NAKED MUSLIM FEMALES. Although not the universal experience, many people report having discovered that Muslim women will take off their clothing, leaving themselves quite naked, provided only that their face is still covered. This was noted by Dr Alberto di Pirajno, an Italian doctor who worked in North Africa prior to World War 2.  He experienced many situations where the woman would, often reluctantly, remove her clothing and lay naked on a bed as he examined her while she held a cloth about her face. Observers have reported sometimes seeing programs on Islamic television services, dealing perhaps with health issues, where women's breasts have been exposed, but not their faces. The Tuareg people follow a curious reversed version of the face covering. The men's faces are covered, the woman's uncovered.

NASRIN, Taslima. A female writer who in May 1994 outraged Muslims in Bangladesh by allegedly suggesting that the Koran should be rewritten. A former doctor and well-known feminist, Nasrin, aged 32, was quoted by an Indian newspaper as making the statement, although she denied having done so. Later she said that she had not called for changes in the Koran but in Sharia law, 'to ensure equal rights for men and women.'  Nasrin has been in trouble with Islamic fundamentalists before. Her book, Lajja ('Shame') was banned by the Bangladeshi Government claiming it was blasphemous and offended Islam.

After the newspaper article appeared Islamic fundamentalist groups called for the writer's death. On one day alone a crowd of 3,000 clashed with police as they demanded her punishment. She had gone into hiding. A fundamentalist group, Towhidi Jagrata Janata ('Rising Faithful') sentenced her to death and said she would be killed when found. The Government then issued an arrest warrant for Nasrin and said they had sealed all exits from the country. If caught and found guilty she could face two years' imprisonment according to law and would then face the prospect of being a sitting target for Islamic assassins.

Throughout July ugly crowds gathered, demanding the writer's death and on one occasion a half-day strike was called in Dhaka and all traffic came to a halt and police had to use tear gas and water cannons to control the vicious crowds. Eventually Nasrin appeared in court and was granted bail, after which she fled to Sweden with the assistance of the Pen Club there. Following this episode militant Islamics demanded that the Government should enact a blasphemy law to protect the Islamic faith. The concept of blasphemy is an interesting one, discussed more fully under: BLASPHEMY. See also: BANGLADESH. 

NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR WOMANHOOD. Front organization in the USA for Christian fundamentalist views on issues such as gender, family, teenage sexuality, abortion and other controversial areas of concern. Other bodies with similar views include the CONCERNED WOMEN FOR AMERICA and FOCUS ON FAMILY.

NATIVE AMERICAN CHURCH OF NORTH AMERICA. The congregations of this Texas (USA) denomination, primarily made up of Indians and claimed to number about 250,000 persons, use the hallucinogen peyote cactus in their worship ceremonies. At a church conference in April 1995 it was complained that insufficient of the wild plants were available to fulfil church needs. Although Texas law forbids cultivation of the plant, the Indians were granted special permission to use it in their services in 1970.  However, they must pluck their needs from established plants and these are diminishing. The problem was cited as a genuine crisis when the members assembled together.

NEGROES IN HEAVEN. In 1926 two American clergymen, the Reverends Taylor and Dick, conducted a public debate at Edenton on the question: 'Will the Negro retain his present colour in heaven?' Mr Taylor asserted that the Negro would turn white there!  See also: SLAVERY.

NEMESIS.  A Greek goddess whose peculiar function was to 'visit the exuberant prosperity both of nations and of individuals with sudden and awful reverses.' (Sir E.S. Creasy). Ah, so like the gods! Before the Battle of Marathon the Athenians constructed a giant statue to Nemesis (minutely described in Pausanias), hewn from a huge block of marble. It was placed in the temple of the goddess at Rhamnus, about 12 kilometers from Marathon. In the event the reverses were suffered by the Persians not the Greeks, for at Marathon the latter, their goddess smiling upon them, achieved a notable victory.

NEOCATECHUMENATE WAY. (alternate: NC WAY) A Catholic fundamentalist group approved by Pope John Paul 2nd.  The group made headlines in May 1996 for stirring up dissent in the Church. They are said to be active in Australia and in Britain, and work  at converting adults to Christian faith. Opponents have claimed it is a secretive sect and operates in a manner similar to neo-Christian cults. It has been accused of brainwashing and of demanding that converts give up their material possessions, more particularly money.
 
NC Way was launched in Spain in the 1960s and in 1996 was estimated as having about one million supporters around the world. Some groups have been known to engage in open-air singing and preaching in the manner of similar Protestant bodies. 

NEW AGE FELLOWSHIP. One of the many 'front' names used by the Unification Church, whereby innocents are deceived.  See further under: MOONIES, The. 

NEW AGERS.  Examining their past lives, a favourite New Age activity, New Agers discover, surprise, surprise, they were once much more important people then than they now are! Rarely do they tell us that they were the lowest of the low! It is interesting to note also that a number of different forms of prognostication are in vogue and that seekers go from the practitioner of one to the practitioner of another.  Then another! And yet many of these systems are in conflict. After all, if astrology carries all the answers who needs numerology? And if crystal balls produce a vision of the future why bother with tarot cards? And, incidentally, can somebody tell me if the crystals, carefully sewn into the lining of clothing, still work their magic if the clothes are discarded for a a nude encounter session?

NEW AGE UNIVERSITY. See under: SANYASSIN.

NEW BLAST AGAINST THE BIBLE. A serious and well-documented book by Professor Thomas Thompson, The Early History of the Israelite People, gives the lie to the Jewish-Christian fables. Not that some of us are unaware of the bulk of what is being presented here but the Professor has brought it all together. He says, quite without reservation but not using my choice of wording, that the first ten books of the Bible are effectively BUNKUM. Fables, fairy tales, dreamed up the Hebrew people to give this small nation some status in the big world.

All those Biblical figures of fame and fortune are either pure inventions or based on other people. As are the many 'historical facts' of the early part of the Bible. Anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the Bible knows this.

NEW CHURCH, The.  The New Church, or New Jerusalem Church, was not founded by Imanuel SWEDENBORG, as is sometimes thought, but is certainly based on his doctrines. The Church believes his theological works are a divinely revealed picture of the new dispensation, or New Jerusalem in the book of Revelation. There are branches of the Church operating in Britain and congregations in several countries, including Australia.

NEW JERUSALEM CHURCH, The.  See: NEW CHURCH.

NOAH. Noah - if, indeed, he even existed, which is highly doubtful - was involved in a case of exposure. Noah got drunk and exposed himself (Genesis 9: 21-25). His sons, Ham, Shem and Japeth, were horrified. 'Their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.' They tried to cover him. However, such exposure has not always been thought of as perverted or an oddity. It was often common and considered a sign of respect towards visitors in some cultures. In a famous incident the Queen of Ulster and all the ladies of her court, totalling, it is said, 610, came to meet Cuchulainn, naked above the waist, and then - raised their skirts.
 
In any event Noah is surely a figure of mythology so I guess it matters not as to his sexual activities. The story more likely reflects the strange attitude to human nakedness among the primitive Hebrews, an attitude that has continued through time and is still evident today among many Christians and Islamics alike.

NOAH'S ARK. 
It is to be hoped that parents who foolishly allow their child to absorb the Bible's many stories will make clear to their offspring that most of what they read is myth, pure and simple. Even the alleged history of the Chosen People is almost certainly 90 percent fiction. Those fantastic stories, such as the one about Moses being found floating in a tiny boat among the bulrushes by the riverside or Daniel turning a lion off his meal are mythical. Not only so but most such stories have their origins deep within the folklore of ages past - long long before the Hebrews ever came upon the scene of history.
 
The Bible is packed with such stories, presumably thought necessary to bolster faith. Moses tapped on a rock and out gushed water. A stick thrown to the ground turned into a serpent. More amazingly and in an earlier era a serpent actually talked to humans in a garden! People crossed on dry land where there was once a sea. Later we have the miracles of the Nazarene do-gooder, Jesus. Well, he had to produce a few miracles for all holy men in those days were expected to do so. And even if he did not pull these events off in real life the disciples who wrote up the story sprinkled the New Testament pages with enough amazing events to convince readers that here indeed was the 'Son of GOD'.

For centuries men have dreamed of discovering the remains of Noah's Ark, high in the mountainous region of Ararat. After all, the Bible tells the story and the Bible is true, so some people fondly believe. Now what a coup for faith it would be if the ark were uncovered! Or would it?

This whole matter was highlighted in August 1991 when Kurdish rebels seized a party of five Western archeologists heading out on the latest search. The party comprised a Briton, Gareth Thomas, of London, Americans Dr Ron Wyatt of Tennessee, Marvin Wilson of Texas, Richard Rives of North Carolina, and an Australian, Dr Allen Roberts, 59. They belonged to a group known as the Noah's Ark Research Foundation.  I know nought of this foundation is but most probably it is a Christian institution, aiming, like the Creation Research Foundation, to prop up the shaky basis of the faith.
 

NATURAL FORCES

Let us suppose the remains of the ark are one day found, so what? Does it prove the Bible? No, it proves that somehow, due to the strange operation of natural forces, a ship got itself up a mountain. And even if this ship proves to be of the dimensions given in the Holy Book, this again proves nothing. The whole of the Old Testament draws its inspiration from other, earlier sources. There is little that is unique in the mishmash Jewish work fondly known as a 'holy book'.

The Flood story itself goes back way beyond the limits of Jewish literature and history, to Babylonian sources and almost certainly even farther back. Just as does the story of Moses in the bulrushes and other fancy Bible kindergarten fables. The very measurement given for the ark are not Hebrew but Egyptian. This is hardly surprising as much of the Jewish religious ceremonial was 'lifted' from Egyptian (and other) sources. It certainly wasn't proclaimed by Yahweh from on high, as is asserted.
 
And one would have to possess the mind of a child of five years of age to believe that all those animals went in two-by-two and seven-by-seven. And lived and ate happily together, not to mention defecating and urinating in that space for forty days and forty nights! Yuk! And all of this in absolute contrast to the true picture of the evolution of animal life on earth, including the dinosaurs. The whole fantasy is so laughable that it is hard for any intelligent critic to bring himself or herself even to deal with the subject. Yet governments acquiesce to children being taught this sort of nonsense in government-funded schools. Surely this is a form of mental child abuse!

When the aforementioned party went missing a photograph was published indicating a formation believed by the archeologists to be the site of the ark. It showed an alleged boat outline in rock formation. It is also claimed that two stone 'anchors' had been found in the area. On an earlier trip to the area Dr Roberts claimed to have identified fossilized gopherwood of the type described in the Bible's account. The site was said to have been uncovered by an earthquake in 1948. 

ANOTHER CLAIMANT

Meanwhile an American salvage expert from Maine had already in 1990 laid claim to having discovered the ark, said to have been made from papyrus rather than gopherwood. And the Turkish government has spent, so we are told via a television program, $4 million providing roads and other infrastructure so that tourists may visit the site, not on Mt Ararat but in the general area of that mountain. Fascinating! Are there any more arks out there? We might end up with rival arks just as we have rival gods.

The later group of Noah's ark men were eventually rescued. As for the archeologist, Allen Roberts, it seems he has no formal training in that field. His doctorate is in Christian Education and was awarded by one of those American institutions that have out degrees that are not recognized by anyone else! Freedom University in Florida was the source of the doctor's title. He founded the Australian College of Christian Education.
 
Roberts told the media he and another researcher had made the astonishing find of a rivet! They have already found bulkheads of a boat, ribs and a 'staggering' discovery he could not talk about. We are panting with expectation! He added, though, that the surrounding area had been destroyed overnight by villagers. Pity! It would be interesting to know what has happened to the other ark, already found and revealed on television some time back!

Dr Daniel Potts, a professor of near-eastern archeology at Sydney University, and a professing Christian, told The Sydney Morning Herald that most academic archeologists regard the many expeditions to find the ark with scepticism. It was like 'trying to find some physical testimony for a fairytale you tell your children.' Dr Potts added the comment that nothing that had ever been 'found' by previous searchers had withstood scientific scrutiny.

But Roberts remained unfazed. All that wonderful free publicity was being put to good use. During succeeding weeks he toured around the country lecturing, for a $4 entry fee (modest enough) on his find, illustrating his lecture with slides. During the meetings forms were handed out seeking donations of up to $100 (or more?) to carry on the work of uncovering the ark.

HIDING

One such meeting, shown on the Current Affair TV program, saw a member of the Australian Skeptics being forcibly ejected by police at the behest of Roberts because he dared to question some of the good doctor's specious statements. Fundamentalist Christians cannot bear the light of authentic science being shone on their pet myths.  Later, after the meeting, the doctor was introduced to a genuine geologist from Melbourne - and a genuine doctor, too - Professor Ian Plimmer. A brief encounter was cut short by Roberts as he spouted some nonsense about the location of 'his' ark.

I use the term 'his' advisedly. Professor Plimmer informed us that at least 15 different search parties have been looking for this amazing boat in the part of Turkey where it is supposed to be. With that many searchers at work surely it must have come to light by now. But maybe it has! What about the discovery already made, mentioned above? What has happened to this ark?
 
Yet another hopeful emerged in late 1995 when Porcher L'Engle Taylor 3rd of Florida (USA) announced he had been studying declassified spy satellite photographs taken over the Mount Ararat region and had discovered 'an anomaly' 4,500 metres up the mountain. This anomaly is probably the same one investigated by several other ark-seekers but never mind, Mr Taylor, thinks he has found evidence of the ark.
 
Taylor says that when he was a West Point cadet back in 1973 there were rumours that the CIA had photographed the skeleton of a timber ship in the region but that ice and snow had (conveniently!) since covered it. Interestingly, when television showed a team investigating the 'anomaly' audiences worldwide saw no evidence of ice or snow!  By August 1996 the CIA will have completed cataloguing the photographs and Mr Taylor will lead a team to examine the site. He expected to employ radiocarbon dating and DNA testing to study any remains found.  [As of early 2008 we are still waiting for someone to produce a genuine Noah's Ark.]

NORTON, Rosaleen. Known as the Witch of Kings Cross (Sydney, Australia). Norton was a very talented artist and practising witch who painted subjects related to witchcraft and the occult. There were sexual elements in much of her art which led in time to police action against her, with charges of alleged 'obscenity' being laid. She was acquitted in the end.
  
Rosaleen Norton was born in New Zealand on October 2, 1917. She died from colon cancer in Sydney on December 5, 1979. Ironically her death occurred in St Vincent's, a  Catholic hospital, but she reportedly remained a pagan to the end.

NÔTRE DAME DE CHARITÉ. In 1902 the French press erupted with outrage at revelations concerning the cruel activities of the NUNS in charge of Nôtre Dame de Charité, at Tours.  In a country where Catholicism had been long entrenched and where many outrages in schools, convents and other Church institutions had been hushed up over the years, it took a real scandal to gain such publicity.

The nuns at this school for girls had a whole range of punishments they employed.  One of the simplest was to force a girl to kiss the feet of her school-fellows. A variation of this punishment was to compel a girl to do 'tongue-crosses' on the dirty floor. To carry out this punishment she had to prostrate herself before the sister and draw crosses with her tongue in the dirt. This might take place in the kitchen, or the refectory or even in the lavatory. If a girl became ill through this experience she might have a lavatory duster thrust down her throat.

Even worse was the restraint frequently imposed on girls in the form of straitjackets. Girls would be forced into one of these constraining devices and left immobilized perhaps for hours but sometimes for days at a stretch. They were still allowed to eat but not released from the jackets to do so. Rather their food was placed in earthenware pots instead of on plates and their heads forced into the pots.
 
One sister in particular, who rejoiced in the holy name of Marie Sainte-Rose du Coeur de Jésus, often smeared the faces of her victims, unable to help themselves locked in their straitjackets, with mud. Worse, on some occasions she even stuffed her own excreta into the restrained girls' mouths. Another punishment consisted of locking girls in what was described as the 'death chamber', a form of solitary confinement in a damp cellar, without bedding. This was the place where the convent's dead were left to lie in state and the effect on impressionable young girls being confined there for long periods was one of great terror.

Finally, girls, also in straitjackets, were sometimes subjected to the 'water-trial'.  The child's head would be forced into a bucket of water and held there until her throat rattled and she nearly expired.  

NULLABOR GOD-HIKERS. Some time in 1990 a group of 'monkish figures', including some who were very young, struggled their way across Australia's notorious near-endless Nullabor Plain, refusing to talk to the media. They said they turned away offers of help and claimed that 'the Lord' would provide their needs. They made it across, although truckies and others did pass food to them! The same group was reportedly still operating a year later, endeavouring to somehow demonstrate their great faith.

NUNS. An Adelaide (Australia) physician, Professor Timothy Murrell, of Adelaide University reportedly commented: 'The first study of breast cancer, by an Italian called Ramazzini, in 1770, showed the rate was five times greater in nuns - among unmarried women, in other words.' (Quoted by The Sydney Morning Herald, February 18, 1989). Mary O'Malley, an English playwright, speaking on a television program, referred to the nuns at her school in these terms: 'There was a sort of violence underneath the habits, simmering away.' This made them hard in their outlook. And maybe, as a result, more cancer-prone? See also: NÔTRE DAME DE CHARITÉ.

OATHS. Early in 1991 a report from Britain said that 10-year-old schoolgirl, Abigail Wright, could not join the Girl Guides because she expressed a doubt about taking the oath, which included a commitment to pray to God. Her mother, a former Guide, Sarah Wright, said she had been excluded for being honest.

OBSCENE PHONE-CALLER IN CATHOLIC OFFICE. Mrs Helen Sexton, who lived on Queensland's Gold Coast (Australia), suffered from obscene phone calls over a period of five years. At times there had been up to thirty such calls in one day and the male caller has not spared her three children from this form of verbal sexual abuse. He had even talked to the children in sexually explicit terms.  On one occasion he told Mrs Sexton: 'I'm going to get your lovely daughter.' All efforts by Telecom (now Telstra) and police to trace the calls failed and Mrs Sexton did not want to change her phone number as she used it for business.

Then one day in 1992 Mrs Sexton was contacted through her number by a representative of the Catholic Education Department in Melbourne. They had been checking on phone accounts and discovered that many calls had been made by some unnamed person in their office to her number. It now seemed that the person responsible for the long saga of verbal torment was known but since then the Church has refused to advise Mrs Sexton who it was. Federal Police were investigating the case as at June 1992 [outcome not known].

OCCULT PRACTITIONERS. Figures quoted in 1988 for France said an informal census conducted by police in Paris had estimated that in that city there were then about 50,000 practitioners (mainly Africans) of magic, soothsayers, witch doctors, fortune tellers, card-readers, sellers of good-luck charms and amulets and miscellaneous practitioners of the occult. Some even ran full-page advertisements in magazines and newspapers.

O'CONNOR, Sinéad.  Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor stirred up a storm of abuse when she appeared on television's Saturday Night Live show in October 1992 and tore up a photo of Pope John Paul 2nd as she intoned the words: 'Fight the real enemy.'

OLD CATHOLIC CHURCH. In its broadest sense the term 'Old Catholic' applies to a group of national churches that separated from the Church of Rome at various points in history but, unlike the Protestants, retained most of the doctrines and ceremonies of the parent church. The chief complaint seems to have been the promulgation of the infallibility of the Pope in 1870. There are groups in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Switzerland and an English group was founded in the 1870s.

The British branch of the Church was formed by an Archbishop Mathew, who had been defrocked by Rome because he wanted to get married. In 1975 a scandal erupted over a hostel run by Roger Charles Augustine Gleaves, Bishop of Medway in the Old Catholic Church. There was in fact a nasty crime committed. A boy named Billy McPhee was brutally beaten and then murdered and three wardens at the hostel were jailed for life for the murder. Gleaves was not involved in this incident but was later convicted on two counts of assault and two counts of buggery. He was sentenced to four years' jail.

OM MANI PADME HUM. Mystic oft-repeated mantra, an incantation found inscribed on many stones throughout Tibet, Nepal and Ladakh, and chanted endlessly by millions of Buddhists. It is usually translated as: 'Hail, jewel in the lotus.' Another view has it that the first syllable represents enlightenment, the most fundamental of all mantras.  The last represents fulfilment. In between the phrase, correctly translated 'jewel in the lotus' signifies 'lingam in yoni' the sexual-mystical union of opposites. 

OPUS DEI.  (Opus dei = 'the work of GOD')  A Catholic lay religious order founded in 1928 which includes in its membership some priests along with lay people. From time to time there have been allegations that Opus Dei has a sinister side. Claims of 'mind control' and what might be termed 'subversive intentions' have been made by ex-members and others but specific allegations appear to be lacking. There have also been reports that members engage in good old-fashioned MORTIFICATION activities, including whipping themselves.
 
When Pope John Paul 2nd decided in 1990 to beatify Josemaria Escriva de Balageur (the stage before canonization), who died in 1975, many within the Church criticized the decision. Doubtless the Pope was rewarding the order for its unswerving loyalty to his person and office. With a continual falling away in membership of both laity and clergy, he needed all the support he could get!   

ORDER OF STAR OF THE EAST. In 1924, the Sydney (Australia) branch of the Order, convinced that Christ would return and actually appear in Sydney, built a large amphitheatre at the northern harbourside suburb of Balmoral, where believers could gather and watch him coming in on the water through Sydney Heads. Seats were sold for between £5 ($10) and £1,000 (2,000) each but eventually the structure was demolished. What happened to the money I know not. The rough outline of the original amphitheatre can still be seen today.   

ORDER OF THE SOLAR TEMPLE. Known in French as Temple Solaire. A neo-Christian cult founded by a Canadian Luc Jouret and having a membership in both Canada and Switzerland. Jouret was a homeopathic practitioner who spoke to meetings in Canada, gathering a small following for his muddled doctrines, which seemed to combine elements of Christianity with a number of other peculiar notions. Jouret especially spoke in apocalyptic terms about a coming 'reign of fire'. In 1993 he was convicted in his homeland on a charge of possessing illegal weapons. He moved to Switzerland, where he gathered more followers about his person.

In early October 1994 the world was startled at the news that there had been a mass suicide of members of the Order, most of whom lived in Switzerland. There were also deaths in Canada, all apparently connected. It appears the faithful thought it best to remove themselves forcibly from this evil world of 'galloping pollution and loss of values.' Altogether over 50 people died, including some children. But not all had, apparently, suicided. Police investigators later found that some had their hands tied behind their backs and had sealed plastic bags over their heads. Jouret's offsider, Joseph di Mambro, was later identified as being among those who died.
 
Investigators later determined that in a Quebec (Canada) home where followers died a baby boy aged just three months had apparently been ritually murdered, with a wooden stake being driven into his heart. It is believed the disciples thought the baby was the Antichrist. There are some other adherents to the Order but they had earlier separated from Jouret and assured authorities they had no plans to take their lives. 

ORDO TEMPLI ORIENTIS. A German occult order, known sometimes as the Order of the Eastern Templars. The order was reportedly founded by Karl Kellner, a rich Freemason who had travelled in the East and brought back to Germany, so it was claimed, knowledge of 'sexual magic'. However, there is much uncertainty about the early days, which seem to date from around the last years of the 19th century.  Kellner eventually died and his place was taken by Theodor Reuss and in time the O.T.O. emerged from its early secretive days and proclaimed openly a doctrine of sex magic.

The O.T.O. spread its tentacles for several other countries and made no secret of incorporating into its higher degrees sexually-oriented activities. Around 1912 Aleister CROWLEY was in contact with the O.T.O. and had himself appointed head of a new British division, to be called Mysteria Mystica Maxima. Crowley was given the title 'Supreme and Holy King or Ireland, Iona and all the Britains within the Sanctuary of the Gnosis.' In 1935 the Nazis banned the O.T.O. along with several other occult organizations.   

ORIGEN. An Alexandrian Christian schoolmaster, who lived around 200 CE and studied under the Greek scholar, Clement. Early in his career he emasculated himself  although he later reportedly regretted his actions.  He became one of leading Church Fathers, writing extensively, although many of his works have been lost.  Origen believed that in the end even the Devil would be saved. 

O.T.O.  See under: ORDO TEMPLI ORIENTIS.

OXFORD GROUP, The. This body was established by an American minister of religion, the Reverend Frank Nathan Daniel Buchman in 1921, and later became known as Moral Rearmament (or MRA). Buchman, who had in early life run a hospice for underprivileged boys, led parties of young men around the world preaching a form of social Gospel. One distinctive feature of the group was found in the compulsory sessions of confession when members had to relate their failings before other members. The group also believed in direct revelation.

OXFORD MOVEMENT.  See under: TRACTARIANS.  

PAGAN CONVERSIONS. Charles the Hammer forced the conquered Frisian chief Radbod late in the 7th century to accept baptism. Radbod had already immersed one leg in the font when a thought struck him: 'Where are my dead forefathers at present?' He put the question to Bishop Wolfran. 'In hell, with all other unbelievers,' was the answer.  'Mighty well,' replied Radbod, removing his leg, 'then will I rather feast with my ancestors in the halls of Woden than dwell with your little starvling band of Christians in heaven.'

PAGAN INFLUENCES. Most Armenians [members of the Armenian Apostolic Church], even those not inclined to religion, still baptize their children and participate in ancient rituals involving the sacrifice of sheep and doves.

PANTHEISM. A sort of broad belief in the presence of GOD in nature.  

PAPAL CLAIMS. It was not until the very end of the 2nd century CE that the Church at Rome tried to assert its authority over the other churches of Christendom.  By then the specious claims concerning Saint PETER were circulating and these were used to provide some sort of basis to the demand for recognition as the chief body of the faith. One of the first references we have to such an outrageous claim concerns Bishop Victor of Rome who around the year 190 CE was informed that the churches of Asia Minor did not celebrate Easter on the same day as the Romans. He then commanded them to change the date! Did the Bishops of the Churches in question agree? No, rather, according to Eusebius the historian (bk. 5: 34), they 'bitterly attacked Victor' even when he threatened to excommunicate them. There the matter rested for the time being.
 
Around 220 CE we have a most interesting light cast upon the situation when no less a person than Tertullian of Africa refers to a Roman Bishop (probably Callistus) who, he says, with disdain, 'calls himself the supreme pontiff' and 'the bishop of bishops' (On Chastity, chapter 1). In 252 CE we have Bishop Cyprian of Carthage (Ep. 55) rebuking Bishop Cornelius of Rome for holding an audience with some complainants as if he had some special role in the Church. In a later letter (Ep.72), written in the name of all the African bishops, Cyprian emphasized: 'We use no violence and make laws for none, because each prelate has the right to follow his own judgment in the administration of the Church.' There is clearly no hint here of Rome being accorded some special supreme position, but in reply to this letter Bishop Stephen asserted the Roman claim, threatening excommunication. The African bishops replied in strong language, stating that 'None of us regards himself as the bishop of bishops, or seeks by tyrannical threats to compel his colleagues to obey him.'

PAPAL MALFEASANCE.  
It would take a whole encyclopedia to detail all the immoral, inhuman and outright criminal activities of many of the Popes through the ages. The story is told of the time of Pope Alexander 6th, when a French priest and a Jew became intimate friends.  The priest, anxious for the welfare of his friend, urged him to be received into the Church, the Jew promising to consider the matter earnestly. The priest, however, gave up all hope when he learnt that his friend had been called on business to Rome, where he would see the unutterably monstrous life of Pope and clergy. To his surprise the Jew on returning announced he wished to be baptized, saying that a religion which could exist in spite of such abominations must be a true religion!

Here are just a few stories:

Pope Liberius was exiled for 'heresy' and replaced by Pope Felix, who embraced 'orthodoxy' (but which was which who can tell?). When these two passed to their supposed reward, two more rivals put in an appearance on the scene, Damasus and Ursinicus. Damasus, described by the Church as a 'saint', was a well-known womanizer, actually having been sued in a civil court for adultery. By now supporters of rival factions were taking to sword, axe and stave to enforce their favourites' claims. The year 366 was a propitious one for the struggle. The conflict raged through Rome in that year and it is said that more people died then than had perished in all the persecutions! But in spite of these scandalous goings-on the Roman bishops persisted in claiming supremacy.

GREEK CONCERNS 

So concerned were the Greek bishops that in 381 CE they met at Constantinople and expressly laid down the view that the Bishop of 'new Rome' (Constantinople) was equal in rank to the Bishop of 'old Rome'. A few years later African bishops, in a letter still preserved to us, rejected the Papal claims. And again in the fifth century the Greek Church clearly restated its previous position. Not content with this, Rome forged a copy of the Greek document to make it appear the Greeks described Pope Leo 1st as 'head of the universal Church.' It was common throughout the period of early Church history to produce convenient documents to prove this or that doctrine or support this or that view. Among the most notable are The Acts of St Silvester  (forged about 430 CE) and The Constitution of St Silvester (dating from about 500 CE), which purported to show that the Bishop of Rome had received his office as head of the universal Church direct from Constantine. This demonstrates how desperate were the Popes to prove their case.
 
In a much later era forgery continued. In the 9th century the notorious Decretals of Isidore were circulating. These documents, some genuine but many spurious, purported to support Papal claims. They were later used, together with other forged documents, at the behest of Gregory 7th (1073-1085) to wrest the investiture of the Pope from the Emperor's hands and to establish the supremacy of the Church over the State.

Throughout the centuries rival popes were elected, two by two, and at times even three! And blood at times literally flowed as one faction fought another for supremacy.  Take the year 418 CE, when two rivals vied for the Throne of Peter. The Church went through its usual ritual of imploring the Ghost for wisdom,  as a result of which Eulalius and Boniface 1st were BOTH duly elected to office! There followed an enormous outbreak of fighting as each Pope claimed the right to conduct the Easter celebrations. Not for the first time the blood of the Christians flowed in Rome's streets; at least it was appropriate, being Easter and all. Again, in 498, two rival Popes were elected. For three years a deadly feud ensued between these two, Symmachus and Laurence. And this was not the end of such rivalry. Pope came and went in lots of one, two or three, according as the prevailing winds dictated.

MORE RIVALS

In 1045 three rivals again reigned. While Silvester 2nd occupied St Peter's Church and the Vatican Palace, Benedict 9th took charge of the Lateran Palace, leaving poor Victor 3rd with only an ordinary church building, that of Santa Maria Maggiore, for his seat. Each man claimed to be the Vicar of Christ and to be occupying his seat as the choice of the Ghost! The pious and newly-installed Emperor of Germany, Henry 3rd, acted; he cleared all three out and installed a single ruler in their place, Clement 2nd.  Presumably he too was there by direction of the Ghost.

The Circus Maximus of the Papacy continued apace with the passing centuries.  Popes were installed at the whim of this or that ruler or as a result of rigged elections. And even when the elections weren't rigged they were quite often disputed.  All the while bloodshed, nepotism, bribery and immorality rent the fabric of the Church of the humble Nazarene. Let's look in on the year 768, for a snapshot of the Church going about its sacred business. A secular-clerical group, meeting in Rome, elected 'Pope' Constantine as a rival to the incumbent, Pope Stephen. There was just one small problem. Constantine was a layman at the start of the proceedings. As only an ordained person could become Pope, something had to be done. No trouble! In short order, with the help of some obliging bishops, Constantine progressed through the ranks to instant consecration. But no sooner had the poor man received this great blessing than a reaction set in. Two Papal officials, Sergius and Christopher, sought help from the Lombard army to depose the upstart. Constantine was placed upon a horse, with heavy weights on his feet and led through Rome to the jeers of the crowd (ever ready for a little sport), to be thrown into a monastery prison to await trial.
 
But Sergius and Christopher couldn't be bothered waiting. They went to the monastery and calmly gouged out the ex-Pope's eyes. In this mutilated, blinded state he was dragged before the Papal court. His ultimate fate is unknown but his brother also had his eyes cut out and one of the offending bishops lost both eyes and tongue for his trouble. But men like Sergius and Christopher play dangerous games; in time a dispute arose between Pope Stephen and his faithful henchmen and they, too, lost their eyes, on the direct orders of the good Christian Pope.

MUTILATIONS

Eye-gouging seemed to be a favourite activity among the faithful. Another Pope, Leo 3rd, suffered likewise in 799. His attackers were not content to gouge out just his eyes, though; his tongue went too! It all came about because Leo had promoted his nephews, Paschal (later to become a Pope) and Campalus to high office, although they were notorious miscreants. On April 25 of that year armed men fell upon a religious procession and seized the Pontiff, leaving him near-dead in a pool of blood. He lived, however, and was restored to his place with the help of Charlemagne. He returned the favour by crowning his saviour head of the so-called Holy Roman Empire.
 
Such were the upheavals within the Papacy throughout the Dark Ages that over forty Popes reigned for less than two years each! Nobody is sure just how many Popes were murdered; it should scarcely surprise us, then, that a recent Pope, PAUL 1st, died within a fortnight of being elected and some seriously suggest he too was murdered.
 
Pope Sergius 3rd arranged for his bastard son to become Pope after him. Leo 8th, who followed him, died in the act of adultery. Benedict 9th, elected at the age of 10, grew up as an unrestrained libertine. Balthasar Cossa, elected Pope to end the Great Schism, later admitted to adultery, incest and general debauchery. It was said that two hundred maids, widows and nuns, fell victim to his brutal lust.
 
Pope Leo 6th was elected through the machinations of his mother, Marozia, said to be the most powerful figure in the house of Theophylact. Marozia, with a reputation for sensuality, controlled Roman affairs and the Church through her son for just 7 months in the year 926. (Some believe that legends surrounding Marozia later resurfaced in the story of Pope Joan, which is almost universally branded as unhistorical by scholars.)

Pope John 12th was once described by a Catholic scholar, E.R. Chamberlin, as 'the Christian Caligula'. John maintained his grip on temporal power by recruiting armed gangs from among the Roman mob who terrorized any who opposed him. His sexual hunger was insatiable and he depleted Church funds, giving away lands and relics to his favourite mistresses.  John effectively turned St John Lateran into a brothel. He was also accused of incest, rape and adultery. Pope John also gambled heavily and reportedly invoked the names of demons to bring him luck. He was deposed in 963 CE.

POISONS AND ADULTERY

Pope John 23rd was accused by the Council of Constance (1414-1418) of poisoning his predecessor and bribing his way into office. The Council investigated the Pope and charged him with atheism, adultery and incest! It removed him from office. Later the Catholic Church, in order to play down the scandal, described John 23rd as an 'antipope'. Thereafter no prelate would accept the vacated title of John 23rd until Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli did so in 1958.
 
A brothel was run by Pope Sixtus 4th. He founded this institution in the year 1471 and it was reportedly well equipped and quite large in extent. The ladies who worked as prostitutes in the papal establishment reportedly paid to His Holiness some 20,000 ducats per year as protection money.  Doubtless such a sum of money would have aided greatly the work of proclaiming the Gospel to sinners.  At the court of Pope Alexander 6th, prostitutes were called to dance naked before the court.  Prizes were offered to those men present who could afterwards copulate with the greatest number of prostitutes.

At the time of the Council of Constance, a contemporary chronicler, Gebhard Dacher, reported that as well as 18,000 priests attending the event there were 83 wine merchants, 346 clowns, jugglers and other entertainers and no less than 700 prostitutes. Another historian placed the figure for prostitutes at 1500!

Footnote:  Up to 1977 there had been 262 popes since the first, allegedly St Peter. Pope John Paul 1st, Albino Luciani (born 1912), patriarch of Venice, was elected on Saturday, August 26, 1978. Presumably under Ghostly inspiration. He died 33 days later, during the night of September 28, 1978, in bed at 11 pm, reading a book. See also: ALEXANDER 6th, Pope.  

PARDONS. Pardons, or indulgences, are ecclesiastical declarations of absolution from particular sins. By the Middle Ages the commerce in pardons had become a major source of scandal in the Catholic Church. If the issuance of such pardons were merely a matter of forgiving 'sin' it might not have affected the world at large. However, the chief abuse arose in that pardons were handed out - for suitable payment - for those committing crimes. During the 14th and 15th century priests even engaged in trade as shopkeepers, especially in the Netherlands. Being exempt from taxation they could under-sell their competitors. But they also added a very profitable sideline - dispensing pardons or indulgences.

The trade in pardons grew to enormous - and very profitable dimensions. Lists of typical charges were posted. For the payment of eleven ducats six livres tournois one could be absolved from the crime of murder by poisoning. Murder by other means was cheaper. For incest absolution came on payment of thirty-six livres, three ducats.  Perjury was covered with a payment of seven livres, three carlines. Parricide was covered by one ducat, four livres, eight carlines. The lucrative trade by priests in pardons was one of the chief abuses attacked by Martin Luther.              

PARSEES.  The remnant Indian branch of the once large and significant Zoroastrian religion. They maintain the old rituals, including the placing of the bodies of the faithful dead on Towers of Silence, to be devoured by vultures. The Indian group is the largest single Zoroastrian body remaining today in the world. See further under: ZOROASTRIANISM.

PASSION, The. A play by Jason Orbaum staged for the first time in London in August 1994, in which Jesus of Nazareth is depicted as having sex with Mary Magdalene and having two children as a result. The play drew outraged comments from Christians.   

PAST LIVES.  In November 1973 Time magazine reported that Olivia Hussey, 23, Argentine-born actress, whose first film was Romeo and Juliet, was chosen to star as the Virgin Mary in Zeffirelli's Life of Jesus. She told reporters that two years previously a medium had told her she had been the Virgin Mary in a previous life.

PATRIARCHY. A number of former Catholic schoolgirls interviewed on a UK television program (circa 1990) thought that the overall aim of their education was to train them in 'modesty, humility and obedience, to become good wives and mothers.' 

PAULICIANS. The Paulicians, a neo-Christian sect, were accused of child sacrifice in the 8th century CE by John of Ojun, Patriarch of the Armenian Church. It was claimed that they mixed the blood of babies with flour to make a eucharistic feast to the Devil. The sect suffered severe persecution in the 9th century.

PAUL, Saint. 
St Paul, high architect of Christianity, is one of the figures, of which there are several, who appear in the Bible under two names. Such name-changes, usually dismissed casually by the editors, always occur in suspicious circumstances; and we are well justified in doubting the historical basis of the 'facts' so given. Abraham and Abram, Simon Peter also known as Cephas, Matthew also called Levi. And some even think Elisha and Elijah are one and the same person.

Paul first appears in Christian pseudo-history as Saul. Not very long after he is mysteriously transformed into Paul and no explanation whatever is given, a remarkable fact indeed! We simply have some early accounts of the man's activities, under the name Saul, then, abruptly, in Acts 13:9 we read: 'But Saul, who is also called Paul'  Thereafter the latter name is always used. This verse, then, is obviously another of those bridging passages between two accounts or documents and its presence must make us very suspicious indeed. It is quite possible that the compilers have drawn material from the lives of two distinct individuals, as they do elsewhere. This deceitful handling of historical data is endemic to the New Testament account, as any open-minded student will continually discover. But it does go a long way towards explaining inconsistencies in the life of Saul/Paul.
 
Saul/Paul is one of those larger-than-life figures thrown up every so often by the historical process. He was humourless, intense, obsessive and zealous, on his own testimony, to the point of fanaticism (Acts 26:4-11). One night I watched a television news report, where angry crowd scenes were shown, relayed from Jerusalem. Black-garbed fanatical Jewish holy men were protesting about sabbath-breaking in Israel. I immediately thought of St Paul. He would have been among their number, probably their leader.

This zealot also had another unpleasant trait - he evidently hated women. He refers on three occasions to having entered homes and not only arresting the menfolk but also dragging off the women, whom he 'bound and delivered into prison,' showing neither chivalry nor mercy. His jaundiced views on the marriage state are well known, his comments showing a certain horror of sex. And he taught that women were subservient to men. Patriarchal religion was alive and well and flourishing in Paul.

Now Jesus had said to Cephas/Peter, the fisherman, so we are told: 'Upon this rock I will build my church' (Matthew 16:18). As we shall see later, this statement was undoubtedly a spurious addition to the original (if we may use such a term as 'original') text. Spurious or no, the Popes of Rome, shrewd politicians that they are, have ever extracted great mileage out of these words. In reality the promise was not only false; it turned out to be wholly wrong! Peter, in fact, represented but one of the warring parties vying for supremacy in the early church. Paul headed the rival party, and Paul's party emerged victorious.
 

PERSONAL REVELATION

There is one more interesting and, for the purposes of our story, important facet to Paul's personality. He was a mystic, probably the Church's first one of any note (as there wasn't much of a church to speak of, anyway, until he arrived on the scene).  Like many before him and many since, he enjoyed his own personal revelation from the unseen world. And his revelation was something special; it came direct from the spirit of Jesus who, if not then an actual god, was soon about to become one. Incidentally Saul (as he was then called) had neither seen nor met Jesus in the flesh.
 
So it came to pass that Saul 'yet breathing out threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord' (Acts 9:1), was on the road to Damascus, and it was midday, and the road to Damascus at midday must have been a very hot place to find oneself upon. Now according to the first of the Biblical accounts (Acts 9:1-22), Saul was dazzled by a light even brighter than the sun. (Very hard to imagine a light brighter than the sun, but that's what is says; there is, however, an explanation but more of this shortly.) Saul fell to the ground and a voice came from heaven. It was the very voice of Jesus, who forthwith commanded Saul to travel to Damascus (blinded for the next three days) where we would receive further instructions as to the future course of his life.

Now all this sounds very impressive; it certainly impressed me in the days of my Christian obsession. In fact, I once thought it one of the most impressive passages in the whole Bible. The account appears to be from firsthand sources, presumably the writer of Acts (said to be St Luke), who gained the information from Saul himself.  Pity isn't it that this same supposed author of the book of Acts seems to be ignorant of the Epistles of Paul and even contradicts them! So much for another of the certainties of the faith.
 
It should not, then, surprise us one whit that this story takes on a somewhat different hue, disturbingly different, when it is retold by Paul in two recorded sermons (Acts 22:3-16 and Acts 26:9-18). We detect some minor discrepancies first. In one sermon Saul falls alone to the ground, in the other it is Saul together with his companions. And the message from Jesus seems to expand with the telling. Another curious point: Jesus spoke to Saul in the Hebrew language yet he had previously always spoken in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Palestine of that time.

CONFLICTING STORIES

It may appear to be nit-picking, bringing up such matters at all, but they do seem to be important in an 'inspired' work like the Bible. All right, let's say this is nit-picking but worse follows; there is a more startling discrepancy concerning Saul's companions. In Acts 9:7 we read: 'The men that journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but beholding no man.' But in Acts 22:9, recounting a later sermon, the very clear statement is made: 'They that were with me beheld indeed the light but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.'
 
Amazing isn't it? And hard for the cleverest Christian apologist to wriggle out of.  Was Paul's memory as faulty as this? How could such a drastic mistake be made by St Luke or Mr Anonymous, whoever it was who wrote the book? What has happened to this 'inerrant' Bible that two completely conflicting accounts of this amazing encounter with Jesus' spirit are peddled as truth? We can well dismiss the encounter of Saul/Paul with a spirit-being right at this point but some people may remain uncertain so we will examine the matter a little more closely.
The suggestion, often made, that Saul suffered sunstroke (or heatstroke as it is now called) on his journey to Damascus is naturally dismissed by Christians out of hand. But there is strong evidence to suggest that sunstroke was indeed responsible for the hatching in the fevered mind of the Apostle the plot of Christianity.
 
Sunstroke is a common condition suffered by travellers and others exposed to the sun in tropical climes. But it is known to strike victims in temperate regions as well during very hot summers. And Syria, through which Saul passed, was not merely temperate but actually subtropical. In parts of the country extremes of temperature are often recorded, certainly high enough to bring on sunstroke. The journey from Jerusalem to Damascus, a distance of some two hundred kilometres, is estimated by commentators to have taken Saul about six days and at least a significant portion of the route ran through dry and arid country; conditions just right for an attack from the sun.
 
In their book, The Life and Epistles of St Paul (Longman's, 1898), two convinced Christians, Conybeare and Howson, wrote of this journey: 'Leaving now the Sea of Galilee . . . we follow the company of travellers over the barren uplands which stretch in dreary succession along the base of Antilibanus. All around are stony hills and thirsty plains, through which the withered stems of the scanty vegetation hardly penetrate. Over this desert, under the burning sky, the impetuous Saul holds his course, full of fiery zeal . . .' (p.71). This was the area known as the Wilderness of Damascus.  And it was midday, as the Bible says, with the sun at its zenith. It was dry and it was hot and the journey was a long one and Saul was a very determined, zealous man.

BRIGHT SUN

Now when we describe the brightness of the sun, we do not mean the sun seen by staring directly into it. This is, as we know, a very dangerous thing to do. Bright sunlight means light shining on us and around us directly from the sun but reflected from other objects and thus, by the laws of physics, always somewhat less than the full brightness of the actual beams of sunlight. When we catch the glare of the sun reflected from a plain white surface or from shiny metal we are receiving almost a full measure of the rays' power. But when reflected from a darker surface the rays are weaker. If now we stare straight into the sun's light then the brightness is indeed brighter than that which we normally perceive as 'bright sunlight'.
 
Sunstroke is described in medical literature as being 'an often fatal affection of the central nervous system.' Through its attack on this system it also affects other parts of the body and in extreme cases causes complete physical breakdown of many bodily functions. Some reports in the past have given a figure of 50 percent fatalities. Predisposing factors not only include high temperature (the major one) but also dry atmosphere, stress or anxiety on the part of the victim, overwork, poor nutrition and 'prolonged marches.'  And recent studies indicate that in many cases a state of mental confusion sets in, people affected not being properly aware of their surroundings.

As recently as January 1991 we have had a dramatic case of heatstroke reported in Australia. A female German tourist, 30, was critically ill after exposure to our southern sun. She had been in a coma for two days, had suffered brain damage, kidney failure and muscle-melt, or liquefaction of her muscles.
   
As I write, then, I picture the zealous, highly-strung figure of Saul breathing out his threatenings and slaughter, marching with his entourage onwards to Damascus, single-minded, intent on dragging Christians found there 'bound to Jerusalem' (9:2), to see in their suffering the release of his own pent-up hatred and contempt for them. A psycho case indeed!

But the Bible itself gives the game away for it tells us, doesn't it, that it was midday, and we know it was hot, and we know it was dry, and we know the journey was a long one. In fact, we know that all the conditions were ripe for the occurrence of a dramatic event. But that event was not Saul's confrontation by a dead rabbi, as we are supposed to believe, which is an absurdity anyway; it was the prostration of Saul beneath the awesome primeval power of the midday sun. 

GHOSTLY VISION

Caught up in a state of mental confusion and detachment, it is easy to understand how ghostly visions could trouble him. And perhaps, as he fell to the ground with sunstroke, he might have stared momentarily into that bright and burning sun and been temporarily blinded. There's another possibility. Carl Jung has pointed out that many cases of apparent blindness are psychogenic in origin and brought about by the victim's refusal to face certain facts, in Paul's case to face the possibility that the Christians he was persecuting might be right.
   
Oh, yes, I know, all of this is conjecture. We have but sketchy facts to go on but such as we have are surely of great interest. Remember Saul/Paul has already been found out giving conflicting accounts of his alleged conversion. And if he did not do so, certainly his biographer did; either way, the New Testament is discredited. So why should we believe that he really met up with a ghostly presence? The idea of sunstroke at least has logic and science on its side, more than can be said of the former notion.
 
But I haven't quite finished with this episode. It should come as no surprise to us, for example, that Saul's blindness was said to last three days - the magical mystery Biblical period again! One cannot help but be a trifle suspicious as to the authenticity of the story with the interposition of this conveniently neat three-day period.
  
We come then to the final and perhaps most significant matter - Saul's blindness.  Why do I think it is of such significance? For this reason: The Bible gives no spiritual reason whatever for the condition of blindness that descends upon Saul. But there is, of course, a probable physical reason. It is plainly obvious that Saul must have come perilously close to losing his eyesight altogether. Remember how he described the light he saw as brighter than the sun (Acts 26:13)? And we have already seen how this phraseology aptly describes the effect of staring straight into the sun's rays.

Still not convinced that Saul suffered sunstroke? Let us turn yet again to the Bible itself (which here, as in many places, gives itself away). In both his second letter to the Corinthians and the letter to the Galatians (leaving aside the interesting question as to whether Paul actually wrote these letters; a good question indeed) we have the Apostle referring, with some feeling, to 'an infirmity in the flesh' he suffered (2 Corinthians 12:7 and Galatians 4:13). This affliction bothered him often. In fact he tells us himself that he prayed for its removal. Alas, his prayers were not answered!  They frequently aren't, even though the Bible assures us that believing prayers are answered!

Now most Christian commentators seem to think this infirmity was - an eyesight problem! Perhaps Paul was part-blind or had even lost the sight of one eye. What else could he refer to but such an affliction when he says of the Galatian Christians: 'I bear you witness that, if possible, ye would have plucked out your eyes and given them to me' (Galatians 4:15). I am justified in asking my readers: Is the view I have propounded all that untenable in the light of this one verse?

Finally, when we examine closely the doctrines espoused by Paul (so far as this is possible, given the uncertainties involved - some epistles attributed to him were probably not from his pen) we uncover an important issue. Paul's doctrines breathed Hellenistic thought. He may have been a Hebrew by race but Paul was from Tarsus, was he not? For that is what the Bible itself tells us. Now Tarsus was a veritable hotbed of mystery cults, a sort of Los Angeles of the ancient world, and most of these groups taught the concept of the need for redemption and thus of a saviour, and preached the death-and-resurrection cycle, the very stuff of Christianity.

Such cults had sacramental rites, in particular baptism, one of the distinctive rites of Christianity, however performed. This was derived directly from the mystery cults, so much so that in a later era Tertullian thought the baptisms practised by the non-Christian religions were devilish counterfeits of the 'true baptism' experienced by the Christian! Thus did St Paul deceive the world with his 'revelation' on the Damascus road and thus did Paul launch upon the world the Christian faith.     

PENANCE.  Penance had developed as a sacrament in the Catholic Church by the 3rd century. It is not considered as such by Protestant Churches. In the earliest era penance was such that it could only be undergone once in a lifetime. It was treated as a matter of the utmost gravity and restoration to a good standing in the Church only resulted after prolonged prayer, fasting and almsgiving. In time the character of Penance changed into an institution closer to that obtaining today.

However, the mediaeval Church exacted something more by way of penance, a decidedly physical penance, than the Church of today. The most famous case of penance is that prescribed for Henry 2nd after the murder of Becket. He was ordered to walk barefoot (a sign of humility) on the last three miles to Canterbury and on 12 July, 1174, was scourged by the monks in the place where Becket had been slain.  Another ruler, Emperor Otto 4th, agreed on his death-bed to be whipped by the meanest of his kitchen servants as a penance. He even demanded that he be beaten harder.
 
The historian Gibbon states that it required three thousand lashes to reduce Penance by a year. According to Gibbon a famous hermit, Saint Dominic of the Cuirass, could inflict upon himself three hundred thousand stripes and thus discharge a whole century of Penance. Self-flagellation was esteemed of great value in discharging Penance and a potent means of grace. The sinner who scourged himself while chanting twenty Psalms gained one hundred years of Penance. India's Hindu holy men, or fakirs, subject themselves to various forms of penance, as do the holy men of Islam. One type of Indian holy man, known as a urdhabahur ('arms upraised') yogi journeyed through Asia with his arms permanently above his shoulders as an act of penance. For details of the sect of self-flagellators, see under: FLAGELLANTS, The.

PENTATEUCH.  The first five books of the Old Testament, traditionally ascribed to Moses. This, at least in the case of the early sections, is an absurdity as Moses, if he lived at all (and there is much doubt among scholars on that score) could not have been present to describe events that occurred before his birth!

PENTECOSTAL MOVEMENT. A variant form of fundamentalist Christianity began to emerge early in the 20th century.  Growing out of the ever-turbulent 19th century American religious milieu, Pentecostalism was a sort of amalgam of 'holiness' teachings, belief in the imminent return of Jesus of Nazareth and faith healing.  However, the crowning and distinctive mark was the believer's 'baptism in the Holy Spirit'.  From now on Christians, however devout, would be politely informed that water baptism was insufficient. They had to be baptized again, in the Spirit, manifested chiefly by SPEAKING IN TONGUES, otherwise known as glossolalia.

As happened continually in the 19th century, the new movement soon began splitting up and forming factions. So many churches, large and small, derived from the initial movement that it is difficult to catalog them all. Names such as 'Apostolic', 'Four Square', 'Assemblies of God' and 'Church of God' were used and many variants of these, and others. One thing is certain about the Pentecostalists; they must be a bunch of rugged individualists - or egotists - so often do they split from one another.  As a typical example, take the split that developed in the USA when the Pentecostal Fire-Baptised Holiness Church separated from the Pentecostal Holiness Church. The issue: relaxed dress standards for men, including discarding on occasions the wearing of a necktie. See also: McPHERSON, Aimée Semple.

PENTECOSTALIST SCHOOL. On 3 March, 1992, parents of children attending a private Christian school, St Peter's College, at Waratah, Newcastle (Australia) complained that a number of children were disturbed by a lecture they attended at a camp in Sydney.  Students of year 7, aged about 13, reportedly became frightened by discussion of and activities involving SPEAKING IN TONGUES. Tongues were reportedly actually spoken. It was claimed by unhappy parents that a young lecturer told children they would go to hell if they had sex outside of marriage. It was rumoured that some teachers had threatened to resign. Students were later withdrawn from the school in protest.

PEOPLE'S TEMPLE, The.  See under: JONES, Jim.

PERSECUTION BY ROME. Between 1948 and 1962 over 120 Protestant missionaries were killed for their faith in Roman Catholic Colombia. No word of rebuke ever issued forth from the Pope during these years.

PETER, Saint. The claim that the Apostle Peter was the first Pope of Rome is a specious one. Peter may well have been in Rome, but even this is hotly disputed. After all, we have clear statements in the New Testament that St Paul went to Rome (around 60-63 CE) and that he was put to death there, but no statement asserting Peter was ever in that city. If he was such a key figure in the Church of Rome it is certainly surprising that no mention is made of his being there!

It was not until about 200 CE that the notion arose that St Peter founded the Church at Rome. His candidature as head of the Church is supposedly supported by a 'proof text' in the Gospel of Matthew, especially Matthew 16:18:  'Thou are Peter, and upon this rock [petra] I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.'

Quite simply this text, upon which so much store is placed by the Church of Rome, is a late addition. For a start, if Jesus of Nazareth said such words to Peter, it was at a time when there was no such entity as the 'church'. Peter, nor for that matter any of the other disciples, would have had no idea whatever to what he referred! The language used was Aramaic and this tongue had no such word in its vocabulary. It is also obvious, if one considers these words without trying to attach any particular significance to them, that they take the form of a pun, a play on words, of the name of Peter [rock] and 'petra' [rock]. It is hard to believe that the person supposed to be the Son of God would have stooped to such a trivial mode of speech in speaking of such an all-important matter! Jesus surely didn't!

The Church that later stooped to producing all manner of FALSE DOCUMENTS would surely not be averse to inserting a few extra words in one of the Gospels to prop up its assertion of supremacy. This was probably one of its earliest forgeries. Two of the foremost Bishops, Ignatius (1st century) and Irenaeus (2nd century) make no reference to such authority in their letters. Indeed, it was not until the very end of the second century - that is at least six or seven generations after the first Christians - that anyone suggested the notion - one not readily accepted - that Rome held some sort of pre-eminence in Christianity. See further under: PAPAL CLAIMS.

Finally, in recent times it has been claimed that the tomb - and bones - of St Peter have been found in Rome. We have as much certainty as to this discovery as we have concerning the myriad false relics the Church of Rome has conveniently found hither and yon through the centuries. See further under: RELICS.     

PILGRIMS ENSLAVED. Around the year 1947, a Sudanese merchant who was a Muslim, Ahmed Beshir, decided to make the pilgrimage to Makkah (Mecca). Sudan was then under British rule. Ahmed decided to take with him his wife, Khadijah, his daughter and three sons. The children ranged in age up to 15. In his own country Ahmed was well established, owning about twenty houses which he rented out. Although slavery had been abolished officially in most of the countries of that area there were still people enslaved. Sometimes there were stories of pilgrims disappearing en route to Mecca.
 
Ahmed did not like flying but an advertisement in a local newspaper caught his eye.  It offered especially cheap family fares for travel by air to Mecca. Ahmed bought tickets and eventually the family boarded the DC-3, along with eight other families.  There were in all about twenty children in the party. Along the way a steward appeared and told the passengers that they were having a little engine trouble and would, for safety reasons, land at a place called Tallil rather than go on to Makkah.
 
Apparently nobody on the plane was suspicious, just concerned about relatives waiting for them. Nobody except Ahmed, who did not say anything to his wife and children but quietly wrote out a note. It read: 'The finder of this, take it, for the love of Allah, to the nearest consul of the British.' Inside he penned the words: 'Sir, I suspect that I, Ahmed Beshir, and of Omdurman, my wife and children and many others on the Dakota plane number FG 546 are being stolen away to be slaves in the Arabias.  Help us, sir. Ahmed Beshir.' The paper was formed into a small ball and hidden in an inner waistcoat pocket.

Soon the party were on the ground, not at Tallil but in some isolated area, and awaiting them was a party of armed men. The children were now separated from their parents, who protested loudly but in vain. One man tried to hit one of the kidnappers but was struck down dead with a dagger. The plane took off again with the children on board, leaving the adults to await a second flight two hours later. All on board, children and adults alike, had been sold into slavery.

When they landed at an airstrip Ahmed took a gamble. Seeing an airport worker who appeared to be of Sudanese extraction he slipped the note into his hand. The man took it without looking up. Fortunately for Ahmed and his family the man did seek out the British consul, a shrewd and diligent man, who immediately took up the case. 

Meanwhile the couple had been put to work in the palace of an Arab sheikh, by name of Ali Aziz. They would be well treated but should they attempt to escape, they were warned, they would be tortured and possibly executed. Their children's fate was not known. In fact, they were not far away, having been taken into the household of the brother of the sheikh. After suitable diplomat approaches from the consul the couple were released and reunited with their children, then returned to Sudan. Eventually the British authorities acted to obtain the release of the other pilgrims and the man who had murdered one of them was caught and condemned to death. 

PIUS 3rd, Pope. Pope Pius 3rd was elected to follow ALEXANDER 6th (the second Borgia Pope). However, it appears that this was one of those occasions when the Holy Ghost made a mistake in guiding the cardinals to choose a new pontiff. Pius only reigned twenty-seven days before he went to receive  his heavenly reward. He was followed by JULIUS 2nd.

PLYMOUTH BRETHREN.  See under: BRETHREN, The.

POD, The. In October 1995 the 60 Minutes program on Australia's Channel NINE revealed the activities of a Sydney-based religious group known as The Pod, led by Stuart Walker. Walker claimed to be able to communicate with whales and sometimes sat on rocks by the sea talking to any what which happened to be passing by. He says he received guidance from them, to apply to his group. Walker claims to have been in past lives the Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Tutenkhamen, among others. He also claims to be able to heal various physical ailments.

Former sect members asserted on the program that Walker had used them to obtain prescription drugs for him from doctors. When cameramen caught up with Walker on one occasion it appeared by his slurred speech and lack of coherent conversation that he was under the influence of some sort of drug. Walker has also been accused by former members of attempting to brainwash children of sect members. He reportedly hit some of them and shook and threw others.
  
It was alleged by a lady who appeared on the program that a male friend of hers had been proclaimed cured of diabetes by Walker but instead had been reduced to a 'human wreck' and was bedridden, in a vegetative state. The man had drunk alcohol after being assured it would not matter, she claimed, with a female doctor who is a group member and friend of Walker's approving. The man had, under instructions, abandoned outside help from orthodox medicine. When he collapsed Walker performed another 'healing' on him, according to the claim.

POLTERGEISTS.  A long time ago a case of poltergeist activity occurred in a home in Galashiels, Scotland. The household included a 13-year-old girl, Margaret Wilson, who seemed, as is so often the case, to be the object of the poltergeist's activity. Loud rappings came from beneath chairs she sat upon and knocking sounds from beneath her bed. The local minister of religion, the Reverend Wilkie, was called in and visited several times, conducting prayer meetings. Reportedly Margaret's body levitated from her bed, even when several strong men tried to hold her down. Strange sounds were also reported and Margaret told the investigators that while she was unconscious the Devil spoke to her.

On one occasion the minister took the girl's Uncle aside and questioned him closely as regards his behaviour towards the girl. The Uncle reacted angrily, denying he had done anything such as the minister implied. According to the account of this episode the minister further pressed a question of 'one thing in particular' but again the Uncle denied responsibility. Was the mysterious thing the appearance of menstrual blood?  In any event soon after this Margaret was sent away and became a servant in Edinburgh.  Immediately all strange happenings ceased in both her own home and in the place to which she had gone. 

POLYGAMY. It was said of the Mormons: 'In the world, it takes two sets of parents to produce five children while in Mormondom the number is produced by one set.'  President [presumably Joseph] Smith had 42 children and Lorin Farr had forty. The excess of women over men in the eastern USA was an important factor helping the rise of Mormonism. 'Mormon plural marriage was never a menace to monogamy . . .  It took up the old maids . . . now accumulating.' The Mormon priests allowed plural marriage only to to men who could demonstrate they had means to support several families and 'so used used the satisfaction of polygamous instincts as a reward to unusual economic' prowess, in the words of one early commentator.
 
In the Mormon War in Missouri a mob raped fifteen or twenty Mormon girls and drove the Saints out. The locals wanted to buy, at a favourable price, a stretch of fertile land, but the Mormons refused. Allen, a missionary who worked in Asian India for 25 years commented: 

If polygamy was unlawful, then Leah was the only wife of Jacob and none but her children were legitimate . . . And yet there is no intimation of any such views and feelings in Laban's family, or in Jacob's family, or in Jewish history . . . God honoured the sons of Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah equally with the sons of Leah. (Quoted by Matilda J. Gage, in Woman, Church, and State, Chicago 1893)

POOR VICAR! Did you hear about the Anglican vicar crying over Britain's famous Steeplechase? No, he wasn't an animal liberationist. He was upset because they cancelled it and he was set to win £100 - or so he claimed.

POPE CONDEMNED. During a 1993 debate in the European Parliament the Pope was attacked for 'condemning people to death' with his teaching against the use of condoms. The Pope actually urged Africans on a recent visit not to use them. This in an area with the highest population growth rate in the world, producing more and more mouths that they cannot feed. And in an area with frighteningly high rates of AIDS infection. The Parliament passed a motion urging the Pope to change his teachings.  See also: PAPAL MALFEASANCE. 

POPES.  See under name first, e.g. ALEXANDER 6th, Pope.

POPULATION. A UN report issued in mid-1990 claimed that world population - currently 5.3 million - would increase by one billion in the 1990s, a rise which would probably prove catastrophic to the environment. It said that poorer countries, where 90% of the rise will occur, will suffer most.' In 1972 quoted that world population doubling rate as at 1950 was 35 years. As at 1968 the USA and the USSR were doubling the rate every 68 years, Denmark 88 years, United Kingdom 140 years,  Philippines 20 years, Indonesia 31 years, Costa Rica and El Salvador 15 to 20 years.  In September 1990 it was stated that the African population, then 550 million, was growing by 3.1% annually, the world's highest rate and could reach 1.6 billion by 2020.  The chief danger to the world lies in the teachings of the Catholic Church and the Islamic religion, which oppose contraception and abortion. 

PORTENTS. Han Kao-tsu was a simple peasant born in China in the 3rd century BCE. At the age of 17 he defied the might of the tyrant ruler of China, becoming a hero in the eyes of the people. It was recorded in the histories that his birth was accompanied by many outstanding celestial portents. Similar portents are recorded in connection with the birth of Jesus the Nazarene, however, curiously only in one Gospel.  According to Luke (2: 1-20), fear-struck shepherds were treated to an amazing angelic vision and saw 'the glory of Yahweh' and heard and saw 'a multitude of the heavenly host' singing a chorus which Mr Handel later used in his Messiah. Very strange, indeed, that only Luke knows about all this. The other three Gospel writers must have been off duty that day.
 
A USA report late in 1986 said a talk-show co-host on a fundamentalist TV network said God had called her to Christian television and given her a sign she was to marry by ringing her wind chimes one night.

PORT-ROYAL. Jansenism, an offshoot of Catholicism, infected the convent at Port-Royal during the 17th century and in 1709 the Pope ordered the dispersal of 22 nuns, the convent's property confiscated and the buildings burnt to the ground.  Evidently His Holiness was anxious to physically destroy the evil lurking there once and forever. So zealous were his emissaries that they even dug up the bodies in the cemetery attached to the convent and dispersed these too!

POSSESSION. Writing about a young child who was supposedly 'possessed of the devil', a Catholic apologist commented: 'We dare not investigate the laws that guide these terrible judgments of GOD; they are wrapped in impenetrable mystery.' 

PRAYER. Constant entreaties affecting GOD - see Guignebert: Jesus, 251-2 re parable of the widow and the judge. Christians have very convenient memories in the matter of prayer. The prayers that are answered are noised abroad as things of wonder while those unanswered are overlooked. 

PREDICTIONS. Late in 1990 US seismologist Iben Browning, 72, predicted a large earthquake on December 2 or December 3. It was claimed on the Beyond 2000 TV program that he has been 80% right in past predictions. He allegedly foretold the Mt St Helens eruption and the recent San Francisco earthquake. Late in November some Christians excitedly phoned talkback stations in Sydney and said GOD had told them these predictions were correct and there would be a huge earthquake. By the end of the week the excitement had died down as the eruptions had not occurred. However, Browning was then reported to have revised his date to the end of the month! And the earthquake still not occur on the new date. 

PREFERMENT. Term used to describe the promotion of a person for an office, especially the office of bishop. In the 18th and 19th centuries in England politics played a large part in the process. A typical case is that of Dr Samuel Squire, Bishop of St David's in the latter half of the 18th century. He started on his road as a Fellow of St John's, Cambridge, then became chaplain to the Bishop of Wells. From this position he went to be chaplain to the Duke of Newcastle. The Duke was well known as a manipulator of appointments and soon Dr Squire became not only Bishop of St David's, but Prebendary of Wells, Archdeacon of Bath, Rector of St Anne's, Soho, Vicar of a church in Lincolnshire and another in Greenwich, and Clerk of the Closet to George 3rd!   

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. Like most groups the Presbyterians divided among themselves. In the American colonies in the 18th century there were two groups, known as the Old Lights and the New Lights. The former were conservatives who believed reason had a part to play in Christian faith. The latter thought that many of the Old Light ministers were not even converted!

PRESSURE GROUPS.  Late in 1990 the US fast-food group Burger King published an 'Open Letter to the American People.' The group pledged in future only to support TV programs when they reflected 'traditional family values on television.'  This was in response to pressure from a religious group, CLEAR-TV (Christian Leaders for Responsible Television) headed by the Reverend Donald Wildmon.

PRIEST PROFITS FROM MURDERER'S CONFESSION. In June 1992 it was reported that a Miami Catholic priest, Lazaro Hernandez, 36, heard a confession from a getaway driver Fernando Fernandez after the murder of a north Miami policeman. The priest then tipped off authorities and collected a $US100,000 reward.    

PRIESTS MARRYING. A Catholic spokesperson, commenting in May 1992, reported that about 40 priests were leaving the Australian church each year to get married. In about the mid-1980s the Reverend Father Francis Kelly, priest in Bundarra, northern NSW, was visited by Dianne, a lady with a divorce going through, seeking spiritual guidance. After one of her visits the priest kissed her on the lips. Not long after there was a sexual encounter and four months later the priest told Dianne he loved her. He also told her not to use birth control methods and in time a son was born. Then another priest secretly married the couple in a Catholic church, although at the time Dianne's divorce had not been finalized. The Church repudiated the marriage and there followed five years of unhappiness for both, until eventually Frank Kelly had a massive heart attack and died. 

PRIEST, The.  A movie about a homosexual priest produced in Britain in 1995. The movie was condemned as being blasphemous and pornographic. However, in Poland, a country steeped in Catholicism, the film was given a big boost by the Church itself, albeit unwittingly. The bishops mounted a campaign against the film before it even reached Poland, where the people have largely been kept in ignorance of the scandalous behaviour of some of the priests.
 
So concerned were the distributors that they contemplated abandoning the movie's release. They were soon to be pleased they had not done so! The Polish people, stirred by all the controversy, flocked to see The Priest in record numbers. One Warsaw cinema was booked out three days in advance. The audiences had to enter theatres before groups of Catholic protesters waving crosses and singing hymns but this did not stop them.

PRIMITIVE RELIGION. G.A. Robinson, a Methodist missionary in the 19th century, accused Australia's Aborigines of Devil-worship. He said of Aboriginal beliefs: 'These devotees of the Devil are excessive in their devotions. They continue to chant their Devil song and perform their rites at every opportunity.'

PRINCE, Reverend Henry James.  See under: AGAPEMONE, Church of the.

PROCESS THEOLOGY. A variant form of liberal Christian thinking that takes the hard edge off evangelical beliefs and the fundamentalist position. It was popularized in several works by Professor Charles Birch, basing his writings on A.N. Whitehead, an agnostic turned religious, so we are told. Process theology seems to be in turn a variant form of nature worship, seeing 'feeling' in atoms and cells and suggesting that humans, animals and inanimate objects share some inner reality. Such a view is known as panexperientialism by Birch and others. Or maybe it is just another form of PANTHEISM.

PROCTER AND GAMBLE. In 1982 the American household products giant Procter and Gamble was subjected to an assault by fundamentalist Christians. An American Baptist group group circulated a pamphlet entitled Satan is Creeping Into your Kitchen!  The group claimed that the famous trademark of the company, representing the Man in the Moon, represented the Ram, one of the supposed incarnations of the Devil. The symbol was also alleged to contain the number 666, the supposed Number of the Beast (probably an incorrect interpretation of the passage in any event) in the Book of Revelation. By linking up the stars in the trademark the the number 666 could be made to appear!
 
At first the firm tried to laugh off this ridiculous attack but such was the power of the fundamentalists that they eventually had to act. By June 1982 the company was receiving an average of 15,000 complaints per month. They instituted legal action against four individuals alleged to be responsible for defamatory material but in the end, so far as I am aware, bowed to pressure and changed their symbol. It was another triumph of superstition over rationality.

PROMISE KEEPERS. Promise Keepers is a Christian evangelistic group based in the USA. It was founded by Bill McCartney, a former football coach from Colorado. It has since spread to several countries, including Canada. Membership appears to be limited to males only, at least the organization's rallies are all-male affairs. Participants pray and sing, sob and generally carry on enthusiastically. Members pledge seven 'promises': to follow the Bible's teachings, to pursue 'vital relationships' with other men, to build family life, to practice sexual purity, to support their church, and to evangelize.
 
PK also opposes women's reproduction rights and the teaching of evolutionary theory. It says women's place is in the home, under male authority. PK also apparently teaches that husbands should beat their wives where necessary, quoting Corinthians, where Paul reputedly said 'the wife does not rule over her body but the husband does.'

James Ryle, a board member of PK, has claimed his organization is the 'terrifying end-time army' prophesied in the book of Joel. PK is clearly a dangerous organization, opposed to democratic processes, for it says it has set out to 'end secularism in America' and impose a theocracy, much in the mould of Calvin's Geneva.

PROPHECIES. In Prophecy and Divination (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1938), Dr Alfred Guillaume reported on a mass of information collected from among the Arabs and others on the matter of prophecy and divination, or 'second sight.' He quotes from Ibn Khaldun, al Ghazâli and Maimonides, among others. The study sheds considerable light on the Hebrew prophets. Maimonides had the theory that the strange symbols referred to by the Hebrew prophets, e.g., candlesticks, horses, mountains in Zechariah, the scroll of Ezekiel, the wall made by a plumb-line in Amos, the beasts of Daniel, the seething-pot of Jeremiah, were all seen in dreams or visions and perceived as to their meaning when the dreamer awoke.

An interesting episode occurred in the early 1990s when Grand Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, of the New York Lubavitcher faction, at the time thought by many to be the Messiah, prophesied that an Australian Jew, mining magnate Joseph Gutnick, would, by a certain date, October 1993, have a substantial find of diamonds. Certainly the area where Mr Gutnick was looking in Western Australia was diamond country. In any event no find was made, a fact not noted later by many financial writers, who directed attention instead to Gutnick's gold-mining activities. It is curious how fulfilled prophecy gets trumpeted abroad while unfulfilled is conveniently overlooked.

PROPHET, Mrs Elizabeth Clare. See under: CHURCH UNIVERSAL AND TRIUMPHANT.

PSYCHIATRY. There are a number of institutions around the world caring for priests, nuns and other clergy who need therapy. Among them is a centre for priests and nuns in Birmingham, England. Evidently the 'transforming Gospel' is inadequate for many in the Church who cannot cope with life with the aid of their religion!

A typical case: Margaret Lavery, 65, a Catholic nun who had worked in Africa as a missionary for 40 years suicided in August 1992. The English nun had returned to the Holy Cross Convent, in Chalfont St Peter, Bucks, in May 1992 after working as a teacher in Zambia. She was apparently in doubt about her faith and had been prescribed antidepressant drugs although she had not shared her doubts with others.  Three months after going on medication she took an overdose of anti-malaria pills and died as a result.

PURPLE MOTHER, The. In 1900 an American, Mrs Katherine Tingley, established an occult community on a 200-hectare property at Point Loma, near San Diego. Mrs Tingley, variously known as Purple Mother, Light of the Ledge and The Veiled Mahatma, ruled the community autocratically. Members studied esoteric subject, including yoga, ancient history, art and music, lessons being accompanied by the atmospheric sound of temple bells ringing,

The buildings were decorated garishly with amethyst doors and opalescent domes while members of the order wore Grecian-style costumes. Visitors were ushered in to the sound of the bugle and the visitors were many. People from all over the world came to the centre and paid homage to its ruler. At one point the Purple Mother claimed a following of 100,000. Certainly the cash contributions rolled in, supporting the lavish appointments.
 
Inevitably the press raised a cry against the group, accusing it of being involved in sex orgies and condoning gross immorality. The Purple Mother sued the Los Angeles Times and eventually, after some years of litigation, was awarded a substantial sum.  However, later the tables were turned on Mrs Tingley. Another lady, Mrs George F. Mohn, who lived with her husband in the community, in 1923 sued her for alienation of her husband's affections.

Mrs Mohn claimed that her husband had been induced to part with $300,000 to aid the cause but worse, that he had fallen in love with the Purple Mother. Mrs Mohn was awarded $75,000. This signalled the end for the Purple Mother. She deserted the community and fled to Europe. Not much was heard of her after this.

QUAKERS, The. 
Otherwise known as the Religious Society of Friends. A religious body founded by George Fox in 1646 and flourishing in England, Ireland, Europe and America, especially from the late 17th century and through the 18th. The popular name 'Quakers' came from the physical manifestations of religious ecstasy they experienced. They were subjected to much persecution along with other dissenters and more particularly because they were pacifists and refused service in any force that was involved in killing. They also believed in receiving inspiration by what they called the Inner Light, and because of this rejected the sacraments and the ministry. They refused to take oaths.

Under successive English administrations, including both those two good Christians, Oliver Cromwell and Charles 2nd, they were hounded and ill-treated. The Star Chamber imprisoned hundreds of Quakers and in many cases confiscated their properties and personal goods and chattels. In the period between about 1660 and 1690 some 15,000 Quakers had suffered in one way or another as a result of persecution and several hundred died.

Eventually in July 1656 two Quaker women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, embarked for Boston, hoping to establish the movement there free from persecution. However, the New World that had embraced so many who had fled from religious persecution in the Old did not take kindly to the Quakers. Evidently the local populace were aware of the teachings of the Friends for the women had barely set foot on American soil when they were seized by an unruly mob, stripped entirely naked, bound to the cart's tail and whipped through the city's streets. Branded as heretics they were then sent back to England on the same ship that brought them to Boston. Old engraving showing someone being whipped at the cart's tail:

Soon, however, other English Quakers also reached Boston and began preaching their message. The Puritans of New England did not take kindly to a rival faith appearing on the scene. Governor Endicot instituted a terrible persecution of these peaceful people. Men and women where hounded from their homes, whipped unmercifully in public, often stripped naked or near-naked for the purpose, branded, mutilated and imprisoned. Some were even sold as white slaves to plantation owners.  The Friends were actively persecuted in all the non-Quaker colonies except Rhode Island.

KNOTTED CORD

There are endless accounts of men and women being seized. In 1657 Mary Clark was given twenty stripes with a whip made of thick cord with knots at the ends of each cord and thrown into prison for 12 months.
 
Soon after the knotted whip fell on the backs of two male preachers, Christopher Holder and John Copeland. They were gagged for the occasion and Holder nearly chocked to death on his gag while the blows were so vicious that onlookers were said to have fainted. They were then locked in en empty cell in midwinter, with no bedding, for the next nine weeks. Other women were locked up and starved for days, being only taken from their cell to be whipped. Some of the floggings were in public and the women suffered the extra humiliation of appearing without upper garments before the crowds of ill-willed onlookers. An early account by John Whiting (Truth and Innocency Defended Against Falsehood and Envy, 1702) reported on a typical incident:

Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose were cruelly ordered to be whip'd at a cart's tail through eleven towns at one time, ten stripes apiece on their naked backs, which would have amounted to 110 in the whole, and on a very cold day, they were strip'd and whip'd through three of the towns (the priests looking on and laughing) and barefoot through dirt and snow, sometimes half leg deep, till Walter Barefoot, of Salisbury, got the warrant and discharged them.

Another writer from the same era, George Bishop (in his New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord, 1703) told the story of the exceeding cruelty suffered by a Quaker, William Brend:

The jailer put him in irons, neck and heels, lockt so close together, as there was no more room between each, than for the horse-lock that fastened them on; and so kept him in irons for the space of sixteen hours (as the jailer himself confessed) for not working; and all this without meat, whilst his back was torn with the whipping the day before, which did not satisfy the bloodthirsty jailer, but as a man resolved to have his life, and by cruelties to kill him, he had him down again the next morning to work, though so many days without meat, his back beaten, his neck and heels bruised, by being bound so long together, because he could not bow to his will; yet he laid him on with a pitch'd rope twenty blows over his back and arms, with as much force as he could drive so that with the fierceness of the blows the rope untwisted and his arms were swollen with it.

Presently after this, the jailer having either mended his old, or got a new rope, came in again; and having hailed him downstairs with greater fury and violence than before, gave his broken, bruised, and weak body fourscore and seventeen blows more, foaming at the mouth like a madman, and tormented with rage; unto which great number he had added more blows, had not his strength and rope failed him, for now he cared not what he did do: and all this, because he did not work for him, which he could not do, being unable in body and unfree in mind. So he gave him in all 117 blows with a pitch'd rope, so that his flesh was beaten black, and as into a jelly, and under his arms the bruised flesh and blood hung down, clodded as it were in baggs, and so into one was it beaten, that the sign of one particular blow could not be seen.

OUTLAWED

The New Englanders eventually passed legislation to outlaw the Quakers altogether in the following terms:

That whosoever of the inhabitants should directly or indirectly, cause any of the Quakers to come into that jurisdiction, he should forfeit an hundred pounds to the country, and be committed to prison, there to remain till the penalty be satisfied.  And whosoever should entertain them, knowing them to be so, should forfeit forty shillings to the country for every hour's entertaining or concealment, and be committed to prison rill the forfeiture be fully paid and satisfied.

And further, that all and every of those people that should arise among them there should be dealt withal and suffer the like punishment as the laws provided for those that came in - viz, that for the first offence, if a male, one of his ears should be cut off, and be kept at work in the House of Correction till he should be sent away on his own charge. For the second, the other ear, and be kept in the House of Correction as aforesaid. If a woman, then to be severely whipt and kept as aforesaid, as the male for the first. And for the third, he or she should have their tongues bored through with an hot iron and be kept in the House of Correction close at work, till they be sent away on their own charge.   

The Governor of Plymouth said that in his conscience he thought the Quakers to be a people that deserved to be destroyed, men, women and even children, along with their houses and lands, 'without pity'. The Dutch were equally vindictive when it came to Quakers. Robert Hodshone, for preaching the Friends' message, was sentenced to be chained to a wheelbarrow, which he had to work with a Negro overseeing him. The Negro was permitted to whip him as he thought best and eventually Hodshone was so badly bruised and swollen that he was quite unable to work at all. Dragged before the Governor for his failure to perform, he was stripped of his upper garments, taken into a room and hung by the wrists with a heavy log of wood bound to his feet and was caned by the Negro. He was then thrown into a cell and two days later brought out and the same procedure repeated. In 1659 and 1660 four members of the Friends were hanged on Boston Common while in Virginia another member died from neglect after he had been flogged.
 
Back in England, the Quakers continued to suffer persecution. George Fox, the founder, was in and out of prison but managed to maintain his strength of purpose. The ordinary Quakers continually fell foul of the authorities over their refusal to attend the services of the Established Church.  Men and women alike were whipped for his terrible offence. In 1654, for example, Barbara Blangdon, was hailed before the Mayor of Great Torrington, the parish priest urging that she should be whipped as a 'vagabond'. She was lodged in a noisome prison at Exeter and eventually sentenced to be flogged. The local parish beadle carried out the sentence with such zeal that the blood reportedly ran down the lady's bared back in streams.

There was, however, another side to the Quaker attitudes of pacifism. In the period of the terrible wars between the American settlers and the Indians, this pacifism led to the capture, torture, rape and slaughter of hundreds of innocent settlers, not themselves imbued with the Quaker ideals. In the 1750s the people on the borderlands of Pennsylvania were ravaged by Indian attacks and cried out continually for aid from the capital. But the Quakers went out of their way to hinder anyone taking up arms and forming militias to combat the Indians.
 
Wrote William Trent, one frontiersman, imploring aid: 'Two and forty bodies have been buried on Paterson's Creek; and since they have killed more, keep on killing.' Soon after this message was received news reached the capital that one hundred more had died. War-parties were attacking men, women and children and those who escaped were left naked and hungry. Adam Hoops wrote of the shocking sight 'for the husband to see the wife of his bosom her head cut off, and the children's blood drunk like water, by these bloody and cruel savages.' Eventually aid of a sort was given the people of the frontier regions but much against the will of the Quakers.

By the beginning of the 18th century some degree of toleration had become the order of the day. It is as a result of Quaker dissent that the English Affirmation Bill of 1696 was passed; this allowed for the giving of an affirmation in legal cases as an alternative to swearing on the Bible. A Toleration Act was passed in England in 1689, which greatly improved the situation of Quakers in that country. For their part the American Quakers early freed such slaves as they had held so that by 1800 Quakers generally held no slaves. They also worked for prison reform in both Britain and the USA and during and after the wars engaged in massive relief works. As at 1992 a figure of 1032 was quoted for membership in Australia. In the United Kingdom membership stood at 17,000 and worldwide it was 250,000. 

RABANNE, Paco. The famous couturier stepped right outside of his field of expertise and got himself infected with Endtime madness late in life and around 1993 produced a book, Has the Countdown Begun? Mr Rabanne suffered alarming visions since childhood, he said, and at the age of 7 the boy's spirit left his body and rose into the heavens and met with the 24 elders of the book of Revelation! Here, his instinct told him, he was on the Seventh Vibratory Plane, whatever that is. His heavenly tour-guides showed him survivors of the coming holocaust [due to happen Real Soon Now] roaming about like wild beasts, tearing each other to pieces and engaging in cannibalism.

Mr Rabanne also said he believed the ANTICHRIST was living in downtown London.  His idea about the Mark of the Beast was not original, though. Many have suggested, as he has, that credit cards, with their magnetically-implanted numbers, represent the Mark of the Beast. Some folk are in deep trouble; they have so many of them! The War, he thought (back in 1994) would begin in earnest in 1996.  

RACISM. Some of the Protestant churches on the USA in former times established separate churches for Negroes. Such a church might, for example, be known as the Baptist Church Coloured, which was in fact one such, in Baltimore, functioning under this title in the early years of the 20th century. See further under: SLAVERY AND RELIGION.   

RADIO CHURCH OF GOD. When I was much younger than I am now and there was no box in the corner the lounge-room, the steam radio provided our household entertainment. And one of the most entertaining performers of them all was Herbert W Armstrong, with his Radio Church of GOD. His announcement: 'This is Herbert W Armstrong' will forever echo in my head.
 
Why I listened to the man at all is something of a mystery. Fascination may be the explanation. Herbert W. Armstrong had built a mighty religious empire almost wholly through his radio talks. These were the days before television and the TELEVANGELISTS and no doubt many of them learnt from Armstrong. They, too, were to build mighty empires but, placed in the context of his times, Armstrong outshone them all. And, like many of today's air-wave prophets, he had his problems, one of them being his own son, Garner Ted Armstrong, who headed his personal roadshow, The Church of God, International. (Not to be confused with the Assemblies of God or assorted other Churches of God, all claiming to be the genuine bearers of the truth.) Dad and Garner T. fell out for a time but I think they were reconciled in the end.
 
In Australia today the church goes by the name The Church of God, International, headed by Armstrong's son, Garner Ted. Apart from the Plain Truth  magazine, freely distributed at airports and other transport outlets, the church has also engaged in newspaper advertising. Those little ads headed 'High Holy Days' come from the group, and clearly indicate the ritualistic Jewish-Christian nature of the faith. Jewish Feasts, Tabernacles, the Day of Atonement, and all the rest, are observed, in a curious mixture of Christian and Jewish doctrine. Many of these are based on the worship of lunar deities, such as the Jewish faith indulged in and later sanitized into festivals in honour of the tribal deity Yahweh. The Church of God, International keeps the holy days of the Hebrew religion. In this it goes much farther than even the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (see under: SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTISM) does in observance of Jewish law.
 
RAINMAKING. During a bad 1982 drought in Australia a Gold Coast (Queensland) lawnmower dealer employed a well-known Indian, Bill Mitter, known as Cherokee Bill, son of a Cherokee Indian chief, from Arizona. He did a 20-minute rain dance, 'praying to his ancestors and the four winds' with the mowers arranged in a semicircle. It rained that night. Which just goes to show that Christian prayers are not the only means of gaining needed rainfall. 'Any god will do.' 

RAJNEESH, Bhagwan Shree. An Indian guru who preached a light-hearted faith and gathered a large following. Bhagwan = God, in Hindi. He said he had become 'enlightened' at the age of 21. His followers grew in numbers in many countries, including Australia and the USA. Eventually he settled in the USA and formed a large commune but was ultimately expelled. From there he travelled to several countries but kept getting moved on by opponents, usually other religions. He died a few years back and with his death so died the movement he founded.   

RALE, Sebastien. Sebastien Rale was born in Franche-Comté in 1657 and became a Jesuit missionary, sent to the American missions by his Order in 1689, at the age of 32. For a while he worked among the warlike ABENAKI tribe in Canada, then settled near the mouth of the Chaudière, later working in Illinois. He eventually returned and ended his days among the Abenakis.

Rale proved to be a very able teacher and worker for his faith. He became skilled in several native tongues but was to prove a thorn in the side of the English to the south.  The Abenaki people at that time sided with the French against the Britishers and, although many Indians had been converted to Catholicism, did not eschew to use violent means to attain their ends. Rale did not teach them otherwise, rather, on one occasion in 1703 he told the Governor of Canada, Vandreuil, that the Abenakis were ready, at a word from him, to lift the hatchet against the English. Indeed, they were to do so soon, not long after this date.

In 1721, by which time Queen Anne's War had died down, Father Rale took a party of Catholic Indians to a parley, or perhaps, to make war if the parley failed. They were to meet with the English at Georgetown. Soon threats were being made by Rale and his Indians against the other side, although at the time the Canadian authorities did not want trouble. Then, on Arrowsick Island, a hostile demonstration provoked the English to seize one of the Indian chiefs. Charged with rebellion, he was taken to Boston, although was eventually released. Soon, however, the rest of the Indians began burning houses, murdering settlers, and committing other acts of violence, in the traditional manner, largely stirred up by Rale.

The English reportedly offered a large reward for the capture of the Jesuit priest but this is doubted by some historians. Three hundred men were despatched to the area and a demand made that the Indians should deliver Rale up to them. Rale, warned of the approach of the English, swallowed the consecrated wafers, hid the sacred vessels, and headed for timbered country. Rale had been in the habit of writing down his experiences and some of his own writings fell into the hands of the English [preserved today in the Archives of Massachusetts] at this time. They proved conclusively that Rale was acting as an agent of the Canadians in inciting rebellion against the British.

Now the Indians attacked in large numbers, burning the village of Brunswick and taking prisoner nine families at Merry-meeting Bay. A small war had broken out. More farmhouses were burnt, more settlers killed and people terrorized. It was not until August 1724 that the battle drew to a conclusion. Rale was still somewhere on the loose, working behind the scenes. A large British force with whaleboats, managed to locate an Indian village in which Rale was hiding. They made a surprise attack at 3 am and soon battle was joined. The Indians were chased off and the English returned to find Rale in a house. He was just then engaged in firing on his own comrades! They had failed to join in pursuing the English and he was punishing them for their defection; one was already wounded.

Rale was just loading his gun for another shot when he was called upon to surrender.  He refused and was shot dead. The English for their part acted with some brutality towards the Indians who were left. They murdered a squaw and her two children and plundered the village. The PURITAN militia then proceeded to smash the Catholic 'idols' and carry off the sacred vessels. In the morning the dead Indians were collected, 26 in all, and ceremonially scalped.

It was with great relief that the border settlers learnt of the fate of Rale. The Jesuit priest had been an incendiary for too long, inciting hordes of bloodthirsty Indians to do his bidding against the English. He had used his Indian converts to further political ends, instruments of worldly policy. Not only did many white settlers suffer as a result of his acts but numbers of the Indians themselves died in pursing his doubtful aims. The Canadians, however, treated his as a martyred saint.

RAMA.  Hero-god, his cause being promoted by Tulsi Das, a Brahmin who lived in the mid-16th century.  In contrast to KRISHNA, Rama was depicted in a poem, the Ramayana, by Tulsi Das as not being the subject of 'prurient and seductive stories'. 

RAMPA, T. Lobsang.  See under: LOBSANG RAMPA, T.

RAPTURE, The. The Koreans in modern times have been obsessed with the Rapture. Is it something in Korean life or the modern world that drives these people into the arms of every two-bit hellfire preacher who comes along? In 1992 and again in 1995 there was a major outburst of hope. Not one but several different Korean sects had prepared themselves for this terrible yet glorious event.

They waited in their churches in the Easter period in 1992. But as no Jesus rose from the grave on the first Easter Day so now no Jesus came to catch up his people in the air. Some of the faithful had been so convinced of the coming end that, like thousands before them through the centuries, they had sold off their property, left jobs and schools and even deserted military posts.

Alas, came the dawn and the people were waiting, but nothing happened. Wild lot those Koreans, some of them, sometimes (witness the massive student riots and suchlike events). These poor Christians were not to be denied their protests. The preacher felt the full force of their wrath as holy books hurtled through the air and church furniture was smashed. A few disappointed folk committed suicide.

Ah, but nothing stops the Christians when their minds are obsessed with belief.  Already, even although some of the little churches were disbanded after this disappointing time, they were preaching again. Some said it was quite certain that the Rapture would occur before 1995.
Ah, dawn on Easter Day (not, incidentally, Easter Sunday, an incorrect designation. It is to the orthodox Christian Easter Day), as Jesus himself rose from the dead, so now they too would rise to meet him in the air. Then would follow seven years of tribulation for the world, followed by the actual return of the god Christ - the Second Coming so long delayed.

At one of these Christian boiler-rooms - known as the Kangrim Church, which name apparently means 'the Advent of Christ', the congregation, meeting above a karaoke bar, the minister, the Reverend Kim Jae-ku, preached a last message. Leave your cameras behind, he told the people. The message was as faulty as the original RESURRECTION myth. But then Christians have been promising such things for two thousand years. There was no riot, just disappointed people filing out. But, just in case, some police had been standing by.

REAGAN Family, The. Ronald Reagan, while president of the USA, and his wife, Nancy, made much of his being a 'Born Again Christian' and adopted a conservative approach to moral issues. Since leaving office it has been revealed from several sources that he and his wife constantly consulted astrologers for advice. Included among those testifying to this fact has been White House chief of staff, Donald Regan. The chief astrologer was Joan Wiley who has told all in a book published at the end of 1990. Nancy Reagan warned her never to reveal her role in the presidential palace. According to Wiley Reagan chose dates for various important meetings and activities according to his charts. As Christian faith and astrology are opposed to one another it is hard to reconcile the claims made by the First Family while in office. In 1992 Patti Davis (Reagan), daughter of the former US president, claimed she had been abused as a child. See also: ASTROLOGY.

RECORD DESTROYING.  See under: MUSIC.

REFORMATION, The.  Broad term used to cover a widespread movement for reform that shook the Catholic Church from the time of Martin Luther on. But Luther was only one figure on the scene, albeit a most important one. The Reformation movement was already underway before his time and Germany but one country affected. In England, France, Switzerland, the Low Countries, there were rumblings over a long period of time, eventually to burst forth in a major split from Rome, out of which were formed several large Protestant denominations - the Lutherans, Calvinist-Presbyterians and Anglicans and, in time, further groups, e.g. Baptists and Methodists.

REGARDIE, Israel. Regardie joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1934, following a course of study begun with Aleister CROWLEY in 1928. In later years he became chief spokesman for the Order and produced a complete study guide to the Order, entitled The Golden Dawn, originally published in four volumes. He was written other works dealing with the Order and its work. 

REIDT, Robert. A California, USA, evangelist who in 1925 was shouting to the skies, via a megaphone, 'Gabriel, we're ready. Oh, Gabriel . . .' Reidt had a small following of those who awaited the Endtime but I have no further information about him. 

RELICS. In 1247 the Emperor Baldwin 2nd sent to Saint Louis a vial supposedly containing a few drops of milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary. Almost 30 churches in Europe also claim to hold similar relics. 

RELIGION, Views on. Stephen King, famous writer of horror stories, told Penthouse magazine in 1982: 'Religion scares me more than anything I could possibly dream up.'

RELIGION-CHANGING. A newspaper report in October 1989 stated that a Joint Church Census report for Australia found up to 30 percent of churchgoers in some denominations may have switched churches. Commented the Reverend Les Vitnell: 'Today we live in a kind of supermarket world, and people are treating churchgoing like that.' The largest movement recorded was to the Pentecostalist churches or the Uniting Church. The Anglican and Presbyterian Churches were the biggest losers.

RELIGIOUS FLAGELLATION. Flagellation in pursuit of religious ends is commonplace. Depicted in commentaries on the mores of the medieval Church and its relationship to society we see frequently pictured nuns being whipped by other nuns or nuns being whipped by priests. Sometimes, too, the priests are whipping the bared backs of attractive young female confessors. These scenes were very common indeed.
 
Saint Chantal said: 'One must bear the lashes of the whip which our good Lord gives us, and kiss the verges (French implement of correction, similar to the birch) tenderly, for he strikes us out of love.' In the book The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea, La Puta Errante, by Nicolas Chorier, written in the 17th century, in one place a mother and daughter visit a priest together in order to be flagellated for the 'sins of the flesh'.  The mother is first whipped soundly, then the daughter. Ottavia, recalling the occasion, tells a friend:

She did not even dare open her mouth; she let a sigh escape her once: 'Ah father!' said she. But he grew angry at this word. 'You shall not go unpunished out of my hands,' he cried. He ordered her to double up her body with her head and breast inclined upon the ground. She obeyed; in this position her buttocks came into open contact with the lash, and during a whole hour he scourged them incessantly. 
'Now that sufficient joy hath been infused into thy soul, rise,' said Teodoro. She got up, let her shift fall down about her heels and, after having put on her gown, took me, smiling, into her arms. 'It is now thy turn daughter. Dost thou think thou hast courage enough for that sport? she asked. 'For it is sport and not suffering.'

'Come here, Teodoro,' said my mother, 'honour my daughter with your office.'  While my mother was squeezing my bound hands between hers and fondly kissing me, Teodoro was lashing and tearing me to pieces.

The rite of exorcism sometimes supplies an occasion when the lash may be brought to bear on the naked back of the penitent, especially the female penitent. This even happens today. In 1992 Australia's Channel Nine Current Affair program revealed how a Sydney Catholic priest, a Father Fox, held a private exorcism session for a young lady, Louise, during which she was allegedly whipped. It appeared that Louise had been persuaded in June 1991 to undergo an exorcism ritual at the elderly priest's home. As the young lady described it, she was required to pull her dress down off her shoulders and a rope was employed to apply 30 lashes on the bared flesh. Father Fox claimed he had been ordained as an exorcism priest and was using the rite of Pope Leo 13th. The young woman had, she said, personal problems and had been receiving treatment for depression before she went to the priest for help.

In a curious twist to the story the woman said that when she complained to him about this treatment he consented to being whipped by her! Later she returned and took up his offer and whipped him after he said prayers. The Catholic Church dissociated itself from Father Fox's activities. See also: JEWISH DISCIPLINE, FLAGELLANTS, The, and: MORTIFICATION.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM INSTITUTE.  An Australian group which appeared to spring into being at the time of the court case in which Dr Allen Roberts and the ARK SEARCH ASSOCIATION, Inc. were sued over allegations of copyright infringement and deceptive trade practices conduct.

RELIGIOUS POLICE. The Saudi religious police (known as the Moutaween) were involved in a bloody incident in Riyadh early in May, 1994, when they attacked foreigners leaving a party. The police suspected alcohol had been drunk and as the guests left they were set upon with fists and clubs, drawing blood. Eleven people, including women, from the USA, Canada, Ireland, Lebanon and Egypt were arrested.  The men were put in handcuffs and leg irons. It was later reported tests had shown no alcohol had been consumed and the prisoners were released. All non-Islamic activities, including Christian worship, are banned in Saudi Arabia, which has an estimated 4 million or more foreign residents.

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.  See under: QUAKERS, The.

RELIGIOUS WARFARE.  Just a few notes. The wholesale massacre of Jews by the Crusaders in Jerusalem in 1099 took place after they were driven from their synagogues and put to the torch. The Crusaders also treated the Muslims likewise.  Today the position of the Christian churches in the Middle East is precarious and their presence only tolerated while they go quietly about their business. In most areas outside the Jewish state the Muslim religion is now in the ascendant.
 
The Ustashi Party of Croatia, in Yugoslavia, boasted that it would 'convert one-third of the Serbs, expel one-third, kill one-third.' More than 300,000 Serbs were deported or fled the country, 250,000 were forced to embrace Catholicism, renouncing their Orthodox faith in mass baptisms, and 350,000 were killed.  Muslims were persecuted.
 
Over the weekend of 14 and 15 October, 1989, a group of Methodist Christians, with Bibles and singing hymns, raided and set alight three temples (Hindu and possibly one other) and a Muslim mosque at Lautoka, Fiji. Eighteen indigenous Fijian Christians were arrested (10 men and 8 women). But observers noted that a previous group of rioting Christians, numbering 57, who had been sentenced to 6 months in jail, were later released by the Government.

In continuing strife in November 1991 militant Hindus stormed a mosque on the site of a disputed northern Indian religious shrine at Ayodyah, threatening to tear down the building. It was the 1st anniversary of an attempt made to demolish a 16th century mosque built on the site of the god Rama's birthplace. The activists wanted to erect a Hindu temple on the site. Police at that time killed 16 demonstrators.

Early in 1995 rival Muslim groups - Shi'ites and Sunnis - attacked each other in Karachi, Pakistan. A new outbreak of violence had occurred when a party of Sunnis attacked Shi'ites at prayer in two mosques, killing twenty worshippers. Reprisal raids then followed and Sunnis, including a priest, died. In the space of one month 150 Muslims died.    

RESURRECTION. 17th century physicist Robert Boyle, originator of Boyle's Law, who wrote also on philosophy and religion, penned an essay on the Resurrection.  Chemical substances could go through endless transformations and then come around to the state they were in the first time, according to Boyle. Applying this to the concept of bodily resurrection, all one had to do was bring together some of the scattered particles that had gone through various transformations.
 
Boyle recognized a 'famous problem' which went all way back to Aquinas - some people have lived their lives as cannibals, so who owns what body by the time it has gone through its various transformations? He came up with a solution - since people are forever changing the makeup of their bodies, all that is needed is a very small part of your old original body to get attached onto your soul again on the Last Day. It did not matter if we had all been living as cannibals for surely, he said, there would be at least one atom of us that we could claim as our own!

Through the centuries Christians and others have believed the supposed miracle of the resurrection of Jesus the Nazarene (see further under: RESURRECTION, The) could be reproduced. In December 1976 Oric Bovar, 59, was leader of a Californian sect that believed in the resurrection. Police broke up a gathering of Bovar and his followers as they circled the body of another disciple, Stephen Hatzitheodorou, 29, chanting: 'Rise Stephen, rise, rise, rise.' A post-mortem examination indicated that the disciple had died from cancer two months previously.

On 2 February, 1978, at the age of 80 a Mrs Rogers died in Missouri, USA, from the effects of influenza. Her son, Daniel Clara Rogers, 41, was an evangelist and predicted his mother would rise from the dead and give a sign that 'the end of the age is near.'  Mr Rogers placed his mother's body in an upright freezer in a mortuary chapel.  On March 12, five weeks after she died, Mr Rogers announced his mother would be resurrected and a crowd of about 1,000 gathered at the chapel to witness the event.  A choir sang hymns and people prayed but no resurrection occurred. Mr Rogers then told the faithful that his mother would resurrect on the coming Easter Day. This prediction also failed. By now the authorities were getting uneasy about the dead body lying about awaiting proper burial and decreed that Mrs Rogers should be buried if she failed to resurrect by March 29. In the meantime the evangelist had contacted a fellow preacher in Indonesia, S.A. Makal, who assured him he could assist if he were brought over to Missouri. There was just one catch, the Indonesian brother requested a sum of $US3,784 to cover expenses and provision of an interpreter and Mr Rogers didn't have that kind of money. Reluctantly he let his mother's body go through normal burial ceremonies.      

RESURRECTION, The. One of the central tenets, and in many respects the most important, of the Christian faith is the bodily resurrection of Jesus following his crucifixion and death.  It was St Paul himself, chief architect of Christianity, who proclaimed (or so we are told):  'But if there is no resurrection from the dead, neither hath Christ been raised: and if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain ' (1 Corinthians 15: 13-14 and see also the rest of chapter 15). The RESURRECTION OF JESUS is dealt with at greater length in a paper I have written.

REVELATION, Book of. (Frequently misspelt Revelations!) Sometimes known as the APOCALYPSE. The last book of the Christian Bible and certainly one of the most fantastic. See further under that reference.

REVIVALS. 
Revivals is a term used for evangelistic meetings during which many people are won over to religious faith. The true nature of such activities was perhaps never more clearly spelt out than in a comment written by one of the famous revivalists, R.A. Torrey, who worked with evangelist D.L. Moody. In his book How to Promote and Conduct a Successful Revival he said:

Revival preaching to be effective must be positive. The doubter never has revivals . . . A revival is a revolution in many important respects, and revolutions are never brought about by timid, fearful or deprecatory addresses. They are awakened by men who are cocksure of their ground, and who speak with authority . . .  Revival preaching must be directed towards the heart and not the head [my italics] . . . Get hold of the heart and the head yields easily.

 
Indeed the hallmark of such preaching was - and still is - the appeal to the emotions and 'the heart' not the head, although sometimes a token degree of intellectual argument is introduced into the preaching. Some of the worst of the old evangelists, like their counterparts among numerous TELEVANGELISTS today, operated what could only be described as a circus on stage, moaning and groaning and sweating and rolling on the floor and doing everything save presenting some reasonable argument for faith. Such preachers lovingly portrayed the hellfire awaiting those who rejected their message, playing on the fears of their congregations.
  
Dr Thomas Barnado, founder of the famous children's homes bearing his name, described how his mother and two of his brothers, George and Frederick, got caught up in the revivalist movement that swept in from the USA and through Ulster into the south. Scenes of near-hysteria reigned in London's Metropolitan Hall, once home to the circus. Here huge numbers gathered two or three times each week to listen to hellfire preachers. In a city ravaged by poverty, famine and disease, it was not difficult to turn the people's attention to the awesome spectre of death and urge repentance and faith.

HOLINESS MEETINGS

The campfire holiness meetings of the American midwest had been successfully transferred to the heart of the big city via the agency of the Evangelicals. After all, the appeal was never to reason but rather to an unthinking response to emotionally-charged word pictures. Nobody stopped to query what exactly it was that was being preached; one simply took the leap of faith. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Tom's father was unimpressed and at first so too was Tom.
 
It is interesting to note that one of the speakers, John Hambleton, a repentant drunkard, was also a former tragic actor. No wonder he was described as an orator of great power and eloquence. In our own times the Reverend Billy Graham proved to be an orator of great power and eloquence. He, too, had a background fitting him for such a role. He had been a Fuller Brush salesman in his early days. One finds, in fact, that many of the super-salesmen of the Gospel have also had business sales experience!  The two often go hand-in-hand. Although Barnado resisted the emotionalism of the meetings he eventually succumbed. On 26 May, 1862, when he was approaching his 17th birthday, Thomas Barnado 'accepted Christ'.
 
In the USA the ground for revivals was well prepared from the early 1800s. The isolated settlements and farmhouses offered fertile soil in which to plant the seed of religious enthusiasm. Men would, through isolation, be rendered morose and despotic and women might even be driven to insanity. Insanity was not an uncommon occurrence among the pioneers in the scattered lands of the West. The camp-meetings that flourished drew large numbers of women. Mind you, some of the antics engaged in during these gatherings might well be calculated to send people insane anyway! (See further under: CAMP MEETINGS).

The history of religion in the last two centuries has seen many massive outbreaks of revivalism, usually among the poor and downtrodden of the world. The Welsh coalminers come to mind; Wales saw an enormous revivalist wave of frenzy.  Revivalism had its origins, so far as I can tell, back within the experience of the lonely pioneer families of middle America, those deeply-religious, hardworking peoples whose ancestors came from among the manifold religious sects of old Europe. People were drawn together by some itinerant hellfire preacher, who thundered forth against sin and warned of damnation to the unbeliever. The tradition has continued into our time, now taking the form of highly-organized evangelistic crusades and TELEVANGELISM.

ENTERTAINMENT

If nothing else revival meetings provided entertainment. The following is a description taken from a newspaper of the day when evangelist Billy Sunday preached in Illinois around the end of the 19th century:

The preacher began with his coat, vest, tie and collar off. In a few moments his shirt and undershirt were gaping open to the waist, and the muscles of his neck and chest were seen working like those in the arm of a blacksmith, while perspiration poured from every pore.  His clothing was soaked, as if a hose had been turned on him.  He strained, and twisted, and reached up and down.  Once he was on the floor for just a second, in the attitude of crawling  . . . At the end of forty-five minutes he mounted a chair, reached high, as he shouted, then again was on the floor, and dropped prostrate to illustrate a story of a drunken man, bounded to his feet again . . . He generally breaks a common kitchen chair in this sermon, and this came after a terrible effort, with eyes flashing, face scowling, the picture of hate. He whirled the chair over his head, smashed the chair to the platform floor, whirled the shattered wreck in the air again, and threw it to the ground in front of then pulpit.

Hellfire was all the rage with such preachers, none more so than another American raver, Jonathan Edwards, who preached in the early part of the 19th century:

Imagine yourselves to be cast into a fiery oven, or a great furnace, where your pain would be much greater than that occasioned by accidentally touching a coal of fire as the heat is greater. Imagine also that your body were to lie there for a quarter of an hour, full of fire and all the while full of quick sense. What horror would you feel at the entrance of such a furnace. How long would that quarter of an hour seem to you? [The preacher continues to extend the period, building to the climax] . . . Oh! then how would your heart sink if you knew that you must bear it for ever and ever - that there would be no end, that for millions and millions of ages, your torments would be no nearer to an end and that you never, never would be delivered.

And again, also from this same hell-raiser, who, incidentally, also described parents in heaven 'with holy joy upon their countenances' at the torment of their little ones:

The wrath of GOD burns against them [sinners]; their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared; the fire is made ready; the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow . . . The GOD that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire . . .

Revivals saw all manner of strange activities. During the Great Kentucky Revival worshippers wept uncontrollably, fainted, and engaged in what was described as 'barking'! Attention has been drawn to the fact that the manifestations taking place during the Christian revival meetings were already found in two other religions - in some congregations of SHAKERS and the ghost-dance religion of the Indians. See also: C.H. SPURGEON.

1906 photo published in The Sunday Strand. Caption reads: 'Bristol enthusiasts who chartered a special train to visit Cardiff when the Torrey-Alexander mission was in progress there.' . . .

ROBERTS, Oral. Roberts was functioning from around the 1950s.  He used many methods to encourage his followers to send him money.  One favourite device was to promise the disciples that they would receive back 'from the Lord' sevenfold for every dollar they sent the evangelist.  On January 4, 1987, Oral Roberts on TV asked millions of viewers watching his show to send him a total of $8 million by March 31.  If they failed to do so, he claimed, 'God would call Oral Roberts home.'  The plea was backed with a message from son Richard who told viewers: 'Let's not let this be my dad's last birthday.'  The money rolled in at the rate of an average of $160,000 per day.  When the figure was $1.3 million short a wealthy Florida dog track owner chipped in to make up the total to the $8 million.

Thereafter Roberts got to work providing himself with a new multi-million dollar house and launching a planned $250 million 'City of Faith Centre.'  But in late November 1991 Oral Roberts was after big bucks again.  He wrote to his supporters, numbering more than one million people, demanding each one should send him $500 or else 'all hell would break loose.'  Roberts claimed that a 'satanic conspiracy to stop God's healing ministry on the earth is unfolding.'  It was all on again.

ROBERTSON, Reverend Pat. Robertson is an American televangelist who heads the Christian Brotherhood Network (CBN) and also runs the Christian Coalition.  Robertson believes, like other fundamentalist Christians, that the Jews are back in Israel by divine fiat and had to gather there. Not, though, to establish their independence but to be converted to Jesus Christ! This must happen before the End Time. Robertson supports the conservative Republicans and in 1988 sought nomination in the presidential race: he failed to gain that high office. His tax-exempt Christian Coalition had over a million members as at early 1995.

Robertson has a peculiar attitude to the Jewish people. Although they feature in the plans of his deity, according to his version of those plans, he also teaches that 'God does not hear the prayers of the Jews.' He means, of course, unconverted Jews, those who stubbornly refuse to see anything other than another Jew in the person of the Galilean prophet, Jesus of Nazareth.

Robertson's views are set out in his book, The New World Order, which details the 'Satanic conspiracy' - one to end all other conspiracies! - at work in the world.   Robertson's theory embraces everything from the adoption, in 1782, of the Great Seal by the United States, which has 'masonic imagery' through to George Bush's call for a 'New World Order'. The New World Order, also expounded by Woodrow Wilson in 1917, is in fact the domination of the world by Satan. Or so we are told!

Embracing such disparate historic events as the production of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 and the rise of the Illuminati, along with the inevitable Rothschilds and other wealthy Jews, the French Reign of Terror and suchlike events presage the coming End. Communist, Freemason, Secret Society member, Jew, Banker, all caught up in the Grand Conspiracy to end all others. Even poor old Abraham Lincoln gets a mention. He was done to death because he opposed the Jewish incursions into America!  Robertson admits here that his evidence is a bit thin but he accuses Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, of being in the pay of 'European bankers'.

The US Federal Reserve board, established in 1913, was, of course inspired by the Jews, and the Cold War has not really ended. The coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 was a hoax! The Holocaust is not denied but it was, in Robertson's view, a trial run for the holocaust to overtake Christian Americans if the conspirators have their way. And the New Age movement is also a part of it all, with Shirley MacLaine heading the list of New Agers pushing their part of the line.

In May 1992 Mr Robertson put up a sum of $US.6 million cash to buy the bankrupt United Press International news organization. One of of the first major efforts of Robertson's 'Christian Coalition' was to swamp lawmakers with support for the embattled Clarence Thomas when he was nominated to the US Supreme Court, in the face of claims he had sexually harassed a woman. In later years Robertson was still active in many ways, trying to sway US political views.
     
ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH. Statistics published in 1995 showed that the number of Catholics attending Mass every week had dropped from 60 percent in the 1950s to 29 percent in the early 1990s. In the years between 1955 and 1965 an average of 60 students enrolled in St Patrick's Seminary, Manly (NSW, Australia); in the period 1988 and 1994 the average was only eight per year. At St Paul's Kensington (NSW) there were 84 in 1978 and 42 in 1995. Membership of 85 religious Orders in NSW had fallen from 4,697 in 1990 to 4,023 in 1995.

ROSARY, The. In 1993 Father Pasquale Silla produced a hand-held electronic rosary. It was being offered for sale in the Sanctuary of Divine Love, Rome, for approx. $A60. Replacing old-style rosary beads, the modern unit runs off internal batteries or may be glugged into a car cigarette lighter. It provides push-button prayer. The Hail Mary button provides suitable prompts for the worshipper to make the sign of the cross, recite Our Father or say Hail Mary. Another button allows for reflection on the 'mysteries' of the faith. In this mode the electronic rosary supplies liturgical music as a suitable background for meditation. 

ROSICRUCIANS, The. A secret society claimed to have been founded by Christian Rosenkreuz (Latin, Frater Rosae Crucis) in the 13th (or, some say, 15th) century, teaching a sort of mystical interpretation of traditional Christianity. However, there is serious doubt as to the truth of this claim, which has been linked to two anonymous German pamphlets published in 1641. Historians now believe a Lutheran pastor, the Reverend Johann Valentin Andreä, was responsible for the story. It is more likely that the name is derived from the words for 'rose' - said to be symbolic of resurrection - and 'cross' - said to be symbolic of redemption. Certainly in the 13th century, as in other eras, numerous secret societies flourished but it is doubtful that more recent groups taking the name 'Rosicrucian' have any historic link with such groups.  

ROSS, W.S. An agnostic journalist and author who wrote in the early part of the 20th century, using the pen-name Saladin. Ross was born in 1844, and died in 1906.  Probably his most famous work is God and His Book which mocks the concept of the revealed Word of God. Ross produced a journal, known originally as the Secular Review, but later changed (1889) to The Agnostic Journal and Secular Review. Although Ross's writings were hard-hitting and highly offensive to Christians he maintained a curious attitude of hostility towards those who called themselves atheists, in particular Charles BRADLAUGH, the parliamentarian. Another odd aspect of Ross's life is that at one time he appeared to be friendly with Aleister CROWLEY.  

RUSHDIE, Salman. A new storm arose in Britain in July 1990 when a Pakistani film about Rushdie was banned by the British Board of Film Classification. Called International Guerillas, the film described how Rushdie helps Jews in a conspiracy against Pakistan and the Muslim world. All efforts to kill the author fail until Allah himself kills him with lightning. The film, three hours long, has been a box-office success in Pakistan. The board said it would release the film if Rushdie's name was removed. It claims the film breaches laws against criminal libel.  Rushdie himself condemned the board and called for the film's release. See also: BLASPHEMY.

SABBATH OBSERVANCE. A fascinating feature produced in 1992 by Agence France Presse, described the incredible effort taken by orthodox Jews to observe the Sabbath. In particular they are so concerned with minutae that consideration is carefully given to the use of all electrical equipment. Even so much as turning on a light or machine is considered a desecration of the supposed holy day. Special refrigerators have been designed so that as the sun sets on Friday they go on 'automatic' and render inoperative the door switch! There were problems with lifts, highlighted in a 200-page special study. Lifts can apparently ascend a building, automatically stopping at each floor, but coming down creates one heck of a problem.
 
In energy-starved Israel, as the lift descends it normally creates energy which is put to work elsewhere in the building. That's the problem. The answer: this had to be changed each Friday and restored again on Sunday! To make a permanent mark with a pen is even forbidden so special Sabbath pens have been developed. Their writing disappears again in two days! A special institute studies all these problems and finds answers. It is currently working on problems associated with microwave ovens, so we are told.
 
In the Old Testament book of Exodus instructions are given for the accoutrements of Jewish worship in the tabernacle. Yahweh, the tribal deity, is quoted as supplying very detailed instructions (chapter 26) as to measurements, the number of curtains, colours, the number of loops per curtain, and so on, ad infinitum. Or perhaps one might say ad nauseum! Evidently the Jewish tribal deity is preoccupied with minutae.

A curious compensation case reached court in England in August 1994, one having a direct bearing upon the above account. Brian Lassman, 46, manager of a Jewish hotel, the Normandie, in Bournemouth, Dorset, had turned a switch on the Sabbath, setting in motion the hotel's central heating system. He was forthwith sacked. Mr Lassman told a tribunal that twenty people were coming into the dining room that day and it was freezing. He asserted that when he took on his job he had made it clear he did not observe all the Sabbath laws. Mr Lassman was awarded £10,600 in compensation.  Commented one of the Jewish officials: 'If Mr Lassman had asked a Christian to turn the heating on for him the Rabbi would have been quite satisfied.'

In 1995 there was controversy in the Anglican Church of Sydney Diocese, ever a hotbed of religious fervour, over whether Sunday is the Sabbath or not. The issue involved Sunday trading by retail stores leasing church property, especially in the Sydney City area. The debate raged over whether the Christian Sunday, the first day of the week, inherited the rest day, originally the seventh day, the day the deity was said to have rested from his creative activity (Genesis 2: 2-3), evidently being tired out by his great work. One alarmed store owner said his business turned over 25 percent of its trade on Sundays. The NSW state laws still retained some control on Sunday trading but generally it is permitted or goes on anyway. Some other states forbid shop openings on Sundays, with special exemptions [sic] where there is a heavy tourist trade.

SACRED MOUNTAIN. Buddhists, Hindus and Jains all believed there existed between India and China a sacred mountain, of cosmic proportions, home of the gods.  It was described as the axis of the universe or the navel of the earth. From its summit flowed a mighty river falling into a lake, from thence dividing to form four of the great Asian rivers.  This belief did not filter through to the West before the 17th century. The Aryans called the mountain Meru. It shone 'like the morning sun and like a fire without smoke, immeasurable and unapproachable by men of manifold sins. On its summit stood Swarga, the heavenly city of Indra, ancient Vedic god of storm, a paradise of flowers and fruits and gold dwellings. Here were the gods or celestial spirits, headed by Brahma the Creator.' To date this delightful place hasn't been discovered although the area has been well explored. 

SAINTS.  According to the New Testament all Christians are saints but the Roman Catholic Church assigns this term to a special group of Christians, the chief hallmark of whom seems to be the working of a miracle or two. It would seem pretty impossible for the Church of Rome to keep track of the many hundreds of saints it has created through the centuries. During the reign of Pope John Paul 2nd alone more than 700 men and women were elevated to this exalted status.
 
The Pope has been accused, even by Catholics, of creating many saints for unworthy motives. A Sydney (Australia) Catholic priest, Father Ted Kennedy, was very outspoken. He commented in 1994: 'They tell me that in the Vatican the whole thing is a joke because it is a new way of creating money via new audiences. The Vatican is being refilled every week with pilgrims from all over the world, who have their particular saint being canonized.'

Exaggeration is a keynote of mainly saintly writings. Mother Juchereau de Saint-Denis, describing the 1711 events when English warships attacked the French in Quebec, filled with enthusiasm at the failure of the English, records that the English Admiral, Sir Hovenden Walker, 'stricken with divine justice' [i.e. retribution for attacking this centre of Catholic faith] and 'wrought to desperation' blew up his own ship and perished with all on board, except two men.

In fact the Admiral did no such thing. Some of the ships had foundered in a storm.  Walker was blamed and retired, eventually living out the rest of his days in Barbados.  

SALEM. 
The capital of the State of Massachusetts (USA) will forever be associated with WITCHCRAFT. The Puritans had settled there and their preachers, Increase Mather and his son Cotton, who flourished towards the end of the 17th century, often warned the people in their sermons of the unseen forces of the Devil working in the world. Mather was a prolific writer and produced in his lifetime 382 books, some perhaps slight but one in particular destined to have a profound, if evil, influence upon people, Wonders of the Invisible World (1692).
 
Cotton Mather was later to regret producing this book for it served to stir up among the common people the fear of witches and their alleged powers. People were ready to seize on the slightest reason for believing in witchcraft and the capacity of witches to cause their enemies to suffer. Indeed, it was believed by the pious Christians that the Indians surrounding them were in league with the Devil who had free reign in that part of the earth before the coming of the white man.

One summer's day in the year 1688, the eldest daughter of John Godwin accused an Irish servant-girl of stealing some of her clothing. The servant, protesting her innocence, ran off to her home.  Her mother, Hannah Glover, was a widow, and the girl was an only child. The mother, who already had something of a reputation for dabbling in occult practices, brooded over the affair and fashioned a small doll which she pricked during the early hours before dawn of the next day, or so the story goes. In the Godwin household during those early hours the eldest daughter suddenly cried out.  She was stricken with convulsions and her tongue had fallen back into her throat, nearly choking her. Soon her brothers and sisters were also seized with strange paroxysms, throwing themselves about convulsively.
 
A doctor was called but was unable to help. The family turned to Cotton Mather, who prayed, and observed the strange behaviour of the children. He later gave his own eyewitness account of what he had seen. He claimed the children were sometimes blind, sometimes dumb, that their tongues nearly choked them but on other occasions lolled out of their mouth and assumed an exceeding length. Their jaws opened widely, then snapped shut as if locked tight. They cried out piteously, they thrashed about, they bellowed, they arched their bodies. Perhaps of chief interest was the fact that they sometimes assumed the position of a well-known and cruel torture: they acted as if the neck and ankles were chained together so that the body was in a fetal posture, lying on the floor like that for periods.     

CONVULSIONS

These convulsions went on for some weeks but eventually the youngest daughter recovered herself. She told those about her that she had experienced a nightmare, with fiery eyes burning in the dark and had heard strange mutterings all around the room. Eventually the whole matter came to the attention of the Boston magistrates and accusations of witchcraft were levelled against Hannah Glover, who was brought before the court. She did not deny her commerce with Satan and was condemned to death. Before she was hung she assured her persecutors that the children's sufferings would continue after she had died.
 
In time, with the passing of Hannah Glover, the outbreak of hysteria died down but in 1892 two young girls, Elizabeth Parris, 9, and Abigail Williams, 11, daughter and niece respectively of a Puritan minister, the Reverend Samuel Parris, experimented with a method of divination involving the use of egg white in a glass. These activities possibly arose as a result of the girls' contact with Tituba, a female West Indian slave who worked for Mr Parris. The girls had both fallen ill afterwards and other girls, mostly somewhat older, who had also experimented with divination fell ill too. Mr Parris consulted a doctor but nothing could be done. Like the children in the earlier case the girls continued to remain ill in spite of all efforts to aid them. It was then that witchcraft was suspected.

At this point some concerned neighbours approached the West Indian woman and her husband, without the minister knowing, and asked them to bake a 'witch cake', using meal mixed with the children's urine, which was fed to the minister's dog, this, presumably, to effect a cure, the animal being thought a familiar. The girls all now recovered from their illness and began to accuse Tituba, along with two old women of the village, Sarah Good and Sarah Osburn, of bewitching them. The Reverend Mr Parris was furious at what had been done and predicted that now the Devil was loose and there would be great trouble. On 1 March, 1692, the three women were brought before the magistrates. The hearing did not go well, Sarah Osburn's husband and 4-year-old daughter testifying against her and Sarah Good displaying 'malice and deceit'. And whenever during the trial the children were brought face to face with the suspected witches they experienced fits.

HYSTERIA

The trial dragged on for days and eventually the three women were consigned to prison and locked in chains without the matter being settled. Shortly after this Sarah Osburn died as a result of the privations experienced in the jail. As spring and summer blossomed so did new outbreaks of hysteria among the young girls of Salem. Soon more accusations were being thrown about and another innocent woman, Martha Corey, who was known as a devout church member, was being accused of witchcraft. She was accused by another woman, Ann Putnam, who told the magistrates that Martha had put a spell on her so she could not see the Devil or his creatures but 'there is a smell of brimstone, and I heard a sound like the grunting of a hog,' and for a long time she was blind. Martha Corey, protesting her innocence, was thrown into prison too.

Others soon followed. Rebecca Nurse, an elderly lady known for her piety, was brought to trial and before her eyes young girls writhed and screamed as if in torment.  'I see a black man beside her, whispering in her ear,' one cried.  This was enough. She too was cast into prison. Soon many were joining them and the torturers got to work, seeking confessions not only of the accused's own involvement but endeavouring to implicate others in commerce with the Devil. The hangman began to be very busy on Gallows Hill. John Proctor, hanged as a witch, complained that the evidence against him had been obtained from the mouths of two young men who had been tortured by being tied into a tight ball, necks bound to knees and ankles bound to hands, and left that way for lengthy periods.
   
One man, Giles Corey, refused to answer any questions and was subjected to crushing under a heavy weight until, after two days of suffering, he died. His death served to worry sensible citizens and a halt was called to the executions. Eventually those still in prison had their sentences suspended, but could not be released before they paid for the cost of their imprisonment and for the cost of making the chains that bound them! Some were unable to do so and remained in jail until the end of their days. Others went free but were impoverished. Within a year the mania had subsided, leaving behind the memory of twenty innocent people executed because of an outbreak of hysteria. Only one of the accusers ever expressed regret over her actions - Ann Putnam.  She had been expelled from the church but in 1706 was received back after she admitted her faults before the congregation.

SALVATION. Many religious bodies fervently believe that outside of their particular doctrinal structure there is no salvation. Indeed, the Church of Rome has believed this throughout her history, even although in more recent times she appears to be making friendly overtures to other denominations. Rome affirms her claims in many ways. 'No one can be saved,' she says, 'without that faith which the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church hold, believes and teaches.' It is 'the One True Church' established on earth by Jesus the Nazarene.
But others dispute such a claim. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, otherwise known as MORMONS, says: 'There is no salvation outside the Church of JCLDS . . . everybody . . . will be dammed except Mormons.' The Christadelphians believe likewise, which obviously excludes Mormons from their particular plan of salvation. The JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES use very strong language to express their hold on salvation. Not only are the JWs 'God's true people' but all others are 'followers of the Devil' and as such doomed to destruction at Armageddon.

The MOONIES or Unification Church also asserts itself as the sole holder of the key to human destiny. 'Only the Lord of the Second Advent, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, will be powerful enough to complete the restoration of man.' The CHILDREN OF GOD at one stage claimed that their leader-guru David Moses Berg alone held the keys of salvation. A hundred years before this CHRISTIAN SCIENCE claimed to be 'unerring and divine . . . outside of Christian Science all is vague and hypothetical, the opposite of truth.'

But the Christian and neo-Christian sects have a strong rival in ISLAM. They know that Muhammad was and is the last prophet and messenger from GOD and that he alone has the truth!      

SAMADHI. A trance-like state said to be achieved by Hindu holy men. The person takes on all the appearances of death but recovers. In May 1993 Balak Brahmachari, 73, an Indian holy man, was declared dead of heart failure by doctors. However, his followers insisted on putting his body into an airtight casket surrounded by ice-blocks.  They were awaiting his RESURRECTION. They claimed he had entered the state of samadhi, which he had done on a previous occasion in 1963. Then he had emerged again about three weeks later. Civic authorities debated the matter, saying his body was decaying and posed a health risk. [No further information.]

SANDERS, Alex. An Englishman who proclaimed himself King of the Witches. Born in 1926, Sanders claimed direct descent via his maternal grandmother, a Mrs Bibby, from Owain Glyn Dwyer, a medieval Welsh chieftain. At the age of 7 he visited his grandmother's house and, entering without knocking, found the old lady performing a curious ceremony in the nude. She was inside a circle marked on the floor and she forthwith ordered the boy to remove all his clothes and step into the circle too. The boy was almost petrified with fright, so he later recounted, as his grandmother then ordered him to bend over with his head between his thighs. She then took a knife and made a tiny cut in his scrotum, pronouncing that Alex was now one of 'them', i.e. the witches.

Mrs Bibby in subsequent years taught the boy all she knew about witchcraft, forbidding him to tell anyone else, even his own mother. When he was aged 10 he was taken to London and left for a period with an important man who performed some ritual activities [sic] with him. It was not until some years later that he realized the person he met was Aleister CROWLEY. Some years after Alex's grandmother died he entered a seminary to study for the priesthood of the Catholic Church. However, some trouble arose when he was accused of becoming too friendly with a fellow-seminarian and he was asked to leave.
 
Following World War 2 Alex Sanders became friendly with a wealthy couple who provided him with a considerable amount of finance and even a house of his own.  However, in subsequent years he squandered this wealth and then turned to teaching witchcraft to others. Thereafter he lived a life divided between a regular job and conducting witchcraft classes and ceremonies.    

SANTERIA. An Afro-American religious cult popular in Haiti and Cuba and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the central American region. The name Santeria means 'way of the saints' and its rites have been adapted from an amalgam of Roman Catholic ceremonies and West African rituals. African slaves brought the religion with them to the Americas. Compelled to become nominal Catholics in the New World, they nevertheless retained their links with African religion and VOODOO was one of the several outcomes.
 
In its original setting, so far as can be determined, the cult sacrificed animals and birds but specifically disallowed human sacrifices, unlike other African religions. However, due to the influences deriving from Mexican sources and particularly the Aztec and Inca rites, human sacrifice found a place in Santeria in the New World. Santeria has in recent times been associated with human sacrifice and gained a bad reputation in a major case in Mexico in which a young American, Mark Kilroy, was sacrificed. 

SANYASSIN. Once going by various other names, e.g. Institute for Postural Integration, Institute for Holistic Integration, and the New Age University.  

SARKANDER, Saint Jan. During the Thirty Years' War from 1618 to 1648, fought between Catholics and Protestants, a Protestant nobleman in the Moravian city of Olomouc tortured to death a Catholic, Jan Sarkander. Sarkander died in 1620.  Sarkander had been involved in a plan to bring Catholic troops to invade and subjugate the Moravian Protestants. In May 1995 Pope John Paul 2nd visited Czechoslovakia (which embraces the former territory of Moravia) to confer sainthood on Jan Sarkander. His action aroused the enmity of Protestants, who had been trying for three years to have the Vatican drop the plan to elevate Sarkander to sainthood.

SATAN.  See under: DEVIL, The.  

SATANISM. From time to time claims surface such that, for example, initiates into satanic cults are forced to trample on the cross or perhaps to drink the blood of animals, sometimes the latter having been, so it is claimed, skinned alive. When the body of a 17-year-old, Ross Cochran, was found, mutilated and battered, near Daytona Beach, Florida, in April 1973, police claimed he was the victim of 'devil worshippers'.  The frenzied nature of the attack on the young man indicated a sacrificial ritual; so the police said.

The debate over Satanism has gone on for years. It seems quite likely that the performance of so-called Satanic rites actually often masks simple but nasty crime.

In January 1997 a group of 45 Egyptian students were arrested after police claimed they had been engaging in 'Satanic orgies,' drinking each other's blood. They had met together in a desert region. The official charge was that they scorned religion, which is hardly correct as they were engaging in practising a religion far older than Egypt's Islamic faith.

SAUDI ARABIA. There is a piece of black humour that circulates in Saudi Arabia, that strict Muslim country. The speaker asserts he is in favour of capital punishment for adulterers, that way there is certainty that the whole Saudi royal family will be got rid of.  

SCHIZOPHRENIA. Schizophrenia is genetically based and in East or West about 2 to 10 of every 1000 are affected. However, the long-term effects are different due to differing expectations. In New York the psychiatrist explains you are schizoid and tells you it must be 'lived with.' It is, we think, due to an abnormality in the dopamine metabolism in the brain. It may present symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions and the like. But it may be absolutely necessary to have particular kinds of family stresses, such as breakdowns, to produce the disorder.
 
In Taiwan you are told the disease is produced by the intrusion of the gods, ghosts and ancestors and if you treat it with the healing ritual it should disappear because you've removed the cause. The expectation is that it will and this self-prophecy works. Thus expectation plays its part in both instances, producing different outcomes. See also: EXPECTATION syndrome.

SCHMAUS, Michael. Schmaus, a Catholic and member of the Papal Theological Academy in Germany following the end of World War 2, produced a book justifying the Nazi reign of terror. This work was Encounter Between Catholic Christianity and National Socialist World Views. He also produced other writings supporting the Nazi cause. In the 1960s he was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Dean of the Faculty of Theology at Munich University. He was a recipient of the Franco-Spanish Komtur Cross.

SCHOOL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE. A curious cult that flourished for a time in Britain from the late 1960s onwards. Although seemingly, from its name, devoted to financial affairs, the 'school' was in fact a religious cult with a peculiar mix of doctrines drawn from both East and West but reflecting Hinduism in many ways. Some branches were also established in other countries, including Australia, the USA, New Zealand, Canada and a number of other places. The name varied from country to country but it was the same group, sometimes going by the title School of Economics and Philosophy, at others School of Philosophy, or Society of Practical Philosophy. I well remember seeing in my own country notices pasted up in public places, such as railway stations, inviting the public to attend lectures in philosophy run by this group.

Among the key teachings of the cult was a strong emphasis on male domination. It taught that women were inferior to men and must always obey and submit. The ancient notion that sex is not 'intended' for enjoyment but merely for procreation was revived.  The woman must keep the household in good order and above all in a high state of cleanliness. Women who disobeyed their husbands should be disciplined, even physically if necessary. Indeed, there was always a pathological emphasis upon discipline, with certain prescribed rules being enforced and punishments meted out to the erring disciples. A typical punishment was to force a woman to stand at the kitchen sink washing dishes all through the night!
 
The sect operated four of its own schools in the London region, two each for boys and girls. Children of members were allowed little free time and had to study, as did their parents, Sanskrit, apparently considered a 'holy language'.
 
Various means of discipline employed in the schools made life something of a misery for the young pupils.  Hardening exercised included long cross-country runs. In a school operated by the cult in the Netherlands boys has compulsory boxing and fencing. Corporal punishment was employed, at least in the English schools. Reportedly prefects in the two boys' schools operated a marking system that resulted in pupils being caned, sometimes so severely that bruises were sustained. A ruler was used on the hands of young children, as young as 5 years according to one mother who complained.

Other punishments included ordering a child to take an ice-cold shower, even in midwinter. This punishment was frequently reported, along with doing press-ups. A well-known radio broadcaster removed her 11-year-old son from one of the schools after he had been humiliated in class. A squeaking chair caused the teacher to force the boy to remove his trousers in front of the other boys and do the rest of his lesson kneeling in his underpants at his desk. As of the mid-1980s the cult was still in existence but I have no later information.

SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.  See under: SCHOOL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCE.  

SCIENTOLOGY.
Scientology was founded by Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, a writer of science fiction.  This group was once non-religious but eventually claimed the status of a religion, from then on calling itself the CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY. The reasons for the change were twofold. First, it produced enormous financial benefits to become a religion, especially in the USA where religions have many tax and other breaks. Secondly, it helped the group fight those who attacked it and wanted it banned as being dangerous to the mental health and well-being of their citizens. In any event the Scientologists believe in reincarnation and in the immortality of the soul, which are certainly religious concepts.
 
The origins of Scientology go back to the year 1938 when Hubbard, a successful science fiction writer, 'discovered' the basics of the pseudo-science of Dianetics, although it was not until ten years later, in 1950, that this nostrum was launched upon an unsuspecting world. The editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, John Campbell, Jr, had been suffering from sinusitis and Hubbard treated him with success (but it later returned). In the May 1950 issue of ASF an article by Hubbard appeared detailing the broad outlines of the new 'science'. Magazine readers responded keenly and when Hubbard's first book on the subject, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Healing, written in three weeks according to its author, hit the bookshops soon after it sold like proverbial 'hot cakes'.
    
Hubbard's amazing insights quickly became the basis of a new cult and soon the Dianetic Research Foundation was established at Elizabeth, New Jersey. Other centres spread across the land and practitioners, trained in the Institute, carried the glad tidings far and wide - for a suitable fee, at that stage a modest $500.

The basic concept of Dianetics is that human beings carry within themselves the scars of bad experiences from their past - even from past lives (a very religious concept) - and from the experiences of the fetus in the womb - which are called engrams. Naturally there is more to it than this, Hubbard expounding a distinctive view of the conscious and unconscious minds and the way these interacted. The basic idea is that an 'auditor' sits with the subject and - somewhat in the fashion of a psychoanalytic session, but based on an entirely different theory - help the subject face the past and root out the engrams recording traumatic events.

Later, when Scientology evolved, a gadget was introduced, called the E-meter, which somehow helps the process of eliminating the engrams. People being processed pass through a stage where they are known as pre-clears, then become clears. There are not many of the latter and Hubbard himself once admitted he had not reached this stage, being too busy with his work of helping others.  

COSTLY COURSES

In the fully-fledged Scientology of today members are taken through progressive stages of training, each of which costs substantial sums of money, some courses running to thousands of dollars. Auditing sessions have many times resulted in the member making a break from his or her family and resulting distress and family discord has been widespread. Those who seek to leave the group are usually hounded in an endeavour to persuade them to remain.

There is an interesting aspect to L. Ron Hubbard's writings on engrams. These betray an obsession that perhaps has its roots in his own childhood, about which we know little. In his illustrations there are many references to women being beaten by husbands or otherwise abused while carrying babies in their wombs. His women seem often to be kicked in the stomach or beaten up, knocking the foetus unconscious!  This, of course, is a traumatic experience producing an engram. He also seems obsessed with the notion that women keep using knitting needles to try to abort their fetuses. 'Twenty or thirty abortion attempts are not uncommon,' he asserts. In later writings Hubbard even found evidence of engrams in sperm and ovum before fertilization occurred!
 
Fixing the engrams for all time were the words occurring at the time of the traumatic experience, e.g. 'Take that, and that!'. If, as the child grows up, for example, someone uses the same phrase when, say, punishing him, this fixes the original engram forever - unless, of course, Scientology shows the way to remove it.
  
Because of the danger arising from such words, Scientology teaches that people should be very careful, even avoiding speech altogether, around the scenes of accidents and when dealing with pregnant women and during the birthing process. Thus Scientologists believe that babies should be delivered from their mothers' wombs in silence to 'safeguard the sanity' of the youngster. The immediate fallacy of such a belief must be obvious to any but the dullest: most of us must be, ipso facto, insane as our mothers doubtless gave birth to us to the accompaniment of cries of pain!

In 1992 Lisa Marie Presley, one of innumerable celebrities attracted to Scientology, obeyed these teachings and refused all painkillers while giving birth to a son by her first husband in a hospital near the sect's headquarters in Florida. In order to stop all sounds of pain as the 24-year-old mother suffered the contractions she virtually gagged herself by holding a thick roll of cotton gauze between her teeth. Commented a nurse: 'What she went through was medieval.' Quite! Another celebrity to join the Scientologists is Australian singer Kate Ceberano. And more recently it was reported that Katie Holmes, wife of fanatical Scientologist Tom Cruise, submitted to the silent treatment when giving birth to her baby in April 2006.

SACRIFICES

Scientology is thus a pseudo-religious cult that demands great sacrifices, especially of the monetary kind, from its members. Time magazine (8 May, 1991) told of a professional and his wife who had spent $US170,000 over a period of time on services provided by Scientology! In July 1986 a Los Angeles court awarded $US30 million to a former official of the Church of Scientology, Mr Larry Wollersheim, 37, who claimed his 11-year membership in the organization left him emotionally and financially drained.
 
The organization is large, with several million members worldwide, and it is powerful. In 1977 the FBI raided the group's headquarters and allegedly found pistols, knockout drops, and electronic surveillance gear, as well as files that confirmed that Scientology had targeted critics for decisive action. One such was Paulette Cooper, author of a book, The Scandal of Scientology. The book appeared in 1971 and in 1973 the Scientologists allegedly set up a fake bomb threat as if it came from Ms Cooper. She was, as a result, indicted on criminal charges but eventually cleared her name. Confirmation of her innocence was provided when the FBI raid netted a particular file in the Scientology offices relating to the plan to 'get' Ms Cooper.

The sect has been involved in all manner of controversy, which is not surprising when it draws many of its followers from the ranks of folk with psychological problems and then charges enormous fees for its programs. To take one recent case - in November 1996 the founder and former head of the Church of Scientology in Lyons, France, Jean-Jacques Mazier, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment on charges of fraud and involuntary homicide. He was also fined $100,000. The court found that Mazier contributed to the death of a church member who had got into debt while trying to pay for counselling and had subsequently suicided. Another fourteen defendants, including a Catholic priest, were accused of abetting fraud and given suspended sentences.

THE TEACHINGS

It is difficult to know where to begin to highlight the absurdities of this pseudo-science. It is hard to avoid the obvious point that a successful science fiction writer produced such a fantastic system! Something of the flavour of Hubbard's peculiar mindset comes out of the advertising used to promote another of his many books, Excalibur.  The world was told that 'Mr Hubbard wrote this work in 1938.  When four of the first fifteen people who read it went insane, Mr Hubbard withdrew it and placed it in a vault where it remained until now.' This work is supposed to carry 'the secret that not even Dianetics revealed'.
 
Records of auditing sessions show that, as in many psychiatric procedures, ideas are planted in the patients' minds by the auditor. As with the clairvoyant who 'fishes' for information from her client and then manipulates him or her to 'discover' for himself what the clairvoyant wants the client to discover, so the auditor does likewise, manipulating the conversation to have the patient 'discover' his inner problems.
 
Naturally Scientology produces cures aplenty. Most forms of therapy do. This is an easily observable phenomenon. The fact that rival therapies produce similar results is the key to understanding the mechanism at work. Especially with neurotic symptoms anything a patient can place his faith in will usually produce results. The more so when he has paid out a large sum of money to obtain such a positive outcome and when he is surrounded by an army of like-minded believers!
  
Hubbard's personal life was a chequered one. His third wife, Sara Northrup Hubbard, then 25, sought divorce from him in 1951 claiming he was a 'paranoid schizophrenic' and asserting that he had tortured her while she was pregnant. She also alleged that medical specialists had told her Hubbard was 'hopelessly insane'. In 1952 the Dianetics Foundation of Wichita filed for bankruptcy. The purchaser of the defunct institution refused to have anything to do with Hubbard and it was from around this time that the new name of Scientology first emerged.
 
In 1954 the first Church of Scientology was founded in (where else?) Los Angeles by a group of enthusiastic followers. In 1954 Hubbard was named Executive Director of the Washington 'Foundation Church'. In 1959 he moved to England and thereafter for the rest of his life, either worked there or sailed about on an expensive yacht. He resigned his official Church post in 1966. He died in 1986.

In many countries Scientology has been attacked and even banned by governments anxious to protect their citizens. A long-running war has been conducted between Scientology and German authorities and in January 1997 Athens-based Scientologists were banned by a Greek judge. Scientologist had set up a front organization, the Greek Centre for Applied Philosophy and obtained a licence to operate as a non-profit public-interest body. The court found that the licence had been granted under false pretences as the organization was profit-making, charging for courses and requiring members to work without pay. 'The organization's operation has proved that its goals are irrelevant to those initially stated, said Judge Constantia Angelaki. Further the group put people's mental and physical health at risk by using 'amateur psychology' in its courses.

SCOPES, John Thomas.  See under: DAYTON MONKEY TRIAL.

SCOTT, Archdeacon Thomas Hobbes. A clergyman in Sydney (Australia) in the 1820s and 1830s, who conducted services in St James' Church, King Street. The Archdeacon was accused in The Monitor, a newspaper of the day, of being involved in business dealings to his own advantage. When the crusading Editor of the paper, Edward Smith Hall, attended worship on the next Sunday, with his wife and six children, the Archdeacon ordered them out, even although they occupied a family pew for which rent had been paid (a custom in Anglican churches of the day). When the Halls refused to go the Archdeacon called in two police constables and had them forcibly removed.

Hall resumed his attacks in the paper during the next week and again on the following Sunday he and his family were thrown out of the church. On the Monday the Archdeacon brought in some carpenters and roofed over the pew. Thereafter over several Sundays the Hall family sat in different areas of the church but on each occasion were thrown into the street. When Archdeacon Scott sued Edward Hall for libel the result was a foregone conclusion. The men on the jury, all military officers, were beholden to Governor Darling and the Governor, who hated a free press, sided with the Archdeacon. Hall was sent to prison. He managed, however, to continue his newspaper activities from jail and eventually was pardoned.

SECOND COMING, The. The Second Coming of Jesus of Nazareth, supposed to happen 'soon', has been about to happen for two thousand years or more. Time and again groups of believers have gathered and waited - and waited - and waited! During the 1970s a group of 22 people in Arkansas moved into a small home together to await the Big Event. They had given up or lost jobs, had their cars repossessed and mostly lost their homes due to inattention to the practical affairs of ordinary living.

Things were so grim they'd run out of money to buy food and some of their children had been taken into welfare. Still they waited as they believed they'd been told by GOD during a prayer meeting that Jesus was coming very soon. Neighbours weren't very happy when they heard 'blood-curdling screams' from the house and a petition was raised to have the strangers turned out of the area. Presumably they are still waiting somewhere.  See also: APOCALYPSE, The.

SECRET HISTORY OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. A book written by H. Walter and published, probably in London, in 1897. The book reportedly unveiled activities inside the ritualistic convents of the Anglo-Catholic movement. The book was said to be rather sensational, even bizarre, but was well documented and ran to four editions, totalling 22,000 copies, within a year or so of publication.

SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY.  See under: EXPECTATION SYNDROME.

SERMON-TASTERS. In London in the 18th century there were so many churches, often very close together, that a group of people arose who rushed from church to church during sermon-time, where they would listen briefly to the preacher, then utter some loud and usually silly criticism before rushing off to the next church to repeat the process. They became known as sermon-tasters.

SERPENT WORSHIP. The serpent plays a curious role in religion. It is directly worshipped in some faiths yet is treated in quite the opposite fashion in others, such as in Christianity where it represents the Devil. The serpent is, in fact, clearly a phallic symbol. The Luo people of Kenya worship serpents. In February 1989 a famous snake, Omiuri, a 5.2 metre python from Nyakach, died. This snake had been worshipped by the Luo people, who believed it was this serpent that tempted Eve. They offered the snake tributes of goats and chickens and showed her off to important visitors.
 
Early in 1987 someone unknown set fire to the bush in which she lived and she was removed to Nairobi for treatment to her burns. This upset the Luo people, ever suspicious of the Kikuyu who control Nairobi.  Luo MPs predicted dire consequences if the python was not returned and floods engulfed Nyakach soon afterwards. The snake was re-located to Kisumu but this did not satisfy the Luo. However the snake eventually died after a long illness. The announcement was made by Dr Richard Leakey, of the National Museum of Kenya.

The Moqui Indians of Arizona hold an annual festival in which they dance ecstatically around holding rattlesnakes in their hands and mouths. The snakes are reportedly neither drugged nor defanged but only rarely is a dancer bitten. When this occurs the results are said to be generally not serious. The Christian sects who use rattlesnakes in their ceremonies either tread on them or hold them between their teeth. A Tennessee judge ordered the end of such ceremonies in his area after rattlers bit several worshippers at a revival meeting in 1973. One victim died. The Christians quote Mark 16:18 as justification for their services. But this Biblical text is not in the most ancient manuscripts.    

SERGIUS 3rd, Pope. It was said that Sergius put his two predecessors in the Holy Office to death. His illegitimate son was elected as Pope John 2nd. 

SERVETUS, Michael. Born in 1511, Michael Servetus was a Spanish physician who discovered the pulmonary circulation of blood. He was also author of the theological works, De Trinitatis Erroribus (1531) and Christianismi Restitutio (published in 1553, the year of his death). The former book was effectively directed against the writings of the Reformer John CALVIN. In particular Servetus attacked the doctrines of the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, and for this was brought before the Holy INQUISITION in Vienne. Servetus had been living under an assumed name, Villeneuve, but was betrayed to the Church authorities indirectly by Calvin himself. He was found guilty and, having managed to escape from custody, was condemned in his absence to be burnt alive. Many copies of his book were seized and burnt, as was an effigy of the theologian.
 
En route to safety in Naples, Servetus made the mistake of stopping off at Geneva, Calvin's headquarters, and while attending a church service there on 13 August, 1553, was recognized, reported to Calvin, arrested and imprisoned. Calvin was later to protest that he did not wish his death but it is evident that he hated Servetus over a period stretching back for seven years and he certainly aided in his detention and the preparation of the charges of heresy that were drawn up against him.

Throughout his trial, Servetus was kept in a noisome prison. Eventually he was condemned to death by fire and on the morning of 27 October, 1553, he was burnt alive on the hill of Champel, with the full approval of Calvin. In a polemical work issued later Calvin defended his actions, asserting that 'the glory of GOD must be maintained' regardless of all feelings of humanity.

SET FREE MINISTRY. Established by Pastor Phil Aguilar in Anaheim, California, an ex-criminal who once served time for felony child abuse and has now 'found GOD.' As at April 1992 the regular congregation numbered nearly 5,000 people, with particular appeal to bikers, ex-junkies and dropouts. Many ex-members have warned about the sect and have publicly charged the group with involvement in illegal drug use, separation of families and taking welfare cheques from poor members.
 
The group controls some 2 dozen drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres. However, Mario Luis, pastor at one of these centres, Shiloh Ranch, has recently been indicted on drug charges. Young people have gone there for help. It has also been alleged that drugs, including crack cocaine, have been offered in exchange for sex.
 
Ex-members report that females who join the group are expected to be submissive and obedient to the males. It is also claimed that Pastor Aguilar has had sex with many female members. When one young woman left the fold her parents were threatened with exposure of the fact that the girl had slept with leaders if they went public on TV.

SEVENTH DAY ADVENTISM. The Seventh Day Adventist Church owes its existence to an American prophet, William Miller, a farmer's son, who was poor in formal education but fanatical in devouring all manner of printed works, especially the prophesies of the Bible. Following his marriage, Miller went from faith to atheism and, in time, back to faith again. Along the way he was involved in an adventurous life of soldiering and other activities. He was once thrown from an army wagon, and suffered severe brain concussion as a result. Like Paul before him, he thus had an 'infirmity in the flesh.' It is amusing, if a trifle cruel, to speculate that brain-concussed Miller gave to the world a new and important church, just as sun-maddened Paul did so long ago.
 
Discharged from the war, William Miller returned to the side of the angels and began studying his Bible intensely until, after fifteen years of wrestling with the problems of prophecy, he concluded that the world would end in 1834! At first he kept the knowledge to himself but one day he had the opportunity to fill a vacant pulpit in a nearby Baptist church. Soon a movement was under way, following Miller's prophetic preaching, drawing members from established churches (and no doubt some of these from that same Baptist church, which must have regretted having invited the interloper to preach there!).
 
Believing that, as described in Matthew 24: 29,30, heavenly portents would signal the nearness of the end, Miller must have been heartened when, on 13 November, 1833, a great meteoric shower occurred, some 250,000 'falling stars' being counted at one meteorological station between midnight and dawn. Miller had by now set a 'recalculated' date which he proclaimed as being in April 1843. Imagine his delight when in the spring of that year a great comet appeared in the skies, so bright that it could be seen at high noon. Other signs followed. Rings appeared around the sun and 'mock suns' occurred from time to time. It sure was a good year for portents.
 
The movement grew in zeal and numbers as the great Event approached. April came and went. No Christ. Quite amazing! Where could he be? At first the faithful were shaken in their resolution but, as always, this mood did not last long! It was difficult to be precise over such dates, said the leaders. Try again. It would be some time in either 1843 or 1844; be faithful, it was Nigh. At length a brave and bold Miller published a newly recalculated date - 21 March, 1844.
 
Hysteria reached a peak as 21 March approached. Special 'ascension robes' were made, crops left unattended, farms and homes sold up. In SALEM, scene of those notorious witch burnings, a large band of the faithful marched in their ascension robes to Gallows Hill to watch for Him. Others went to the graveyards so as to be with departed loved ones when they rose from their graves.
 
One man, waiting for his first wife to rise, was deserted by his slighted second wife after the expected event didn't take place. He was, she thought, altogether too anxious to meet up with his first love.  Some of the more anxious ones climbed trees and perched on rooftops so as to be closer to Him. Some even constructed wings and, on the stroke of midnight, on March 21, tried to fly 'into the arms of GOD.' They flew instead into the unyielding dust of the ground and broke a limb or two.
 
Perhaps the highlight of these amazing antics was provided by a drunken halfwit known as Crazy Amos, in the village of Westford, Mass. A group of the Millerites, complete with ascension robes, had gathered in a house to await the great event. Now this Crazy Amos had a trumpet and, on hearing the tumult in his neighbourhood, rushed into the street, sounding forth for all to hear. This was Gabriel and the Day of Judgment had arrived. The Millerites rushed into the streets, expecting to be caught up into the air, only to be disappointed. Midnight passed and once again their hopes were dashed. But not their naïve faith in the Prophet.

In the face of all this one might have thought the movement would have been killed stone dead. Not so! From the remnants of this discredited rabble arose the Seventh Day Adventist Church which, in time, was to become a large denomination. It spawned a number of offshoots, for dissension is never far away from the Christian message. And as it sought to feed man's spiritual life, it established a not inconsiderable offshoot, the Sanitarium Health Food Company, which manufactures foodstuffs to nourish the bodies of the faithful (while they wait for his coming).

Miller was followed by a prophetess, Ellen Gould White. Mrs White (born in 1827) experienced visions from the age of 17. She saw, so she said, angels, and Jesus of Nazareth, and the Old Testament patriarchs and claimed to have experienced more than two thousand visions and prophetic dreams in her lifetime. As some of the better-known patriarchs are undoubtedly products of legend rather than real persons, this makes Mrs White's visions a trifle puzzling. Ellen G. White was a prolific wordsmith, churning out year in, year out, reams of paper covered in endless words. She produced no less than sixty-five lengthy books, wrote several thousand articles and letters, and in total her output probably ran to about 30 or 40 million words. Many of her works are still produced and sold by the Church today. One book, Steps to Christ, has sold more than 20 million copies. Mrs White died in 1915. See also: DAVIDIAN SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH.

SEX ORGIES. It was reported in an old Scottish Chronicle that in Easter Week, 1282, Father John, the Catholic Priest of Inverkeithing, 'revived the profane rites of Priapus, collecting young girls from the villages and compelling them to dance in circles to the honour of Father Bacchus. When he had these females in a troop, out of sheer wantonness he led the dance, carrying before them on a pole a representation of the human organs of reproduction; and singing and dancing himself, like a mime, he reviewed them all and stirred them to lust by filthy language.'

SEXUAL DEVIATIONS. At least two sexologists, Von Hartmann and Moll, found from their observations that there were especially among spiritualists and mediums a great number of persons with sexual deviations. This is not to say, of course, that all such persons are deviant, but it is an interesting observation. 

SEXUALITY AND RELIGION. There is no doubt that there are often strange links manifested between human sexuality and religion.  The Austrian sexologist Wilhelm Stekel, who wrote extensively in the first half of this century, certainly believed strongly in such a link and, indeed, discovered in a large proportion of his patients a personal history that indicated a close connection between religion and sex.  Since then many studies have dealt with this topic.  A psychologist, Theodore Schroeder, in the early part of this century wrote:

All religion in its beginning is a mere misinterpretation of sex-ecstasy, and the religion of today is, only the, essentially unchanged, evolutionary product, of psychological perversion . . . Thus literally may we say 'God is love' - sex-love, sometimes in disguise and indistinctly recognized as such, by the lover whose lovesick longings even now create a god to take the place of the undiscovered and much-craved human lover.

It is interesting to note, as Mr Schroeder has pointed out, that the language of faith is often akin to the language of love, nowhere more so than in the relationship between the professed Catholic nun and her deity. But not only female disciples! Take these words of devotion from St John of the Cross (in The Dark Night of the Soul):

On his flowery bosom, Kept whole for Him alone, There He reposed and slept; and I cherished Him, and the waving of the cedars fanned Him. As His hair floated in the breeze, That from the turret blew, He struck me on the neck, With His gentle hand, And all sensation left me.  I continued in oblivion lost, My head was resting on my love; Lost to all things and myself, And, amid the lilies forgotten, Threw all my cares away.

 
It is also noteworthy that religious awareness seems to reach some sort of peak that coincides with the sexual development of the individual. Far more persons are converted in the teen years than in any comparable age group. Adolescence is the period of the individual's life that evangelists love! A number of studies through the years have highlighted the fact that the rate of conversion increases rapidly in the ages between about 11 and 16 and then begin to decline towards 20. Perhaps 13 to 16 years is the 'golden' time for the preacher to work his necromancy.
 
Interestingly many young people with awakening and insistent but suppressed sexual demands find in religion at this time a means of sublimation of those urges. This is clearly evident in the life stories of some of the famous mystics, including Blaise Pascal, Mme Guyon and St Catherine of Genoa. In the case of the latter two saints, both were very unhappy in their married lives when they experienced their mystical encounter with the other world. However it is also possible, as sexologist Stekel has shown, that a dangerous mix of religion and sexuality may lead to future trouble in the individual's life.
 
Some observers believe that the revivalist-type meeting gives ordinary, otherwise restrained individuals, at outlet for their repressed sexuality. It is certainly true that the Christian faith in general promotes the repression of the sexual instincts, with its emphasis on sex within marriage only, and in some cases of sex only for the procreation of children, not for pleasure, not to mention of the denial of sexuality altogether implicit in the system that promotes the celibacy of the clergy.

Through the centuries there was another curious development, seen in many eras and places. Groups of zealous Christians, e.g. the ADAMITES, set out to preach and practise a pure form of religion in which sex played no part, yet in time degenerated into quite the opposite. (On this subject see also: AGAPETISM, and: CAMP MEETINGS.)
 
Sexuality manifests itself in many ways, especially when it has been repressed in the individual. It is noteworthy that in recent times there have been numerous scandals involving 'illicit' sexual activities, both in America and here in Australia, where the transgressor was a prominent Pentecostalist or member of some other evangelical body. Now this is not to say other Christians do not transgress their own codes, nor to paint all Pentecostalists with the same brush. However, I believe that underneath the veneer of righteousness there is repressed sexuality crying to get out. Those of us who have no such beliefs are happily able to find many legitimate outlets for our sexual instincts. Not so the Bible-believing Christian.

And distortions of the sex instinct are also noted in the religious context. There was an era in England when many small private schools seemed to be inflicted with a cane-wielding clergyman as headmaster. Some of these men were undoubted sadists and the close connection between sadism and sex is well known. In former times in Catholic schools, too, many nuns and brothers were undoubted sadists. The awe with which Catholics tended to treat their religious mentors ensured that the cruel activities of many of these pedagogues went unchallenged and generations of young children grew up in fear of the rod and strap. It is only now, when the hold of Catholicism upon enlightened people has weakened, that there has been revealed the widespread abuses that occurred, both physical and sexual and the misery through which many children lived.         

SHAMANS. Adolf Bastian said that a shaman entered into a state of possession so intense he could clutch a red hot iron in his hands or slide hot knives over his tongue until his hut was filled with the smell of burning flesh, although without apparent effect on his body. Shamans, and the prophetesses of Delphi, and the inspired priests of the Batak people were under such intense strain that they all died young. A Russian neurologist, Dr W W Karelin, reported in 1909 he had observed a shaman whose respiration rate rose while possessed from 20 to 36 a minute and whose pulse rate rose from 80 to 200.

SHARIA LAW. (Sometimes spelt: Shari'a) An Islamic set of legal enactments, prescribing punishments such as flogging, stoning, amputation and capital punishment for various crimes, including 'moral' offences such as adultery. The law also forbids the drinking of alcohol and prohibits the charging of interest on loans. Pakistan in 1990 moved to incorporate Sharia law into the country's legislation.

SIGHT RESTORED. 'Miraculous' sight restoration occurred when Mrs Ellen Head, 84 of Hamilton South, NSW, lived through the Newcastle earthquake in December 1989.  Mrs Head's eyesight had been fading for the previous three years and she was 'very nearly completely blind.'  Reportedly she could neither read nor crochet and had to have someone accompany her out of the house. A doctor had told her she would eventually go completely blind and she was using Talking Books. Then the earthquake struck and she saw the wall shaking opposite where she sat. However, it was not until after the earthquake that she realized she could see more clearly. When she put on her glasses she could read newspapers and see colours again.
 
The Royal Blind Society of NSW (now known as Vision Australia) said Mrs Head was suffering from macular degeneration, a condition associated with age. Dr David Cockburn, of the Department of Optometry, at Melbourne University, commented that 'one possibility is that she had been bleeding into the internal cavity of the eye, where there is a jelly-like substance called vitreous.' The jolt of the earthquake could have moved the jelly and caused the haemorrhage to drop away from the centre of the retina and allow much better vision.  Just one more explanation of seemingly miraculous events! See: FAITH HEALING.

SIKHS. During the 14th century CE a teacher named Ramananda, a disciple of a famous Hindu saint, Ramanuja, moved ot Benares and founded a new sect. Ramananda taught bhakti, or devotional religion, as opposed to the more formal rites, especially as propounded by the Brahmins. Around him he gathered twelve particular disciples.  Among them was one named Kabir, who went even further in denouncing the empty rites he saw all around him. He poured scorn on the ascetic and the priest and thought that the common person was often closer to deity than these others.

Kabir was eventually banished from Benares by the Muslims and became a wandering preacher, dying in 1518. It was claimed by his disciples that a miracle followed his death; in the place of his body were found only rose petals. These were taken back to Benares and their ashes scattered on the Ganges. Kabir left behind him a sect, the Kabirpanthis, and still in modern times has millions of followers. However, he also plays an important role in the development of the Sikh religion.
 
In 1469 CE a follower of Kabir, Nanak, was born near Lahore. Nanak took up where Kabir left off, moving about the Punjab preaching among the Jains and Hindus and gathered a following, known as Sikhs (disciples). The Sikhs carried over many Hindu doctrines, especially karma and transmigration of the soul and the notion of the Guru, or spiritual leader. He appointed a disciple as a successor or Guru, sometimes known as Pontiff. There were ten Gurus.
 
Amritsar developed as the sacred city of the Sikhs. In time there was trouble when Arjun, one of the Gurus, supported Khusru, the rebel son of the ruler Jahangir. For his trouble he was tortured and beheaded. His son Hargobind, evidently deeply affected by his father's fate, turned the Sikh religion into a militant body. Hargobind spent twelve years in a Mogul prison but upon release engaged in relentless war against his enemies.

Another Guru, Teg Bahadur, was martyred in 1675 and his son, Gobind, the tenth and last Guru, set to work to develop the Sikh's military character still further. Initiates were introduced to the military order through the Baptism of the Sword, during which they renounced caste. Gobind Singh was murdered in 1708. In place of the Gurus, whose line had now ended, a Bandah, or military successor was appointed.  Known as the False Guru Bandah led the Sikhs in a foolish attack upon Sirhind, slaying the Muslim inhabitants without mercy and defiling the mosques. Imperial troops then moved in and defeated the Sikhs. Bandah, with his wife, son and a thousand or more survivors were paraded through Delhi's streets, their faces blackened. Bandah's small son died before his eyes and Bandah himself was exhibited in a cage before being executed. All the rest died too.

During the 18th century the Sikhs suffered, their temple at Amritsar being destroyed by Afghan invaders. When the Sikhs eventually returned to their homes they attacked the Muslims in revenge, acting like common bandits. The Sikhs by now were at a low ebb but in 1792 Ranjit Singh, then aged 12, became head of his family and set to work to unite the Sikhs. Soon the Sikhs had recovered Amritsar and Lahore and at the former city was built the famous Golden Temple. Ranjit Singh was proving himself to be the greatest of all the Sikh leaders.

Ranjit Singh feared and distrusted the English and actually imported two of Napoleon's generals to train his troops. However, in 1809 he signed a treaty with the British, the Sikhs now effectively possessing their own independent state. Ranjit Singh died in 1839. The rite of suttee was performed, four queens and seven slavegirls joining their master on the funeral pyre. The Gurus had denounced suttee but the latter-day Sikhs had revived the terrible practice. Following the death of Ranjit Singh the Sikhs suffered reverses.

SIMOS, Miriam. An American writer who uses the pen-name Starhawk. She is a practising witch based in San Francisco as well as being a feminist. Her writings include: Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics, and The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. She has also written works of fiction.

SINGLE MOTHERS. Up until very recent times any unmarried young woman who became pregnant was treated as an outcast by a society influences by religious laws.  Many people, including doctors, nurses, welfare workers and others exerted pressure on the mothers to enter special homes where they could have their babies, after which they would be taken away from them. Many of these homes were run by Church authorities and such young women were described with terms such as 'disgraced teenager'. Mostly they were coerced or tricked into signing documents, usually while heavily sedated, passing control of their babies into the hands of the institution or the State. The young mothers never saw their children again, nor were even able to make contact with them later in life as any records were carefully hidden or even destroyed.

SISTERS OF ST JOSEPH OF THE SACRED HEART. An order of nuns set up in Australia in 1866 by Mary MACKILLOP and Father Julian Edmund Woods. In 1870, while Mother Mackillop was absent in Queensland, the Adelaide nunnery was in the charge of Father Woods. During this time two of the nuns, Sisters Angela and Ignatius, claimed they had a series of mystical experiences, including receiving visions, and visits from the Devil, and other phenomena. Father Woods naïvely wrote to Mother Mackillop: 'Last night the Devil heated a saucepan of boiling grease and threw it over Sister Ignatius as she was in bed and asleep.' In another comment Father Woods wrote that 'the Devil threw Sister Angela down and tore her habit in many places by beating her chest very much and trampling upon her.' Other strange occurrences were reported. Mysterious fires, bloodstains on the altar cloth, and other mysteries. In the end these mystical manifestations turned out to be fakes.

SLAVERY AND RELIGION. 
St Augustine drew attention to the fact that Christian slaves had the opportunity denied to other people of practising the virtues of obedience, humility, forgiveness, patience and modesty! A nice cop-out.
 
An 18th century British traveller, James Bruce, wrote that during his travels in one 'frontier town' in Ethiopia, Dixan, the Moors and Christians were both engaged chiefly in trading in slave children. Even the Christian priests of Tigré were involved in this trade.  In other parts of Africa clergy were also engaged in the slave trade, especially in the Congo, where Catholic priests actively ran slaving operations in one era.

The Christian clergy in the USA in the 18th and 19th centuries mostly acquiesced in the slave trade, some reluctantly, others quite actively. In a large coloured-only 'sabbath school' the children were exhorted to be good. 'What a comfort it will be to your masters and mistress,' he added. It was common on plantations for masters to teach children their duty as 'the way to salvation'. After all, slavery is condoned in the Christian Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments! Biblical verses, enjoining slaves to 'obey their masters', were frequently quoted. And anyway, the slave could look forward to a better life in the hereafter.
  
It should be noted here that the Catholic Church in Latin America had a better record than the Protestants of North America. There was a considerable amount of pressure from the Catholic Church exercised on governments and settlers to ameliorate the lot of the Indian slaves in those countries and the Jesuits in particular had a specially good record in this regard. Few Protestant Christians in the north even questioned the institution of slavery, let alone concerned themselves with the terrible abuses apparent on every hand. Bishop Meade once preached what must have been one of the most hypocritical sermons ever heard in a church. He exhorted the slaves with these words:

Poor creatures! You little consider, when you are idle and neglectful of your master's business, when you steal, and waste, and hurt any of their substance, when you are saucy and impudent, when you are telling lies and deceiving them, or when you prove stubborn and sullen, and will not do the work you are set without stripes and vexation - you do not consider, I say, that what faults you are guilty of towards your masters and mistresses are faults done against God himself, who hath set your masters and mistresses over you in His own stead, and expects that you would do for them just as you would do for him. And pray do not think that I want to deceive you when I tell you that your masters and mistresses are God's overseers, and that, if you are faulty towards them, God himself will punish you severely for it in the next world.

FAMILY SEPARATIONS

One of the chief sources of heartache for the Negro slaves was the separation of families, separations that often meant never seeing one's loved ones again.  Particularly heartbreaking were the separations when a small child was taken from his or her parents. An ex-slave, William Craft, complained that his master who had a reputation as a devout Christian 'thought nothing of selling my poor old father, and dear aged mother, at separate times, to different persons, to be dragged off never to behold each other again.' This same good Christian 'sold a dear brother and sister, in the same manner as he did my father and mother.'

The slave had no rights whatever and slaves were even forbidden to teach other slaves to read and write. A white lady, Margaret Douglass, of Norfolk, Virginia, fell foul of the law when she took it upon herself to teach a slave girl, Kate, to read the Bible.'  A court tried her and found her guilty of 'one of the vilest crimes that ever disgraced society . . . No enlightened society can exist where such offences go unpunished.'  The court seemed to forget that Christians were enjoined to preach the Gospel to all people! The lady's punishment is not recorded.

The Christian religion seemed to be forgotten in the matter of sexual liaisons between whites and slaves. In Kentucky 'in the kitchen of a minister a slave man was living in open adultery with a slave woman.' She was a church member. But while this went on, the man's wife was on the minister's farm in another place. The pastor of an Alabama church had two families of slaves, one pair of whom had been married by a Negro preacher. The pastor seduced one of the Negro women. The other pair lived in concubinage, as it was then described; they were both church members.
 
A Baptist association in the South formally declared that a slave might lawfully have several wives. If a slave were sold off to a plantation ten, twenty, or thirty, miles away, and took another woman into his bed, it would not injure his standing in the Baptist Church. One pastor added a phrase to the marriage ceremony when using it for slaves. After 'to death do part' he inserted the words 'or some other cause beyond your control.'
 
Four allegedly 'pious' Negro women in one household, all church members said to be in 'good standing,' bore children, although none had a husband. There was only one Negro man in the same household, also a church member. It was common then for a female slave to change husbands but still retain her church membership.

OFFSPRING WANTED

Some masters forced newly-purchased slaves into marriage, so as to produce offspring. The 'marriage' often meant merely cohabitation. On at least one plantation an overseer punished troublesome slaves by redistributing the persons involved among other partners.
 
Baptist W. Noël wrote in 1863: 'If a pastor has offspring by a woman not his wife, the church dismisses him if she is a white woman, but if she is coloured, it does not hinder his continuing to be their shepherd. In a Sabbath school in Mississippi around the year 1870, after the Civil War, it was observed that many unrecognized children of 'first citizens' attended. These included the offspring of governors, politicians, lawyers, justices of the peace, sheriffs, judges, doctors, ministers of religion, teachers and tradespeople.
 
A southern Methodist preacher in 1888 proposed that the parents of mulatto children should be sent to the chain gang. At about the same time a correspondent to the newspaper Advance, urged every coloured woman giving birth to light-skinned children to be compelled to disclose the father, who should forthwith be hanged.
 
Following emancipation Negro men and women of 'good repute' in northern churches often travelled to the South to procure handsome Negro girls for sex. In the churches many Negro preachers at this time were said to owe their promotion to the fact that thy prostituted their wives to the men further up in the hierarchy. William H. Thomas in his book American Negro (1901) said: 'A large majority of our Negro ministry is conspicuous for its licentious indulgence with the female members of Negro churches.'  A physician who specialized in Negro work declared that Negro preachers were frequently treated by him for syphilis and gonorrhoea. Abortion was also commonplace, young Negro women getting rid of babies conceived to white fathers, at the latters' insistence.

To be fair, there were Christian preachers who were active abolitionists. The Reverend Thomas W. Higginson, actually led a group of blacks and whites assaulting a courthouse in Boston in which were held some fugitive Negroes.   

SMYTH-PIGGOT, Reverend T.H.  See under: AGAPEMONE, Church of the.

SNAKE WORSHIP.  See under: SERPENT WORSHIP.

SOKAGAKKAI. 'The purpose of the faith lies, first of all, in teaching the individual how to redevelop his character and enjoy a happy life through the supreme religion.  Through this supreme religion, a person can escape from poverty and live a prosperous life, if only he works in earnest; a man troubled with domestic discord will find his home serene and happy; and a man suffering from disease will completely recover his health and be able to resume work. Through the power of faith, a mother worried with her delinquent son will see his reform, and a husband who is plagued with a neurotic wife can have her return to normalcy. We often hear of a man whose business if ailing and who, after becoming a convert, has a brilliant idea, or makes a contact with an unexpected customer and begins to prosper again . . .
Message of a fundamentalist Christian group? No, of Sokagakkai, the Japanese religion. 

SOLAR TEMPLE. See under: ORDER OF THE SOLAR TEMPLE.

SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS. A film made by the Australian Salvation Army, claimed to be first full-length film in the world. It was made and shown in Melbourne in 1900.  It contained 'gruesome scenes' depicting martyrs being beheaded and crucified, eaten by lions, slashed with swords and stoned to death. The movie appears to be more in the nature of a documentary stringing together various scenes depicting Christians facing persecution rather than telling a coherent story.

SONG OF SOLOMON.  The Old Testament book, Song of Solomon, must be an embarrassment to many Christians. In the 19th century the Reverend E. P. Eddrupp, prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral, in a commentary said: 'Such a book as the Song of Solomon may not be fitted for public reading in a mixed congregation, or even for private reading by the impure of heart.' There was debate in the Jewish religion as to whether this book belonged in the canon of the scriptures. It makes no reference whatever to GOD but seems to celebrate carnal love.

SOUL, The.  In January 1991 Dr Peter Fenwick, consultant neuropsychiatrist, Maudsley Hospital, London (United Kingdom), was reported in newspapers as having 'discovered the human soul.' Dr Fenwick spoke with Jeremy Cordeaux on Sydney radio station 2GB. A patient had approached Dr Fenwick with the complaint that he had lost his higher sensitivities; he couldn't appreciate music and poetry like he used to; it was if he had 'lost his soul.' There are some psychiatric illnesses, such as some anxiety states, where people say they have lost their emotions, they can't 'feel' at all.
 
The patient insisted that it was not psychological but he felt it was physical. Tests were carried out with a catscan and all was apparently normal. Electrical activity of the brain was studied but this, too, was normal. Psychological testing also showed all was normal. At this point the man still insisted there was a physical cause, and because of his insistence a new imaging technology called SPECT, was put to work.  Radioactive isotope are given and the decay of the isotope is measured. The isotope is taken up by the brain according to the rate of flow of the blood through that organ. To the surprise of the psychiatrist and others the man had a very specific deficit, a reduced blood flow, in one particular area.
  
The area was the right temporal lobe, a complex area related to one's sense of one's body, and time and spatial memory. 'It probably has a wider function and in a major way is probably connected with emotion. It looks as if it was this function of that area which had been damaged in him.' No damage or vascular disease could be found. The doctor thought it was probably not possible to restore the situation.
  
'There are articles in the literature concerning people who have had epileptical discharges in this same area and, although it is extremely rare, people have also reported mystical experiences, wide experiences when they get abnormal electrical discharges in the very same area. Probably it is related to the sorts of feelings one thinks of as being related to oneself . . . religious experiences.'
 
In one paper in the literature, somebody who had an electrical discharge in this area said he 'became part of the universe,' and experienced very intense emotion. Such areas of the brain have their representations in areas of the body. Intense anxiety is felt in the chest or stomach, intense love, for example, said to be felt in the heart, the sort of representation as when fear affects the stomach. 

SOUTH AFRICA. A leader of the Dutch Reformed Church remarked, within the hearing of Anglican apartheid critic Trevor Huddleston, that 'mixed worship would scarcely be edifying.' Huddleston once told the Afrikaners who led that church: 'The truth is, gentlemen, that we seem to worship different gods.'

SOUTHCOTT, Joanna. Joanna Southcott was an 18th century prophetess. She was born in humble circumstances in England around 1750. She was almost illiterate.  But in 1792 she declared herself to be the woman driven into the wilderness (Revelation 12). Illiterate she may have been but she managed to prophesy in verse and prose, wrote letters and pamphlets and finally produced a work called The Book of Wonders. To her followers, who grew in number greatly and who included many of the clergy, she issued sealed papers, her seals, guarantied to protect them from the judgments of GOD in this world and the next. (Which documents hardly had any less validity than the indulgences  of the Popes.)

By now men of learning and position were drawn to her cause and her disciples numbered thousands. Then a great announcement was made. The Prophetess was to give birth, at precisely midnight on 19 October, 1814, to a second Shiloh, or Prince of Peace, miraculously conceived, for she was now about 60 years of age. The great date came and went but no Shiloh was born and soon after the Prophetess died. But not even her death deflected the disciples, many of whom believed she would rise again from her 'trance' as the mother of Shiloh. A post-mortem examination revealed the cause of her apparent 'pregnancy'. She was suffering from dropsy. 

SPEAKING IN TONGUES. Through the centuries there have been particular periods when an intense 'outpouring of the Spirit' occurs. These Awakenings or Revivals appear to come as reactions to the cooling of ardour in the main body of the Church. They are characterized by fervent preaching, intense passion and outward 'signs' of the Spirit's working.
 
In the last hundred years a sort of perpetual Awakening has been institutionalized through the growth of Pentecostalism. People testify to the 'joy and release from anxiety which has come to them through the baptism of the Spirit.' Truly a message for our times - and for people under pressure! What gives the Pentecostalist churches a distinctive, and one must say, peculiar, emphasis is their central message, that members may receive the baptism of the Spirit. Indeed, it would be true to say that for them Christian experience is incomplete without this baptism.

And what exactly is this big event, this outpouring from heaven upon the believer that transforms his life? Taking as their proof-texts certain events in the New Testament, which we shall examine more closely later, the Pentecostalists teach that the Spirit enters the life and manifests his presence with signs. The chief of these is glossolalia, or speaking with tongues. Now ordinary rational people among my readers will be inclined - and who can blame them? - to dismiss all this as nonsense. Well, I must be honest and say that the 'tongues' phenomenon does exist. I have been present when it has occurred. But to say it is real may be a question of definition, for what you and I would call real may well be different to what Pentecostalists do.

The plain fact of the matter is that the phenomenon of people speaking in tongues, or languages unknown to their conscious minds, is quite a common one and is found not only among Pentecostalists in the West but among various native peoples. In fact, every single aspect of the enthusiastic and excited revivalist-type religion, every 'manifestation of the Spirit,' is duplicated elsewhere in human experience. Naturally the practitioners of revivalism have an answer to this indisputable fact (Christians always have glib answers to difficulties). These others are counterfeits of their true experience! They are worked by devils, evil forces opposed to Yahweh and Christ.

For example, certain African religious rites found their way over to Latin America, notably Brazil. One such was known as candomblé,  which in time developed into a sort of syncretism of African and Christian institutions. In the ceremonies of this belief system dance and music play a large part and the initiates, under the tutelage of priests and priestesses, fall into a state of possession. They dance and sing for hours, during which they experience - or suppose they experience - ecstatic union with the gods of the cult.

Among the Tuareg women of northern Africa there was a malady, brought about by an imp, 'the spirit that sits upon the shoulder'. Young and beautiful girls were the chief victims, especially when locked away in harems. The affected woman may have convulsions, or suffer from sensory hallucinations, she may remove her clothes or soil herself. And she might be caught up in a prophetic delirium and speak languages she does not know.

The modern revival of glossolalia covers well-worn ground. Tongues were being spoken far and wide in the mid-19th century. By the 1850s hundreds of Spiritualists around the world were speaking fluently in tongues of which they could have no natural knowledge. A New York medium, Laura Edmonds, conversed fluently in Greek, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Hungarian and several North American Indian dialects. The only language she had ever studied, other than English, was French. Jenny Keyes sang in Spanish and Italian. Others spoke in Danish, Hebrew, Malay, Chinese and Indian dialects. Laura Edmonds not only spoke in tongues but had the gift of interpreting them, including several dead and living languages supposedly unknown to herself. She also had the gift of 'discerning spirits.'

There may be a natural explanation, at least for many cases where 'unknown' tongues have issued forth from someone seemingly ignorant of the languages involved. In his book The Law of Psychic Phenomena (first published in 1892, reissued by Castle Books, New York, in 1995) Thomson Jay Hudson records studies that have traced many such utterances to the subconscious of the person reproducing languages heard as children but long forgotten. The Comtesse de Laval, for instance, was observed by servants to talk in her sleep but in a language none knew. It was discovered eventually that the lady had been born in Brittany where as an infant she had heard the Breton idiom, but had long since forgotten this early experience.
 
The similarity between this type of activity and the same played out in a Pentecostalist meeting, with the lusty singing of hymns, the beat of accompanying music and the hypnotic, emotional preaching of the evangelist, is plain for all to see.  There is great emphasis upon repetition in such services, with constant use of catch-phrases such as 'Praise GOD' and 'Hallelujah'. The intellect is lulled, the senses take over. The supplicant is anxious over his faith, has a profound desire, to receive the gifts. And the unknown tongues come forth!

Now while Pentecostalists interpret what happens to them as being distinctively Christian, they usually reject what happens to all the others as being counterfeit! The Pentecostalists point to 'proof verses', particularly a passage in Mark's Gospel (Chapter 16, verses 15-18). But, interestingly, it so happens that this section of Mark is not found in the two oldest Greek manuscripts, not to mention in other ancient versions. Doubtless that does not faze those who believe specifically that every word of the King James version of the Bible is inspired.   

SPIRAL FEEDBACK. An American sect going by this name, located in Lincoln, New England, declared in 1989 that then President Bush was about to put everyone into concentration camps.

SPIRAL MOBIUS. An American sect, based at Kennet Square, Pennsylvania, that believes the US Government is building UFOs and cloning androids of high officials.

SPIRITS.  Glendower: 'I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?' (Shakespeare: Henry 4th)

SPIRIT TV. Klaus Schreiber, a West German inventor, claimed in 1988 to have invented a method for viewers to see the spirits of departed ones on their television screens. He said he had seen the spirits of his deceased wife, son and daughter and had so far producing 7,000 such images.

SPIRITUALISM. T. H. Huxley said of spiritualism: 'The only good I can see in the "truth of Spiritualism" is to furnish an additional argument against suicide. Better live a crossing-sweeper, than die and be made to talk twaddle by a medium hired at a guinea a seance.'

SPONG, Bishop John Shelby. Bishop of the Episcopalian (Anglican) Diocese of New Jersey (USA).  Bishop Spong has been a controversial figure since he published his 1991 book, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism. Bishop Spong believed St Paul was a 'deeply repressed, self-loathing gay male'. In 1994 he published another controversial book, Resurrection, Myth or Reality, in which he debunked the notion of Jesus of Nazareth rising from the dead. He claims the New Testament does not depict events that actually happened.

SPURGEON, Charles Haddon.  Famous evangelist, born in England in 1834, who preached to huge crowds over a long period of time. Spurgeon died in 1892. As well as his many preaching engagements Spurgeon penned numerous books. Spurgeon was a Baptist but eventually fell out with the official denominational organization, which he accused of being weak on essential doctrines, especially in relation to the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. See also REVIVALS. Old engraving of Spurgeon at the age of about 21:

STARHAWK. See under Miriam SIMOS.

STATISTICS. Professor Francis Moloney of the Australian Catholic University stated early in 1994 that he estimated that 98 percent of young Catholics leaving Catholic secondary schools abandoned their religion within 12 months. The Methodist Church in Britain reported a decline in membership from 635,000 in 1969 to 408,000 in 1993. See also under: CHURCH ATTENDANCES.

STEPHEN 7th, Pope. Stephen was the illegitimate son of a priest. Among his acts he had the body of his predecessor exhumed and displayed to a Church synod and then had two fingers cut off the body before throwing it into the Tiber. Stephen was strangled.

STERNE, Reverend Laurence. Sterne was born in Clonmel, County Tipperary, Ireland, in 1713, and was to become a noted - and eccentric - writer. He had a hard childhood, his father having died in poverty when the boy was aged 2, although his great-grandfather had been Anglican Archbishop of York. Sterne managed to gain a reasonable education and was eventually ordained as an Anglican clergyman. In 1758 his marriage failed and his wife Elizabeth (née Lumley) was committed to an asylum.  Sterne appeared to devote more attention to such matters as painting, music and writing - along with women - than to playing the part of a clergyman. Many think it was his constant womanizing that sent his wife mad.
 
At about this time there began to pour from Sterne's pen a stream of literature, beginning with The History of a Good Warm Watchcoat (only published posthumously).  But Sterne is best known for his next work, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (first two volumes published in 1760). Seven more parts of this popular book followed, along with other works, including Sermons and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768). Tristram Shandy was a hit with the public, a witty work and an important milestone in English literature.
 
Undoubtedly Laurence Sterne was more 'turned on' by sex than many other clergymen; it is reported that he sometimes based his sermons on extracts from bawdy literature! Critics of Tristram Shandy write of the 'prurience' displayed in this work. Sterne made little secret of numerous liaisons he had with various females throughout his life and was even discovered once by his wife having intercourse in the rectory with the housemaid. Nothing could stop Mr Sterne in his tracks. The Archbishop of York had ordered him to do penance for his adulterous affairs by standing with a sheet draped over his body on the steps of York Minster; this was just before his wife caught him in the escapade with the housemaid.
 
A medical practitioner who was incensed by the Reverend's behaviour circulated leaflets accusing him of sexual impropriety. Sterne retaliated by forming a choral group, which he called the Demoniac Club, that stood outside the doctor's residence on several nights singing bawdy songs.

Sterne was associated with John Hall-Stevenson, whose inherited Skelton Castle, Yorkshire, became known as 'Crazy Castle', the scene of ribald gatherings. John Hall-Stevenson was the original of the character Eugenius in Tristram Shandy.  Sterne also carried on a flirtatious correspondence with Mme Fourmantelle, a married woman, which was published after his death (1775). Mr Sterne was not a well man and his short but tempestuous life came to an end in 1768 when he died of pleurisy, presumably much to the relief of numerous people.   

STIGMATA.  Supposedly spontaneously-occurring wounds in the palms of the hands and feet and, less frequently, the side or the head. The wounds are claimed to represent those made in the body of Christ hanging on the cross and typically they start bleeding, then heal up, then bleed again. Over 330 people are on record as having displayed the stigmata. The great majority have been Catholic priests, monks or nuns.  The first recorded instance was that of Saint Francis of Assisi, who had two Popes as witnesses. But stigmata have been recorded into modern times.
 
Debate continues over whether such wounds are the result of miraculous divine intervention or caused by trickery or perhaps have some other cause. In many cases the wounds have undoubtedly been faked. Nevertheless some appear to be genuine but the reason for their appearance is not a miraculous one. Ethologist Dr Desmond Morris suggests the most likely explanation is a localized viral infection. Small virus-warts, known as verrucas, appear on the palms of the hands from time to time. If they are scratched they bleed. The victim may not even realize he or she has scratched them. They heal, but only slowly, slower than an ordinary abrasion. If the healing is imperfect they can start bleeding again. Surgery is usually required to effect a permanent cure.

A curious episode arose in history when towards the end of the 15th century nuns in convents all over Italy began producing stigmata in their hands and feet, claiming they were in 'spiritual intercourse' with St Catherine of Sienna and imitating her way of life. At the time the Duke of Ferrara was much taken by these reports and in particular studied the case of one nun, Sister Lucia of Narni, Viterbo. He treasured in particular cloths stained with the sister's blood. The Duke approached Sister Lucia and intimated that he wished to set her up in a magnificent new convent building in Ferrara, where she could found an order dedicated to her patron saint, Catherine. Lucia jumped at this offer but not so her fellow nuns and the townspeople of Viterbo.
 
The Duke built the new convent and eventually resorted to smuggling Sister Lucia out of Viterbo in a laundry basket. However, the sister became troublesome, demanding that the Duke compel some of her friends and family to leave wherever they were then residing and join her in the new convent. With the help of Lucrezia Borgia, the Duke's daughter-in-law at that time, the Pope's aid was enlisted and Papal Bulls were issued commanding the nuns, under threat of excommunication, to move to Rome to travel on to the Duke's realm.

STONING, Death by.  Stoning to death was a common punishment inflicted in Biblical times by the Hebrews for various crimes, some purely 'moral' faults. If someone tried to entice a Hebrew to worship other gods he was to be stoned to death (Deuteronomy 13: 6-10). Women were not spared (Deuteronomy 17:5). And young women who proved not to be virgo intacta on the wedding night were likewise to die by stoning (Deuteronomy 22: 13-21). Adulterers of both sex were to suffer a like fate (Deuteronomy 22: 22-24). Even animals did not escape judgment. An ox that gored a man was to be stoned to death (Exodus 21: 28). Those who dabbled in witchcraft faced death by stoning (Leviticus 20: 27) as did anyone breaking the strict Sabbath laws (Numbers 15: 32-36).
 
It was the requirement among the Jews that a person to be stoned should be taken to a special place outside the city walls. There his or her accuser would ceremonially throw the first stone, after which the crowds would join in and cast the rest. In the case of a woman taken in adultery, her father had to cast the first stone.

The Jews maintained such a method of execution through the centuries as, according to the tradition enshrined in the New Testament, Saint Stephen was stoned to death, in his case for BLASPHEMY, in claiming that Jesus of Nazareth was a god. Stoning is sometimes a spontaneous form of execution engaged in by mobs. This occurred, for example, in China in the late 19th century when two European Protestant missionaries by name of Bruce and Lowis were stoned to death by a mob near Changteh.
  
In many Islamic states where SHARIA Law operates stoning to death is prescribed for what Islamics term 'serious criminal offences', such as adultery, rape and pederasty. Throughout the 1990s it has been reported from Iran that many executions had taken place by stoning.  These are usually carried out in public and the spectators are encouraged to participate. Male prisoners are buried up to the waist and females buried up to the chest while being stoned to death. The judges generally cast the first stone and then the mob joins in. It sometimes takes as long as 20 minutes for the prisoner to die. In February 1994 several men and one woman were reportedly stoned to death in a mass execution. It has been claimed that in the last few years hundreds of Iranian women have died by stoning for alleged adultery.
 
In March 1994 Mr John Brown, an ex-Minister in the Australian Government, accused Malaysia of stoning women to death for adultery. Malaysia vigorously denied the charge. Stoning deaths have also taken place in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime and stoning sentences have been handed down against Pakistani women on at least three occasions in recent times. In all three successful appeals were made to higher courts.
 
In February 1998 international outrage was expressed over a case in Iran in which a German man was condemned to death by stoning for kissing a Muslim woman. The woman for her part was sentenced to 99 lashes. It was claimed by the prosecution that the couple engaged in sexual intercourse but this was denied and two of three medical teams who inspected the woman reported her virgo intacta.      

STRATTON, Reverend John Roach. The pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in New York. Stratton made a name for himself in the 1920s by visiting speakeasies and 'lewd' entertainments. It must have been hell for him! He saw one play called Aphrodite. The name should have warned him, but, undeterred, he went about his righteous work. Later he described the play as 'a nightmare of nude men and women slobbering over each other, lolling on couches, and dancing together in feigned drunken revelry.'

STYLITES, Simeon. History confuses us in regards to this figure as there were several saints with the same name. However, the one best known is the one who lived from the end of the 4th century CE to the year CE 459. Simon was one of those religious devotees who mistake masochism for piety. Like many of the early saints he gave himself over to a life of severe asceticism, suffering self-inflicted starvation and other deviant activities. Eventually he finished taking himself to the top of a pillar where he stayed for most of his life preaching to pilgrims.

SUICIDE CULTS.  See under: BRANCH DAVIDIANS, and: JONES, Jim.

SUMMER INSTITUTE OF LINGUISTICS. See under: WYCLIFFE BIBLE TRANSLATORS.

SUMMERS, Montague. Born 1880, died 1948. A Catholic writer who devoted considerable energies to writing and translating works on witchcraft. Summers was an authority on Restoration drama but is mainly remembered today for his writings on the occult, the most famous of which is the History of Witchcraft and Demonology, published in 1926. Summers takes a traditional Catholic line, believing in the reality of the craft and being hostile towards it. His writings are, however, valuable for their historical material and the History has an extensive bibliography, mainly covering ancient texts. Summers also translated the famous treatise by Henry Kramer and James Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum, first published in Italy in 1486.  

SUNDAY SCHOOLS.  Rules for the Sunday schools in Sydney Town (Australia) in the early 19th century included a provision that 'if any Scholars be guilty of lying, swearing, stealing, indecent Conversation, or any other Crime, they shall be punished; and if they persist in such wicked Conduct, they shall be publicly expelled.'

SUPERSTITION, Eastern. When a railway tunnel was being built through a hill near Chungking in China in 1910 it was believed the FENG SHUI - spirits of wind and water - were angered. It was about this time that Halley's Comet was due to appear and the necromancers pointed out that this was a sign from heaven that this action by the foreign devils had been noted by the gods, who disapproved. At about this time there was also a partial eclipse of the moon, a particular sinister omen. The people were in fear and trembling and beat gongs and drums and let off firecrackers. It was thought that an eclipse of the sun or the moon meant a dragon was trying to swallow the people and the noise was intended to frighten the dragon off.
 
When the first tramline was constructed in Korea prior to World War 2 (by Americans) it happened that a drought occurred. The sun blazed down piteously, no rain fell and the paddy fields dried up. The farmers blamed the newfangled contraptions and flocked to geomancers and ground-prophets with their complaints.  They were told that it was the fault of 'the devil that runs the thunder-and-lightning wagons.' Mobs now attacked the offending tramcars, blowing up the tracks and destroying some of the rolling-stock. Soon after this it began to rain and the attackers were now convinced that they had given the 'tram-devil' a terrible fright by their actions. 

SUPERSTITION, Western.  According to a story in The Australian newspaper (January 1990) noted Australian pianist Roger Woodward is highly superstitious. For example, he was about to play to a packed audience in Perth when he complained he had seen a witch and refused to go on stage. Only when a crucifix and a clove of garlic were produced and put on the piano was he persuaded to proceed.

SUPREME MASTER CHING HAI. The Supreme Master Ching Hai is, in fact, in spite of the title, a lady. A religious leader based in 1995, in Taiwan, Ching Hai, claims to be a 'spiritual teacher who had one time practised in the Himalayas [very holy area!] . . . through the Qan Yi Method.' Ms Ching Hai, according to the literature produced by her own organization, and probably written up her, has 'attained perfect enlightenment' and as a result helps and guides people who 'long for eternal liberation, to achieve spiritual elevation'.

Ms Ching Hai is, according to her own recognizance, an accomplished poet, musician, painter, composer, singer and artist. She designs 'fans, lamps and beautiful elegant clothes' and has 'reached the peak of artistic perfection'. And all this she 'does . . . spontaneously, effortlessly and gracefully.'

In a newsletter issued in April 1995 Ms Ching Hai dealt with the problem of the gender of GOD. To clear up any doubt, from then on in the literature of the cult, rather than use the term she and he the word would be hes.  And rather than her and him the word would be hirm.  And, finally, rather than hers and his the term would be hiers. Typial advertisement for the Supreme Master:

SWAGGART, Jimmy.  On 12 October, 1991, US televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was stopped by police and a prostitute, Ms. Rosemary Garcia, 31, was found in his car. He had picked up the woman at a truck stop, who told police he had asked her did she know of any porn outlets in the area. Police said there were porn magazines in the car. Some days later it was announced that Swaggart was stepping down from his 'worldwide ministry.' The organization is based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The evangelist's son, Mr Donnie Swaggart, was assuming leadership of the body. In an earlier development a rival minister, Marvin Gorman, sued Swaggart in New Orleans for allegedly spreading false rumours about Gorman's sex life. Damages of $US10 million were awarded against Swaggart.   

SWEDENBORG, Emanuel. Born 1688 in Stockholm, Swedenborg was the son of a Lutheran bishop who became one of the foremost philosophers and scientists of his day. He produced a number of learned treatises but with the passing years gave an increasing amount of thought to the nature of the soul. In his middle years he largely abandoned his scientific pursuits and devoted himself to the study of theology, claiming he had received a direct revelation of heavenly truth. In 1749 the first volume of his Arcana Caelestia appeared. Numerous volumes of theology followed.

Swedenborg postulated a sort of unitarianism, believing that Christ is the one God, the whole Trinity being absorbed in him. His religion is essentially mystical and he expounds the Bible's 'internal' or spiritual meanings. He seemed to believe, towards the end of his life, that a new dispensation was being ushered in via his revelations.  Swedenborg also claimed that he conversed with angels. The NEW CHURCH or New Jerusalem Church was not founded by Swedenborg but did base its teachings on his revelations. Swedenborg died in 1772.

SYNANON. Originally a drug rehabilitation foundation based in California, Synanon eventually became effectively a cult. Its founder, Charles Dederich, was at the centre of a major criminal case in 1978 when a Los Angeles attorney, Paul Morantz, who had won a $300,000 damages suit against the organization, was subjected to a bizarre murder attempt. A large live rattlesnake, from which the rattle had been removed, was placed in the attorney's mailbox. He was bitten and it took a major effort on the part of a medical team to save his life. The incident was allegedly carried out at the instigation of Synanon's head Dederich, who was arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and other charges.  [No details as to outcome.]  Synanon reportedly had an arsenal of weapons in their control.    

TABITHA'S PLACE. A fundamentalist American Christian sect, described as 'millennialist', which established homes in Angous and Sus, near Pau, in France in the early 1980s. In April 1997 a 19-months-old boy named Raphael living in one of the farms died, allegedly as a result of malnutrition and proper medical care. The boy was found to have had an untreated heart ailment. The parents of the boy, Raphael Ginhoux, 36, and his wife Dagmar Zoller, 34, were placed under investigation by a magistrate and remanded in custody, after which police raided the farms. A team of doctors examined the 75 children they found. Altogether about 170 people were living on the properties, totally isolated from the outside world, teaching their children at home and refusing outside medical treatment.
 
Documents found by police indicated that the group believed in corporal punishment for children. Raphael was the second child to die within the sect during a twelve months period.

TAMI MISSIONARY CHURCH. See under: MISSION FOR THE COMING DAYS. 

TANCHELYN. Variously spelt Tanchelm, Tanquelm, etc. A Flemish religious leader of the early 12th century. Tanchelyn preached at Antwerp, attacking the authority of the Pope and all other ecclesiastical heads. He also denounced the ceremonies and sacraments of the Church of Rome and was branded a heretic. But, in the words of historian John Motley (The Rise of the Dutch Republic) he was 'the first [of a long line of prophets] to turn both the stupidity of the populace and the viciousness of of the priesthood to his own advancement . . . ' Motley continued:

All Antwerp was his harem. He levied, likewise, vast sums upon his converts, and whenever he appeared in public, his apparel and pomp were befitting an emperor.  Three thousand armed satellites escorted his steps and put to death all who resisted his commands. So grovelling became the superstition of his followers that they drank of the water in which he washed, and treasured it as a divine elixir. 

Tanchelyn went further than most heretics. He was soon announcing his approaching marriage to none other than the Virgin Mary herself. His followers were commanded to provide for the expenses of the wedding feast and the dowry for his wife. Two collection boxes were provided, one on either side of an image of Mary. All of his disciples were invited to attend the wedding ceremony, showing himself off alongside an image of the Virgin. Tanchelyn appears to have died at the hands of an assassin, thought to be a priest, around the year 1115. 

TANTRA. In 6th and 7th centuries CE the Eastern religious milieu spawned the tantric cults, with their strongly sexual emphasis. Ecstatic enlightenment was sought through the arousal and activation of the male principle by the female. In Hinduism the cult was of shakti, acquired by Shiva. In Buddhism the cult was manifested in the tara goddesses, the female creative energy liberating the male. To the lingam (male) was joined the yoni (female). The tantric cult is a key factor in the devotional cults of Buddhism in Tibet. The four-faced demon Demchog is always depicted in art locked in athletic sexual embrace with the female Dorje Phangmo. See also: HINDUISM.

TAYLOR, Charles. An American preacher who predicted the Return of Jesus the Nazarene, giving one date after another.  Among the years he listed were 1976, 1980, 1988, 1989 and 1992.  In case readers are wondering, no, Jesus did not reappear in any of those years.  Mr Taylor was one of those many Christians besotted with the notion that the State of Israel still has some part to play in the whole Endtime charade so on one of the occasions he actually led a party of pilgrims to Israel to await there the coming of his Lord.

TEED, Cyrus Reed. See under: KORESHAN UNITY.

TELEVANGELISM. Several exposés of televangelists have revealed in recent times many fraudulent activities. For example, W.V. Grant, one of the top men in the faith healing area, was found to talk to subjects or their friends before the services began, to obtain necessary information on their illnesses, backgrounds, etc. He would then talk to the persons in public as if GOD had revealed all to him.

At some healing services of various evangelists it was discovered that careful staging had effected apparent cures. One example showed a man in a wheelchair. The evangelist reached over and apparently took a walking-stick from his hand, then commanded the man to rise and run down the aisle, which the man did. A TV reporter interviewed the man afterwards and he said the walking-stick was not his but was taken from someone in the aisle just beyond the camera's view and that he had come with a stomach complaint only. He could walk anyway!

Another evangelist, Larry Lee, a young man who has been billed as 'the next Billy Graham', had been conducting a campaign to raise funds to build a church at Auschwitz. Investigators went to Poland and discovered that an old church in the nearby village was being restored by local people. Two workers assured the team that Lee had not sent any money. All the funds had come from the locals. When confronted on camera by this claim Lee was unable to provide a satisfactory answer, although he had apparently actually visited the site of the church.

Lee was shown in a sequence of TV appearances describing how his home had been burned down and all his possessions lost. On camera, with his wife, he told of the trauma experienced but claimed their trust of GOD would see them through. Camera shots were shown of the burned-out building and furniture and the evangelist urged people to send for a video on the topic, for $30. Lee claimed that he and his family had lost all their possessions in the fire and even continued to claim this on camera when confronted with the investigators. However, they showed photos taken after the fire in the main mansion, which was well filled with furniture and other possessions, including even personal photos on the walls. Furthermore, investigators showed that Lee had at least two other properties.

Robert Tilton, a televangelist with a melodramatic style, was investigated. He is claimed now to have more air time through the USA than any other of the breed and is based in a high-tech church complex in Dallas. Turnover of his organization is estimated at $80,000,000 per year, a conservative estimate. It was discovered that Tilton carried on his fund-raising and support activities through a commercial organization, Response Media. Investigators interviewed, without his being aware of their real purpose, the operator of Response Media, who gave them advice on how to raise funds, such as sending out free gifts. The main aim was to get people to write in all the time.

Tilton sent out such items as Miracle Prayer Cloths, Holy Water from the Jordan River and Miracle Anointing Oil. People were exhorted to send back certain things, such as a detachable arrow, so that prayers could be offered on their behalf. Once again the object was to get people writing in. But all letters to Tilton's organisation went directly to his bank and were opened there. The money was deposited. Investigators found trash bins outside the bank filled with the discarded items - supposedly prayed over - sent by the faithful, including their personal letters, filled with hope and longing and their photos.

Someone who went to high school with Tilton was interviewed who said he had first practised to become a salesman. As youths they had drunk booze and taken drugs and for a lark had attended tent revival meetings. They would then develop parodies of the evangelists' performances. They would talk together of one day forming an evangelistic group, getting a good big tent, flying around the country, having fun and raking in money. Tilton, who affects all the style of a born salesman, was at this time living in a $4.5 million lake-view house described in literature as 'the parsonage'. He also has at least two other large homes and a rented property as well. This latter costs $6,000 per month in rent.

Another scam involved evangelists making use of an orphanage in Haiti, shown in their programs, as a means of raising funds. The actual operator of the orphanage, an overweight man, was trapped into admitting that for a small sum - say $20 per month per orphan - the evangelists could film there, showing the children (which some did) and raise hundreds for every $20 laid out!

Footnote: The US Globe reported in mid-1986 that a computer programmer, unhappy that TV evangelists' fund-raisings take advantage of poor people, decided to teach Jerry FALWELL a lesson. For 8 months the Atlanta man made an estimated 500,000 phone calls to Fallwell's toll-free tithing line, hanging up as soon as the phone was answered. It is estimated these calls cost the organization $500,000.

TEMPLARS, The.  The Knights Templar, otherwise known as the Red Cross Knights (and other names), was a military order founded by Baldwin 2nd, King of Jerusalem, in 1118 CE, which arrived in England in 1185 CE. They took vows of obedience to a Grand Master who they had appointed, and also bound themselves to purity of life, mutual assistance and to fight against the infidel (Islam). They wore a white robe with a red cross. In time they grew very powerful and wealthy and eventually tended to lose sight of their noble aims.
 
By the year 1250 they owned more than 8,000 buildings across Europe, from Denmark in the north to Spain in the south. In France Philip 4th from 1287 onwards set out to curtail their power. For a time he was restrained by his own problems and actually received financial help from them. The Templars were, in fact, the chief financiers and moneylenders of medieval Europe. But Philip acted with duplicity for he coveted their wealth for himself and he eventually turned on them. As a result of Philip's actions the trial of the Templars stands in history as an outrageous miscarriage of justice.
  
Informers in Philip's pay reported to the INQUISITION that the Templars had preached heresy and were, in fact, secret Muslims. There had long been rumours of dark doings in Templar ceremonies and some alleged the knights were in league with the Devil. It was easy to play on these beliefs and accuse the knights of worshipping idols, spitting on the crucifix and engaging in 'unnatural crimes,' especially sodomy, 'obligatory' at that.
  
In October 1307 the Grand Master, Jaques de Molay, and sixty brethren were arrested in Paris. They were all put to torture to extract confessions of guilt and thirty-six died under torture in the first attack on the order. More were arrested.  Many of the Templars were elderly men, easily coerced into false confessions, and over 120 confessed to spitting on the crucifix at their reception, a ludicrous suggestion. Other prisoners confessed to all charges levelled against them. A worse turn of events was the public confession by the Grand Master himself, set forth in a letter on 25 October, admitting to spitting on the cross and denying Christ.

Templars in other countries were also seized and tortured. The Pope, Clement 5th, by now had issued a bull calling on monarchs everywhere to arrest the Templars within their borders. In the year 1310 the Templars were ordered under Royal Warrant issued by King Henry 2nd of England to be arrested and tortured. This is one of the earliest recorded instances of torture being permitted in England, although the law made no provision for the use of torture. As it happened such an innovation was a cause for consternation as no skilled torturers could be found to carry out the order.

Meanwhile Pope Clement had become unhappy with these events and set up a commission to inquire further into the Templars. However fairness was not the aim; in the end the Pope sided with Philip, upon whom he was dependant to a great degree, and many Templars were judged guilty of heresy and condemned to be burnt to death. The Pope eventually abolished the order and most of the Templars' possessions were transferred to the Knights of the Order of St John.  One final act in the drama saw Jaques de Moray, before the Cathedral of Notre Dame, publicly withdraw his confession, as did the Preceptor of the Order. The king forthwith ordered that both be burnt - specifically, slowly - on the spot.  Whether or not the Templars were indeed guilty of heresy is still being debated by historians; the final verdict? Probably not.  See also: KNIGHTS TEMPLAR, The. 
 
TEMPLE MOUNT. A 14-hectare plateau in Jerusalem, traditionally the place where Abraham offered up Isaac as a sacrifice. Solomon's temple was built there in the 10th century BCE but later destroyed by the invading Babylonians. It was rebuilt by King Herod, but demolished again by  the Romans in 70 CE. In the 7th century the Muslims built the Mosque of Omar on the site which they called Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, otherwise known as the Dome of the Rock. A rock within is said to be from whence Muhammad ascended to heaven. In the 8th century a second building, the al-Aqsa Mosque, was built nearby.
 
The only remains of Herod's Temple, the Western or Wailing Wall, has been a Jewish holy shrine for hundreds of years. The Muslims generally allowed Jewish access to the wall until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The Old City then came under Jordanian control and the Jews were kept out. In 1967 Israel regained the territory but allowed the Muslims to retain control of their buildings. Orthodox Jews believe a third temple will only be built after the coming of the MESSIAH. 

TEMPLE OF DESTINY. Set up in Phoenix, Arizona, in the 1960s by a former barber and psychiatric patient, Frisby by name. The church issued 'mystical prophetic scrolls' and for a time the prophet attracted many thousands of followers. Frisby once claimed that in his younger days he had been in danger of 'brain combustion'.   

TEMPLE OF LOVE. A somewhat misnamed religious institution, headed by a black leader, Hulton Mitchell, who had renamed himself Yahweh Ben Yahweh ('God the Son of God'), was flourishing for ten years between about 1982 and 1992 in Florida. Mitchell instituted a reign of terror during this period, killing 'white devils' and 'black blasphemers'. Disciples who 'strayed from the paths of righteousness' were attacked with machetes and an initiation rite demanded that followers produce the ears of 'white devils' which would be placed on the altar. In 1992 the law caught up with Yahweh Ben Yahweh, then aged 56, and he was found guilty of murder and jailed for the rest of his days.

TEMPLE OF SET. Founded by Dr Michael Aquino, a former disciple of Anton LaVey (CHURCH OF SATAN), in San Francisco. He quit when LaVey started selling priesthoods, claiming the latter had lost his way. Aquino was an officer of US Army with a top-secret clearance. He has been described as 'high priest of the leading Satanic group' in the USA. Aquino first met LaVey in 1969 and was ordained by him into his church. Eventually they fell out and Aquino formed, in 1975, his own order. It is, unlike, LaVey's church, restrained and majors on meditation and a quiet approach to its faith.

TEMPLE OF UNDERSTANDING. Founded in New York in 1960, supported by such figures as the Dalai Lama and Pope John 23rd. Its intention was to study world religions. 

TEMPLE SOLAIRE. See under: ORDER OF THE SOLAR TEMPLE.

THE OTHER ISRAEL. Title of an American video, reportedly produced by the Reverend Ted Pike. Many Christian fundamentalists repudiate this video. It has been doing the rounds of congregations in Australia. It is said to present 'inflammatory material', described as 'dreadful'. Presumably anti-Jewish? 

THEOCRATIC UNITY. Theocratic Unity was the name given to a group set up by Laura and Theodore Jackson (formerly Ann O'Delia, spiritualist medium, and General Diss Debar, of the USA) in England. Described as an 'immoral cult' it proclaimed that Jackson was Christ reincarnate. A rather elaborate 'and smutty' initiation ceremony involving young girls was devised. One of the recruits complained that Jackson had outraged her in the presence of his wife. The pair went to prison for seven years in 1901, being released after five. Ann returned to the USA.

THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. The Society had its origins in the late 19th century, especially as a result of the work of Madame Elena Petrovna Blavatsky, who was a spiritualist medium. Madame Blavatsky (née Helena Hahn) was born in Russia in 1831 of noble parents and married General Nikifor Blavatsky in her teens but soon left him.  She visited India and Tibet and developed an interest in the occult. In 1873 she was in the USA and there in 1875 organised in New York, together with Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, the Theosophical Society. In 1882 the Society effectively moved itself to India, setting up headquarters at Adyar, near Madras, and from there spread to other countries, including Australia, where the Sydney radio station 2GB was in its early days operated by the Theosophists. (There is still a Theosophical bookshop in Australia selling online under the name Adyar.)
 
In 1885 the English Society for Psychical Research demonstrated that a number of miracles allegedly performed by Madame Blavatsky were frauds. Mrs Blavatsky published several books, including Isis Unveiled (two volumes, 1877) and The Secret Doctrine (two volumes, 1888). The doctrines of Theosophy are a mishmash of Eastern and Western religious thought, Christianity and Spiritualism, with many other additions. Theosophists believe in the transmigration of souls and deny the personal nature of Godhead and personal immortality. They believe in the existence of Mahatmas, teachers of great wisdom, and one supreme Great World Teacher.
 
At the age of 49 Mrs Blavatsky married a youth aged 16. The latter promptly went insane the day of the wedding. Another leading light in the movement was Mrs Annie Besant (née Wood), born in England of Irish parents in 1847, who joined the Theosophical Society in 1889 and effectively took over after the death of Madame Blavatsky in 1891, at which time there were an estimated 100,000 Theosophists scattered around the world.

Annie Besant had earlier been a controversial figure in England, where, after separating from her clergyman husband, Frank, she joined with freethinker Charles BRADLAUGH in campaigns for freethought and for the free dissemination of information on birth control. Mrs Besant was President of the Society from 1907 to 1933. She spent most her time in India, founding colleges and various works, including the Order of the Star in the East, and eventually, in 1917, becoming President of the Indian National Congress. Mrs Besant became convinced that an Indian youth, Jiddu Krishnamurti, born 1895, was the Great World Teacher or Messiah. She sent him to England for an education and in 1925 proclaimed publicly that he was indeed the Promised One.

However in 1931 Krishnamurti himself renounced any such claim, dissolved the Order of the Star, and thereafter travelled the world teaching and writing. Mrs Besant herself wrote numerous books, including The Gospel of Atheism (1877), Reincarnation (1892), Karma (1895) and an Autobiography (1893). She died in 1933. At one time Theosophists in Australia, believing the Messiah would enter Sydney Harbour walking on the waters, arranged an amphitheatre in a convenient bay, where believers could await this great event. The remains of the amphitheatre are still visible today.

THéRèSE, Saint. St Thérèse of Lisieux was French saint who lived in the 19th century. The earlier saint was St Teresa of Avila, Spain, who lived in the 16th century.  They are often confused. The Avila Teresa, it is reported, on 26 July, 1570, had a vision while praying. She was, she said, transported to the high seas, where she was present, in spirit, at the deaths of forty priests and novices of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), who were massacred by pirates on a ship taking them to Brazil. She heard the voices of the victims and, among them, she recognized that of her kinsman, Francis Serez Godoï. When the vision disappeared, she told Father Balthazar Alvarez what she had seen. A month later, when news of the martyrdom became officially known in Spain, Father Alvarez recognized the accuracy, down to the smallest details, of the account given him at the time by the saint. Or so the story goes.   

THOMAS, Neil.  Head, with his sons Peter and Trevor, of The GRACE CHURCH, in Melbourne [as at mid-1992]. See under latter for details.

THOMAS, Saint. St Thomas, one of the original disciples of Jesus - known as the Doubter - was said to have been sent forth as a missionary to the East. There is some degree of uncertainty about this but the general opinion of scholars now seems to be that Thomas did indeed reach India in or around 52 CE, and thereafter, preaching the Gospel, founded a church at Malabar. Nevertheless the book known as The Acts of Thomas is considered to be apocryphal and if the interesting tale it carries is legendary then perhaps it at least reflects some truth.

Certainly Thomas is considered to be the Apostle of Southern India and his memory is strong in that area today. Thomas was, if the tale can be believed, martyred by the Brahmins around the year 72 CE. His relics are said to lie in the Cathedral of St Thomas at Mylapore, near Madras. There is, incidentally, another version of the story, of Armenian origin, with differing facts, which serves to highlight the uncertainties here.

TIBET. During 1994 it was reported that the Chinese occupiers of Tibet had decided they had a greater degree of heavenly inspiration than Tibet's traditional spiritual leaders. The Tibetans believe that many high lamas return after death to continue their teaching work. The Tibetans consult oracles and look to prophetic dreams to guide them in discovering the identities of the 'hidden' lamas. No longer, said the Communists! From now on only the State can recognize reincarnated lamas.  Coming from the atheistic Communists this is a puzzling statement, to say the least.   

TIFERET ISRAEL. See under: JEWISH CHRISTIANS.

TITHING. The practice of tithing has an ancient history and the Hebrews were, in fact, commanded by Yahweh to give one-tenth of their substance to the priesthood. The first mention of the tithe is in Genesis 14: 20 in the curious context of the encounter of Abram (who later became Abraham, or were there two?) with Melchizedec king of Salem. It is not clear whether Melchizedec gave Abram a tenth or vice-versa, although the writer of the New testament book of Hebrews seems to think that Abraham paid the tithe to this mysterious king (Hebrews 7: 4). Be that as it may, what this episode indicates is that the tithe was an ancient practice pre-existing at that time, taken into the Hebrew's religious system like so many other concepts. The tithe was later incorporated into Israel's laws (Leviticus 27: 30 and numerous other verses).

There is debate among theologians as to whether the Jewish tithe still applies to Christians. Some claim that it is, at least, an implied obligation. However, the ancient Church didn't stop to debate the matter but soon found this a convenient enactment to mulct the faithful and help support the ever-expanding structure of priests, nuns, monasteries, nunneries and, of course, the Papacy. Latter-day fundamentalists and numerous sects such as the Seventh-Day Adventists have found no reason to abandon tithing.

In medieval times the tithe, in physical goods, was levied on all citizens, whether they supported the Church or not. 'People must pay the tithes, and should pay these before any other impost,' decreed the council of Avignon in 1209. And there must be no short measure. Pope Celestine 3rd threatened excommunication to any peasants who deducted the cost of cartage or other expenses from their deliveries. Jacques of Vitry thundered from the pulpit that 'the tithe is the property of God and His ministers' and anyone who failed to pay up was in danger of HELL fire.

There are numerous instances of people rebelling against these extractions. From 1207 onwards for some years peasants in the area around Orléans refused to pay the tithe on their wool. The Bishop of Orléans threatened excommunication, whereupon the peasants plotted his death. The Bishop managed to escape but only just. Other stories tell of peasants falling upon priests and assaulting them because of the tithe. Indeed this imposition was often one of several grievances motivating those involved in insurrections. In the mid-1800s it was estimated that some 30,000 Anglican clergy in Britain received their living from the State, i.e. out of the pockets of the people, an appalling indictment of Christian 'morality'
 
TM. See under: TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION.

TOILET BATTLE.  In April 1995 it was reported from Apia, Western Samoa, that a battle had erupted between churchmen over the question of a dirty toilet. When the Reverend Loli Eteuati, a minister of the Methodist Church, was about to move from the manse, to make way for a new minister, trouble erupted. Tavita Ioelu, son of the incoming Methodist minister, commented to Mr Eteuati that the toilet of the manse was dirty. This enraged the former minister and the two argued and swore at each other in a very irreligious manner.

Into this situation now stepped the son of the departing cleric, Enoka, a 24-year-old intent on defending his father's honour. A chase ensued, with Enoka throwing a rock at Tavita Ioelu and waving about a large cane-cutting knife. For his part Tavita now produced a gun, whereupon Enoka lunged at him with the knife, nearly severing  one hand. The hand was, in fact, later amputated.
 
In court in Apia Enoka Eteuati was found guilty of grievous bodily harm. Doubtless the two ministers will continue to preach the Gospel - on the simple premise, 'Do as I say but not as I do.'

TONGUES, Speaking in.  See under: SPEAKING IN TONGUES.

TORNADO DESTROYS CHURCH. On Palm Sunday, 27 March, 1994, tornadoes ravaged the south-eastern USA. In the Goshen Methodist Church, at Piedmont, Alabama, 140 people were gathered watching the enactment of a Palm Sunday pageant by children at the front of the church. The winds suddenly hit the building, a wall collapsed, then the roof. The major impact was at the front of the building, the very area where the children were playing their parts, including some in the first row of seats. Six children aged between 2 and 12 and including the pastor's own small daughter, died. A total of 19 worshippers died in all and about 90 were injured, some seriously.

Bishop Robert Fannon later told reporters that the church community would recover from the tragedy. He went on: 'We're people of faith and we feel we are part of God's creation and things happen and our faith gives us strength to face days like these.'

TORQUEMADA, Frey Tomás de. Fifteenth century Spanish Dominican friar, head of the Holy Office in Spain. Born in Valladolid in 1420, Torquemada became a prior at Segovia and chaplain to the Spanish rulers, Ferdinand and Isabella. He used his influence at the court to persuade the rulers to ask the Pope to institute the Holy Office in Spain and was appointed Inquisitor-General in 1483.
 
Torquemada was undoubtedly a sadist masquerading under clerical garb. He was pitiless as he watched impassively the poor creatures, male and female, young and old, being tortured and burnt.  During his eighteen years as Inquisitor-General he reportedly burnt 10,220 and tortured 97,320 people. He was also credited with being responsible for expelling the Jews from Spain in 1492. Doubtless they were better off out of the country as many thousands of their number suffered at the hands of this monster! The historian William Prescott commented: 'Torquemada's zeal was of so extraordinary a character that it may almost shelter itself under the name of insanity.'

TOUVIER, Paul. A French citizen accused of war crimes, Touvier was allegedly responsible for the execution of seven Jews in 1944. Although on the scale of the Nazi decimation of the Jews his case is a relatively minor one, it became a cause célèbre due to a particular set of circumstances involving the Catholic Church.  Touvier served under the Vichy-French Government in the Lyons area, where Klaus Barbie ran a ruthless Gestapo operation. Touvier served in the pro-Nazi militia and on June 29, 1944, ordered the reprisal execution of the seven Jews in the suburb of Rillieux-la-Pape.

Touvier, like so many collaborateurs, disappeared after the war but was twice sentenced to death in absentia. During a period of about twenty-five years Touvier escaped justice with the active assistance, both financial and moral, of no less than fifty Roman Catholic institutions. He was also assisted by the then Archbishop of Lyons, Jean-Marie Gerlier. Among those aiding Touvier was Archbishop Marcel Lefevre, the renegade conservative priest, and organizations such as Secours Catholic. This latter charity paid him a living allowance.

In 1971 French Church officials and the Vatican prevailed upon the Premier, Georges Pompidou, to grant him an official pardon. This act outraged both former Resistance fighters and Jewish organizations. They came forward with new evidence, but before Touvier could be charged he disappeared again. In 1989 he was tracked down at a priory at Nice on the Riviera, where the monks endeavoured to dissuade the police from taking him. However, in April 1992 an appeals court cleared him of six charges. This finding again outraged public opinion and the case went to a higher court, which overruled the appeals court, and also announced the laying of new charges of crimes against humanity.

TOWERS OF SILENCE. See under: ZOROASTRIANISM. 

TRACTARIANS, The. Otherwise known as the Oxford Movement (not to be confused with the the much later Oxford Group). In 1833 members of this Anglo-Catholic movement within the Church of England produced Tract Number 1.  Thereafter followed a stream of similar publications, the earliest of which were brief leaflets, the later ones treatises running to perhaps 80 or 90 pages.  Authors included J.H. Newman, E.B. Pusey and J. Keble.  At first there was difficulty selling the leaflets.  They were produced by private subscription and in many instances given away.  Eventually some were bound together to form a book, and in this form became more saleable. The series came to an end in 1841 with Tract 90, in which J.H. Newman endeavoured to show that the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles were essentially Catholic.  There was a storm over this Tract and two years later Newman left the Church of England and joined the Church of Rome. Others in the Tractarian Movement followed suit. Newman eventually became a Cardinal.

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION. The TM organization makes much play of 'scientific support' for some of its teachings. Drawing on the findings of 'research' in such fields as biology and physics TM claims there is a sound basis for its principles and practises. In particular reference is made to the cult's 'secret mantras' being chanted during periods of meditation. However, investigators have demonstrated that much of the 'research' is of quite uncertain value. In any event the chanting of mantras is one common method employed by cults to produce personality changes in converts.
  
According to claims in press reports in January 1991, more than 70,000 Australians had taken TM courses. On 28 January, 1991 they were asked to participate in a 'globally synchronised group meditation to help swiftly end the Gulf War with minimal loss of life.' According to TM guru Susan Germein, 'sociological research' shows that large groups meditating together create 'a positive harmonizing influence' on the society around them. 

TREATY OF UTRECHT, The. The Treaty of Utrecht secured freedom of worship to the people of what was then known as Acadia, which embraced the area now known as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and a part of Maine. The majority were French Catholics but, following negotiations between England and France, it was agreed that they would now fall under the British Crown.

That tolerance of worship, which would permit Catholic and Protestant alike to exercise, with some limitations, freedom of worship, was to be abused in Acadia. The priests of Rome were agents not only for their Church but for the King of France.  They were, in short, double-dealers, and from the first laboured mightily against British interests.
 
The Catholic missionaries engaged in politics from the start. Trading upon the devotion and obedience of their flocks they preached and taught the primacy of Rome and of the French King. They even took, where they could do so, their place in courts as judges, and used such office to enforce their partisan views. The threat of refusal of the sacraments to the faithful was sufficient, in those times, to bring any dissenters to heel.
They treated British officials with open scorn. Governor Armstrong wrote to the Lords of Trade: 'Without some particular directions as to the insolent behaviour of those priests, the people will never be brought to obedience [to the English Crown], being by them incited to daily acts of rebellion.' Further, they worked among the Indians, instilling hatred against the English in their converts. They even made it a condition of hearing Indian confessions, and granting absolutions, that the penitent should always express hatred of England.

When two of these subversives were called before the Council of Annapolis, they answered, with great contempt, 'We are here on the business of the King of France.'  One would have thought their business was to promote Roman Christianity. The pair were ordered out of Acadia forthwith but four years later one of them returned, on the orders of the French Governor of Isle Royale, to prepare the Acadians for an attack on Annapolis.

By 1720 the English were expressing great frustration at the situation. It was being urged that all French priests should be thrown out of the area. There is no evidence that the Britishers ever molested any priests but they were sorely tried. They remonstrated and appealed to them but to no avail; the priests were intent on pushing their political barrow. 

TRINITY, The. The curious Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a subject worthy of some study. In effect it permits Christians to worship not one but three deities, although they would never admit to this odd situation. However, the truth is that the 'Father' is the Jewish tribal deity Yahweh, the 'Son' is Jesus of Nazareth, and the 'Holy Ghost' is an odd emanation only appearing late on the scene. In the earliest era of the Church the doctrine of the Trinity was unknown. The first mention of such a notion came in 180 CE, which is a long time after the first Christians gathered together, when Theophilus of Antioch used the term to refer to GOD and two of his attributes.
 
In the third century the full-blown doctrine became an article of faith and was enforced via the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381). There were at that time dissidents who would not accept this teaching and from the Reformation era onwards there have always been those opposed to the doctrine. In modern times one church in particular, the Unitarian, opposes such a view and it rejects, too, the divinity of Jesus.

There is nothing unique about a triune godhead. Many religions have similar concepts. The Hindus have Brahma, Siva and Vishnu. The Egyptians had Isis, Osiris and Horus. Then there was the triumvirate of Bacchus, Demeter and Persophone. The Phoenicians, the Persians, the Romans, the Peruvians and many others had triune deities. The Christians came up eventually with a complication in that the Church of Rome elected MARY to godhead too. She is, after all, known as the Mother of GOD. This means the Catholics worship a fourfold deity.    

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING? It has been revealed (perhaps the appropriate word) that 'holy water' can sometimes threaten life! A youth in Britain, infected with a deadly bacteria, was saved when an observant doctor stopped his aunt sprinkling 'holy water' on him from a bottle. It proved to be full of deadly bacteria. The Lord certainly moves in mysterious ways to do people in!

TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY. Baron Harden-Hickey, an American who founded Trinidad (according to his own account) was involved with the Truth Seeker Company, an anti-religious society and publishing house which produced such works as What Would Christ Do About Syphilis? His book, Euthanasia: The Aesthetics of Suicide, was published in 1894. The baron suggested such methods as: drugs, poison, scissors, and a pistol, and urged anyone facing disease or misfortune to end it with suicide. Four years later the baron took his own advice and ended his life with a dose of morphine.

TUKAREM. (Or: Tukaram) A poet-saint born in India in 1608. He worshipped the god Vithoba, gave away his goods and allowed men to trample him down in many ways.  In 1631 his wife and child died in a terrible famine in the Deccan and henceforth Tukarem devoted his life wholly to religion. The Brahmin priests, however, hated the poet and persecuted him for he was of a lowly caste. They destroyed some of his writings and they dragged him bodily through a hedge of thorns.

TURNING DERVISHES. See under: DERVISHES.

TYNDALE, William. Tyndale was born in Gloucestershire in 1494 and became the first man to translate most of the Bible into English, working from the 'original' Hebrew and Greek, using that term in the sense Christians use it (as there are in fact no original texts whatever). This he did, however, not in England but in Germany as the English Church authorities at the time preferred to retain the Latin Bible. Tyndale's work was printed in Germany and smuggled into Britain in much the same manner erotica was early in the 20th century - printed in France and smuggled into Britain!  The censors acted in Tyndale's day as they did later; they burnt heaps of his books at St Paul's Cross. Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London, presided over the fires as they destroyed the 'Word of GOD'.

In time the fires were to destroy Tyndale himself, which no doubt pleased the Bishop of London. In 1536 Tyndale was condemned to death as a heretic in an England that had not yet fully broken with Rome. He was strangled and his body burnt at the stake. A great part of the later Authorised (King James) version of the Bible is directly taken from Tyndale's translation, with only minor changes. 

TYSON, Mike. Like so many criminals Mr Tyson managed somewhere along the way seemed to find GOD! It is a common and very convenient phenomenon. In some photos as he came and went from the court Mike Tyson is seen wearing a 'Jesus Saves' badge and carrying a Bible. (Even Manuel Noriega, the drug baron, was promoted as a 'born again' believer! The good old American Baptist Church has apparently taken him into the bosom of the Christian family.)

When Tyson, was on trial for the rape of Miss Black America, Desiree Washington, early in 1992, a group of Baptists expressed their support for the boxer. President of the US National Baptist Convention, the Reverend T.J. Jemison, not only lobbied publicly on Tyson's behalf but led a 13-day prayer vigil for the boxer during the trial! The prayers failed; Tyson was found guilty and jailed for 10 years, with a non-parole period of 6.
 
'Tyson offers thanks to Allah,' ran the newspaper headlines as world-famous boxer Mike Tyson emerged from imprisonment in the Indiana Youth Centre late in March 1995. Apparently Mr Tyson was unhappy that Jesus had let him down - he had been found guilty. So Allah had evidently to come to Tyson's rescue. No wonder Mr Tyson turned Muslim!  Or turned back? One report said he'd been a Muslim for three decades.  Must have had a brief relapse into Christianity!

UNIFICATION CHURCH. See under: MOONIES, The.

UNITY SCHOOL OF CHRISTIANITY. Founded in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1889 by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, Unity might perhaps be described a 'thinking person's religion'. Although Unity has many esoteric beliefs it has a strong emphasis on practical Christianity, especially as seen in successful living. There is a special regard held for the power of positive thinking to produce good health and financial well-being, not to mention happy marriages and all other such blessings.

As regards physical healing Unity has much in common with CHRISTIAN SCIENCE but is not perhaps as dogmatic as that faith. A unique feature of its ministry is to supply 'healing at a distance' through a special branch of the work known as Silent Unity. Unity at one time had a very extensive mailing list and made heavy use of the mails to promote its views. It also produced a large amount of literature. 

UNIVERSAL CHURCH OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD. A Brazilian denomination founded in 1977. The Church grew rapidly until by 1995 it owned a bank and a TV station in Brazil and 30 radio stations in Brazil, plus one in Portugal and one in Mozambique. Late in 1995 there were accusations by former members that the church leaders were squandering large sums of money living the high life, with expensive cars and other trappings of office. The Government was investigating and people were demanding the return of donations they had made to the Church. 

UNIVERSAL LIFE CHURCH. Founded in Imodesto, California (USA) around the year 1970, by Kirby Hensley. The church may best be described as anarchistic - its ministers being allowed to more or less follow whatever doctrinal views they wished, provided that they are roughly based on the Christian Bible.

The church has very liberal views on issues surrounding sexuality. In September 1985 it was reported that the Reverend Elbert ('Thad') Poppell, 52, a minister of the Universal Life Church, was suing the Californian city of La Mesa for refusing him permission to open a business described as 'a combination nude health spa and church.'  Included in ceremonies for the religion were nude baptisms. Undoubtedly the congregation would swell mightily on baptismal days! The church already has a following of several thousand across the USA.

Early in 1997 it was reported that John Wayne Bobbitt, centre of a sensational 1994 saga in which his wife cut off his penis, had become an ordained priest of the Universal Life Church. Following his 'operation' - which saw his wife Lorena throw the detached penis out of a car window - Mr Bobbitt went on to achieve a certain degree of fame by starring in pornographic movies.

At the age of 29, his past behind him, Mr Bobbitt announced he had applied for a licence to minister in Las Vegas. Travelling about with so many beautiful girls had tired the star out, he told reporters. He hoped that his work as a priest would enable him to help other people avoid tragedies such as he had experienced.

UN WOMEN'S CONFERENCE, CHINA, 1995. The Roman Catholic Church delegation pressed the Church's restrictive view in the matter of woman's fertility.  Tricia Szirom, Australian National President of the YWCA criticized the Vatican which, she said, 'can impose the will of a few old men on birth control and fertility rights of all the women of the world.'

UNSUBSTANTIATED CLAIMS. The Anglican Church in Britain ran into a spot of bother with advertising. It seems Britain has laws that forbid advertisers referring to 'GOD' in any direct sense. The Independent Television Commission stipulates that 'unsubstantiated' claims are inadmissible on TV, so the church had to amend the wording of some ads accordingly. 'GOD' certainly is an unsubstantiated entity. Unfortunately Australia does not seem to have a similar law.

URBAN 2nd, Pope. In November 1095 at Clermont, in the Auvergne, Urban 2nd issued his famous appeal to Christendom to crusade against the infidels. The First Crusade got under way the next year. See also: CRUSADES, The.

URBAN 6th, Pope. Urban 6th, a 14th century Pope, strolled up and down outside his castle reading his breviary (prayer book), all the while listening to the anguished cries of several of his cardinals being tortured for opposing him.

VALESII.  A religious sect that flourished for a brief period in the 3rd century CE.  Augustine refers to them. They, like several other radical groups, believed in voluntary emasculation as a means of avoiding sexual 'sin', taking for their support texts such as Matthew 19: 12: ' . . . and there are eunuchs, which were made eunuchs by men: and there are eunuchs, which made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake.' (See also Matthew 5: 28-30.) The Valesii not only castrated themselves but persuaded visitors to have the operation performed on them.

VAMPIRES, Fear of.  A Polish immigrant who went to live in Britain after World War 2 was terrified of vampires all his life.  At an inquest into his death held on 9 January, 1973, his landlady reported that he thought vampires were everywhere. 'He used salt, pepper and garlic to keep them away,' she added. A police officer described the man's lodgings as looking like a real Dracula's Castle. He continued: 

In the room was a ritual distribution of objects as antidotes against vampires.  There was a bag of salt to the left of the dead man's face, one between his legs and other containers scattered around the room. Salt was also sprinkled on his blanket.  There was a strong smell of garlic in the room. Outside his window was a washing bowl containing cloves of garlic. From a book, The Natural History of the Vampire, I found that these things were some of the methods used as precautions against vampires.

The terrified man had even stuffed garlic into the keyhole in his door. And upon retiring to bed each night he placed a clove of garlic in his mouth. He had choked to death on the garlic. The police officer testifying added: 'There is no evidence this man was attacked [by a vampire].' 

VANDALISM. The Christian Spaniards and Portuguese destroyed many great monuments in the ancient world, believing them to be symbols of the pagan religions. The Puritans, when they gained the upper hand in England, went about destroying many beautiful ecclesiastical monuments. Missionaries who went to Papua-New Guinea in the 19th century condemned the beautiful tribal structures in the Sepik region and put them to the torch. They were, they said, pagan temples. In 1993 Muslim fundamentalists announced they wanted to see the the Egyptian pyramids and other ancient monuments bulldozed because they represented an ancient religion that is an abomination in the sight of Allah. And Islamics In Afghanistan destroyed ancient monuments.

VATICAN LIBRARY. H. Montgomery Hyde says that the Vatican Library contains the greatest single collection of erotic and sexually-oriented books in the world, even outstripping that of the Kinsey Institute of Sex Research in the USA (which has 20,000) with over 25,000 books on such subjects.

VATICAN 2. The Second Vatican Council was headed by Pope JOHN 23rd and staged in 1962. It became an occasion for reform and modernization in the Church of Rome. Latin was abandoned for the liturgy, religious Orders were encouraged to open up and let in some fresh air and many other areas of Church life were examined, with a view to reform. There were many long-term, and some unintended consequences of these changes, particularly in relation to the makeup of the priesthood.

VAUDOIS.  See under: WALDENSES, The.

VELIKOVSKY, Immanuel. Immanuel Velikovsky was born in Russia in 1895 and obtained a degree in medicine from Moscow University, thus enabling him to be known as Doctor Velikovsky, many of his devoted readers presumably thinking he is a doctor of some form of science rather than a simple medical practitioner. In any event Velikovsky travelled hither and yon and for a time worked as a psychoanalyst in Vienna with Dr Wilhelm Stekel, the noted sexologist. In 1939 Velikovsky settled with his wife and two daughters in New York, thereafter he spent long periods studying in the library of Columbia University.

In 1950 Velikovsky produced his first book, Worlds in Collision. It was published by an established publisher of scientific textbooks and for this reason brought about a storm of protest from reputable scientists. In spite of the protests it would only be fair to add that some quite respectable names in the world of scientific literature commented favourably on the book when it appeared. The publishers eventually bowed to pressure and sold out to Doubledays, who thereafter reaped handsome financial rewards from their author's first and subsequent books.

This is not the place to explain Velikovsky's theories but basically the good doctor set out to prove, to his own satisfaction and to the satisfaction, doubtless, of many readers, that numerous amazing events described in the Bible could be explained by natural happenings, including the fantastic claim that Joshua made the sun stand still!  Velikovsky achieved this feat by twisting all manner of dates and data (and he backs his arguments with enormous numbers of quotations) to suit his purpose.  It requires a capable scientist to refute his absurdities but, as when one reads the Bible itself, a fair-minded, logical and sane human being, sitting reading some of the ideas put forward, must gasp in amazement.
 
Clearly, though, Immanuel Velikovsky was in tune with his times and his later books were likewise eagerly purchased by a public anxious to believe anything other than that they are alone in a cold unfriendly universe. Ages in Chaos followed in 1952.  

VENTA, Krishna.  See under: FOUNTAIN OF THE WORLD.

VICTIM. A victim (of reparation) is a term used within the Catholic Church to describe the suffering and self-abasement expected of the disciple, especially the religious. Mother Mary of the Passion said: 'Souls are not simply converted, they have to be bought.' For this reason 'the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary make a complete holocaust of themselves at their final profession when they add to the three religious vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, the following oblation: "I offer myself as a victim for the Church and for souls.".' The victim himself or herself becomes the symbolic offering of sacrifice to the deity. For an example of this concept see: MARCELLINE PAUPER.

VINEYARD CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP.  A charismatic church with a branch located at Toronto, Canada, airport. In August 1994 it was reported that this wildly enthusiastic airport congregation was holding services six nights a week and drawing people from all over the world to participate in the strange gymnastics and babble of tongues emanating from the building. 

VIOLENT CHRISTIANS. A Greek Orthodox bishop on the island of Crete warned in February 1986 that 'blood will flow' if Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, the Indian guru ousted from the United States, remained on the island. Metropolitan Dimitros of Petra, the local bishop, said the island's clergy would convene a synod 'so we can arrange to throw him out.  We have the strength and desire to get rid of this rumour-monger.  He has to stop preaching here or we will use force. In the end, blood will flow.'

VIRGIN MARY APPEARANCES.  See under: VISIONS AND IMAGES.  

VIRUS OF THE MIND. Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, describes religion as a virus of the mind. Sometimes it is difficult to detect but the infected person exhibits certain symptoms, such as feeling 'impelled . . . by a deep inner conviction' to believe certain dogmas, not on the basis of any real evidence. Such 'knowledge of the truth' is described as 'faith' and to that person it becomes even more certain than reality! The believer is intolerant of rival faiths, even advocating at times death for those who hold such or who are apostates.
  
Of all the thousands of possible faiths such people could hold the majority strangely hold the same faith as their parents. Those who do not have come under the influence of a particularly virulent virus-donor, a Billy Graham a St Paul or a Muhammad. Or are attacked by a sexually-transmitted viral infection, obliged to convert because of love.  Reality is replaced by virtual reality - the voice inside the head, 'the still small voice.'

Unfortunately modern Western society, in extending a broad-minded tolerance towards those infected by the religious virus, open the way for repression by those infected. Thus we behold so-called community leaders openly advocating the death of a writer who dares to oppose them. The real cause for concern was not so much this advocacy but the lengths to which those in authority went to tolerate this expression of incitement to murder! 'Showing broad-minded tolerance towards certain kinds of fundamentalism is about as sensible as showing broad-minded tolerance to the rabies virus,' warns Mr Dawkins.

VISIONS AND IMAGES. In 1986 an image of the god Jesus Christ was said to be visible on the side of a rusty water-tank on a farm about 50 km south of Toledo, Ohio (USA). Although the faithful believed it to be a true vision the owner of the tank said it was merely a 'combination of lighting, rust spots, fog and people's imaginations.' Eight years later people claimed they saw a similar image on a soybean storage tank at Fostoria, also in Ohio.  The image had appeared twice before, the faithful said.
  
In 1986 a statue of the goddess Mary ('ever-virgin') seemed to be weeping tears composed of blood mixed with rose-scented oil. Thousands converged on the small community out from Montreal to witness this miraculous event. A number of people, including a police officer, claimed they had witnessed the miracle. The statue's owner said it started bleeding on the same night he received it as a gift. A forensic scientist tested samples of blood alleged to have been taken from the statue and confirmed it was from a human. This is a puzzle in itself as if Mary was assumed into heaven as she was supposed to have been, surely she is no longer flesh and blood!
 
It would be interesting to know what blood group the goddess Mary had. Might have helped to know. 1986 was a good year for Mary. Statues in her likeness in Ireland were said to be moving about, rather than weeping real blood.  Too much whisky being drunk by the onlookers? These reports prompted the Women's Community Press of Dublin to produce a comic postcard featuring a large choir of Madonna figures, waving from their pedestals and singing: 'We shall not be moved . . .' Someone in Ireland still has a sense of humour; and a touch of rationality.
 
In a Texas (USA) town people reported seeing an image of the god Jesus Christ, or the Virgin - apparently they are not sure which! - on a tabletop in an elderly man's backyard. I would quite definitely vote for the Virgin; it is almost always she who turns up in these mystical appearances. Who knows why? Naturally we cannot expect to see the Holy Ghost, but it would be reasonable to expect a viewing of the gods Jesus Christ or Yahweh now and then.

On or about 31 August, 1992, 10,000 people crowded into the town of Colesborough, Kentucky, expecting an appearance of Mary at midnight. A prayer service was held at 11.30 pm and many said afterwards they had seen the Virgin. A 12-year-old girl was reported as saying she had a veil and everything about her was white. Jesus was with her and was wearing a red cloak.
 
But Christians are not alone in such matters. A few years back a mystical tree became an object of worship because of supposedly healing water that dripped from its leaves. The pine tree, in the Chinese village of Xinfu, attracted more than 40,000 people, and the water was claimed to have enabled a paralyzed woman to walk after she drank it. Yet other people claim to have seen thirty-two Buddhas in the branches of the tree! That would be some sight! Do I detect a doubt? Do readers not believe this last story? But if not, why not? It seems every bit as believable as those other visions and images, except that it was not happening in a Christian country, but in China.  Government analysts found that the water was in fact the urine from millions of insects and lacked any healing properties whatever. See also: BERNADETTE, Saint, and: JEANNE d'ARC, Saint. 

VOICES OF THE GODS. People suffering from mental disorders, including sometimes schizophrenia, think they hear voices and are often convinced that the voice they hear is that of GOD. In an Australian case a schizophrenic young man was working at a job until he started having auditory hallucinations. He claimed he heard the voices of Jesus and his angels. Other voices were, he said, cruel. Even after treatment the voices continued to plague him and although he tried everything to stop them, he could not. Scientists believe schizophrenia has a variety of causes, including genetic disorders, brain chemistry alterations, brain structural differences and damage to brain cells during birth. Stress is also considered to be a factor.  Among notable voice-hearers were Jeanne d'ARC and Socrates.

VOODOO. As a result of its complex racial composition Haiti boasts a peculiar religious mix. While Roman Catholicism is the main Christian faith the native Voodoo, primarily of African origin, has a strong hold on the populace. Voodoo is a form of religion of secretive nature, originating in Africa and transported via the slave population to Haiti. The origin of the name is a subject of debate.  Some think the word Voodoo is either derived from the African town of Hoodoo, or the Guinea word houedo, a non-poisonous snake. Others trace the word back to the Vaudois in France. The sect worshipped serpents and indulged in cannibal orgies, but also incorporated into its structure debased elements of Christianity.
 
The voodoo cult has always been regarded as hiding sinister secrets. Doubtless some blame lies at the feet of the cultists themselves, many of whom believe in the creation of ZOMBIES, or living-dead and the existence of werewolves. These impressions have been strengthened by Hollywood movies! Voodoo worshippers observe Twelfth Night, the eves of Easter, Christmas and the New Year. These Christian festive seasons became occasions for cannibal orgies. Efforts were made by the Americans to suppress the cannibalism of the sect but from time to time it has surfaced again. In 1863 and again in 1864 there were trials of worshippers for cannibalism.
 
Human sacrifice has also taken place on occasions. In 1864 one trial was directed against Negro Voodoo worshippers who had immolated a 12-year-old girl and drunk her blood mixed with rum. The country's reforming president at the time, Geffrard, had eight persons executed for this crime. Then he was driven from office by Voodoo followers. His predecessor, President Salnave, had actually performed human sacrifices while in office in 1863. Another president, Hyppolyte, used to display skeletons of his sacrificial victims for all to see. And still as late as 1884 the President and most of the Ministers of State were active participants in Voodoo rites.
 
The high priests of the sect are known as Papalois, while the high priestesses are known as Mamalois. These priests conducted the human sacrifices. Loi is the Negro pronunciation of the French word roi = king. The priests have an extensive knowledge of herbs and poisons. Of particular interest is their claim, probably using medicinals, to be able to kill slowly or quickly and, especially, to induce madness, paralysis, idiocy and impotence. They also claim less tangible powers - invulnerability, poverty, and riches.

A German writer, Hans Heinz Ewers, wrote a fictional account of a secret Voodoo sacrificial ceremony (Nachtmahr - Munich, 1922), which was said to summarize accurately the evidence available at that time. Deep in the jungle the people have gathered and ceremonies are under way. Then into a clearing a girl aged 10 is led, a rope around her neck. (Young girls were, in fact, frequently sacrificed.) She looks around in astonishment and seems anxious, but does not cry out. She stumbles, for she has been given rum beforehand, to deaden her senses.
 
The Papaloi approached the child and speaks:  'I consign you to Azilit and Don Pedro, that they may convey you to Cimbi Kita, the Prince of all the Devils.' The priest then presses pieces of horn into the child's hair and sets fire to them. The little girl is now frightened but before she can raise her hands to her head, the Mamaloi leaps forward with a horrid scream, seizes the child by the neck and, lifting her high in the air, squeezes the life out of her body. At last the child is dead, after which her head is sliced off and cast into a waiting cauldron. The body is now spitted over a fire and, as it turns and bastes, is sliced and hacked at. The blood is collected in a basin, mixed with strong rum and consumed by the worshippers.
 
In the real ceremonies in a special enclosure high in the hills of Haiti wild dancing took place around the pole of Damballah-Uedo, the serpent god. The pole was painted with figures of writhing serpents and was believed to be used by the god who would come down via it and penetrate his female acolytes through their vaginas. Thus possessed they would themselves turn into snakes. They would respond by writhing in orgasm on the ground and then wriggling, crawling out into the darkness on their stomachs. There was also worshipped Lola Criminel, the god of fire. Female devotees danced while they held live coals in their hands and under the soles of their naked feet.

Early in 1995 it was reported that a Miami (USA) courthouse had to be cleaned up each morning; the scattered remains of voodoo items were left behind by those appearing in various cases. It seems that many of the Cuban and Haitian settlers appearing in the Florida courts were bringing with them sacred worship objects, such as dead chickens and goats, in an effort to gain assistance from their deities. Hard to judge the results; obviously some won, some lost!

WALDENSES, The.  The Waldenses were a sect that arose in the south of France around the 12th century. At about this time the CATHARI and ALBIGENSES were also flourishing and it was natural that the Waldenses should be equated in the minds of the Church hierarchy with the former heretical sects. The Waldenses were a less radical body, followers of Peter Waldo of Lyons. They had no desire to separate from the Church, their chief fault being the habit of conducting preachings without ecclesiastical sanction. They also read the Bible in their own language rather than Latin and generally sought to follow a simple and pious manner of life.

When the Lateran Council was called in 1215 the Waldenses were lumped together with the other heretical sects and excluded from the Church. They managed to maintain a precarious hold on freedom for a long period although persecuted on and off, until, with the coming of the Reformation in the 16th century they sided with the Protestants. In 1655 the Duke of Savoy and King Louis 14th launched a full-scale persecution of them and they suffered cruelly. Their children were seized and spirited away to be brought up as Catholics and thousands of men, women and children were slaughtered. The barbarities perpetrated at that time led to a call by Oliver Cromwell for the Protestant powers of Europe to execute vengeance on their persecutors.
 
A new outbreak of persecution was unleashed with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 (see further under: HUGUENOTS). A remnant of the original group still, however, persists, having been granted equal rights with Catholic citizens by Charles Albert of Piedmont in 1848. They are now known as the Vaudois.

WALKER, Ann. Ms Walker is a spiritualist medium who in 1994 claimed she had been visited by White Arrow, said to be the heavenly incarnation of Chief Sitting Bull. The visitor had warned her of coming catastrophes for the world. Japan and parts of North America would sink beneath the waves within 20 years. Temperatures in Britain would soar to 120 degrees F. Ms Walker had during her perambulations into the ether met up with an extraterrestrial creature known as Zipper. She also received from the shade of Albert Einstein the formula for a 'fume-free' car fuel.  

WALKING ON WATER. In Bombay in 1966 a Hindu yogi named Rao announced he would walk on water. Six hundred prominent members of Bombay society were invited to view the event and tickets were sold, some for as much as $100. At the stated time the mystic in flowing robes stood beside a pond nearly 2 metres deep. He then stepped in, sinking to the bottom.

WALWORTH JUMPERS, The. A small sect flourishing in the latter half of the 19th century. They took their name from Walworth Road, in London, where they met. The sect was headed by a Mrs Girling who demanded that members should remain celibate so as to be ready for Christ's Second Coming. Married couples joining the group considered their marriage ties to have been broken and henceforth lived as brother and sister. And even brothers and sisters were warned against 'any undue intimacy'.   

WASHINGTON TIMES, The.  This newspaper is owned and operated by the Church of Unification, otherwise known as the MOONIES.

WAY, The. An American Christian sect with a Pentecostalist emphasis, based in Kansas in the mid-1970s. Members are drilled in classes that teach them in so many lessons how to speak in tongues and how to interpret the gibberish that results. The disciples are continually urged to speak often in tongues, so much so that ex-members find they have difficulty getting the gibberish out of their heads after they leave! [See further under: SPEAKING IN TONGUES.]

This sect also reportedly had students and staff of its Emporia college enrolled in courses at the National Guard Armoury, learning about rifle shooting. One report said that more than 500 college people were observed attending on one occasion. The sect said the training was for 'hunting safety' purposes only.  

WEEPING STATUES. Washington has joined Ireland, Yugoslavia and other places around the world where statues of the Virgin Mary weep tears. Father Jim Bruse of Lake Ridge says he has the gift to produce the phenomenon, along with STIGMATA.  Many people are reported to have witnessed the weeping statues. Weeping statues and stigmata are among many seemingly miraculous events that supposedly demonstrate the intrusion of the Other World into our own. There are only two types of explanation for all such happenings - mass suggestion and trickery. When impartial investigators check such stories out they find that either or both play a part.    

WESLEYAN METHODIST CHURCH. The Methodist Church was founded by John Wesley, who was an evangelical Anglican clergyman. Wesley did not want his followers to start a new denomination but eventually the split occurred. In time the body of believers who separated from the Anglican Church split among themselves, as the manner of many is. A whole series of denominations resulted, e.g. the Primitive Methodists and the Bible Christians, and among them was the church taking Wesley's own name.   

WESLEY, John. John Wesley was an Anglican clergyman born in 1703 into a large family headed by a clergyman, the Reverend Samuel Wesley. He was, in fact, the fifteenth child. He was brought up in an atmosphere of severe, even cruel, discipline, under the heavy hand of his mother, which perhaps is a factor in the peculiar bent of his life and message. In a rather odd episode John Wesley, then 32, and his brother Charles went as missionaries to America but they seemed to upset the colonists and soon returned to England.
 
In 1738 he was 'converted', presumably not having been in this state of grace when in the mission field, and thereafter single-mindedly devoted this life to saving souls.  Wesley believed implicitly that witches and WITCHCRAFT were malevolent forces to be opposed by good Christians. He proclaimed: 'Giving up of witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible. I cannot give up to all the Deists in Great Britain the existence of witchcraft till I give up the credit of all history, sacred and profane.' He died in 1791, by which time his followers had all but separated from the Anglicans to form the METHODIST CHURCH.    

WHIRLING DERVISHES. See under: DERVISHES.

WHITE, Arthur Edward. Occultist connected with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. 

WHITE WITCHES. Term used to denote what might be described as benevolent witches as against black ones, who dabble in the darker arts. It is seemingly a somewhat arbitrary and meaningless distinction as all witches, whether known as white or black, would claim their craft benefits rather than harms humankind.

WISH FULFILMENT. Feuerbach and others have suggested that religion is an outlet for wish fulfilment, much in the same manner as dreams. Wishes devotees seek to fulfil include the search for a perfect parent and the perfect lover and, especially, the desire for personal immortality. 

WITCHCRAFT. 
In Rome, even before Christianity was in the ascendant, those having intercourse with occult forces were liable to severe penalties. Publius Marcius was stripped and whipped to death because of his dabbling in magic, and Lucius Pituanius was hurled from the Tarpeian Rock for the same crime. When the first Christian Emperor, Constantine, began his rule he distinguished between black and white magic and persecuted those engaged in the black arts. From time to time during successive centuries witches were persecuted but only sporadically and in some cases wise rulers actually forbade any such harassment. Charlemagne's laws prescribed death for those who dabbled in the 'dark arts' but on the other hand mobs taking the law unto themselves in punishing witches were threatened with the death penalty.

It is probable that many witchcraft ceremonies were conducted by people in the nude in the Middle Ages. The gatherings, held at night, were occasions for dancing and for the celebration of life and it is understandable that clothing should be discarded, the dancers feeling in tune with nature. Some think that there was an occult belief associated with this practice, namely that the body's energies, normally focussed in the ceremonies towards particular ends, would be hindered by clothing. Naturally the censorious Church, both Catholic and Protestant frowned on such displays. In modern times some groups go naked, others remained clothed, while some go naked for certain ceremonies but wear robes for others.

The advent of the Witchcraft mania in Christendom saw an outbreak of cruelty comparable with but probably in no way surpassing the INQUISITION. Witchcraft was always regarded with suspicion by the medieval Church, which paid regard to the Biblical injunction: 'Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress [witch] to live.' ().  But not all Christians believed. In 785 the Synod of Paderborn actually decreed: 'Whoever, being fooled by the Devil, maintains in accordance with pagan beliefs, that witches exist and causes them to be burnt at the stake, shall be punished with death.'

Practising witchcraft, was a common and convenient charge levelled against heretics of various stripes and hues. There is a record of three witches being burnt in Scotland in the 10th century. They were accused of conspiring to murder King Duffas with the use of spells. They died at Forres, Morayshire. In 1275 at Toulouse, France, a woman, Angéle de Labarthe, was burnt as a witch.

In 1227 Pope Gregory 7th sent Conrad of Marburg, a dedicated sadist, on an organized witch-hunt to Germany. It was this same Conrad who had, as confessor to Elizabeth of Thuringia, persuaded the lady that she dearly needed corporal punishment for the good of her soul, applied to her naked body. And on a number of occasions. Conrad made full use of torture to extract confessions and was pleased to announce the success of his mission. Those who admitted their crimes under torture were committed to the fires, those who would not bow were tortured until they did, and then committed to the fires. There was no escape from suffering and death for any who fell into Conrad's hands. A later Pope, Boniface 8th, neatly summed up the Church's attitude: those who were accused of witchcraft were to be dealt with 'simply and squarely' without the trouble of engaging lawyers and judges.
 
From then on there was a rising toll of innocent people. However, the active persecution of suspected witches did not begin until the late 15th and early 16th century, a time of religious ferment when the Protestant revolt against Rome was stirring. But in time those same Protestants who sought to break from Rome and enjoy freedom to worship as they desired were just as active in persecuting witches who, after all, merely worshipped a different god, as were the Catholics.

In 1485 Pope Innocent 8th was moved to issue a bull directed at the extirpation of witchcraft and by the middle of the next century the witch mania was in full swing, extending into the newly-emerging Protestant realms. Interestingly, in Germany, where the forces of Rome and of Luther were somewhat in balance, the witch persecutions probably saw their most ferocious manifestations. In England Henry 8th issued a royal proclamation against witchcraft in 1542 and a further enactment, in Germany, in 1532, unleashed terrible persecution in that country.
 
Under Elizabeth 1st witchcraft was proscribed in 1453 but the law, although harsh, were in effect milder than later when James 1st ascended the throne. Elizabeth certainly believed in witchcraft, as did her great minister Burghley. Other great ones of the 16th century, thinkers like Francis Bacon, and Sir Matthew Hale, known as one of the best and wisest of English judges, and Sir Thomas Browne, a famous physician and writer, all acknowledged the power of the Witch. So did the Church's bishops to a man.
 

LANDS CONFISCATED

Offenders not only faced death but the confiscation of their lands. Indeed, in many places, especially in France and Scotland, provision was made for the costs involved in torturing and executing the prisoner to be taken from his or her estate. There are lists extant detailing such costs. For example the execution of two witches, Janet Wishart and Isobel Crocker, at Aberdeen in February 1596 resulted in the following costs:
   
20 loads of peat to burn them                            40s.0p.
    6 bushels of coal                                             24s.0p.
    4 barrels of tar                                                  26s.8p.
    Fir and iron barrels                                         16s.8p.
    Stake                                                                16s.0p.
    24 feet of hangman's rope                              4s.0p.
    Carrying peat, poles and barrels up hill       8s.4p.
    Fee for justice                                                13s.4p.
   
One account rendered included a fee of an extra ten shillings added 'for dragging another witch through the town in a cart'. The accounts for the execution of William Coke and his wife, Alison Dick, at Kilcaldy, Fife, Scotland, highlighted the grim nature of their deaths. Charges were listed for hempen coats and a tar barrel. Apparently in this area it was normal to dress the witch in a hempen coat and put her inside a tar-lined barrel to ensure a good burning. Some bills included a pricking fee and fees were levied for guarding and feeding the prisoner.

Suspected witches, male or female, young or old, were invariably tortured to seek confirmation or otherwise of commerce with the Devil. A number of manuals appeared in time, detailing the methods, i.e. the tortures and torments, whereby suspected witches could be tested. One of the earliest was Demonomania of Witches by a French monk, Jean Bodin, which appeared in 1480. Soon after this came the notorious work by Henry Kramer and James (or Jacob) Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum ('Hammer of Witches'), published in Italy in 1486 (English edition, translated by Montague Summers  issued at London in 1928).
 

DANGEROUS NONSENSE

This book was a farrago of nonsense, yet most dangerous nonsense, and people's very lives hung in the balance because of it. Typical is the following passage:

For a certain man tells that, when he had lost his member, he approached a known witch, to request that she restore it to him. She informed the afflicted man to climb up into a certain tree, and that he might take whatever he liked out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he attempted to take a large one the witch said: You must not take that one, adding, because it belonged to a parish priest.

 
The manual instructed witchfinders to use dissimulation to attain their ends. The witch 'may be promised her life  . . . provided she supply evidence which will lead to the conviction of other witches. She should be led to suppose that some other penance such as exile, will be imposed on her as punishment.' In fact, having extracted what they wanted from the poor woman, they then consigned her to life imprisonment, chained in a noisome dungeon on a bread-and-water diet. Others promised leniency found they were hustled off to the stake as soon as they had passed on the required information. The manual was also quite specific in prescribing torture at every point in the proceedings. And, like those persecuted by Conrad, there was no escape from the inevitable pain and punishment, no possibility of anyone being found innocent.
 
This manual had the full approval of the Pope of Rome, who described its authors, Kramer and Sprenger, as 'our dear sons'. It ran to at least forty editions between its publication and the mid-17th century and appeared in a number of translations. Daily life in many places became overshadowed with the gallows and the stake. A priest named Duren who lived near Bonn, Germany, early in the 17th century, wrote in despair:

Half the city must be by now implicated, for already professors, law students, pastors, canons, vicars and monks have been arrested and burnt . . . The Chancellor and his wife and the Private Secretary's wife have already been seized and executed.  On the Eve of Our Lady's Day there was executed a girl of 19 years who had the reputation of being the loveliest and most virtuous in all the city and who from her childhood had been brought up by the Prince Bishop himself. A canon from the Cathedral by the name of Rotensahe, I saw beheaded and burnt. Children of 3 and 4 years had devils as their paramours. Students and boys of noble birth, of 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 years of age, have been burnt. To sum up, things are in such a pitiful state that one does not know with what people one may talk and associate.

IRON PRESS

A later book, published at Amsterdam in 1725, described how both male and female suspects could be tested. An iron press was set up on the floor and the prisoner was laid down. The press had ridges where it touched the shin bones. It was now closed and the pressure on the shins caused intolerable pain to the person, with the bones being broken and blood flowing freely. The inquisitors who employed this method usually recorded falsely that the accused had confessed 'without torture'.

Torture was not always employed in England and elsewhere. The use of thumbscrews or whipping were not officially sanctioned but the investigators found many ways to torment the poor wretches in their power. Solitary confinement and starvation for a period would help bring a poor woman 'to her senses'. She might also be deliberately kept awake day and night for a lengthy period. These methods produced no telltale marks. There was also a curious form of binding, the thumb of the right hand being bound tightly to the big toe of the left foot and vice-versa. The victim would be left lying this way for days.

The simplest of activities might be misconstrued by the superstitious to bring about a witch conviction. Thus a woman was one day washing her dress in a river and an observer noted that she turned the pockets inside out, the better to clean them.  But this action was reported to the authorities as evidence of witchcraft. It was claimed that 'no good Christian would wash what was not visible'. She had obviously carried out this activity to please her master the Devil. She was burnt at the stake.
 

CHILD VICTIMS

In former times children as young as 5 and 6 were initiated into the covens by their parents so that they could pass on their hidden knowledge. Thus children often became the targets of the witchfinders, as they were easily induced to tell all manner of fantastic stories about suspected witches. On the Continent some of the alleged witches rounded up were as young as 8 years old. The largest group was of young girls from about 14 years of age and upwards. The youngest French witch to die was said to be an 11-year-old girl, Catherine Naguille, burnt at the stake in the 16th century, mentioned by Pierre de l'Ancre. But many young children, mainly girls, also died in England, by hanging and in Germany, as we have seen.

The executions themselves were usually cruel affairs. While some witches were hanged, the majority were burnt at the stake, especially on the Continent. This mode of execution normally involved the prisoner first being strangled, then his or her body burnt. However, in the case of witches they were often denied the swift end by strangulation and were instead burnt alive. And this could be a prolonged and cruel death, depending on how the fire was arranged. Jean Bodin wrote: 'Whatever punishment we can order against witches by roasting and cooking them over a slow fire is not really very much.'
 
A gruesome record of a Scotch witch burning in December 1608 saw a number of women 'burned quick [alive] after such a cruel manner that some of them died in despair, renouncing and blaspheming God; and others, half-burned, brake out of the fire and were cast quick in it again till they were burned to the death.'
 
In Amsterdam, in Holland, an unusual method of execution by burning was employed.  It was said to be more economical than the regular method employing a pile of faggots about a stake. A smaller fire was possible. The witch was bound to a ladder, the fire lit and then the ladder tipped over onto the fire.
 
England experienced a major wave of witch mania during the Civil War, particularly under the influence of Matthew Hopkins, known as the Witch-Finder General. It is estimated that between 1563 and 1736, about 1,000 lost their lives in England as alleged witches. In Scotland the persecution was greater and various estimates have been given of lives lost. The actual names of 1,800 witches were listed in 1938 by George F. Black, who had researched the subject, but it is generally believed that around 4,000 or more perished there. Contrast these figures with Europe where hundreds of thousands died. 

TRIALS

In the years 1590 to 1592 Dr John Fian was accused, with about 200 others, at North Berwick of using witchcraft against King James 6th of Scotland (James 1st of England). Trouble started when David Seaton, Deputy Bailiff of Tranent, East Lothian, became suspicious of the activities of one of his serving-girls, Gilly (or Gellie) Duncan. Gilly was in the habit of wandering about at night and was also credited with working miraculous healings. Seaton took it upon himself to torture the girl and examining her naked body for the Devil's mark, which he claimed he found - on her throat. Under further torture and in agony the poor girl was forced to name many others, including an older woman, Agnes Sampson, and a schoolmaster, Dr John Fian, who were accused of being involved in witchcraft.
 
In court Agnes Sampson said that the witches had been plotting against the king and they had all participated in a Sabbat for this purpose. Agnes Sampson, who was tortured by twisting a cord about her temples, among other methods, had a vivid imagination and poured forth a typical tale of amazing happenings, with witches flying through the air in sieves and the Devil himself appearing in the local church. Gilly Duncan, she said, had met the witches as they arrived and led them in a weird procession through the graveyard. Dr Fian at first escaped his persecutors but was arrested again and tortured. The thumbscrews were used on him and the boot. Both legs were crushed into a pulp, and then needles were forced up under his fingernails, which were then torn off. Eventually, and reluctantly, Dr Fian, now more dead than alive, confessed and was eventually strangled and burnt.
 
The vengeance of the outraged king knew no bounds. Many others faced court, including an extremely wealthy woman, Dame Euphemia Maclean. A number of lawyers dared even to defend her but to no avail; she was burnt alive, denying to the end that she had participated in any way in the forbidden ceremonies. When the jury dismissed the defendant in the case of Barbara Napier the king ordered the court to reassemble and demanded that the accused should be strangled and burnt forthwith, and all her property handed over to him. Thus was justice dispensed in this era. The jury were then tried on the king's orders, because they had let a witch go free. Barbara Napier was spared in the end as she pleaded pregnancy.
 

MASSACRE

Soon James enacted laws that superseded the previous milder ones carried over from Elizabeth's days. James backed his assaults with his own book, Daemonologie, in which he demanded that all witches be put to death 'according to the law of God.' Any form of witchcraft was now to be punished by death. What followed was a massacre. In the short period between 1603 and 1682 70,000 people were hanged, burned or drowned as witches. This immense figure included men, women and children, but chiefly it was women who suffered, especially, but not always, the elderly. Earlier Reginald Scot had published a book, The Discovery of Witchcraft, that cast grave doubts upon all claims of evidence of witchcraft. Now the King ordered any copies that could be found of Scot's book to be seized and burnt and made sure new print runs of his own book were issued.
  
During this era it was dangerous to carry out the slightest action that might bring suspicion upon oneself. Once accused of being a witch the path to the gallows or stake was almost certainly laid out before the poor wretch. Typical was the case of one poor girl, Joan Waterhouse, aged 18, who had the misfortune to be accused by a 12-year-old girl of bewitching her after Joan had gone to the girl's mother begging bread. The terrified girl was hauled into court and stripped naked before all eyes while she was examined for the supposed witch mark. She was, fortunately for her, acquitted, after suffering this indignity.

There was little possibility of a fair trial. On the Continent, especially, it was common for lawyers to refuse to defend a suspected witch (or heretic of any kind, for that matter), as the lawyer then laid himself open to the charge of defending heresy!  Thus the poor prisoner was left to defend himself or herself as best they could in the face of all manner of false accusations, often uttered by hysterical teenage girls, uncomprehending children, or vindictive neighbours. It was said of the tortures faced by the witches on the Continent that even the most courageous would confess to any crime and welcome death, if only they could be released from the terrible pains they suffered. The slaughter was probably greater on the Continent, too. In one area of France, at Piedmont, it was said that almost every family had lost at least one member to the fires.
  

CONTINENTAL TORTURES

The torments of the witch suspects on the Continent make grim reading. Wilhelm Pressel left a description of the torture of a woman accused of witchcraft in Germany in 1629. Early in the morning the woman was taken from her dungeon, stripped, and her hands bound. Then the hangman cut off her hair and threw alcohol over her head, setting it alight to burn the hair to the roots.  He then placed strips containing sulfur under her armpits and lit them. The woman next had a rope attached to her bound hands and was hauled up close to the ceiling and left hanging there for three hours while her jailer enjoyed a lengthy breakfast. She was then lowered again and alcohol was thrown over her back and set alight.

Again she was suspended from the ceiling, this time with heavy weights attached to her feet. The woman still refusing to confess, she was hauled down again and was forced onto a plank, which had nail-points protruding from its surface, meanwhile having her thumbs and big toes squeezed in vises. The woman fainted several times in her agony but was again hauled to the ceiling. Then her legs were squeezed in a vise and the jailer flogged her with a rawhide whip. By now it was but the middle of the day and the jailer, before going off to his lunch, put the vises back on the woman's thumbs and toes and left her for the next three hours.  Upon returning he set to with the whip again. She confessed in the end and named twenty other women who, she said, went on night flights with her to sabbats.
  
By the end of the 17th century belief in witchcraft was beginning to weaken in England but the Lord Chief Justice, Hale, maintained its existence up to 1676. Laws prescribing death for witchcraft were repealed in England early in the 18th century.  Just when the last witches died is a confused subject. Some say that the last witch execution in England saw three women hanged in Exeter on 25 August, 1682.  Others, however, say a witch, Alice Molland, was hanged at Essex, East Anglia, in 1684.  And a witchcraft trial was held in March 1712, the accused being Jane Wenham, her trial being conducted at Hertford Assizes. She was convicted and would have been executed but was granted a Royal Pardon. The amazing outbreak of witchcraft mania at SALEM, Massachusetts (USA) is treated elsewhere.

LATE TRIALS

Meanwhile, in Scotland, as late as 1722 (or 1727 in some accounts), one Janet Horne was found guilty of using her daughter as a flying horse whom the Devil had shod, making her permanently lame. She was condemned to be burnt to death in a tar-barrel at Dornoch, in Ross-shire, her daughter being released. The day of her execution was particularly cold and the official records note: 'After being brought out to execution, the weather being so severe, Janet Horne sat composedly by the fire prepared to consume her whilst other instruments of death were being got ready.' This appears to have been the last recorded trial, although there is some uncertainty in the matter. As late as 1773, the Associated Presbytery in Scotland passed a resolution declaring its firm belief in the reality of witchcraft.
 
But witchcraft trials lingered on in Germany. In 1749 a sub-prioress of a convent near Wursburg, Maria Renata, was tortured and burnt. One of the last of the German murders occurred in Bavaria in 1775 when Anna Maria Schwagel, a servant-girl, was accused of being bewitched by a coachman, with whom he had fallen in love.  Her confession to the court read more like a description of erotic love-play than witchcraft but it was enough to condemn her. She said she had participated with the coachman in sabbats dancing with other revellers. 'Our naked bodies were covered with an ointment,' she reported, 'and rare herbs were brewed which stirred us to fornication and abandoned dancing. In the moonlight we moved like wraiths above the ground, and the Master came among us, embracing all the young girls in turn.' Both girl and coachman were beheaded and their bodies burnt.

In France a priest accused of divination was burnt at Lyons in 1745 and as late as 1818 in Spain Ana Barbero suffered a penalty of 200 lashes for 'making a pact with the Devil'. In Ireland the law which made witchcraft a crime punishable by death was not repealed until 1821 and in that country towards the end of the 19th century superstitious country folk believed an old woman had been responsible for the failure of their crops. They killed the old woman. And on 3 February, 1968, a Mexican woman was accused of murdering a small girl by witchcraft. A lynch mob grabbed the woman and hanged her. Sixteen participants in the murder were later arrested.

In 1921 at St Osyth two female skeletons were unearthed, believed possibly to be the remains of two witches, Elizabeth Bennet and Ursula Kemp, executed in 1582. Iron rivets had been hammered into the knees and elbows. It is conjectured that this was done as a means of hindering their ghosts from leaving the grave. The bones were lodged in a Cornwall museum. In 1951 England's ancient Witchcraft Act was repealed.  Prior to this time the practice of witchcraft was a criminal though not a capital act, although the law had not been enforced for a long time.
 
It took a long time for wise heads to see the folly of the witch mania. But as far back as 1611 Alonso de Salazar Frias, a member of the INQUISITION, reported that he had talked to 1,800 witches, many of them making voluntary confessions.  He had also sifted through a huge quantity of testimony and had concluded:

Considering the above with all the Christian attention within my power, I have not found even indications from which to infer that one single act of witchcraft has really occurred. I also feel certain that, under present conditions, there is no need of fresh edicts or the prolongation of those existing but rather than, in the diseased state of the public mind, every agitation of the matter if harmful and increases the evil. I deduce the importance of silence, and reserve from the experience that these were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked or written about. 

His was a lone voice; nobody listened in 1611. In all, in various countries, many millions of people are believed to have perished as a result of the witch mania that seized men. And at the very forefront of the persecution of witches was the Christian Church, its zeal bolstered by reference to just one statement (Exodus 22: 18) in an ancient text, claimed to reflect the view of Yahweh.

Footnote: In 1988 a Christian fundamentalist group in Georgia, USA, charged an elementary school teacher with 'witchcraft' because she included stress-reduction training in her 3rd-grade class. In mid-April 1992 in a house in a middle-class area of Bogota, Colombia, some 45 skulls were found. Police, who found the skulls in crates, believe they may have been used in witchcraft ceremonies.

WOMEN, Attitudes towards.  The 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill in his work On the Subjection of Women denounced the prevailing views of his time. He wrote that the husband was regarded as the sovereign lord of the wife and the wife was treated as a bondservant. 'She vows a lifelong obedience to him at the altar and is held to it all through her life by law. She can do no act whatever but by his permission.' On the question of sex Mill continued:

. . . a female slave has in Christian countries an admitted right and is considered under a moral obligation to refuse her master the last familiarity. Not so the wife.  However brutal a tyrant she may be chained to, though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to loathe him, he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of the human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclination. 
While she is held in this worst description of slavery as to her own person, what is her position in regard to the children in whom she and her master have a joint interest? They are by law his children. He alone has any legal right over them.
 

Even actual physical chastisement of the wife was considered lawful in 'Christian' Britain and in an earlier era English women had actually been sold in the marketplace. In the middle of the 19th century an American husband might legally have his wife's earnings paid to him and she had no right to custody of her own person or her children.  If divorced the woman forfeited all right to the property, even if she contributed to it or it was originally hers. English common law still operated in every state except Louisiana and according to this a man might beat his wife to the point of endangering her life without being liable to prosecution. It was not unknown for a husband to have a wife shut up in an insane asylum. This was easily accomplished.
 
In his book Slavery Ordained of God (1857), a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. F.A. Ross, D.D., said:

Do you say, the slave is held in involuntary servitude? So is the wife. Her relation to her husband, in the immense majority of cases, is made for her, and not by her. And when she makes it for herself, how often, and how soon, does it become involuntary!  How often, and how soon, would she throw off the yoke if she could!

Oh ye wives, I know how superior you are to your husbands in many respects - not only in personal attraction . . . in grace, in refined thought, in passive fortitude, in enduring love, and in a heart to be filled with the spirit of heaven . . . Nay, I know you may surpass him in his own sphere of boasted prudence, and worldly wisdom about dollars and cents. Nevertheless he has authority from God to rule over you . . . You are bound to obey him in all things.

Your service is very, very, very often involuntary from the first, and, if voluntary at first, becomes hopeless necessity afterwards. I know God has laid upon the husband to love you as Christ loved the church . . . But the husband may not so love you. He may rule you with a rod of iron. What can you do? Be divorced? God forbid it, save for crime. Will you say that you are free, that you will go where you please, do as you please? Why ye dear wives, your husband may forbid. And listen, you cannot leave New York, nor your palaces, any more than your shanties.
 
No; you cannot leave your parlor, nor your bedchamber, nor your couch, if your husband commands you to stay there. What can you do? Will you run away with your stick and bundle? He can advertise you! What can you do? You can, and I fear some of you do, wish him, from the bottom of your hearts at the bottom of the Hudson.

Do you say the slave is sold and bought? So is the wife, the world over . . .  the New England man, the New Yorker - especially the upper ten - buy the wife - in many, very many cases. She is seldom bought in the South, and never among the slaves themselves; for they always marry for love . . . Old ugly brute, with gray goatee - how fragrant -bids one, two, five, ten thousand dollars, and she is knocked off to him - that beautiful young girl asleep up there, amid flowers, and innocent that she is sold and bought. Sir, that young girl would as soon permit a baboon to embrace her, as that old, ignorant, gross, disgusting wretch to approach her.

Ah, has she not been sold and bought for money? But - But what? But, you say, she freely, and without parental authority accepted him. Then she sold herself for money, and was guilty of that which is nothing better than legal prostitution. I know what I say; you know what I say. Up there in the gallery you know: You nod to one another. Ah! you know the parties. Yes, you say - All true, true, true.

The lot of women, even today, is a hard one in many countries. In 1993 a Saudi women have been beaten and stoned for the simple act of trying to drive a car, forbidden to Saudi women. Others in some Islamic countries are beaten for refusing to wear a veil. The lot of the Indian village wife is not always a happy one. Not only is she almost invariably married to a man she did not choose for herself, not even having met him before the wedding, but she is expected to treat her husband as a godlike figure with complete dominion over her. She is not allowed to talk to her father-in-law or her husband's elder brother and is expected to have her head covered in the presence of any male.
 
The Hindu husband may beat his wife for any reason as he sees fit and the wife generally accepts this as 'normal' behaviour in marriage. Beatings in many households are quite frequent. The women are generally confined to the house, although may be removed from it during menstruation. They defer to their husbands in all things, even eating their meals only after their husbands have eaten. No Jewish women were allowed to give testimony in legal cases unless supported by two other witnesses.   

WOMEN PRIESTS. In the early 1990s a considerable controversy erupted within the Anglican Church over the role of women in the institution. There was a determined movement seeking ordination as priests for women. In February 1993 the last obstacle to this in Britain was removed when the General Synod passed amendments to its laws. The first ordinations were to be held in April. Already in Australia some Anglican dioceses had allowed women to be ordained. But in both countries and elsewhere there was bitter debate on the issue. Many priests and laity threatened to leave the Church and join the Church of Rome if women were ordained. Two ends of the theological spectrum - Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic joined hands over this issue, both claiming that the Bible does not allow women to exercise authority over men.
 
Soon after the British move a statement was released by five bishops and 570 clergy declaring they would leave the Anglican Church and seek to join the Roman Catholic Church. The group is known as Forward in Faith. Observers claimed at the time that the departing clerics would cost the Church some £55 million in compensation. A speaker in Synod, the Reverend Paul Williamson, cried out loudly as the Archbishop of Canterbury signed the document: 'You have just lost the Church of England and its assets. We will have this contested in every court in Europe.'

Married priests were reportedly awaiting confirmation from Rome that they could be employed as priests in the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, in May 1994, Pope John Paul 2nd reaffirmed his Church's stance on banning women from the priesthood. The Pope issued a letter to Catholic Bishops titled On Reserving Priestly Ordination to Men Alone' and demanded in strong terms that 'this judgment is to be definitively held.'  Large numbers of people in the Catholic Church were dismayed upon hearing this latest statement.
 
The Eastern Orthodox churches maintain a strong stand against women being ordained. 

WORLD CHURCH, The. A Los Angeles based sect led by O. L. Jaggers. Jaggers claimed that he had been given an exact formula for a miracle oil than brought eternal life on earth to believers. 

WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES. The late Mr B.A. Santamaria (a prominent Australian Catholic) considered the WCC to have 'long since forfeited any claim to be regarded as a religious organization.' Among other criticisms levelled at the WCC over many years was that the WCC simply acted as spokesman for Soviet foreign policy. It was completely silent on the brutal suppression of religious faith in Communist countries, even including the grim regime of Ceausescu in Romania. The WCC has long espoused radical left-wing causes around the world, has almost always opposed anything the USA or Britain has done on the world scene and is a thoroughly discredited body. Its religious views are so broad as to have lost any semblance of Christianity in any meaningful sense of that name; it is, rather, in effect a body devoted to pantheism.' 

Other observers agreed with Santamaria's outburst, including the Reverend James Murray, writing in a religious affairs column in The Australian. It is 'an entirely political body with an ideological agenda,' he said. Invited to attend the world assembly meetings in Canberra in early 1991 were three Muslims, two Jews, two Buddhists, two Hindus, one Shinto representative, and two Sikhs, among others. The assembly needed no less than 320 staff members (i.e., not delegates) to operate.

WORLD VISION. Around the year 1983 it was revealed that Australian men had been supporting orphans through World Vision and Foster Parents' Plan so as to visit them and have sex with them. It was known that at least two men had sponsored four Filipino boys and had later travelled to the Philippines and had sex with them. It is claimed one Australian spent up to two weeks in a hotel room with a young boy. World Vision mounted an immediate attack on the problem. There is no suggestion that the organization was aware of the activities of the men.

WOTAN. Highest of the Teutonic gods.

WRIGHT, Keith. Mr Keith Wright, prominent declared Christian and Federal Labor MLA for the seat of Capricornia (Queensland) was charged in August 1992 on ten counts involving alleged sexual activities with teenage girls. Mr Wright was in the Queensland Parliament for 15 years and for a period was Leader of the Labor Opposition. Altogether he was been in political life for 23 years. He began his career as a teacher. Following the formal laying of charges in court in November Mr Wright refused to resign from his party or step down. The Labor Party National Executive called an urgent meeting by phone and decided to withdraw Mr Wright's endorsement. The Brisbane Courier-Mail newspaper published [selectively, according to Mr Wright] a letter he wrote to one of the alleged victims, in which he said: 'I cannot describe the shame and guilt I feel.'

Wright is reportedly a 'born again' Baptist, lay preacher and well known as a vocal high-profile crusader against pornography and child abuse! At a news conference called in Rockhampton in December Mr Wright quoted the Bible verse, 'My times are in God's hands'. He was eventually tried and convicted and sentenced to a term in prison.

WYCLIFFE BIBLE TRANSLATORS. A rabid US-based fundamentalist Christian group, also using the name Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). A missionary organization devoted not only to translating the Bible into native languages but of 'saving souls' in remote countries. In the early 1970s they were working in Ecuador in a remote jungle region and were accused of being involved in plans by mining companies to exploit the area. The nomadic Indians were herded into compounds so they could 'learn about God's love'. To move into these places, operated conveniently by SIL, was, they were told, 'God's will'. The Auca tribe was almost eliminated by a sudden epidemic of polio soon after the missionaries arrived in their area. Significantly, oil had just been discovered there! 

XAVIER, Saint Francis. Can we ever discover the truth about the life of Saint Francis Xavier, one of the great figures of Catholicism? Born in 1506, Xavier abandoned a promising career, travelled to the east, and worked in India and Japan in the service of the Church. After just twelve years of dedicated service, however, Xavier became ill and died, weakened no doubt by his strenuous activities. The year was 1552. Thus we have the basic facts of his life. Naturally such a significant life is treated by many biographers. And, indeed, there was a great deal of material to work on. Xavier himself wrote many letters and reports, as did other workers and observers during the period of his labours. The total is quite large.

Thirty-six years after his death a biography of the saint (as I shall describe him, although he had not yet been lifted to this exalted status) was included in a book called History of India, compiled by a Jesuit father. This book briefly mentions miracles but does not go into great detail. Then, in 1596, appeared a work by Father Tursellinus, The Life of Xavier. The number and variety of miracles had grown somewhat in this book. They included curing the sick, casting out devils, stilling the tempest, and raising the dead!

By 1622, seventy years after Xavier's death, when Cardinal Monte preached at the canonization service in Rome, the list had grown even longer. Together with numerous lesser miracles, Cardinal Monte listed ten great wonders. Among these were the following: By the sign of the cross, Xavier had made sea water fresh, so that fellow-passengers and crew could drink it; on one occasion he was lifted bodily from the earth and transfigured before onlookers; to punish a blaspheming town he caused an earthquake and buried the offenders in cinders; a crucifix lost overboard from a ship, was restored to him on shore by a crab; and, after death, lamps placed before the saint's image, filled with holy water, burning as if filled with oil.

There followed, as with most saints, a long series of written 'lives'. As the years passed each new 'life' expanded greatly the store of the saint's miracle-working powers. As an example, in the 1596 book the story is told of Xavier needing some money. A friend, Vellio, gave him the key to his safe. Xavier took three hundred gold pieces, leaving the balance, 29,700 pieces. Vellio reproached Xavier for not taking more. Xavier whereupon told Vellio that because of his generous impulse the time of Vellio's death would be revealed to him, to afford him ample opportunity for repentance. In the version of the same story in 1622 (note, only 26 years later), Vellio opens the safe to find all the money there. It is a miraculous restitution! And to the message regarding Vellio's death is added a promise that the strongbox shall always be full of money. The story was expanded even further in later works. Note, in passing, the precise detail in each of these stories.

But probably the classic biography of Saint Francis Xavier was issued in 1682, one hundred and thirty years after the saint's death, by Father Dominic Bouhours. Not only did all the old miracles reappear in this work, but they were enormously multiplied and many new ones added. 'Miracles small and few in Tursellinus became great and many in Bouhours,' is the apt comment from Andrew Dickson White, to whom I am deeply indebted for much of this account of Xavier (A History of the Warfare of Science With Theology). 

In the first work Xavier saves one person from drowning, in the second it is three people; in the first Xavier raises four persons from the dead (which figure, note, was already an advance on earlier accounts), in the second, the figure has jumped to no less than fourteen;  in the first book, Xavier is transfigured twice, in the second five times, and so the list continues. Now it must be remembered that Bouhours was writing ninety years after Tursellinus and could not have had access to new sources.  Xavier had been dead one hundred and thirty years and all those upon whom the miracles were worked were dead, as were their children and grandchildren.
 
But surely, one might ask, aren't some of these related in Xavier's own writings or in those of his contemporaries? But no, amazingly, not one word of miracle enters these accounts. Xavier himself makes no claim whatever to being a miracle-worker. The nearest we come to anything remotely like miracle is the mention by Xavier, on three occasions, of providential experiences, where he thought he saw the hand of GOD at work.

These were comments such as any missionary, Catholic or Protestant, might make in letters to the folks at home. One example: While travelling with an ambassador to Europe, a servant got into deep water and was in danger of being drowned. Earnest prayers were made by the ambassador and the man finally struggled from the stream. This is Xavier's own account. But the biographers were not content. Like over-enthusiastic tabloid editors, they ran the story with Xavier praying, not the ambassador, and informed the world that the saint had lifted horse and rider out of the stream by a supernatural act.

And lastly, shortly before his death stories began to circulate in which he was said to have brought about resurrections from the dead. At first it was affirmed that 'some people from Cape Comorin' said he had raised one  person; then it was said there were two people; in time it became four. Finally, as we have seen, it swelled in number to fourteen! Not just fourteen 'people' but all given names, with locations and circumstances detailed! And, to cap all this off, there was even a story noised abroad to explain why the saint had not referred to his miracles in his own writings.

YAHWEH. The transliteration 'yahweh' is closer to the original than the old English version, Jehovah. He is the Hebrew tribal deity.

YOGI. In May 1949 Indian yogi Djanah Burmah entered a coffin with 30 snakes and stayed there, fasting, for 45 days. He emerged alive; all the snakes died. He then re-entered the coffin and took with him two pythons; they lived, and so did he. Grateful well-wishers among his French audience showed their appreciation with money gifts.  An Indian newspaper carried this story in 1935: A young Hindu yogi entered a trance state in a hollow structure measuring 16 ft square and 5 ft high. The entrance was blocked with a stone, cemented into place and a guard posted. According to instructions, on the 45th day, the wall was broken through, the man removed and massaged with oil; he recovered. On a previous occasion one of his hands was almost eaten away by white ants while he was in the trance state. 

ZARATHUSTRA. See under: ZOROASTRIANISM.

ZEN BUDDHISM. In the 6th century CE a Buddhist missionary, Bodhidharma spread a body of mystical doctrine which resulted in the formation of the Zen sect of Buddhism. 

ZINA LAWS. (Or ZENA).  A report early in 1990 said that half the prisoners in Pakistani jails were women there for 'sex offences'. These were called ZINA. For adultery or premarital sex the sentence was a maximum of 10 years. Offenders might also be whipped with up to 100 stripes in public. An 18-year-old teenage love affair brought a sentence of 3 years. Pakistanis quote the KORAN: 'Let not compassion move you' in administering such laws. It is allowed for men to take up to four wives but a woman must not take a lover. Cases arise where women are killed by husbands and courts have set the husband free because the husband pleaded his wife's 'bad character.'

Arranged marriages are the rule in villages. In a case where a girl refused a man the family invaded the home and dragged the girl away. They ripped off her clothes, beat her and marched her to their home, where she was raped by four family males. The police refused even to register her complaint as under Muslim law it requires four Muslim male witnesses to testify! On the other hand, female rape victims themselves are often jailed, as the courts take the male side.
 
The Zina laws strike even at women walking in the street with a male friend. In one case a couple went to jail for five years and received 15 stripes for sitting together in a room. These laws were proclaimed by President Zia who proclaimed: 'Sex outside marriage is a crime against the State.' But rich men and women who transgress are not convicted, only poor people. Someone has well commented: 'Every dictator uses religion as a prop to keep himself in power.'

ZOLOTOV, Boris. Russian 'sex messiah' and spiritual healer who gained a large following between 1992 and 1994. According to Mr Zolotov he gained his spiritual insights after he had become involved with researching the emotions of dolphins. By mid-1994 he had an enthusiastic following, mainly women, for his cult. Among other teachings he urged disciples to roll naked in the snow (a common practice in Russia and Finland), after taking a hot bath. Under his teachings disciples experienced mass simultaneous orgasms, which, the preacher claimed, are produced by telepathy. His meetings are not dissimilar to American REVIVALS, with masses of screaming, swaying and falling-down women experiencing the joys of the possession of sexual and emotional ecstasy.    

ZOMBIES. Living-dead humans, believed to be created as a result of Voodoo magic. The name is of African origin. Between the years 1917 and 1927 a zombie-like epidemic affected millions of people around the world. This was encephalitis lethargica, or viral sleeping sickness. It is said millions died as a result of the infection, while those who survived often developed a zombie-like condition, their bodies and minds in a trance state. Some of these people continued to live like this for as long as 40 years, virtually helpless, speechless and motionless. Some developed rigidity, tremor and problems with balance.
 
In the late 1960s, Dr Oliver Sachs, of New York's Mt Carmel Hospital, began administering L-Dopa (used for Parkinson's Disease, which has similar symptoms) to these people and in the summer of 1969 all of the patients 'awakened'. A book by Dr Sachs, Awakenings, detailing the amazing story, was published in 1973 (reissued in a revised edition in Picador, 1990).  See also: VOODOO.

ZOROASTRIANISM. 
Zarathustra is the form of the Prophet's name now in general use. Zoroaster was derived from the corrupt Greek version of the original Iranian name, although the religion itself is still referred to as Zoroastrianism (or sometimes Mazdaism). About the Prophet's birth and early life we know little. Doubt has been expressed as to his very existence, but this is so with Jesus, too. The general weight of scholarly opinion has it that Zarathustra was a real person. Mind you, as with Jesus, a mass of miracle and fantasy overlays such details as we have concerning his life. He was probably a native of Media, but enters history living in eastern Persia (roughly Iran today). The date of his birth is uncertain. It could have been around 660 BCE but some think it may have been as early as 1,000 BCE.
 
To read through Zarathustra's life, such as we have of it, is like reading through Muhammad's life, but written one thousand years before the Arabian Prophet came onto the world stage. The events are mostly familiar, being repeated in the later story. Many of Zarathustra's early converts came from his own family. Opposition to his teachings was stirred up by the established priesthood and progress was at first slow. In time, as with Muhammad, rulers were won over to the new faith and progress thereafter was more rapid. And, like Muhammad, Zarathustra was intolerant of what he felt were false faiths. The sword was employed to enforce belief.
 
The religion of the Zoroastrians was enshrined in a large volume of writings gathered together in the 3rd century CE, much of which has since been lost. These scriptures were known by the collective title of the Avesta (or Zend-Avesta, meaning 'commentary and text'). That which remains (some being compiled from the earlier fragments) comprises five parts. The Yasna is a liturgy recited by the priests, with the Vispered, a supplement used on certain occasions. The Vendidad is a book of law, dealing with clean and unclean objects and purifications. The Yashts are a collection of hymns to the deities. Finally the Khordah Avesta is a collection of prayers for private use by both priests and laity.

THE GATHAS

Inserted into the Yasna (chapters 28 to 54) are the Gathas. These are metrical texts, written in a different dialect to the rest of the scriptures. This section is considered the oldest and most sacred part of the book, being the utterances of Zarathustra himself or the revelations of GOD, Ahura Mazda through the Prophet. (As with the god worshipped by Christians, the name varies somewhat through the ages. The Parsee descendants of the Zoroastrians worship Ahura Mazda under the name Ormazd.) At the head of this important section of the scriptures we find the typical appeal to revelation: 'The Revealed Thought, the Revealed Word, the Revealed Deed of Zarathustra the Holy; the Archangels first sang the Gathas.'
 
Zarathustra, we are told, found at length a ready hearer in the person of someone called King Vishtaspa, although such a royal figure is not to be found in known chronologies. Be that as it may, the Prophet now began to proclaim his message. Zarathustra declares that the chief deity, Ahura Mazda (the 'Wise Lord') has revealed himself to the Prophet. Regrettably we have only sketchy details of this particular revelation to a prophet. It would have been of great interest to compare in fuller detail the revelation given to Zarathustra with that given to others of his ilk.

The Gathas imbedded within the Avesta are claimed to be the precise words of the Prophet as he proclaimed the faith.  Such certainty has a familiar ring to it. Similar claims were made of Muhammad's words, not to mention many others. Zarathustra says of himself that he received a commission from Ahura Mazda to purify religion (Yasna 44:9). Apparently the revelations came to him as he tended the sacred flame at the altar. The god, chief of the pantheon of Iranian deities, revealed to him the word which he proclaims now to men. It was brought, as it was to Muhammad, through the agency of an angel. It is Zarathustra's mission to teach men to obey Ahura Mazda and strive after what is termed the Right (Asha), through which they shall gain the best of both this world and the one to come.
 
Thus, if the hearer is to be saved, he or she must believe Zarathustra's message.  Only then shall be avoided the terrible fate awaiting unbelievers in the coming destruction of the world. Zarathustra is the chosen messenger and only true teacher of righteousness. In the Gathas believers are exhorted to chastise with the sword those who worship 'other gods'. But the exclusiveness here claimed is repeated ad nauseum  in the messages of many 'teachers of righteousness'. Zarathustra believed his calling as Prophet occurred in 'the fulness of time,' that is, just when such a person was needed in history to proclaim the truth of Ahura Mazda to mankind at large. The same would be said in his day of Jesus and his proclamation of the truth of Yahweh.

DOCTRINES

Now when we turn to the doctrines of the Zoroastrian religion we come across one particularly fascinating and dramatic word-picture. In the teachings concerning the Last Judgment there appears the image of a bridge, the Cinvat Bridge, sometimes known as the accountant's bridge, stretching from mountain peak to mountain peak, spanning the abyss of hell. It is the bridge of the Judge and over it must pass each soul; the righteous, those whose good works outweigh bad ones, find it a broad way to Paradise. The wicked, however, find it to be as narrow as a knife-edge and pitch headlong from it into the depths of hell. (There are interesting parallels to this bridge story in early European folk motifs and especially in North American Indian religion.)

Zoroastrianism itself was a bridge, a vital link between East and West, the old and the new. It inherited the complex religious thought of Persia and Mesopotamia, which had in turn both influenced strongly and been influenced by the religions of the East, especially those of India. And it summed all this up in a new (and for a relatively short period of time) dynamic faith that was to have a profound influence upon those yet to come.
 
Zarathustra, like Muhammad, turned the people's attention from the multitude of gods they worshipped to the one Supreme Being. And Ahura Mazda was, like the gods of Egypt, no mere idol of silver and gold but 'immortal, invisible,' as too were Yahweh and Allah. In Mazdaism no images of the deity were worshipped, although Ahura Mazda figured in relief in monuments, just as Yahweh (the Father) appears in Christian art.

Nevertheless, there was in this religion what we might term vestigial gods, remnants of earlier deities and personified forces. In this regard Muhammad in his time was to prove more dogmatic in proclaiming but one god. (Although Islam does have its angels and jinns, both personified forces.) The religion founded by Zarathustra was, however, essentially monotheistic. Indeed, Zarathustra apparently taught that many of the ancient deities, including Indra, Saura, Tauru and Zairi, were in fact evil beings, deadly foes of the forces of righteousness. Clear echoes of this Zoroastrian doctrine are to be found in Ephesians 6:12 in the Christian Bible: 'For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.'

WORLD HISTORY

The Zoroastrian scheme of world history divided it into four 3,000-year periods. In the first, Ahura Mazda created spirits, in which form this creation existed for the 3,000 years free from corruption. The second period saw the creation of the material world. In the third period Angra Mainyu (also called Ahriman), the demon of destruction (reminiscent of Siva in some respects), enters history. Humanity thereafter is plagued with evil. In the beginning of the fourth period of 3,000 years Zarathustra the Prophet appears. This last period closes with the final Judgment.
 
Angra Mainyu is not the only source of evil in the Zoroastrian pantheon of devils.  There are other evil forces at work. There is also a good spirit, corresponding to the Christian (Holy) Ghost. The whole Mazdain concept strongly emphasizes the conflict between good and evil, with the ultimate triumph of good, themes to reappear in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions, where the actual phraseology of Zoroastrianism is echoed. The very familiar Babylonian-Jewish myth of the Flood reappears in Zoroastrianism as a terrible winter, of ice-age-like proportions, in which all plant, animal and human life is destroyed. Into a great shelter-shed are taken choice specimens of plants, animals and human beings (presumably believers), two of every kind, to replenish the earth.
 
We must bear in mind when reading such tales that their origins have long been lost in the mists of time. No doubt such stories start off in a very rudimentary form, based on perhaps minor natural events, the details being developed as they are passed on by word of mouth from generation to generation and from place to place. Thus when they emerge out of folklore into recorded history at various points in time and among different peoples the details appear at first sight to differ markedly one from the other; closer inspection reveals the inner links and the common origins.
 
In our own time certain elements of this same mythology are seen in stories concerning UFOs and their role in the future of the human race. There is no new thing under the sun, as the Preacher well said (Ecclesiastes 1:9).

DEMONS SENT

Another highly interesting episode is the report that when Zarathustra entered the world Angra Mainyu sent demons to kill him. The Zoroastrian Devil seeks to tempt the Prophet by promising him dominion over countries far and wide if he will but abjure the good law of Ahura Mazda. The close parallel to the story concerning Jesus (Matthew 4:8-11) hardly needs pointing out.
 
Zarathustra preached that men must choose between good and evil in the endless struggle waged by Angra Mainyu against Ahura Mazda. Humans are animated by Vohu Mano (Good Mind) or Akem Mano  (Evil Mind). The dark forces of the world are responsible for the evils of drought, the blast of icy winter, the onslaughts of marauders, destruction wrought by beasts of prey and all manner of illness and evil.

Little knowledge has come down to us of the organization of the Zoroastrian church. We do know, however, that there was a priestly hierarchy, headed by the Zarathushtrotema, the Prophet's vicar on earth, a figure not unlike the Pope of Rome.  The priests are in the Avesta described (with but one exception) as Athravan (fire-priests).
 
The Greeks used the term Magi to describe the Zoroastrian priests, a name later used by the Parsees, the small group that inherited what finally remained of the Zoroastrian faith. These Magi reappear in the Jewish Old Testament and in the Christian New. In the latter they are said to have put in an appearance in Jerusalem seeking knowledge concerning the birth of Jesus. Curiously, the New Testament later uses the same term, Magi ('Wise Men') in a derogatory sense, where the English version translates the name as sorcerer!  These same Magi reappear later in history in occult lore.
 
Both from those earlier writings that have been preserved to us and from modern Parsee worship we gain a picture of Zoroastrian ceremonies and beliefs. A central feature was the fire-shrine, in which a sacred fire was kept burning upon an altar, tended by the fire-priests.  Early reliefs picture the king standing before the fire-altar under an open sky.  The fire itself is fed with carefully selected wood.  Modern Parsees uses sandalwood, and services are held five times a day.
 

SACRED FIRE

The sacred fire was a gift from Ahura Mazda. It symbolized light and purity and was inherited from earlier Aryan religion. Thus, Zarathustra himself was said to be tending a fire-altar already in existence when Ahura Mazda revealed himself. It is through this fire worship that we see one of the many strong links between the religion of India and that of Persia. One of the greatest gods of the Rig-Veda (the ancient Hindu scriptures) is Agni (ignis). This god is fire personified in all its forms in heaven and upon earth. In over two hundred hymns in the Rig-Veda, Agni is lauded. A curious link with water is also formed in these poetic outbursts. In the lightning breaking from the clouds in the rain-drenched sky Agni is born and reborn, descending to earth in the lightning-bolt.
 
The other major feature of Zoroastrian worship is the preparation and offering of the sacred liquor, Haoma. Once again we have here a strong link between East and West. The Haoma offering corresponds almost exactly with that of Soma, the libation of the gods in Hindu worship. Haoma was prepared by pounding twigs of the sacred plant in a mortar and mixing the resulting fluid with milk and water, to produce a heady, intoxicating brew. (Perhaps Zarathustra's prophecies resulted from imbibing too much of the sacred stuff!).

In the Indian ceremonies Soma is thought of as a god, like Agni, divine power personified. Worshippers exclaim: 'We have drunk the soma, we have become immortal, we have come to the light, we have found the gods; what can enmity do to us now, and what malice of mortal, O immortal?' Along with the offering of Haoma, the priests also partook of small cakes, with butter or fat to represent animal sacrifice. In the Christian institution of the Eucharist (or Communion) we see yet again, under the elements of bread and wine, strong echoes of sacrificial feasts to the gods of old.
 
At a practical level, the Zoroastrian faith had strict moral laws, prefiguring those of Muhammad. Sexual licence was frowned upon and transgressors harshly treated.  Like Jews and Muslims, the Zoroastrians were obsessed with certain objects and states of existence thought to be clean or unclean. Unclean things included menstruating women, women in childbirth and diseases such as leprosy. Chief of the unclean states of being was death itself and, accordingly, ceremonies were conducted to cleanse anyone who had become unclean by reason of contamination from such sources. It was thought that demonic influences produced these unclean states.  Jews, Muslims and many Christians still today cling to such superstitious notions.
 

DEATH RITUALS

When a person was approaching death a priest visited him, as in Roman Catholic practice, the dying person confessing his sins and receiving into his mouth a few drops of Haoma. As dead bodies were considered to be unclean, the Zoroastrians practised exposure, rather than burial or cremation. For this purpose they erected what were known as Towers of Silence, upon which the body was laid and exposed to the vultures. This was one Mazdain practice not followed by later religions.
 
After death the soul of the righteous person was thought to linger three days and three nights near the head of the body. A reiteration of this belief clearly surfaced in the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus, when that drama was recorded hundreds of years later. In fact the statement was in Jesus' case untrue as, even if we assume his body vanished, it was not in the tomb for three days and three nights!   But St Matthew who said this (12:14), or whoever wrote the Gospel's words, clearly reflected very ancient beliefs. They possibly even predated the coming of the Persian Prophet. Be that as it may, in the Zoroastrian system the soul, at the end of the three days and nights, passes on its way towards the realms of endless light in the presence of Ahura Mazda, having numerous adventures along the way which, naturally, crosses the Cinvat Bridge. The wicked who die also wait three days, before passing on their way to horrendous punishments, and to await further wrath on the great Judgment Day.
 
Like all religions deriving their authority from prophetic revelation, Zoroastrians saw in those who were either unbelievers or heretics (false believers) enemies of their god. The Zoroastrian picture of the Judgment Day conveys in dramatic terms a scenario in which the powers of evil shall be delivered into the hands of the righteous.  But this is not quite the end of the human saga in the visions of Zarathustra. The eschatology of Zoroastrianism is every bit as colourful and dramatic as that of Christianity. For a Saviour is yet to appear, and isn't that an interesting thought for every Christian believer?
 
  When the prophet Zarathustra began to unfold to the world the revelation he had received from GOD - that is, from the god who had revealed himself to Zarathustra, Ahura Mazda, he was unleashing religious concepts that were to play a role that has never been fully acknowledged by the three great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But they derive far more from the Persian prophet than they are ever willing to admit. (Religion is not quite so self-effacing as it claims.) No wonder even today Islam persecutes the Parsees, inheritors of Zoroastrianism. Such a dogmatic religion as Islam can never afford to acknowledge its debt to another faith. Older Muslim writers, however, believed Zarathustra to be equated with Abraham. It hardly needs stating that such a connection is an absurdity. In any event Abraham was probably a mythological figure.

The Zoroastrian religion is today a shadow of its former great self. It has gone the way ALL religions go eventually (and Christianity is well on the way to extinction; give it another 500 or so years). In India a small remnant, the Parsees, maintain the faith, and here and there others do likewise, the world total of adherents being put at about 200,000. In July 1994 a Sydney (Australia) congregation of Zoroastrians opened their own temple, at Annangrove, north-west of the city.