Related Articles:
- Chapter 1 - Abortion: The Religion of Witchcraft and Child Sacrifice
- Chapter 2 - Abortion in Biblical Perspective
- Chapter 3 - Abortion ... The Devil’s Mousetrap
- Chapter 4 - The Origin of Child Sacrifice
- Chapter 5 - The History of Human Sacrifice
- Chapter 7 - Witchcraft, Feminism and Child Sacrifice
- Chapter 8 - Do What Thou Wilt - Witchcraft and Satanism
- Chapter 9 - Defeating Jezebel
- Chapter 10 - Tearing Down the High Places
Chapter 6 – Modern Witchcraft and Child Sacrifice
by Eric Holmberg and Jay Rogers
Entering the modern era, in 15th century Italy, Pope Innocent VIII was so concerned about the rise of witchcraft that he commissioned Kraemer and Sprenger’s famous Malleus Maleficarum, a treatise on Witchcraft. Commissioned in 1484, the treatise repeatedly links witchcraft to abortion and child sacrifice: “Witches who are midwives in various ways kill the child conceived in the womb and procure an abortion.”
During the reign of Louis XIV, for example, there was a network of occult activity involving abortion and infanticide that reached even into the King’s courts. Investigating a series of suspicious deaths, the Lieutenant General of the police in Versailles was led to Madame de Montespan, Louis’ favorite lover, and then to “La Voisin”, a practicing witch and abortionist who had provided the poisons used in the murders. Upon further investigation, he learned that the abortion services connected with satanic rituals were also being performed – primarily for female members of the aristocracy. The following is the testimony of la Voisin’s daughter at the subsequent trial:
“At one of Madame de Montespan’s masses, I saw my mother bring an infant, obviously premature, and place it over a basin over which its throat was slit, and its blood drained into the chalice.”
Note that the child was premature, likely the victim of one of the many abortions la Voisin had performed.
“Then the cup filled with the baby’s blood was lifted up to heaven and this invocation was given: ‘Hail Ashteroth and Asmodeus, Princes of friendship, I conjure you to accept the sacrifice of this child in return for the favors asked of you.’”
Ashteroth was the goddess wife of Moloch. Asmodeus is a transliteration of the Hebrew name for a demon that is normally associated with lust. Aborted children, as well as infants purchased from the prostitutes and the destitute were being sacrificed in a satanic ritual designed to grant spiritual power to the practitioners.
“At her trial la Voisin confessed that no less than 2,500 babies had been disposed of in this manner….”
Historians debate whether these tales of Satanic Black Masses and rumors of ritual infant sacrifices are in fact reliable. Were they coaxed out of frightened witnesses by Gabriel De La Reynie, the Lieutenant General of Police in Versaille, who used torture as part of his interrogation techniques? Or were these simply folk rituals combined with elements of the Catholic mass that served to assuage the conscience of La Voisin as she came to terms with the moral implications of the many abortions she performed?
In the book, Affair of the Poisons, Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism in the Court of Louis XIV, author Anne Somerset offers this explanation:
“La Voisin appears genuinely to have believe in the power of magic but she combined this with an outward profession of piety. As the circumstances of her arrest suggested, she was a regular churchgoer, and her answers to her interrogators would abound with devout sentiments and respectful invocations of the ‘Good Lord.’ When she finally began to make significant revelations she would claim that she was doing so ‘for the glory of the Lord,’ who had commanded her to heed His will as she knelt in prayer. Earlier in her career her readiness to imply that she was in tune with the workings of providence had stood her in good stead, for clients were comforted by her apparent belief that her personal activities were compatible with Christianity. It may be that La Voisin herself was scarcely aware of any contradiction. Once, having assisted at an abortion, she was said to have wept tears of joy when the midwife in attendance baptized the fetus. Far from being troubled at having terminated the unborn child’s existence, she exulted in having been instrumental in securing its salvation.”
Witchcraft? Black masses? Infant blood sacrifice? It does seem far-fetched. It’s no wonder that some historians are skeptical. But when we consider the culture of the time, the picture comes into sharper focus.
The French Renaissance saw the revival of interest in the Greek and Roman gods. King Louis XIV himself loved paintings with mythological themes and had a particular fascination with the sun god, Apollo. In paintings of that era, Louis is portrayed as the “sun king.” La Voisin, no doubt, shared Louis’ fascination with pagan gods and goddesses. She mixed this with a kind of folk witchcraft, herbalism, astrology, and the concoction of love potions and various poisons, including potions used to induce abortion. La Voisin’s vocation as a poisoner is, in fact, the most documented element of the affair. The 1997 film, Marquise, depicts the story of a young actress, played by Sophie Marceau, who purchases poison from La Voisin in order to murder her husband so she might be free to marry her lover.
Likely in the minds La Voisin and others who practiced these abominations, they were doing a “good thing” in providing abortion to women whose children were products of adultery, fornication or incest. Whether or not Black Masses and ritual infant sacrifice actually occurred, it is apparent that elements of witchcraft and pagan religion were interspersed with Christian rituals in order to justify the horrific crime of child murder.
But is this any different than what we commonly see in the 21st century?
The notorious abortionist George Tiller, who was shot to death in 2009, employed a resident chaplain in his late term abortion clinic. Observers outside the clinic would note the frequent smoke arising from an incinerator chimney as babies were cremated inside the building. Tiller’s website advertised baptisms, funeral services, celebrations and blessings for the aborted fetus prior to being burned in the incinerator.
Whether intentional or naïve, blatant or hidden, there is a growing association of abortion with these bizarre religious rituals including witchcraft. This abortion clinic in Seattle, Washington, Aradia Women’s Health Center, for example, was named for the goddess associated with witchcraft. Aradia is an alleged figure of Italian folklore in Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. According to Leland, Aradia is the daughter of the goddess Diana and Lucifer who came to Earth to teach witchcraft to her oppressed worshippers.
The 19th century folklorist compiled the book as an attempt to portray the beliefs and rituals of an underground religious witchcraft tradition that, Leland claimed, had survived for centuries until his discovery of its existence in the 1890s. The Gospel of Aradia became “the first real text of the 20th century Witchcraft revival” (Magliocco, Sabina (1999). “Book Review: The New Edition of Leland’s Aradia.” Pomegranate: the Journal of Pagan Studies).
The book of Exodus contains a biblical injunction that in our relativistic, increasingly pagan age appears to some as controversial, absurd or even immoral.
“You shall not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18).
This verse is as poorly understood today as it was during the medieval period when it was used to justify killing people who were reputed to be involved in paganism, animism and other earth-oriented religions. In its proper context – and we must always remember that a text without a context is a mere pretext – this verse was and is primarily about protecting human life.
In biblical times, those executed for witchcraft were not punished for merely casting spells. The death penalty for those living within Israel that practiced sorcery was prescribed because of their monstrous practice of child sacrifice.
God had warned Israel not to intermingle with the Canaanite tribes – worshippers of Baal, Asherah, Moloch and Ashteroth – because they were idolaters who routinely sacrificed their children to demons. But instead of separating themselves from them as the Lord commanded, “…they mixed with the nations and learned to do as they did” (Psalm 106:35).
And so the Israelites became increasingly accustomed to and then enticed by the sex rituals the pagans practiced, eventually engaging in them. Soon they were lured into also worshipping the dark deities that stood behind the rituals – Moloch, Baal and Ashteroth most specifically. And then the final trap was sprung.
They served their idols, which became a snare to them. They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. Thus they became unclean by their acts, and played the whore in their deeds (Psalm 106:36-39).
And the Israelites here are far from unique. Why do we see the practice of human sacrifice throughout world history? The Word of God declares: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9).
In other words, “history repeats itself.” That being true, we must then ask ourselves: Is idolatry and human sacrifice still alive and well? Has the same process of co-mingling, seduction, sexual idolatry and finally child sacrifice taken place in our day?
Like the ancient Israelites, 20th century Americans were first enticed by the sexual revolution that took place during the early 20th century, what is often referred to as the Roaring Twenties. Industrialization, the automobile, the rapid spread of information through radio and print media, the birth of cinema and a number of other cultural phenomena unleashed a wave of new ideas and possibilities that the Church at the time was ill prepared to address. As a result, biblical standards, particularly as regards sexual mores, began to fray and then break.
Into this volatile mix stepped Margaret Sanger. Founder of the American Birth Control League and the abortion movement, Sanger is among history’s best examples of destructive power of spiritual deception.
In a biography written by an admirer Sanger was described as having “… tried to dispel depression by sex, travel, Rosicrucianism (a cult), numerology, now she tried a new panacea – astrology.”
Sanger was a confirmed adulteress who consistently and publicly supported a “woman’s right to destroy.” She became deeply involved with Havelock Ellis, a modern day false prophet who advocated a variety of bizarre sex practices supposing them to be the keys to spiritual enlightenment and power. For Margaret Sanger and her militantly (even religiously) promiscuous lifestyle, abortion became a necessary backup for contraceptive failure.
The American Birth Control League eventually became Planned Parenthood and has grown to be the single largest abortion provider in the world. Along with killing millions of babies, they have promoted promiscuity (and hence the demand for abortion) through sex education programs that frequently ignore and even mock biblical standards of modesty and chastity. And all of this comes with the support of your tax dollars – to the tune of well over a quarter-of-a-billion dollars a year!
Following Sanger came the 60’s, the invention of the birth-control pill and the century’s second and biggest cultural and sexual revolution. Again, a sleeping church was little match for the tsunami of so-called free love, religious syncretism, moral relativism, statism, feminism, the explosion of drug use and its spiritual relation, sorcery.
When Roe v. Wade was being debated in the Supreme Court, the vast majority of professing Christians were missing in action. So in 1973 abortion was codified as a fundamental, constitutionally protected “right” – in part to mop up the results of all the quote “free love.” Soon over one million pre-born children were being killed a year; over 50 million babies sacrificed and counting.
Whenever pagan sexual immorality is accepted, abortion and child sacrifice becomes a necessity in covering up the fruit of sin. One high priestess of a witches’ coven explained her support of abortion this way, “It is only in maintaining full control of our bodies that we maintain our full empowerment as Priestesses.” In her article, “Ethics of Abortion: A Witches Perspective,” Lady Lee wrote, “Access to abortion is truly a witches’ issue” (Lady Lee, “Ethics of Abortion: A Witches Perspective,” feminista! 3, no. 3, 1999).
In other words, this high priestess is saying abortion as an essential part of sexual liberation, which is an essential part of the “craft.” In Power of the Witch, spokeswoman for the Witches League for Public Awareness, Laurie Cabot, extols the paganism the ancient Celtic world in which fornication, adultery and homosexuality were “normal.” The Mother Goddess cult is presented as “a joyous, playful, sensuous, peace-loving culture.”
Cabot describes the permutation of the Mother Goddess into an old crone and the Horned God into a ravenous animal. Cabot’s description closely mirrors the transformation of ancient deities from sensual sun gods and fertility goddesses into demons of ritual human sacrifice. Child sacrifice and abortion were practiced and were accepted as facts of everyday life – the necessary consummation of rampant sexual immorality.
