The victims say Craig beat them, shackled them to beds, kept them in dog cages and starved them.

Durham Couple Sentenced In Satanism Abuse Case

NBC17 | Nov 27, 2009

DURHAM, N.C. – A North Carolina couple has been sentenced on misdemeanor charges in a case involving abusing other adults during Satan worship.

Joseph Scott Craig, 25, and his 30-year-old wife Joy Johnson were each sentenced Friday to two 60-day suspended sentences and a year of probation.

Search warrants said the victims were a man and a woman who moved in with Craig and Johnson after they became friends through their satanic interests.

The victims say Craig beat them, shackled them to beds, kept them in dog cages and starved them.

Craig entered an Alford plea, which means he maintained his innocence but acknowledged prosecutors had enough evidence for a conviction. Johnson pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting her husband.

Vicar sends warning over occult activities

A rural vicar has warned people not to dabble in the occult after a sheep’s head was impaled on a pole outside one of his churches.

Telegraph | Nov 26, 2009

Rev Nick Bromfield says he has spotted several signs of black magic worship in the area and even seemingly harmless pub psychic nights and crystal readings can cause untold damage.

Mr Bromfield decided to speak out after seeing increasing evidence of “dark forces” in the Forest and being called on to pick up the pieces when things go wrong.

“I want people to be aware of the potential damage that can be caused by this kind of activity,” he said.

“It might sound medieval to talk about the relationship between good and evil, but there is no middle ground on this. People need to leave well alone.

“I have been told there are people operating in a darker place, and I have seen signs of satanic activity in the Forest.

“It’s difficult to quantify but there is something about borders that attracts occult activity and the seclusion is also very attractive. They are allowing in forces that can do great damage.

“I know a lot of pagans in the Forest and they are as appalled about this as Christians.”

Mr Bromfield, the rector of Drybrook, Lydbrook and Ruardean, is asked to bless around 10 homes a year because of the owners’ fear something is amiss.

So far he has not needed to call in the diocesan deliverance officers who are allowed to perform exorcisms.

But he is regularly asked to help people who have been left angry, upset or sometimes scared after being tempted to contact dead loved ones.

The vicar says he has seen animal carcasses laid out in circles or surrounding stones, which could be a sign of black magic worship in the woodlands.

A few weeks ago a parishioner at one of his churches was upset to find a severed sheep’s head dripping with blood mounted on a pole in the grounds.

“Naturally it wasn’t very pleasant and I burned it,” said the vicar, who fears it could have been a warning.

“But I think it’s something that clergy in many rural parishes have experienced.

“It’s either a malicious deliberate provocative act against the church or our “friends” from that sphere of activity sending a tribute because we are successful.”

Adopted … Matthew Roberts

The Sun | Nov 23, 2009

By PETE SAMSON

LIKE many adopted children, Matthew Roberts set about finding his biological parents with a mix of nerves and excitement.

But nothing could have prepared him for being told his dad was… serial killer CHARLES MANSON.

Over a five-week period in the summer of 1969, Manson and his Family of commune followers committed a series of nine gruesome murders. Victims included pregnant actress Sharon Tate, wife of film director Roman Polanski.

Matthew, 41 – who bears a haunting resemblance to his father – sank into depression after discovering his identity.

Warped … Charles Manson now

He has since been in contact with his dad in a series of letters to his California prison and Manson has replied – each time chillingly signing off with a swastika.

Now Matthew, who was given up for adoption as a baby, has told of his horror at finding out he was the son of a monster.

He says: “I didn’t want to believe it. I was frightened and angry. It’s like finding out that Adolf Hitler is your father.

“I’m a peaceful person – trapped in the face of a monster.”

Matthew grew up in Rockford, Illinois, and didn’t know he was adopted until his sister told him when he was ten.

He loved his adoptive parents but always knew he was different. He says: “My parents were great people, but very conservative.

“They were products of the Fifties and I didn’t relate to them. My biological parents were products of the Sixties and I take on a lot more of those characteristics.”

He also reveals his adoptive father tried to discourage him from getting in contact with Manson, telling him: “Nothing good will come from this.”
Letters

Matthew, who now lives in Los Angeles, began investigating his family history 12 years ago when he contacted a social services agency who located his mother, Terry, in Wisconsin.

He wrote to her straight away and their early exchanges will be familiar to adopted children everywhere.

She confirmed she was his mum and told him she had named him Lawrence Alexander – and that she would tell him his last name in time.

The jigsaw of his life was beginning to take shape but it was still missing a crucial piece – his father.

Terry remained tight-lipped about his identity but after Matthew pressed her for details in a string of letters, she eventually revealed the awful truth.

She said she met commune leader Manson in 1967 – two years before the infamous “Manson Family” murders in Los Angeles for which he is still in jail at the age of 75.

But back in 1967, Terry had been one of many who were transfixed by Manson’s charms.

Her father had tried to chase him away when he met Terry, calling him a “white-trash biker bandit” but she found him charismatic and hypnotizing.

So she hopped on a bus with his Family and ended up in San Francisco. There she claims she was raped by Manson in a drug-fuelled orgy, after which she returned home and Matthew was born on March 22, 1968.

Terry always believed Manson was the father of the baby she gave up for adoption. And after seeing a picture of Matthew, her worst nightmare was confirmed.

For he is the spitting image of Manson, with the same nose, mouth, eyes and large forehead. They even have the same thick, arched eyebrows and long, thick, dark hair.

Like his father, Matthew is a songwriter and poet. He is even worried that he may have inherited his father’s schizophrenia.

Matthew, now working as a DJ, recalls hearing mum Terry’s bombshell: “She even said, ‘You look just like him’.

“I’m not nuts but I’ve got a little bit of it. It’s scary and upsetting. If I get worked up, my eyes get really big and that’s really freaked some people out before.

“I’ve tried to tone that down quite a bit. I don’t like having that effect on people.

“I don’t even like the fact that I’m big. It makes me even scarier. My hero is Gandhi. I’m an extremely non-violent, peaceful person and a vegetarian.

“I don’t even kill bugs. I’ve had long hair all my life. I could make it go away, but I can’t let the world and their fears change me.” After discovering the truth, it took Matthew five years to pluck up the courage to write to his father at Corcoran State Prison in California.

Manson replied to Matthew’s letter straight away and has since sent him a string of ten handwritten notes and postcards signed with the wartime Nazi symbol.

Matthew says: “He sends me weird stuff and always signs it with his swastika. At first I was stunned and depressed. I wasn’t able to speak for a day. I remember not being able to eat.”

According to Matthew, the letters mainly rambled and said “crazy things” but Manson did confirm he could be his father.

In one twisted letter he wrote: “The truth is the truth. The truth hurts.”

In another note Manson talked about meeting Matthew’s mother. He wrote: “I remember her. We came back to LA on the super-cheap train.”

And Manson – who grew up without a father figure – even compared his childhood to Matthew’s.

He said: “You got the same father I got. A hobo just left on the midnight train and died, lost at sea.” Then in a postcard two years ago, addressed to Matthew’s birth name Lawrence Alexander, Manson sent his son his prison phone number.

But Matthew has never made the call to his dad.

He says: “There’s always a subconscious block.

“What I’m worried about is that you think you’re going to meet your birth mother or father and they’re going to love you and welcome you with open arms. But he’s not that kind of person.”

Despite Manson’s evil actions, Matthew confesses he now battles confused emotions towards his biological father.

He says: “If I did talk to Charlie on the phone, I would say, ‘I truly understand what it’s like to be you, more than anyone could ever imagine on so many levels’.

“He’s my biological father – I can’t help but have some kind of emotional connection. That’s the hardest thing of all – feeling love for a monster who raped my mother.

“I don’t want to love him, but I don’t want to hate him either.”

Irish Times | Nov 19, 2009

PÁDRAIG COLLINS in Sydney

THE CHURCH of Scientology in Australia was last night defending itself from a scathing attack by a politician using parliamentary privilege.

In a senate speech late on Tuesday, independent south Australia senator Nick Xenophon said: “Scientology is not a religious organisation. It is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs.”

Mr Xenophon questioned Scientology’s tax exemption status and called for it to be investigated by the police and parliament.

The senator tabled letters he received from former Scientology members detailing claims of abuse, false imprisonment, forced abortion, embezzlement and the covering up of children’s deaths.

“One of the saddest correspondences I have received – and they are all sad – is from Paul Schofield,” said Mr Xenophon.

Mr Schofield alleges the cover-up of child abuse by Scientology and admitted being part of a campaign to cover up the facts surrounding the deaths of two of his daughters. “Lauren, who was 14 months old, was being babysat at the organisation’s building in Sydney when she was allowed to wander the stairs by herself and fall. She died in hospital two days later,” said Mr Xenophon.

Mr Schofield said he felt pressured by Scientology executives not to request an inquiry, and was told if he sought compensation he and his wife would be ineligible for any church services. “His second daughter, Kirsty, who was 2½, died after ingesting potassium chloride – a substance used as part of a so-called ‘purification programme’ run by the organisation,” said Mr Xenophon.

Mr Schofield says he perjured himself to the police in the inquest to protect the church.

A letter from former Scientologist Aaron Saxton said he was involved in coercing female followers to have abortions.

He said this was part of a policy designed to keep followers loyal and to allow them to continue working for the organisation.

The Church of Scientology said Mr Xenophon’s allegations were an abuse of parliamentary privilege.

“If these people had key issues, then how come they haven’t contacted the church officially? . . . I think it’s a bit disingenuous that someone stands up in parliament, where they can say whatever they want,” said Scientology spokeswoman Virginia Stewart.

Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd said Mr Xenophon’s speech contained “grave allegations”.

“I share some of those concerns but let us proceed carefully and look carefully at the material which he has provided before we make a decision on further parliamentary action,” he said.

Al Gore. Photograph by Graeme Robertson

“I’ve done a Christian [-based] training program; I have a Muslim training program and a Jewish training program coming up, also a Hindu program coming up. I trained 200 Christian ministers and lay leaders here in Nashville in a version of the slide show that is filled with scriptural references. It’s probably my favourite version, but I don’t use it very often because it can come off as proselytising.”

Nobel winner adapts fact-based message to reach those who believe they have a moral duty to protect the planet in Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis

guardian.co.uk | Nov 2, 2009

Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth sequel stresses spiritual argument on climate

by Suzanne Goldenberg

Al’s Gore’s much-anticipated sequel to An Inconvenent Truth is published today, with an admission that facts alone will not persuade Americans to act on global warming and that appealing to their spiritual side is the way forward.

In his latest book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, the man who won a Nobel prize in 2007 for his touring slideshow on disappearing polar ice and other consequences of climate change, concludes: “Simply laying out the facts won’t work.”

Instead, Gore tells Newsweek magazine in a pre-publication interview, that he has been adapting his fact-based message – now put out by hundreds of volunteers – to appeal to those who believe there is a moral or religious duty to protect the planet.

“I’ve done a Christian [-based] training program; I have a Muslim training program and a Jewish training program coming up, also a Hindu program coming up. I trained 200 Christian ministers and lay leaders here in Nashville in a version of the slide show that is filled with scriptural references. It’s probably my favourite version, but I don’t use it very often because it can come off as proselytising,” Gore tells Newsweek.

Gore’s book arrives at a time of intense international scrutiny of America’s moves on the environment ahead of an international meeting on global warming at Copenhagen, now just more than a month away.

It draws on the scholarly approach Gore developed for Inconvenient Truth. Since 2007, the former vice-president has been calling experts together from fields ranging from agriculture to neuroscience to discuss possible solutions to climate change.

The book draws on 30 such “solutions summits”, as well as Gore’s countless telephone conversations with scientists at America’s best institutions. According to the book’s press release, “Among the most unique approaches Gore takes in the book is showing readers how our own minds can be an impediment to change.”

New polling last month showed a steep decline in the numbers of Americans who share Gore’s sense of urgency in acting on climate change.

Related

Gore poised to become world’s first “carbon billionaire”

The book aims to reach those Americans by familiarising readers with emerging alternative energy sources, such as geothermal, biomass and wind power, as well as the possibilities of making cleaner coal power plants, and developing a more efficient and responsive “smart” electrical grid.

Gore also explores how deforestation, soil erosion, and the rising world population are multiplying the effects of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Much of the material was developed through the series of brainstorming sessions organised by Gore. Since 2007, the former vice-president has been calling experts together to discuss possible solutions to climate change. He has also held countless telephone conversations with scientists at America’s best institutions.

“He is one of the only politicians that takes the time to actually talk to scientists who are producing the cutting-edge stuff and he comes in with questions. He doesn’t ask us how our results impinge on a particular policy he actually asks about science,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who spoke to Gore along with colleagues four or five times for the book. “Nobody that we have dealt with has ever taken as much time to understand the subtlety of the science and all the different complications and what it all means as Al Gore.”

Those conversations led Gore to politically inconvenient conclusions in this new book. In his conversations with Schmidt and other colleagues at the beginning of the year, Gore explored new studies – published only last week – that show methane and black carbon or soot had a far greater impact on global warming than previously thought. Carbon dioxide – while the focus of the politics of climate change – produces around 40% of the actual warming.

Gore acknowledged to Newsweek that the findings could complicate efforts to build a political consensus around the need to limit carbon emissions.

“Over the years I have been among those who focused most of all on CO2, and I think that’s still justified,” he told the magazine. “But a comprehensive plan to solve the climate crisis has to widen the focus to encompass strategies for all” of the greenhouse culprits identified in the Nasa study.

The former vice-president has been working behind the scenes to try to nudge the White House and Congress to move forward on a 920-page proposed law to cut America’s greenhouse gas emissions and encourage its use of clean energy sources like solar and wind power.

On Saturday, he told the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, he was “almost certain” Obama would attend the negotiations. The White House has so far refused to make a commitment.

But Gore has also been confronted with almost daily fresh reminders of the difficulties of prodding Americans to action.

The proposed legislation has set off a ferocious debate about the costs of dealing with climate change – with conservative Democrats and Republicans saying reducing America’s use of oil will deepen unemployment and hurt average American families.

Republicans in the Senate have threatened to boycott a session today that had been called to move forward a draft of a 920-page proposed law to deal with climate change.

Progress on the bill is seen as crucial to getting a binding deal at Copenhagen. Barbara Boxer, the chair of the Senate’s environment and public works committee, said yesterday she was ready to move ahead without any Republican participation.

__________
Glenn Beck-Lord Monckton Debate Global Warming

David Miscavige, leader of the Church of Scientology. Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters

Florida newspaper exposé reveals allegations of campaign to gather information on high-level defectors

Former Scientology members tell of group’s efforts to track them down

Guardian | Nov 3, 2009

In the latest chapter of an extraordinary exposé of the Church of Scientology, the St Petersburg Times has described the group’s strenuous efforts to track down and bring back members who try to leave.

Former Scientology members have told the Florida newspaper of being pursued and detained, cut off from family and friends and subjected to months of interrogation, humiliation and manual labour. What is particularly damaging is that these allegations come from former high-ranking Scientology officials who allegedly coordinated the intelligence gathering and supervised the retrieval of staff at the behest of the church’s leader.

The latest instalment of the series – What Happened in Vegas – includes detailed allegations of a campaign to gather information on a group of high-level defectors.

According to the paper, two couples and a man who left in 1990 to set up a mortgage business in Las Vegas were infiltrated by a mole who would send reports on the group to the church’s office of special affairs’ (OSA) intelligence unit back in Hollywood.

The church’s alleged interest in the group’s activities had to do with the two women, who were sisters. Terri and Janis Gillham were two of the original four “messengers” for L Ron Hubbard, the pulp novelist who founded Scientology. As his messengers they fetched people for private audiences and carried his handwritten notes – bulletins in red ink and policy orders in green.

For the story, the St Peterburg Times interviewed high-ranking defectors, including Mike Rinder, the former director of OSA, and Marty Rathbun, the former inspector general of the Religious Technology Centre, the church’s top ecclesiastical authority. A Scientology spokesman “categorically denied” that Miscavige knew about or was involved in the pursuit of runaways or spying on former members.

The Church of Scientology has been battered by negative publicity in the last few days. Last week one of the most high-profile members, Hollywood film-maker Paul Haggis, quit the organisation in protest at its stance on same-sex marriages. In an explosive letter of resignation, Haggis claimed he could no longer “be a member of an organisation where gay-bashing is tolerated”.

On this side of the Atlantic two flagship branches of the church in France were ordered to pay fines of over €600,000 (£550,000) after being convicted of “fraud in an organised gang” by a court in Paris. The latest piece from the St Petersburg Times just piles on the bad publicity for the church founded by Hubbard in 1952.

About 10,000 couples from around the world gathered at Asan, outside Seoul in South Korea, to have their unions blessed by the Rev Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church (Lee Jin-man/AP)

London Times | Oct 14, 2009

Forty thousand people took marriage vows today in a mass ceremony across four continents, in what may be one the last such spectacle to be presided over by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, ageing leader of the controversial Unification Church.

Some 10,000 brides, dressed in flowing Korean national costume or white wedding dresses, married grooms in black suits, red ties and white scarves, at the Sun Moon University in Asan in South Korea. About the same number of people went through ceremonies in locations as varied as Brazil, Australia and the United States.

Some were couples renewing their vows and there were conflicting reports of how many had been introduced to one another by the church, a controversial practice that brought together complete strangers and contributed towards the “Moonie” church’s reputation for being a brain-washing cult. At least one couple from Japan, Rie Furuta and Tadakuni Sano, told reporters that they had met only three times since their marriage had been arranged by the church.

“I pray that you become good husbands and wives, and men and women who can represent the world’s six billion humankind,” the weeping 89-year old Mr Moon told the newlyweds, as he sprinkled holy water and scattered confetti.

Members of the Unification Church regard the The Rev Moon and his wife as messiahs. In the 1970s and 1980s the church acquired a reputation for brainwashing and separating recruits from their families, but for the past two decades it has projected a more low-key and responsible image.

In the past, The Rev Moon wore white priestly robes, but at today’s ceremony he was dressed in a dark suit and bow tie.

One participant interviewed in Asan by the Associated Press seemed very unhappy to be there. “I came here against my will,” said the weeping young woman who refused to give her name. “I’m too young to get married. I don’t understand why I have to do something like this.”

In this photo taken Oct. 3, 2009, Guatemalan Mayan Indian elder Apolinario Chile Pixtun poses for a portrait at the Iximche ceremonial site in Tecpan, Guatemala. Archaeologists, astronomers and modern-day Mayas shrug off the popular frenzy over the date of 2012, predicting it will bring nothing more than a meteor shower of new-age ‘consciousness,’ pseudo-science and alarmist television specials. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

Associated Press | Oct 11, 2009

by Mark Stevenson

MEXICO CITY – Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly “running out” on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it’s not the end of the world.

Or is it?

Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. “I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff.”

It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood’s “2012″ opens in cinemas, featuring earthquakes, meteor showers and a tsunami dumping an aircraft carrier on the White House.

At Cornell University, Ann Martin, who runs the “Curious? Ask an Astronomer” Web site, says people are scared.

“It’s too bad that we’re getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they’re too young to die,” Martin said. “We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn’t live to see them grow up.”

Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.

A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.

But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes “predictions” from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: “Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?”

It may sound all too much like other doomsday scenarios of recent decades — the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the Jupiter Effect or “Planet X.” But this one has some grains of archaeological basis.

One of them is Monument Six.

Found at an obscure ruin in southern Mexico during highway construction in the 1960s, the stone tablet almost didn’t survive; the site was largely paved over and parts of the tablet were looted.

It’s unique in that the remaining parts contain the equivalent of the date 2012. The inscription describes something that is supposed to occur in 2012 involving Bolon Yokte, a mysterious Mayan god associated with both war and creation.

However — shades of Indiana Jones — erosion and a crack in the stone make the end of the passage almost illegible.

Archaeologist Guillermo Bernal of Mexico’s National Autonomous University interprets the last eroded glyphs as maybe saying, “He will descend from the sky.”

Spooky, perhaps, but Bernal notes there are other inscriptions at Mayan sites for dates far beyond 2012 — including one that roughly translates into the year 4772.

And anyway, Mayas in the drought-stricken Yucatan peninsula have bigger worries than 2012.

“If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn’t have any idea,” said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. “That the world is going to end? They wouldn’t believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain.”

The Mayan civilization, which reached its height from 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., had a talent for astronomy

Its Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. Thirteen was a significant, sacred number for the Mayas, and the 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012.

“It’s a special anniversary of creation,” said David Stuart, a specialist in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin. “The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they’re just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six.”

Bernal suggests that apocalypse is “a very Western, Christian” concept projected onto the Maya, perhaps because Western myths are “exhausted.”

If it were all mythology, perhaps it could be written off.

But some say the Maya knew another secret: the Earth’s axis wobbles, slightly changing the alignment of the stars every year. Once every 25,800 years, the sun lines up with the center of our Milky Way galaxy on a winter solstice, the sun’s lowest point in the horizon.

That will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, when the sun appears to rise in the same spot where the bright center of galaxy sets.

Another spooky coincidence?

“The question I would ask these guys is, so what?” says Phil Plait, an astronomer who runs the “Bad Astronomy” blog. He says the alignment doesn’t fall precisely in 2012, and distant stars exert no force that could harm Earth.

“They’re really super-duper trying to find anything astronomical they can to fit that date of 2012,” Plait said.

But author John Major Jenkins says his two-decade study of Mayan ruins indicate the Maya were aware of the alignment and attached great importance to it.

“If we want to honor and respect how the Maya think about this, then we would say that the Maya viewed 2012, as all cycle endings, as a time of transformation and renewal,” said Jenkins.

As the Internet gained popularity in the 1990s, so did word of the “fateful” date, and some began worrying about 2012 disasters the Mayas never dreamed of.

Author Lawrence Joseph says a peak in explosive storms on the surface of the sun could knock out North America’s power grid for years, triggering food shortages, water scarcity — a collapse of civilization. Solar peaks occur about every 11 years, but Joseph says there’s evidence the 2012 peak could be “a lulu.”

While pressing governments to install protection for power grids, Joseph counsels readers not to “use 2012 as an excuse to not live in a healthy, responsible fashion. I mean, don’t let the credit cards go up.”

Another History Channel program titled “Decoding the Past: Doomsday 2012: End of Days” says a galactic alignment or magnetic disturbances could somehow trigger a “pole shift.”

“The entire mantle of the earth would shift in a matter of days, perhaps hours, changing the position of the north and south poles, causing worldwide disaster,” a narrator proclaims. “Earthquakes would rock every continent, massive tsunamis would inundate coastal cities. It would be the ultimate planetary catastrophe.”

The idea apparently originates with a 19th century Frenchman, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, a priest-turned-archaeologist who got it from his study of ancient Mayan and Aztec texts.

Scientists say that, at best, the poles might change location by one degree over a million years, with no sign that it would start in 2012.

While long discredited, Brasseur de Bourbourg proves one thing: Westerners have been trying for more than a century to pin doomsday scenarios on the Maya. And while fascinated by ancient lore, advocates seldom examine more recent experiences with apocalypse predictions.

“No one who’s writing in now seems to remember that the last time we thought the world was going to end, it didn’t,” says Martin, the astronomy webmaster. “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of memory that things were fine the last time around.”

The torment of the cauldron, as seen by Knight Owein during his pilgrimage through St. Patrick’s Purgatory. Wikimedia Commons

London Times | Jul 28, 2009

David Sharrock in Station Island

With bare feet, they shuffle around the island muttering prayers; pain and suffering writ on their faces and a rainstorm breaking over them.

An ancient pilgrimage set in what medieval Christians called “the ends of the world” is undergoing a revival in Ireland as economic woes prompt a spiritual reawakening.

St Patrick’s Purgatory on Station Island in Lough Derg, County Donegal, Ireland. Photo credit: Société Perillos

St Patrick’s Purgatory, on Station Island, a rocky islet in the midst of Lough Derg, was once Christendom’s premier pilgrimage. Its renown was based on the belief that it was a gateway to the next world and a place where penance could be matched to any sin.

Now that the material world of the Celtic “tiger” economy lies in ruins, the annual pilgrimage season is providing evidence that Ireland is returning to its roots as an island of saints and scholars.

The Lough Derg pilgrimage repeats much of the experiences to which 6th-century monks subjected themselves: a journey, lengthy periods of fasting, long litanies of prayer and physical penances.

“If the hunger doesn’t get you, then there’s always the cold or the lack of sleep to battle,” said Mary, one of three women who are participating for the fifth time. “And finally, if you can deal with all of that, the midges will eat you alive.”

“It’s madness,” Pat Maguire said. “What are we doing here, walking around these buildings and rocks with no shoes on in a strict order for days on end?”

He answered his own question, however. “It brings you back to basics — you can be standing next to a judge and suddenly your position in life doesn’t matter here, you’re all in your bare feet.”

Monsignor Richard Mohan, who has overseen huge changes to St Patrick’s Purgatory since he took over in 1990, said that halfway through the pilgrimage season numbers had risen by more than 10 per cent compared with last year. By the middle of next month, the 10,000 mark may have been passed.

The success of Lough Derg perhaps points a way out of the Catholic Church’s troubles after recent revelations about the abuse of children. “Maybe it’s something to do with Lough Derg being a place apart, a safe haven,” Monsignor Mohan said.

“Because of the Celtic tiger we all lost the run of ourselves, money was no object and it was all second homes and fancy cars. That’s gone and there’s more of a sense of reality now.

“There was too much money around … nobody had time to do the things which mattered. Some people will be disaffected with the Church, others are angry. Coming here changes your perspective.”

The medieval fame of St Patrick’s Purgatory was the result of the writings of an English monk, who recorded the story of the Knight Owein and his encounters on the island. Owein described how, in 1148, he journeyed into the afterlife when he entered a pit on the island.

Walking through the gloom, he emerged into a bright field where 15 men in white warned him of the ordeal ahead.

No sooner had they disappeared than he was attacked by demons, who dragged him through fire with iron hooks. Every time Owein called on Jesus to help him the torture ceased.

The story inspired others to follow in his steps. In 1353 the pilgrim George of Grissaphan said that the devil tempted him.

Gary Woods, a 29-year-old police officer, was smiling as he waited for the boat to take him off the island, a cigarette keeping the midges at bay. “It’s my first time — my girlfriend Annemarie persuaded me. She’s been here six times.

“I wouldn’t be religious at all really, it was more to say I’d done it, an achievement to get through it. But you get sucked into the whole atmosphere. It’s weird and I feel weird saying it, but right now I feel very happy inside, even though in a few hours I’ll be back at work in Dublin.”

Annemarie, who declined to give her surname, agreed. “Every year when I leave I say, ‘That’s it, I’ll give it a rest now’, because it’s so physically gruelling. But I come away feeling lighter, much happier and it’s a feeling which stays with me for a long time.”

As holiday destinations go, it certainly has little in common with the modern Irish experience: the couple are heading to Ayia Napa next week.

Holy lands

Lourdes is the largest pilgrimage site in Europe after Rome, with 7 million visitors a year. The town of 15,000 has 270 hotels to house pilgrims who worship at the site where a miller’s daughter claimed to have seen 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1858

Fátima in Portugal became a key European pilgrimage destination after three children claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary on the 13th day of six consecutive months. Nearly a million Catholic pilgrims visit on May 13, when she was first seen, and October 13, her last appearance

Santiago de Compostela, in northwest Spain, is the final destination for several pilgrim routes. It is claimed that the remains of St James are in the cathedral

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St Patrick’s Purgatory: Oracle of the dead

Evans-Wentz considered St Patrick’s Purgatory to be providing the best example of the cult of the dead. These mysteries vary from tribe to tribe, though in almost all of them there is what corresponds to the Death Rite in Freemasonry.

Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick

Irish knight named Owein travels to St. Patrick’s Purgatory to atone for his sins. After descending into purgatory, he is visited by several demons who show him unholy scenes of torture to try to get him to renounce his religion.

St Patrick’s Purgatory

The association with St Patrick dates back to the legends that while in a cave on the island, Patrick is said to have had a vision of the punishments of Hell. Hence the place came to be known as St Patrick’s Purgatory. St. Patrick prayed that God would help him relate the Word of God and convert the Irish people, and in return, God revealed to him a pit in the ground, which he called Purgatory; by showing this place to the people, they would believe all that he said.

Ramon’s Voyage to Purgatory

The Order of St. Patrick

Time | Feb 23, 2009

By M.J. Stephey

The Skull and Bones Society Building

On Feb. 17, the 100th anniversary of Geronimo’s death, descendants of the Apache warrior filed a federal lawsuit against the secretive Skull and Bones society of Yale University demanding that the group — which it claims is in possession of Geronimo’s remains — return them to his family. “I believe strongly from my heart that his spirit was never released,” Geronimo’s great-grandson Haryln Geronimo, 61, told the National Press Club.

As legend has it, Prescott S. Bush — the father of President George H.W. Bush and grandfather to President George W. Bush — dug up Geronimo’s grave in 1918 with the help of several other “Bonesmen,” as members of the society are known, and stole the warrior’s skull, two bones and some riding gear from his grave at Fort Sill, Okla. The society allegedly put the remains on display at the “The Tomb,” an imposing, windowless crypt in New Haven, Conn. that has served as the group’s headquarters since its founding in 1832.

Conspiracy theories about the Skull & Bones Society are almost as old as the society itself. The group has been blamed for everything from the creation of the nuclear bomb to the Kennedy assassination. It’s been aped in bad teen horror films and satirized, along with fellow conspiracy-group targets the Freemasons and the Illuminati, in The Simpsons. Even CNN has done a segment on the Prescott grave-robbery saga.

Prescott Bush stole Geronimo’s Bones – CNN Report

A young Yale junior named William Russell founded the group after spending a year abroad in Germany among members of some of the most mystical and elite clubs in the world, including organizations that mimicked the Enlightenment-era Illuminati. Russell returned to the U.S. determined to found a secret society of his own and “tapped” Alfonso Taft, whose son would later become President William H. Taft, to be among the first members of “The Brotherhood of Death,” or as it was more formally known, “The Order of the Skull and Bones.” Members worshipped Eulogia, a fake goddess of eloquence, glorified pirates and reportedly hatched schemes of world domination at the “Tomb” — which is rumored to have a landing pad on the roof for the society’s private helicopter.

Skull and Bones formed at Yale University, the third-oldest school in the U.S. and an institution “known for its strange, Gothic elitism and its rigid devotion to the past,” according to journalist (and Yale secret society alumnae) Alexandra Robbins. Skull and Bones is not the only secret society at the school either: others include the Scroll and Key, Wolf’s Head, Berzelius and Book and Snake, all of which like keeping tabs on one another, some in the form of dossiers that include “reliability ratings.” Each group picks its members in a highly confidential manner and subjects them to rounds of occult hazing rituals — what pledging a fraternity might be like, perhaps, at Hogwarts.

But given the secrecy of the groups, whether a young Henry Luce (founder of Time magazine) really laid naked in a coffin and told the tales of his early sex life during his Skull and Bones initiation, or if William F. Buckley jumped into a mud pie as part of his hazing, or whether any of the three Bush Bonesman (Prescott, H.W., and W.) actually received a gift of $15,000 and the guarantee of a lifetime of financial security upon being selected — all these rumors, publicized over the years by Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times and numerous independent book authors, might never be known.

Minus the trappings of wealth, privilege and power, Skull and Bones could be a laughably juvenile club for Dungeons-and-Dragon geeks. But its rumored alumni have made up a disproportionately large percentage of the world’s most powerful leaders. (One historian has likened the society’s powers to that of an “international mafia,” for as another writer put it, “the mafia is, after all, the most secret of societies.”) Bonesmen have, at one time, controlled the fortunes of the Carnegie, Rockefeller and Ford families, as well as posts in the Central Intelligance Agency, the American Psychological Association, the Council on Foreign Relations and some of the most powerful law firms in the world.

During the 2004 presidential election, the Republican and Democratic candidates were both former Bonesmen, though neither would say much about the subject. “It’s a secret,” John Kerry said when asked about his membership; “So secret, I can’t say anything more,” George W. Bush wrote in his autobiography, as if to complete Kerry’s sentence.

The group has remained silent about the lawsuit from Geronimo’s descendants. But in a time when the Internet is opening up previously private information to the world and even Swiss banks are spilling their secrets, the activities of the Skull & Bones society might not be able to stay so clandestine for long.