Occult Confessions

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18.3: Falun Gong Aug 12, 2022

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On April 25, 1999 between ten and sixteen thousand Falun Gong believers, clutching the little blue book of Li Hongzing, gathered outside the Chinese Communist Party's headquarters in Beijing. They stayed from dawn until well after sunset for what was the largest public protest in China since the 1989 democracy movement that resulted in the Tiananmen Square Massacre. For Chinese authorities, Falun Gong or Law Wheel Cultivation was a dangerous “devil cult” worthy of persecution decreed from the very top of the government and party structure. But what was it about this seemingly harmless belief system that the CCP found so threatening?

18.2: Aum Shinrikyo Jul 29, 2022

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Panic struck the Tokyo subway on 20 March 1995. Men boarded subway cars with plastic bags and umbrellas, removed the newspaper covering the bags, and punctured them with the sharp tips of the umbrellas releasing sarin gas, a biogological weapon first developed by the Nazis during World War Two, into the underground. Eight of eleven bags were broken open and leaked 159 ounces of liquid sarin onto the cars as they hurtled through the subway system. Twelve people were killed, 1,039 were injured, and 4,460 went the hospital reporting symptoms of exposure. The men were members of Aum Shinkrikyo, a religious organization founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987, and were hoping to spark an armageddon—namely war between Japan and the United States—according to their guru's designs.

18.1: Cult Brainwashing Jul 15, 2022

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Brainwashing has long been used to account for why otherwise reasonable people join religious groups deemed strange or aberrant from the standpoint of mainstream society. In the nineteenth century, Mormons were accused of mesmerizing people into joining them. In the 1970s, parents in the anti-cult movement abducted their own adult children and subjected them to forced “de-programming.” Today, the narrative of an individual or group being “brainwashed” by a charismatic leader persists. But is it possible to fundamentally alter a person’s beliefs despite their own better judgment?

17.7: Pagan Saints of Mexico Jul 01, 2022

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For centuries, there was one primary saint Mexicans turned to for protection: the Virgin of Guadalupe. Then, beginning in the 1990s, the popularity of a new saint began to take hold: the skeletal Santa Muerte or Saint Death. The Catholic Virgin of Guadalupe overlapped with an ancient Aztec goddess in ways that blurred the boundary between Christianity and paganism. Similarly, Santa Muerte emerged as a liminal and uncertain figure on the edges of Mexican spirituality.

17.6: Tituba in Salem Jun 17, 2022

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In January 1692, Village minister Samuel Parris's Indian slave, Tituba, reported seeing his nine-year-old daughter, Betty, and eleven-year-old niece, Abigail, acting strangely. Parris was fully invested in the notion of a satanic conspiracy and beat Tituba to get her to confess to witchcraft. It's likely that much of what the magistrates drew out of Tituba in court can be traced back to Parris. Although Salem hung many for witches in the witch trials, Tituba managed to save herself by cleverly talking around her judges’ expectations.

17.5: The Tainos and Columbus Jun 03, 2022

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The celebration of Columbus day had started among Italian Americans in San Francisco and became a national holiday in 1937. Recently, indigenous people and their allies have requested changing the celebration of Columbus Day to the celebration of Indigenous Peoples' Day. While this is, in part, an effort to recognize the place of Native people in America's history and culture, it is also a reaction against Columbus who, detractors say, does not deserve his own holiday. For them, Columbus is a villain. Certainly, Columbus played a central role in the Christianization of the Americas, specifically the Caribbean. His example inspired countless European explorers to cross the Atlantic and initiate ambitious programs of colonization which ultimately decimated native populations. But is the villainization of Columbus based on the fact that he set an example for explorers to follow or crimes committed by the man himself against the Caribbean's indigenous people?

17.4: The Great Witch Hunt May 20, 2022

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The legend of the witch that spread during the three centuries of witch hunting and lasted through the Renaissance began with the devil. A woman or man (but usually a woman) who was down on their luck would suddenly find themselves in the company of the Prince of Darkness. Great gatherings of witches would take place on a sabbat and witches had to travel great distances to reach it, flying on a ram, goat, pig, ox, black horse, stick, shovel, spit, or the iconic broomstick. Witches who missed the service or didn't do enough mean magical stuff in the time between sabbats were whipped for their transgression, suggesting the degree to which the witch was simply an inverted mirror image of the strictly controlled religious life of Renaissance Christianity.

17.3: The Baltic Crusades May 06, 2022

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When we think of crusades, images of the Knights Templar riding into battle against their Islamic foes in the Holy Land spring to mind. But there was another medieval crusade against non-believers, in this case pagans, held in Scandinavia in the same time period. How did the Church arrive at the conclusion that it had no choice but to forcibly convert these Baltic heathens? Some monarchs were anxious to convert for the political advantage it gave them, but others like the Swedish Queen Sigrid the Haughty preferred a slap in the face to Christianity.

17.2: The Pope and the Barbarians Apr 22, 2022

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In the first millennium, Pope Gregory the Great understood humanity to be blind, cold, and lost since the fall of Adam, drawn to materialism and false gods and religions. With humility, humans who subjected themselves to God's divine will and grace could learn to live righteously and channel God's higher purposes to their fellow human beings. Gregory's vision of history was one of the species' gradual movement closer to god. The three stages of our collective spiritual development were paganism then Judaism and finally Christianity. Some of the tribes he endeavored to convert came easily. Others not so easily.

17.1: Constantine Apr 08, 2022

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Constantine was the first Christian emperor of Rome and established Christianity as a state religion for the first time. Constantine certainly knew about Christianity and was already well on his way to a conversion for personal and political reasons before ascending to the throne. He was a fan of the Christians and saw value in aligning his reign with their God. But his concept of the Christian God may have been based, at least in part, on the Syrain worship of a rock that fell out of the sky.

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