Expositional Lectures

Magic and Witchcraft

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Doctrinal Studies

Lesson: 12-12

Genre: Speech

Track: 082

Dictation Name: RR122A

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s - 1970’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] In a recent issue of the Indianapolis News the editor, Stanton Evans, commented on what he called the drift back toward paganism.

The young man had just graduated from the University of California at Berkley and receive his degree for studies in the field of magic. This was the first degree awarded in the subject in the United States. However, virtually every major university has either regular or extension courses on the subject of magic and witchcraft. Stan Evans commented, and I quote, “Few things set Western Christendom apart from the pagan world more sharply than the subject of magic. As Western religious premises have been systematically eroded, this pagan way of thought has reasserted itself. One need only recall the circumstances under which Sharon Tate died. To note how supposedly magical ceremonies can get interwoven with the new morality lifestyle. Indeed the whole witches brew of orgiastic self-assertion, drugs and lust for violence, which constitute the yippie{?} movement is quite clearly a throwback to the pagan magical view of life.” Unquote.

Evans then goes on to cite elements of magic all around us as an everyday part of our lives, and then concludes with this sentence. “So it would appear that Isaac Bonwits, the young man who received the degree, is not so unusual after all. He is merely making it official.” At that point Stan Evans is absolutely right. We are living in an age of magic when the philosophy of magic prevails in our schools and universities, in our scientific establishment and in our political order. Before we analyze the significance of magic and witchcraft it is important for us to understand what religion is. A very good point at which to begin is with Paul Tillich’s definition of religion. I don’t know of any other point at which I agree with Dr. Tillich, who died just a few years ago, and was perhaps the most prominent existentialist thinker in the world. But Dr. Tillich at one time defined religion as submission to that which is ultimate. And I think that’s a good definition. Whatever is ultimate, whatever is absolute, that we submit ourselves to. That we bow down and worship. For the Christian, ultimate concern is with God, the triune God. And so in biblical religion, man submitting to the absolute sovereign and triune God seeks then to obey His commandments. He seeks to exercise dominion over the earth under God and to subdue the earth unto God. But at every point in his life, in every area of his life, the biblical Christian, the true Christian, recognizes the sovereignty of God and the total lordship of the triune Creator.

Now magic is at the other end of the pole. It is diametrically opposed to religion. Magic is anti religion. Because the essence of religion is submission to whatever is ultimate. And the essence of magic is control of all things natural and supernatural. Over whatever god or gods maybe and whatever man maybe in the way. This is the essence of magic. The desire to control. The search for instruments of control.

As a result, it is a serious mistake to define magic simply in terms of something that a witchdoctor in Africa does. His magic is primitive magic. His bones and his feathers and his paraphernalia are the crude methods that he uses. But the magician in a primitive tribe has total control over the men around him. He claims to have, and he very often does have, amazing controls over nature. I spent eight and a half years on a very isolated Indian reservation. It was a hundred miles from any town, bus or train line. In those days there was only a dirt road going in there and sometimes in winter, because we were on an elevation of five thousand four hundred feet, we were snowed in five and six months. Sometimes a little longer. There were some Indian medicine men. They did things I couldn’t account for. I recall this one Indian medicine man who at round up time when a rattlesnake was spotted, and a rattlesnake is most dangerous, most venomous in the spring, he’s just come out of hibernation and his venom is all the more concentrated. He began to chant and he went over and picked up that rattler and he began to play with it. He would put the head of that rattler in his mouth, he hung it around his neck. Now you know they have some snake cults in the South. Some of those people when they migrated Westward, tried to continue their snake cult out there, and they found that the Western rattler doesn’t cooperate. They died very quickly and the cult disappeared. But this Indian medicine man was able to exercise that kind of power over rattlers. How, I don’t know. This I do know, that I never knew a one of them who didn’t show marks of psychological and mental and moral deterioration.

Now this is primitive magic. There’s more there than we can explain. But we can explain is that it is an attempt to control the world, man and the supernatural. That sometimes as it deals with the natural world and with men its powers are surprising. But there are strict limits to its power and it pays a very ugly, a very fearful price. I could take a great deal of time to go into the lives of such medicine men and their families. The radical disintegrating, deteriorating effect of their calling. The price is fearful.

But there is such a thing as developed magic. And today unfortunately a great deal of our science is developed magic. Its purpose is not to understand, the word science literally means understanding, knowledge, to know. And then to use this knowledge to exercise dominion under God. Rather science increasingly involved trying to play God. To be a magician. To control the universe and man. In my book ‘The Mythology of Science’ I cite one British astrophysicist, Kenneth Heuer of the Royal Astronomy in England. Who declares that the scientists like himself are working on the key to everything, the future holds no problems to them, true the earth is going to die someday and the moon also, but by the time it does we will be able to make a new sun and put it in the heavens. Of course death is a problem, but we’re going to overcome that also. There’re no problems we cannot solve. This is playing the role of magician as well as of God. The goal of such science is pure magic. It aims at total control. And this is why today in the public schools you no longer teach history.

Under the influence of the new science what they teach in the place of history and civic and the old fashioned courses you once had, is social science. And what is social science? The science of the control of man. The social scientists are those people who are planning to control you and your children and your grandchildren. And if you read the words of the social scientists it is entirely a matter of control. Do you remember when president Kennedy instituted project Camelot, a social science project, all over the world? Six million dollars appropriated right off the bat. The most that’s ever been appropriated by the federal government for any social science project. And then about three years later, in Johnson’s day, the lid blew off in Chili. A newspaper man there got wind of what was going on and published it. And all hell broke loose. Why? Because the purpose of project Camelot was to control people. To move people to all kinds of situations, revolutionary and otherwise, and then to manipulate them and to control them. And all over the world, from every country where these project Camelot’s social scientists were, there was a protest and the program had to be wiped out. And all over the country the social scientists protested. After all, their science requires, requires controlling man. They are magicians. Their purpose is total control.

About a year and a half ago I was on a forum in Northern California with senator Clark Bradley presiding and Dr. Dragovich{?} of the Hoover Institution and Mr. Paulson, a former FBI agent and myself on a panel. The panel’s concern was education. I spoke in favor of Christian schools and said that public schools, I trusted, would soon disappear. After the debate was over, a school teacher came charging up with blood in her eye. I represented everything ugly and nasty in her eyes. And of course she represented pure social science. And finally she concluded her debate with me with words that shocked every person round about us and a lot of women who were present had their tape recorders there to catch that statement of hers and rejoice that they caught it, because it was this. “I was misleading people and talking about liberty. Didn’t I know (and these were exact words) in the modern world freedom is obsolete.” Freedom is obsolete. Why? Because you cannot have a social science experiment unless every factor in the experiment is controlled. You cannot have a scientifically ordered society unless every factor in that society is controlled and therefore there can be no such thing as freedom, it is obsolete. Obsolete in their vision of what they call a scientific future, but what is in actuality a future in terms of magic and magicians. People whose goal is total control over the world, over man and over the supernatural. Did you read 1984? Remember the picture that is given to us there, the author was a lifelong Marxist. A disillusioned Marxist when he wrote the book. Because he had come to realize the real purpose of social science, of the scientific socialist sate of control.

Power over man. Power of the world. And so he said, the ultimate and the only picture you can give of the state that is coming, of the scientific state, of the socialistic state, is this. A boot endlessly pounding itself on a human face. Power, control, this is the purpose of magic. Our social science today and our science are thus concerned with magic. Our education today is concerned with magic in the public schools. Its purpose is control. It does teach social science. It does work for that kind of society which it considers scientific, but which is in essence the vision of the magician. Our politics today all over the world is increasing the politics of magic. Stan Evans saw that point. And he said, and I quote, “in its most fundamental terms, the pagan magical mentality is an effort to attain secret knowledge which will give one mastery over nature and other people. As such, it has long been a component of the modern outlook. Much of what passes these days for science, scientism is the more accurate term, is in fact magic in modern dress. Scientism and magic merge together at the age of the Renaissance, remember Dr. Faustus{?}, and have been ingredients of secular thought ever since.” Unquote. The politics of magic, education, social science, science, all governed by the perspective of magic. It is something to reckon with.

Our subject tonight however is magic and witchcraft. What about witchcraft? Well, if you were to examine the dictionary of Anthropology, you would find that the definitions for magic and witchcraft are very similar. So similar that it leaves you a little bewildered as to what the real difference is. The difference is an important one. Magic, as I indicated, aims at control over the world, over man, over the supernatural, over every power. Witchcraft has that same purpose. But it differs from magic at this critical point. It seeks that power and control, from below. It delves into what is known as black magic. It sees the power as in chaos, in the primitive, in the demonic, and hence it seeks it progressively downward. This is why whenever witchcraft arises, even when it arises in twentieth century America, you have a return to such things as we have seen evidences of, and perhaps you had articles about it in your papers here, of blood sucking, of dogs and of corpses found with all the blood drained out of them. It leads to cannibalism, it leads to all kinds of ugly practices, the purpose of which is to seek power from below, in practices which are demonic, in practices that are deliberate acts of chaos.

For witchcraft, that which is above is the essence of futility. Thus witchcraft never looks to God. The mind, reason, is for witchcraft irrelevant. Why? Because its perspective is evolutionary. Long before Darwin and Haggle, who formulated evolution in the modern world, witchcraft believed in evolution. It’s an ancient primitive belief. And in terms of an evolutionary philosophy, the last thing which is developed in man is reason, it’s a late comer. And therefore it’s weak. What therefore is strong in man? That which reflects his pagan, his savage, his animal background. So how do you gain power in order to control the world? You look below. You look downward to chaos, you look downward to animal acts like eating your own kind. You look downward as the means to regeneration, to vitality, to power, to control. Now the minute you have this philosophy of evolution and witchcraft, they go together, you seek for power below, in acts that are savage, chaotic, and revolutionary. Witchcraft plus evolution give you revolution.

You’re not going to beat the Communists by documenting what they are doing, because the philosophy of the modern world makes for Communists. You can go and tell your neighbors, who are public school products, how terrible the Communist conspiracy is, and it doesn’t register.

In fact, they tune you out. Why? Because their basic faith being evolutionary, non-Christian, power for them comes from below and while they may not openly admit it or allow it to come to the top levels of their thinking, they are at one philosophically with the Communists. They can’t oppose them logically. Witchcraft plus evolution gives you a philosophy of revolution.

But let’s go a step further. One of the basic points in the philosophy of Haggle deserves our very careful attention. Haggle was the philosopher whose philosophy was basic to Marxist thinking, Communism, basic to John Dewey’s philosophy, pragmatism and progressive education, basic to the philosophy Max Turner, anarchism, and you can go across the boards in the modern world and virtually every philosophy, including that of Ralph Waldo Emerson, goes back to Haggle. Now one of the basic statements of Haggle was this. The rational is the real. The rational is the real. Now that sounds like a pretty mild statement, rather abstract. What’s the menace in it? Well, the whole point of Haggle’s statement was simply this. That which my mind conceives to be logical and rational therefore is the real that exists. If you tell me there’s a God and I don’t feel that a god is a rational thing to exist, he doesn’t exist. But if I determine something is logical and rational in my mind, then it exists out there.

Now to you this may seem the height of absurdity. But this was the keystone of power for Marx, for Nichi{?}, for Dewey, for Max Turner, for virtually every prominent modern thinker.

This is why Nichi{?} could say the truth in the old-fashioned sense means nothing to us. We’re making our own truth as we go along. This is why John Dewey was not interested with truth. Ridiculed the quest for truth and the quest for certainty. The pragmatic, that which works and that which my mind has determined is going to work, alone is real. You get the point of this.

Now God declares in His Word, that His creative Word makes reality. For God the ration is the real. For God His thoughts become reality. And God said let there be light and there was light. God spoke the word and Heaven and Earth came into being. God speaks the word and Heaven and Earth could disappear. God’s Word is the creative Word. And what was Haggle saying when he said the rational is the real? Man’s word is the creative word, man’s word speaks and it is done and the world is what man decrees it to be. Paul Mark said the philosophers until now have been content to understand the world. The whole point of philosophy should be to make it. To change it. To speak the creative word and to make the rational the real. As a result Haggle gave to the modern world the basic philosophy of magic. Man trying to play god and believing I declare the word and it shall be. And this nonsense infests the modern world. Let us speak the word and it shall be done. Et us pass a civil rights law and declare that all men are now equal and it will be done. And if anybody disagrees he is somebody who doesn’t understand it is now a reality and he’ll have to be pushed out of the way.

And in the Soviet Union he is liquidated. The creative word has been spoken. Don’t you know that’s the reality now? This is the perspective of magic. Total control. And witchcraft, total control and seeking power from below. We live in a magic and witchcraft saturated age. And whether we call it communism or anarchism, it’s perspective is magic and witchcraft. And if you have that basic philosophy of social science and of modern education and progressivism, it ‘s the same things, it comes from the same source. And whether it were as the label of the democratic party or the republican party, it is the same thing, the difference between them and the anarchists and the communists and the witches is one of degree. And if you call yourself a Christian and are a part of a modernist church, a church that does not hold to God’s creative Word, to God’s sovereignty, that does not submit itself absolutely to the sovereign God, it’s going to drift in one direction into magic and witchcraft. The only way to fight this therefore is to fight it in terms of the whole Word of God, the whole counsel of God. This morning I spoke to the children on peashooter religion. I said, most of our religion today is peashooter religion. It’s like trying to take on a charging elephant or a charging lion with a peashooter. The odds are against you and no good insurance agent would sell you a policy at that point. Now the odds are against the United States today. Because all it is trying to fight all these forces of magic and witchcraft in education, in science, in politics and in the Church. All it is fighting them with is peashooter religion. And what is needed is the whole Word of God. The whole counsel of God. And with that victory is certain.

For we more than conquerors through Him that loved us. And this is the victory which overcometh the world even our faith. We were not called to defeat. We have been called to victory. We had better proceed to make sure we have it. Thank you.

[Applause]

[Other] Thank you. Rush I have something here that was handed to me by someone who came in late, and I mention the lateness {?} because what’s kind of interesting {?}, it’s about Isaac Bonwits. And the person doesn’t know that you were just talking about Isaac Bonwits before they came in. But what’s interesting is that this is from today’s Washington Daily News and it’s a column entitled ‘Science Today’. And it was {?}…

‘A few decades ago the academic establishment looked askance at the possibility of offering courses in parapsychology. But this condition has drastically changed as attested by these items pulled from the September October issue of the magazine ‘Physic’. Isaac Bonwits, 20, has received a bachelor of arts in magic in the University of California in Berkley. Berkley {?} ever granted by the University and possibly the first anywhere.’ And then they mention a couple other {?} too. {?}. Now I was interested to hear in Fairfax County this past year they are offering courses now in one of the high schools in transcendental levitation and yoga, witchcraft and last spring a number of us were up in {?} High school for freedom academic day, and a student chose the subject {?}, and was {?} magic {?}. Very well attended, all the students, many of them were flocking in to hear that subject {?}.

Well, with {?} do any of you have questions you’d like to ask?

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] The Bible speaks of necromancy and hypnotism, is this the same thing?

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, it’s a variation of the same thing. The Bible gives a very wide number of terms, diviners, necromancers and so on, and these were various forms of magic and of witchcraft. Now necromancers concentrated on communicating with the dead in order to have knowledge and power, so that the Bible’s terms give us the specialists, as it were, in the field. But it’s the same subject.

[Other] It’s very interesting that King Saul in the Bible rejected God and His word and he turned to a medium. …{?}… Who rejected God’s word, looked down at those who accepted the Bible as the Word of God and the revelation of God, and then consulted a medium who tried to make contact with {?}…

Do we have other questions?

[Audience] …{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. It is quite fashionable for all of these witches and magicians to claim a façade of Christianity and that’s all it is. Jean Dickson cannot be regarded as a Christian when she believes a new Savior, a new Christ, has been born somewhere in the past ten years in Tibet or the Himalayas, when she interprets the stars for people and so on. Her Christianity is a facade. One Catholic priest has said, because he’s quite irked at her claims to a devout Catholic, he said I have not been able to ascertain what parish she is a member of. So he said I view her claims with suspicion. Now E.S.P, there’s no question, as with the rattlesnake and the medicine man, there’s something to it. But it is also very clear that people who concentrate on developing such powers also destroy other aspects of their being. They tend to bring to the fore a lack of control over themselves. A basic emotional and moral instability.

So that while there are very clearly powers here that they do develop, they pay a severe price for it. There is a German pastor, Coch is his name, who has spent his life time in counseling, as a psychologist in Germany, and has specialized in this field. And he wrote a book about ten years ago which unfortunately very quickly went out of print. And then a second book on counseling in all such cases, which also unfortunately went out of print to quickly. But in his first book, ‘Between Christ and Satan’, he documents, from years of experience, the deadly effect that all these psychic phenomena have on the people who cultivate them. Very deadly moral and emotional consequences. And so his conclusion was there are far more surprising phenomena here than we realize. Sometimes amazing ones. But they are clearly demonic and their effects are terrifying.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] The belief in reincarnation is a part of occultism. Now occultism is related to magic. And today of course there is a great deal of occultism abroad and reincarnation therefore as a belief is being extensively promulgated.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. There have been several books on that, Bridey Murphy was the most famous one. However, there was a very thorough analysis of the Bridey Murphy case which exploded the entire thesis. Totally. There was not a fragment of reality to it. This has been true of every case they have followed through. Now occasionally there have been cases where some child has spoken another language and claimed to be someone who lived at some other time. And such cases have been clearly possession. Demonic possession we would say. Because there are two personalities there, there’s the personality of the child that was involved, and there’s the personality of the intruding spirit speaking another language. These things happen very commonly in areas in parts of the world where you have no Christian faith and where there is a great deal of paganism, of magic, witchcraft, demonic cults. And so you do have very real cases of possession.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Well, the basic thing is that it is destructive so totally of the personality of the individual. They become emotionally and morally unstable. It leads them into such radical instability that, well, as with this Indian medicine man I cited, he was unable to function to provide for his family. All his children had not only a woebegone look and unwashed unkempt enough to embarrass a hippie really, they would have embarrassed the average hippie they were so far gone, but he was a very intelligent man and yet it was difficult to carry on a conversation with him because there was this shattering effect of whatever he was leaving himself wide open to, and I think of course it was demonic. So he was like a zombie almost at times. And as far any resistance to any kind of temptation, or to any kind of evil, he lacked the capacity. He was destroyed as a person. And yet it was not a lack of intelligence or lack of ability. And this, I could document over and over again in gruesome details. Both among the Indians and among whites.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] The which magicians?

[Audience] ..{?}..

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. Very good question. Now, the whole of the Egyptian religion, and in my book on the One and the Many, I have a section on this, can be summed up in what the pyramid represented. The pyramid was a religious symbol. The base was on the earth, the top pointed to heaven, because man was on his way to becoming a god. And at the apex of the social pyramid was the Pharaoh, who was both god and man. Who bound heaven and earth in his person. The Pharaoh controlled the other world as a god. He was leading his people up into godhood. His magicians therefore represented his control of that other world ass the supreme magician. And as a god Pharaoh could therefore bring all kinds of power to bear on the human scene at any time. And the magicians very definitely had remarkable powers. Missionaries among the Sudan, interior missions, have told of the incredible and demonic powers some of the magicians today in the Sudan have. Very commonly as with the Indian medicine men, involving serpents. Their abilities sometimes to control animals. Now this system therefore required the magicians to manifest that supposedly absolute power over heaven and earth by the Pharaoh. A similar belief prevailed among the Babylonians. This is why one of the most revealing statements in the entire Bible to illustrate what paganism meant and its world of magic, was the statement of Nebuchadnezzar to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. He genuinely loved them. He was distressed that they refused to bow down to the image. He gave them another chance. They were supposed to have been thrown into the fiery furnace immediately, but Nebuchadnezzar out of respect for them gave them another chance. [48: 38]

And when they refused his statement expresses amazement. He was angry later. But who is that God that is able to deliver you out of my hand? For there is no god except me. Now when Nebuchadnezzar became king, the first act that he performed whereby he was officially king was to go to the great temple of Marduk. There was a great statue of Baal, with outstretched hand. And Baal represented the fertility, the power of nature. And Nebuchadnezzar would go up there and shake the hand of Baal. Grab it, to indicate now all of your power, the power of nature, power over nature, power over man, power over the world, has gone into me. And I represent the power of the universe for this day. Therefore, who is that God that is able to deliver you out of my hand, why that’s a fantastic thing. Impossible. This was the philosophy of Pharaoh, it was the thought policy and philosophy of Nebuchadnezzar. It was also the philosophy of Rome. The philosophy of paganism and of statism, totalitarianism. This is why one of the problems that was created after Stalin’s death was this. Khrushchev  and the Polit Bureau wanted to downgrade Stalin a bit, because after all, he was unpopular. And they wanted to get a little bit of popularity in the eyes of the people, everyone was so glad Stalin was dead and distrustful of any successor, they wanted some trust, some confidence. And you remember he made the famous speech criticizing Stalin. In the very happy reaction there was in the Soviet Union. But then he made a second speech, retracting what he said. Why? Because immediately all the Marxist theoreticians in the Soviet Union and in the Communist International said, what have you done? Don’t you realize the dictatorship of the Proletariat is infallible? It represents the dialectical process, it incarnates itself in history. Therefore the dictatorship of the Proletariat cannot make a mistake.

So what did Khrushchev say in his second speech? He re-established Stalin’s infallibility. He said Comrade Stalin did the right things for his day. But they are not the right things for our day. And so to try to bring Stalinism into our day, {?} it was the infallible word for his day even as what we will offer will be the infallible word for our day. Now I’m putting it in more biblical language that they did, but this is precisely what their argument was.

Yes.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, a very good question. And there’s a book, by the way, just published, and I’ve just gotten it and haven’t had a chance to do more than browse in it, on the Salem Witchcraft Trials. And the attitude of the author, who was not a Christian, is that we’ve been unfair to the Puritans of Salem. There was a lot more there than just imagination. Now to explain what was there, what we need to do is to go back and realize what happened in Europe when the missionaries moved in. Incidentally, there are a series of books by a British anthropologist, Dr. Murray, which deal with this subject, ‘The God of The Witches’, ‘The Witchcraft in Western Europe’ and others as well. Well these pagan cults were fertility cults. Witches cults, witches covens, they were churches presided over by a witch. Their worship was made up of sexual rites, the purpose of which was to have power over nature, power over people. These things were suppressed by the Church. But in the latter part of the Middle Ages as the Medieval Church began to decline under the impact of humanism, all these pagan cults came to the fore again. And they began to be more and more flagrant in their practice. They would even go into churches and desecrate them at night with black masses. They began to practice cannibalism, human sacrifice and many other things.

As a result a very extensive persecution of the witches cults broke out. It was a life and death battle. There’s no getting around it. At this point the recent article by {?}, David {?}, ‘An American Opinion’ is a good account of the historical aspects of the subject. Now in England also these cults were very, very prevalent. The history books try to ridicule the thing and they say the Puritans were such killjoys they objected to harmless dancing around a maypole. Well, as discreetly as I can state it, the maypole was not just a gaily colored pole that people innocently danced around, the maypole was a carved representation of the male generative organ and the young men and the young women did indeed dance around it for a time and then head for the woods. It was a magical practice. And a very great amount of debauchery went with it. The Puritans fought it on religious grounds and on moral grounds.

Now what happened in the colonies was that some of the people who came over were very clearly members of this cult. What we must realize is this. You did have your pilgrims and Puritans come over. But before they came over, there were already fishing boats from England coming and fishing off the coast of New England. No permanent settlement, but they’d fish there. And others came after the original boatloads of pilgrims and Puritans and settled among them who were interested in the trade there. In the fisheries and so on. Whose purpose was not religious and who were pagan. And they began to revive this cult.

There was one man named Burrows who was quite prominent in it. He was shipped back to England. Later on the outbreak again was detected. The evidence is very clear that there was such a cult, they were practicing it, there were serious offenses. Now apparently one or two girls who were hysterical, did give a lot of testimony at a point that implicated perhaps some people innocently. But there was a real problem and it was the Puritans who stopped it when they began to realize that they were dealing with a couple of hysterical and lying girls. They stopped the further proceedings. But what they had done up until that point was valid. I believe the author of this book is Hardwick. ‘The Salem Trials’ I think was the title. Just published this year.

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Everyone who denies God. You see, you’ve always had this sort of thing, you’ve always had pagans around. But it’s when Christians go weak that these things spring up. So that they are ultimately Satanic in origin. But the problem is not who is doing this but what are we doing about it? This is why I feel that so much of the conservative movement is futile. Very wonderful well meaning people who keep trying to document, as it were, their own funeral. If all the money that has been spent fighting the Communists since 1919 in the United States had been put into Christian schools, there wouldn’t be a public school left in the country today, I believe.

You see, well, I told the young people today that one of the things that our Lord criticized in His letter to the Church of Thyatira in Revelation 2:24 was that there were some people in the Church of Thyatira who were spending their time studying the depths of Satan, or, as some translated it, studying or knowing the deep things of Satan. In other words, instead of growing spiritually they were spending their time trying to study the conspiracy of their day. And our Lord condemned them. That’s no way to grow as a Christian. All you need to know is to look around you, yes, there’s a Communist conspiracy. There’s a Fabian Socialist conspiracy, there’s an Anarchist conspiracy. Good. I don’t have to document that endless to know that. I can know it, if I am intelligent, in ten minutes time. The question is what am I going to do about it? That’s the key. And our Lord said not studying the deep things of Satan, but the deep things of God. I’ve just seen a very wonderful woman whom I thought very highly of who has been a leader in a number of civic and public affairs, held high office in California, go very much astray. Why? Because she has spent the last twenty, twenty-five years in the forefront fighting every kind of conspiracy in one field of government after another where she has held office. But although a professing evangelical Christian, she is as ignorant of the Bible as a Sunday school child in the average church. And it’s led to her moral shipwreck now. Because she has been fighting without any ammunition or any armor, fighting without any nourishment. And ultimately too it becomes a very disheartening thing, you begin to feel bitter and soured on life when you’re concentrating on the enemy and what the enemy is doing, the conspiracy and what the conspiracy is doing.

But if you’re busy conspiring on your hand to build up works that are of the Lord, a church, a school, whatever else, then you’re full of bounce and hope like Bob Thoburne{?} is over here and Ed Urban{?} over there. You’re accomplishing something. You have the future in your hand then. You’re remaking the future, not looking backward to the past. The other day I read somewhere from a conservative organization that a conservative is someone who loves the past. I thought well that leaves me out. I’m in love with the future, because as a Christian I’m helping make it under God. And that’s what I’m looking forward to.

[Other] Any more questions? Mrs. {?}

[Audience]…{?}…

[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. A very good point. But before I tell how right you are, let me put in a good word for the real snake. He’s one of God’s creatures and he has his place in nature and he does a good work. Everything God creates has a purpose, a good purpose. And when we study His world we find, ultimately, the real value of all things.

Now, symbolically the snake does represent two things in pagan cultures. It does represent Satan and it does represent magical knowledge. Knowledge as power. And so for both these reasons the snake is very popular in all these movements as a symbol of that which they stand for. You stated it very well.

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[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. There are exorcists still functioning in a few places in the world. Not to many years ago there were among some of the Reformed missionaries in Korea, this was before World War 1, several very capable exorcists. To exorcise spirits possessing others. And they could tell some very remarkable stories and several book were written reporting episodes which tied in with this kind of talk about reincarnation.

Incidents where someone, in some cases known to the missionary, who’d died had possessed the body and personality of someone else who was emotionally unstable. In Europe there are exorcists to this day, a few of them, on the continent where a great deal of revival of witchcraft and magic has been underway for some time. There are a few Catholic exorcists and a few Protestant exorcists. And in the book I mentioned by Coch ‘Between God and Satan’ he has some reports of exorcisms.

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[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes, I think there is a great deal of revival of it and I don’t think it’s only practiced by the Negroes today. It has spread. And the hippies have picked it up in many, many cases. You see, a few years ago Normal Mailer{?} put his finger on the situation. Now Norman Mailer is one of our more peculiar minds on the left but on the other hand he is a remarkably discerning mind at times. And he said the goal of the average liberal today was to be, in his words, a white nigger. Because, you see, sharing the perspective of magic, all you need to add to that is witchcraft and where are you going to seek for power? Below. And so his goal, to be a white nigger. To have that closeness to that which is primitive, animalistic, and hence the appeal. It was some years ago when a professor of a major university here on the Atlantic coast, told me of going to a voodoo service. Now why was a man like that interested in it? He was looking for power from below. Incidentally he was scared and ran before the service was entirely over.

Yes.

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[Dr. Rushdoony] Yes. The signs in the zodiac are more properly astrology, which is also a related thing. Now astrology brings out a paradox of the magical point of view, because in astrology you believe that you are totally controlled by the forces of the universe. Well, whenever you have a magical worldview, you also have hand in hand with it, a growing pessimism. Because when man tries to play God over the universe, and to say that the rational is the real, that his word makes things, he begins to be disillusioned, and so instead of believing he’s in control, he begins to believe what’s the use? I’m utterly helpless. I’m totally determined by the forces of nature rather than controlling them. So astrology is the other side of magic, the pessimistic side. And this is why the Greco-Roman world, which was thoroughly magical in its perspective, in its latter days fell almost entirely into astrology and total pessimism. Incapable of doing anything, what’s the use?

Dr. William Carol Barth of Stanford University in his book ‘The Origins of the Medieval World’ has pointed out that the millions of Romans were defeated, not by huge barbarian armies, but by hundreds of barbarians. In other words, a few hundred barbarians would cross the border here and maybe two or three thousand over here, handfuls of them, and Rome with millions couldn’t stand up to them because there was nothing but hopelessness, despair, the feeling, well, if it’s in the stars what can you do about it?