constitute a Satanic Conspiracy? Or are oriental religions only part of a Satanic Conspiracy when they arrive in western societies? Where was the Satanic conspiracy during the heydays of occultism…and Spirit Trumpets? Psychic experiences? Try this:

St. Joseph of Cupertino. He was said to levitate during prayer. And now it will get strange:

The St. Joseph of Cupertino Medal is supposed to be worn by airline pilots and passengers afraid of flying. And then there’s:

Gidgit Baniszewski. And having finally decided to leave destruction of the cosmos in the hands of Aunt Wilhelmina and Sutekh, she became the flying nun. Hey! There’s no such thing! Oh, really?

St. Gerard Majella, the flying priest, drifting casually down the corridor, and stopping to gaze adoringly at a picture of Mary and Jesus. If witches fly, and that’s a sign of Satan, why doesn’t the same thing apply to nuns and priests? It’s an interesting question, at least.Then there’s…

St. Gemma Galgani. She was so mesmerized by Jesus that on one special day as she stood “adoring” Jesus on a crucifix…the Carpenter from Nazareth suddenly came to life! And then:

In a moment of love and joy, Gemma was raised off the ground and taken to Jesus. She embraced him in an ecstasy of love.

What would happen if a Wiccan made that claim? Or anyone else for that matter?

St. Paul of the Cross. He pulled off a neat trick when he floated through the air, and walked across the tops of the heads of some worshippers. Then there was the Floating Chair Trick! His levitating abilities were so powerful that while seated in a chair, he gripped the arms…but no use! He and the chair went for an aerial spin.

Saint Mary of Agreda, the one who mastered the magical ability of bilocation. In fact, she was known to fly around Spain and Portugual, something that probably took her mind off of being stuck in a convent at the same time. Then! She decided one day to visit New Mexico, and preach to the Indians there. Who knew that you could travel the world without leaving your convent? This is, of course, simply a form of astral projection.  But here’s a magic trick that interests all fans of Regan MacNeill!

Therese Neumann. She was prone to entering into bizarre states…imagine that. While in an ecstatic state, she heard someone speaking in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. After she re-emerged from her ecstasy, she could understand the languages when spoken, and could speak them herself. Mary of Agreda was able to understand the language of the New Mexican Indians without any prior exposure to it. I suppose that if Karras took his tape recorder into Regan’s room and she:

Could speak bird-language…he’d have no trouble getting permission for the exorcism. Karras want a cracker?

Now for the trick to end all tricks! Regan MacNeill was seen by two people, first Chris and then Karras, to have caused her head to spin around on her shoulders. I maintain that it only happened in the minds of the two people told about Burke Denning being found at the bottom of the Stone Stairway with his head turned all the way around. But even if you believe that Regan did this within the Artificial Reality, it is absolutely boring compared to this guy:

Saint Denis. And yes, he is holding his severed head. During a Roman persecution of Christians, he was executed by beheading. But Denis remained undaunted! He casually picked up his head, then walked several miles carrying it. Here’s the best part! He preached a sermon the whole way! And he wasn’t the only Blow-The-Doors-Off-Regan-MacNeill guy! The Catholic church referred to a saint who could walk around holding his severed head a cephalophore…literally…a head-carrier.

This poor guy was martyred as a boy. His name is St. Justus, and after being beheaded, his body picked up the head, which began to speak. In fact, he began preaching to the ghoulish onlookers present at the execution, and actually converted some of them to Christianity! But that’s the boring story. The really cool story states that the young headless boy carried his head back home to his mother. A dutiful son! Or, one might consider the case of Saint Valerie of Limoges…

who, after being decapitated, picked up her head, and brought it to her bishop.

Saint Solange. After being decapitated, her head yelled out the name of Jesus three times.

Saint Aphrodisius. Having been decapitated, his head was thrown into a well. But! His head was catapulted out of the well, hit the ground and rolled back to him.

Now it’s one thing to walk around carrying your severed head, whether preaching a sermon and converting pagans to Christianity, bringing it home to your mother, or taking it to your bishop. One cephalophore did something that boggles the mind. His name was St. Genesius. He lived at Arles in France. First, he was a soldier, then he was a secretary, and finally ended up as an entertainer…

He played Lead Lute! Maybe he’ll join my band! I’ll bet he could play…Stairway to Heaven! And he was so important he became the patron saint of a lot of things…actors, lawyers, clowns, comedians, dancers, musicians, printers, stenographers, torture victims, and those suffering from….Scurf. Eventually, he got into a disagreement with some locals and they…oh you know…beheaded him. What did Genesius do? Well, he picked up his head, and threw it into the Rhone River. His head then floated down the river and was washed out to sea. But the tale doesn’t stop there. It floated across the sea until it reached the Spanish city Cartagena. The locals found his head, and they did with it what any sensible people would do if they found a severed head washed up on shore…they worshipped it, and it soon began performing miracles.

Now for the best of the headless saint tales. This one doesn’t involve a saint walking around with his or her own severed head. This one goes well beyond that. I start with St. Beuno…

Bueno was a Welsh abbot, tradition fixing his birth to the year 640. And he came from quite the noble family! Being born in Powys, he could trace his lineage back to…

King Vortigern, a figure from the Arthurian Cycle who is shrouded in mystery. Historical sources for the history of Romano-Britain after 410 A.D. are often unreliable. That was the year that the emperor Honorius was desperately trying to retain his hold on the Western Roman Empire. A usurping British emperor, Constantine III…

had taken most of his forces with him to Gaul and Spain in search of a promotion, which left Britain at the mercy, what little they had of it, of the Saxons, who raided the island in the years 408 and 409. The locals in Britain weren’t particularly thrilled that Constantine had done nothing to help them, which, in all fairness to Constantine, is understandable seeing how he wasn’t able to help himself. They responded by driving the Roman politicians from the island. In trouble again, the people of Roman-Britain asked Emperor Honorius for military aid. His famous response was…you’ll have to care of yourself, seeing how I’m sitting around helpless as the Visigoths sack Rome. That was it for the Romans, and the island of Britain quickly became divvied out among local warlords. One such warlord was Vortigern, as was Uther Pendragon, father of Arthur. Uther and his brother Aurelius Ambrosius, supposedly sons of Constans II, son of Constantine III, although it is well established that Constans son was Constantine IV…

Two good-looking guys! Aurelius Ambrosius is a distinctly Roman name as opposed to that of his brother, Uther, who teamed up to make war against, and defeated, Vortigern. But Vortigern was regarded as the founder of the royal line of the kings of Powys. Beuno’s sister was named Wenlo, who married Tyfid ap Eiludd, a Welsh warlord. Their daughter was Grewnffrewi…

...or Winifred, by which name I will call her seeing how I can’t pronounce old Welsh names. Winifred was supposed to marry a hot-head named Caradog, but instead, she decided to become a nun, which drove Caradog into a blind rage, and he decapitated her…and that’s not nice! Her head rolled down a hill before coming to a stop. And where it stopped, a healing spring of water appeared…

And so St. Winifred’s Well, located in Holywell, Wales. It became a place of pilgrimage, and the waters there were believed to have healing properties. I’m sure that all would agree that it’s a pretty cool story. Except it gets better! When Bueno heard what Caradog did to his niece, he was rather displeased. And what is an uncle to do in such a situation? That’s easy. He suddenly appeared, picked up Winifred’s head, and re-attached it! Yes, as if he were some Dark Ages Victor Frankenstein! The first thing Winifred did was to ensure that the earth opened up and swallowed Caradog. Well, he did have it coming. Then she went to join the other saints in Heaven. No…wait, that’s not it. Winifred went on to become a nun as she originally planned, later became the abbess at Gwytherin, and carried a very pronounced scar on the back of her neck.

It should be said that the cephalophoric saints may be a manifestation of what I will call Head Worship. The Knights Templar, the great order of crusaders, we accused of worshipping Baphomet. Given the very secret nature of Templar religious practices, what Baphomet actually was is uncertain. One prominent theory is that it was some type of head. During the investigations conducted by the Inquisition, a strange silver reliquary was found. It was made of silver and was the shape of a female head. It supposedly contained fragments of a skull, and Caput LVIII was sewed into a silk covering. Since Caput LVIII means…Head Number 58, I supposed there were 57 other heads somewhere.

It is clear that head-shaped reliquaries were used to house bones claimed to be relics. An example would be the skull of St. Cordula, whose head was said to be in the Cathedral of Palencia:

Particularly gruesome is the mummified head of St. Catherine of Siena…

If you are a collector of the heads of dead people…and who isn’t? Then St. Cathrine’s head might just hold the prime spot in your collection. But not the actual…prime spot. The most impressive dead human head is the one kept in the massive cathedral in Amiens. There one will find…

This is supposed to be the head of John the Forerunner. Known to you and me as John the Baptist. Some have suggested that this is what is the head named Baphomet that was the most important cultic item in the secret religion of the Knights Templar. Might one wonder…is this Head 58? If so, given its importance, I would think that they would call it…Head Number 1!

There are also the teraphim, a term that appears in various parts of the Old Testament. They are usually regarded as a certain type of sacred statues, which, in the case of the matron Rachel, are notably small, but in the story of David’s escape from King Saul’s hitmen…can be quite large. Commentators often equate the teraphim with the Roman Lares and Penates, which are deities specific to a family, house, or other locations. Hence…household gods. But the Book of Jasher says:

And this is the manner of the images; in taking a man who is the first born and slaying him and taking the hair off its head, and taking salt and salting the head and anointing it in oil, then taking a small tablet of copper or a tablet of gold and writing the name upon it, and placing the tablet under his tongue and putting it in the house, and lighting up lights before it and bowing down to it. And at the time when they bow down to it, it speaketh to them in all matters that they ask of it, through the power of the name which is written in it  

That is disturbing to say the least! And I hope this isn’t true. The belief that severed human heads could be used for divination purposes led to the…automaton. An automaton was a mechanical head that was said to be able to speak and answers asked of it. Pope Sylvester II, who was said to have married a succubus, was also accused of having made a talking mechanical head. And the climax of the Brazen Head myths! Albertus Magnus (1206-1280) was said to have built a talking, mechanical head. But another account states that he actually built an entire robot that could walk, speak, and clean the house. Thomas Aquinas, Albert’s pupil, tired of listening the automaton chatter endlessly, one day took a hammer and smashed it to bits. And who could blame him? Why?

And so, we find yet another manifestation of the Prince of Darkness! Satan the Robotic Engineer! And his specialty is building robots to conquer the world…

I wonder if Albert’s Mechanical Man was built to Satan’s specifications. And, as far as I am concerned, I would have used Asag, Sutekh, and Aunt Mina instead of robots.

The image of the cephalophore later appeared in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight... 

which we, of course, recognize almost immediately:

It’s probably just me, but you want to call occultic silliness like crystal balls, tarot cards, Ouija boards, Spirit Trumpets, ectoplasm, pocket seers, and Magic 8-Balls as signs of Satanism? I would suggest that Pope Paul VI take a brief look at his religion’s own history. And how is it that Regan’s Head-spinning is demonic, but dead saints carrying their severed heads around as they speak…isn’t? How is it that saints who can inexplicably speak and understand languages they had no familiarity with are among the Godly, but when Regan throws out two Latin phrases and two French phrases…it’s a sign of Satan? What about levitation? Regan did that too…not really, but Father Karras saw it that way. So many saints put her to shame as far as that goes! What about flying down corridors? Usually, these things are attributed to the practitioners of the Dark Arts. What about bilocation? What about astral projection? Perhaps Christianity should come to grips with it’s dark nature before telling someone trying to bend a spoon with his mind that he is Satanic.