The Satanic conspiracy

Since the pre-Christian era there has been a concept of an embodiment of evil to explain the tragedies that humanity faces on a daily basis, from the failure of crops, to infant mortality, to war, famine, pestilence and death. Often in early religious beliefs there is an established duality between a creator God and a destroyer or deceiver God set within a pantheon encompassing the range between these polar opposites. With the advent of monotheism, first through Judaism and on into Christianity and Islam the image of the Devil, Satan, Lucifer becomes the greatest threat to mans relationship with God. Theologically the concept of Satan is fraught with challenge raising questions over the creation, and the reason for an almighty God to allow inherent evil to have a place in that creation. Often this is rationalised as being a necessary part of the implementation of free will, and the ineffability of Gods divine purpose. Through almost 1600 years from the acceptance of Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire until the late 19^th and early 20^th Century, Christianity has been the dominant force in the Western World, and as such anything that stood against Christianity was, by definition, Satanism, from the heresy of Martin Luther and the Calvinists, through Henry VIII and the reformation, taking in Joan of Arc, Gallileo, Copernicus, Alchemists, Astrologers, Scientists, Philosophers and many others.

Since the late 1800's and beginning before this there was a shift however, a movement amongst groups of intellectuals and wealthy dilettantes to explore something that would be more closely matched to real Satanism, the worship and venerate of an evil force, personified, rather than simply rebelling against the Church. The process began with the exploration by academics, historians and antiquarians into concepts beyond the worship of God. There was an upsurge in interest in subjects such as spiritualism, eastern mysticism, meditation, astrology, tarot and other forms of prediction. There were developments in the reconstruction of pseudo-prehistoric beliefs such as Druidry, Shamanism, Witchcraft and Occultism, and around these an interest in folk-lore and in how it could be used to justify this shift. There is often a desperate attempt to try to separate out these practices and to distance Satanism from other nature based Pagan faiths, but this is not reality. There can be no doubt that the cross-pollination of ideas, and the limited number of leading protagonists mean that there is no such separation in reality. Certainly if one looks at the development of modern witchcraft one sees behind the work of Gerald Gardiner, the thoughts and influences of the Satanist Aleister Crowley.

What is not so clear at first sight is that this is no coincidence. Many Christian thinkers had suggested that the period between 1800 and 2000 would see a decline in belief in and worship of God, and an increase in Satanic practice leading to the beginning of the rule of Satan on Earth from 2000 onwards for 1000 years. It can be little coincidence that since the late 1900's and early 2000's there have been developments in personal identification monitoring, financial controls, state surveillance and monitoring, conflict and terrorism, civil unrest and societal breakdown. Just the things that many Christians have expected to see based on Biblical prophecy. For many years there has been debate with Christianity about whether some forms of alternative spirituality are “harmless”, things like the daily astrology columns in newspapers, tarot reading in pubs, mind body spirit fairs and so on, and the answer appears to be a clear and resounding no! The rise of Satan is made easier by everything that is not sanctioned by God, and by Christians turning away from challenge and not speaking up against evil in all its forms, no matter how innocent or harmless it may appear.