Word: witchcrafts
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Crystal Balls. A wave of fascination with the occult is noticeable throughout the country. It first became apparent a few years ago in the astrology boom, which continues. But today it also extends all the way from Satanism and witchcraft to the edges of science, as in Astronaut Edgar Mitchell's experiment in extrasensory perception from aboard Apollo 14. In this area, serious researchers in the field of parapsychology are increasingly interacting with devotees of such claimed occult gifts as prophecy and telepathy to probe the powers of the human mind. Indeed, the very word occult?denoting hidden knowledge, secret...
...trip to Europe?especially Great Britain?would be right in keeping with the current boom. England is experiencing such a resurgence of witchcraft and other occult dabbling that an ecumenical commission of Anglicans and Roman Catholics recently recommended that each diocese appoint an official exorcist to drive out demons. In France, a popular seer named Madame Soleil gives weekday advice on radio, and rumors say that Black Masses are being performed in Paris and Lyons...
Author Owen Rachleff (The Occult Conceit), who teaches a course called Witchcraft, Magic and Astrology at New York University, takes a dim view of the whole movement. "Most occultniks," says Rachleff, "are either frauds of the intellectual and/or financial variety, or disturbed individuals who frequently mistake psychosis for psychic phenomena." Yet for all its trivial manifestations in tea-leaf readings and ritual gewgaws, for all the outright nuts and charlatans it attracts, occultism cannot be dismissed as mere fakery or faddishness. Clearly, it is born of a religious impulse and in many cases it becomes in effect a substitute faith...
...took centuries more for the church to condemn witchcraft and magic as exclusive tools of the Devil; persecution did not begin in earnest until the 13th century. By then much of the residual paganism had died out, and at least some of the witchcraft and magic had turned more sinister. The spirits now invoked for aid were demons; the pact was with the Devil. So at least the Dominican inquisitors saw it, and so many suspects admitted...
They jockey for upward mobility in the five degrees of church membership, which closely resemble those in witchcraft covens: apprentice, warlock (or witch), wizard (or enchantress), sorcerer (or sorceress) and magus?the degree that La Vey holds. The ruling Council of Nine, which La Vey heads, makes appointments to various ranks on the basis not only of the candidate's proficiency in Satanist doctrine but also his "dining preferences," the "style of decor" in his home, and the "make, year and condition" of his automobile...