In the first half, author, lecturer, and vampire Michelle Belanger discussed her work challenging the erroneous conclusions of law enforcement that various homicides have been the acts of witchcraft, such as a recent gruesome case in Florida. In the Florida incident, Sheriff David Morgan suggested that the body positioning of the victims, the use of a claw hammer, and the timing of the blue moon were indicative of an occult ritual, but Belanger pointed out that such a hammer is not connected with any known occult practices, nor is a murder ritual on a full moon. She also spoke about the West Memphis Three case, in which Damien Echols (who was known for his interest in the occult) and two others were wrongly convicted of child murder charges, in a kind of "Satanic panic."
There are different types of Satanism, with LaVeyan Satanism more of a intellectual philosophy that stresses individualism, whereas theistic Satanists, who worship Satan as the embodiment of evil tend to be without a real community, and use outdated ideas of witchcraft for their belief system, she explained. Belanger touched on her Dictionary of Demons, a compendium of the names and attributes of some 1500 demons dating back to medieval and Renaissance Europe, including a demonic goat named Leonard. For more, check out this video clip about Ouija boards from Belanger's "My Haunted Life" series.
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In the latter half, radical academic Jeffrey Grupp delved into such topics as "dark ecstasy," the "mindscreen," simulation theory, scrying (crystal gazing), and numerology. He described dark ecstasy as the feeling of intense pleasure that some people get from negative and gruesome events, and as a kind of religion that the Illuminati observes. Those who are into dark ecstasy might be particularly obsessed with bizarre deformities such as depicted in the works of photographer/artist Joel-Peter Witkin, Grupp continued.
He examined the idea that our reality is a kind of "mindscreen" or simulation-- "it's like a movie theater that has feelings inside your consciousness," and though it goes out of control there are techniques you can do to surpass it, such as Buddhism or spiritual practices, he said. If we're living in a simulation, it may be unstable, and there could be a joyous reality like an electrical field underneath, he mused. Further, Grupp believes there is evidence that we are actually living under a dome, which he explores in these videos.
News segment guests: Jerome Corsi, Peter Davenport