The Last Crusade 09: In The Kingdom of Witches
We are watching the towers of our civilization drowning in a rising tide of madness, and we wonder why none raises any effective dike against this unclean sea.
We should not wonder. As we have seen in prior columns, the enemy of modern Western civilization in general, and of America in particular, is not animating a political movement but a religious one. This movement is called by many names, for one of its successful tactics is forever to change from one deceptive name to another.
It is religious in nature, even though it proposes no worship of God, for the same reason Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are religious in nature.
Whatever offers an answer to the fundamental questions of human existence, offers meaning and purpose to life, and hope for unity with something higher than the self. It is religious in nature for the same reason Satanism is religious: its ultimate enemy is not America nor even the West in general, but only those parts of Western civilization still loyal to the teachings of the Church.
The movement opposes Christ.
The movement is perfectly content to use Christian notions like compassion for the poor, for example, when it allows the state to overstep its traditional role, and take on the charitable acts which once had been the purview of the Church, and, by making them entitlements rather than charitable, to decrease the charity and goodwill in the world.
The movement is opposed to marriage in its every aspect and dimension, except when it comes to homosexual unions, whereupon the full panoply of Christian rites is demanded, and Christians are the preferred persons to bake the cakes, rent the halls, an take the wedding photos. There is no glee and no glory for the movement to hire Buddhists or Jews to do these things.
The inability of the political Right to halt any of these long, slow, ineluctable attacks should need no further clarification: since the days of David and Goliath we have known it. No one can beat a spiritual enemy with a political weapon. The reach and patience is insufficient. Politicians compromise for the sake of maintaining the worldly order. Prophets do not compromise. Their world is not this world. That is true as well for false prophets as true.
But what religion is it, then?
It is witchcraft. We live in the Kingdom of the Witches.
Since the days of L Frank Baum, portrayals of witches as young, pretty, kindhearted and good have outnumbered any portrayal of witches as diabolical and sterile old crones bent on wickedness. Even now, most people will think of the neopagan, a wise woman, or a female magic-user from a fantasy story when the word witch is said, and not feel the horror and sorrow the word should carry.
But the essential nature of a witch, as she was portrayed in fairy tales (which contain a good deal more sense than newspapers) was of a withered, childless spinster: a woman with nothing to offer the community, but whom age and curiosity had opened the secret properties of plants and stars and other things easily turned to venom.
The witch could not defeat the young and happy, healthy family men and their lovely wives and pink-cheeked children by force of arms. Deceit, muttered spells, and poison brewed in a cauldron were her weapons, and as she flew through the air on her broom, she swept up any trail of clues left behind. And shoved children into her oven to consume them.
I suggest that what we face is a faith that holds forth a modern and materialistic version of all these same ancient and crooked evils. Note their targets and their methods.
And, as times pass, their true nature grows more clear.
Recently, it was revealed in the news that covens of witches throughout America would be casting hexes, curses, and spells on the current President. That this news was seriously reported and apparently seriously meant has far deeper implications of a far deeper corruption than one might suspect.
Whether it is true that supernatural forces influence the human world or not, the report should disturb. If not true, it is disturbing that so many allegedly educated fellow citizens believe in hocus-pocus. If it is true, it is disturbing that so many allegedly decent fellow citizens regard dark powers to be things with which it is lawful, prudent and wholesome to traffic.
Recently also the resolution has been voiced by many on the Left never to use the name Trump when referring to Mr. Trump, nor to call him President, despite the rather obvious fact that he was lawfully elected and inaugurated. (Those who yodel that he did not win the popular vote overlook the fact that he is neither the eldest son of the late King of England nor was he elevated to the purple by the outcry of the ancient Praetorian Guard. And if we hear a man object that we do not select our President in America by primogeniture nor by acclamation, that man should be congratulated that he knows more of our system of government than do the yodelers who raise the objection aforementioned.)
Now, what have these two actions, the speaking of a witch’s spell and the unspeaking of a man’s name, have to do with one another? Obviously, no one in his right mind could think these things had any affect over politics, or would result in any political effect.
And again, recently, many throngs of lunatics in a ghastly display of vulgarity, completely with nudity, swearing, and other degradations, wearing images of women’s genitalia on their heads. The gathering was called a protest, but no protester could articulate for what cause they gathered. It was yet again called a political movement, albeit, again, no law nor policy nor any specific political act was demanded to be done or undone. What was it for?
They are rituals, ceremonial, magical. They are sacraments, symbols intended to create the result they symbolize.
What do the witches want? Let us cast the net further abroad, and look for a pattern in events.
Recently it was also revealed that Disney’s live action version of their masterpiece BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, taken from a traditional fairy tale, will introduce the sidekick of the antagonist to be a sodomite whose wish is not to serve and aid the object of his admiration, but to kiss and caress. This is aimed at a general audience, including children.
Now, as a means to promote a change of opinion, no one book or film is likely to accomplish much, and these things are sure to lose customers and create ill will among their loyal customers, including me. So money is not their motive.
There is a message to the fiction. The message is this: the normal male friendship that obtains between Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, Frodo Baggins and Sam Gamgee, D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers, Robin and Batman, is now defined as unreal. There are two kinds of love recognized to exist: family love, which is very commonly used now to refer to strong bonds of friendship between team mates, and sexual love, which includes everything else. There is no room for friendship.
No one could or would believe such a thing for an instant. And one film lending its weight to the message one way or the other is insignificant. The motive is not financial and not political, because, as a political vehicle, it is grossly inefficient.
But in the same way to the Christian, no prayer is ever wasted, for God hears them all, so too for the witch no curse against normal love and natural family life is wasted, since Hell hears them all.
It is often said these days that politics is downstream of culture. It is a truth, but those who say it may not realize the deeper implication of what they say. Culture is not merely a set of attitudes and habits, such as tipping waitresses or driving on the right side of the road. It is not merely a shared language. Nor is it merely a shared philosophy. It is a share worldview, a shared vision of life’s deepest meaning, a shared religion. A culture is a cult.
No one would risk having a major motion picture flop for any worldly reason. It is not even the best way to spread propaganda. But if one’s motive springs out of one’s cult belief, one’s deepest belief about what makes life meaningful and what distinguishes right from wrong, one would take the risk without bothering to count the cost. The only folk offended by an angelic message, so runs the reasoning, are devils. And angels do not care for the patronage of devils. Likewise, the demons do not care for the patronage of angels, nor witches for Christians.
Admiring a man’s art regardless of his personal life is a politic and polite stance to take. But it only obtains for civilized men. Barbarians and heathens have no such broadmindedness. Tolerance is a virtue practiced by Christians and Jews. Classical pagans never express admiration for alien works of art, and the witches judge all things solely by their politics. They call on tolerance when and only when it can be used as a truncheon to cudgel Christians.
Speaking for myself, I would not risk the loss of happy customers merely over a political point, nor would I seek to offend those whose only difference of opinion was over the prudent laws and policies to be followed in seeking a just and ordered society. But religion runs deeper than any philosophy: it is soaked into the bones, and changes the heart, and changes everything. Even if I tried to hide it, the enemies of my faith would scent it by its celestial savor, and howl, and call out the hounds of hell to hunt me down nonetheless. So I make no attempt to hide it.
Does the pattern hold in other examples?
In the hall of academia, it is commonplace to punish education, that is, the fearless curiosity that ever seeks truth, and impose in its place mere indoctrination, that is, the incurious recital or repetition of those ideas conformity demands. Obviously, indoctrination deadens curiosity and prevents it. It is madness to use the institution meant to foster education to deter it.
Likewise, in the courts of law, it is so commonplace for judges to overrule the legislative intent of the law that this has its own name: it is called judicial activism. Obviously, it is the mere opposite of using the legislature to make laws no man is above. It is madness to use the institution meant to foster law to undermine it.
Likewise Hollywood allegedly creates popular entertainment to entertain us. Entertainment is a temporary indulgence in an innocent pleasure to escape from the stress and work and struggle of the life. Attending a lecture is work, meant to educate oneself. Attending the sacrament of confession, and the examination of conscience, is work, meant to rectify oneself. Being hectored into confession, particularly when one is innocent, is an infliction of pain. Obviously, using entertainment as a mechanism of social engineering, hectoring and lecturing the audience, is the mere opposite of entertainment. It is madness to use innocent pleasures and pastimes as a tool to destroy innocence.
But none of this is madness if entertainment, law, and education is not their goal. They are using the schools, the courts, and the theater to promulgate the faith. Their faith.
Let us cast the net wider. Is there any institution uncorrupted by this antichristian religion, any question untouched by it?
Generally, the political institutions in a republic are meant to induce the equal enforcement of the laws that protect the natural rights of man, which include his rights to life, liberty, and to enjoy securely the fruits of his labor and the joys of his family life. Man is wolf to man.
We rightly fear each other as the main source of predation on our property and ourselves. It is to reduce that danger that we submit to the rule of princes and parliaments, who derive their just authority from their ability and willingness to protect those rights. In a civilized republic, the laws are written and objective and apply equally to all men, to the rulers as well as the ruled.
To achieve this, the power to enforce the laws is hedged about with checks and balances. As the checks and balances are removed, the likelihood and magnitude of corruption increases.
The legendary blindness of the goddess of justice is precisely this: that she takes no account of faction and is no respecter of person, but judges each case according to its merit alone. Each case is judged by the innocence or guilt of the accused, and the identity of the accused is ignored.
But corrupt law operates by a double standard: it is lax and forgiving against one’s own faction, or grants special privileges, but strict and draconian against rival factions, and imposes special burdens. The whole point of corrupt law is the identity of the accused trumps any question of guilt or innocence. Members of the rival factions are guilty by definition, born guilty, guilty due solely to their membership, guilty solely because of their identity. Members of friendly factions are innocent by definition, forgiven solely because of their identity.
This madness is called identity politics. It is using the political institutions to erect a double standard in order to abolish rather than secure justice, in order that the liberty, lives and property of others may be hindered, harassed, or plundered for one’s own benefit.
But it is not madness if the political institutions are not being used to organize society, but to break it. Society is an obstacle to the faith. Their faith.
Tumult, riot and war may or may not be their intended goals, but the maintenance of the social order is the opposite of their goal.
The institutions of maidenhood, marriage, and motherhood have not escaped the curse of madness. Most obviously, our nation has become psychotic on sexual topics, that is, the consensus opinion has suffered a total break with reality. A measure of this break can be seen in that even fundamental distinctions between male and female are abolished. These include questions of whether men can be brides and marrying other men, or use the women’s locker room in schools, or girls pretending to be boys can join the Boy Scouts.
Anyone who refers to reality, that is, any sane man saying a sane thing, on these topics is shouted down, vilified, demonized, and called phobic, homophobic or transphobic, that is, accused of having a psychopathological fear of homosexuals or transvestites.
The irony is that the insane call the sane insane. And that is insane.
Our nation’s current sexual psychoses spring from decades of neurotic decisions concerning abortion, contraception, and no-fault divorce. The pleasures of the marriage bed, which are quite clearly natural, pleasurable, and joyful, become unnatural when the intimacy of marriage is eroded. Prostitution reduces these sacred and intimate ecstasies to a commodity; Pornography makes the commodity public. Contraception so reduces the moral hazard of fathering a bastard that the merely prudential argument against out of wedlock copulation is muted. And no nation could so divorce itself from nature as to contemplate making it lawful to murder offspring in the womb unless a passion as strong as the sexual drive were behind it. And the desire of the guilt-ridden to smother the conscience is just so strong.
But it is not madness if the specifically Christian elements of marriage are the target of the assault.
It is not polygamy or sexual slavery, not prostitution nor pornography nor perversion they seek to undermine, diminish and abolish. It is monogamy, a rare thing outside the Christian world. It is lifelong fidelity they hate and divorce they cherish. Motherhood they hate and abortion they call brave. Pederasty and paedophilia they drop ever increasing hints should be next to be lionized and normalized, except when the accusation can be brought against Catholics. Which is a hypocrisy on their part so great and so obvious that it would be madness if this were meant as a political program.
But it is not madness, because it is not politics. The Christian religion reveres both virgins and mothers. This new religion hates both, for it wishes promiscuity on the first, and abortion on the second.
I submit that the actions which otherwise are insane and inexplicable are perfectly easy to understand once the symbolic witchcraft behind them is understood. The examples can be multiplied endlessly.
Note that recent news reports show a controversial oil pipeline was impeded by the government despite clear evidence that comparable methods of convey oils in like amounts across like distances, by trucking, rail, or shipping, posed far more grave and frequent dangers to the environment. Demonstrators gathered to protest the completion of the pipeline left litter and debris strewn everywhere, imposing a considerable clean-up cost on taxpayers.
And, again, consider the controversies surrounding an alleged gap between the wages offered men and women for the same work. If women would do the same jobs under the same working conditions as men, but were actually accepting seventy cents on the dollar (which is what the myth claims) any prudent entrepreneur would recognized the opportunity. He would fire all men on his staff immediately, offer women job applicants ninety cents on the dollar. This would increase her wage and at the same time increase his profit.
Also, consider the question surrounding minimum wage laws. If it were possible to increase the value to the ultimate consumer of an unskilled worker by government fiat (which is what the myth claims) then the government could command that employers not only pay fifteen dollars an hour, but twenty, forty, eighty, or a thousand. Once all unskilled workers were worth one thousand dollars an hour, or eight hundred thousand dollars a year, in a decade, every workingman in the nation will be a millionaire.
All of these seem like politics because they call upon the government to take action: to force employers to fire employees, to force oil businesses to make more oil spills and harm the environment, and so on. Indeed, not a single Leftwing economic policy ever proposed since the dawn of time has ever had the economic effect promised to come from the policy. The end result is always and forever the same, the removal of the price system, and in its place some sort of diminished market with correspondingly higher prices, or rationing, or both.
All these things are directly counterproductive of their stated goals. All the hysterics of the Left are entirely immune to any facts on any of these matters. It is not that they doubt the fact, they neither care one way or the other. It is in the same way, indeed, in the exact same way, that the faithful Christian is entirely undisturbed by arguments about astronomy one way or the other. Religious matters are not settled by scientific arguments for the same reason scientific arguments cannot settle theological disputes.
The oil pipeline was symbolic. It is meant to placate Gaia. The government funding for abortion is symbolic. It is meant to placate Moloch. The riots in the streets when bankers meet is symbolic. It is meant to deflect the cargo planes from the White Man to the Borneo Islanders. The protests by women dressed as their own genitalia is symbolic. It is for Lilith and Hecate. The love of Islamic terrorism in this generation, and the love of Soviet terrorism, mass killings, and orchestrated starvation in the last generation is symbolic. It is for Satan.
You may ask then, why, if we live in the kingdom of the witches, and these are all their true goals and purposes, why do not of them say so, speak so? Do none of them know where their stampede is heading?
They do not say or know the truth about their own movement, or about the world, or their place in it, because there is no truth in them. But to explore that question is a matter for another day.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
