The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'robed figures magic ritual.'
One of the most popular books on wanttoknow.info is Timothy M. Silver's Lifting the Veil. This is is overall a well-researched and impressive book. It convincingly argues that our political system is a 'pathocracy' that employs increasingly ubiquitous manipulative devices to secure and grow the power of a small group of people at the expense of everyone else, and highlights patterns of corruption that are essential for any student of deep politics to understand. Here are the chapter titles:
Memories, Repressed or Implanted?
While the vast majority of Lifting the Veil can be recommended unqualified, it makes a couple of statements that do not quite seem to hold up under scrutiny. In Chapter 13: Cults and Child Abuse (The False Memory Hoax), Silver writes, "People rarely stop to ask the question, who exactly are the members of the FMSF (False Memory Syndrome Foundation), and how solid is their science?"
The FMSF has since disbanded. The debate around the issue of repressed vs false memories cooled off. On one side are advocates of the theory that 'repressed memory syndrome' is responsible for an epidemic of therapy-driven 'recovered memories' of 'satanic ritual abuse' (SRA). On the other side are proponents of the idea that all such recovered memories are therapist-implanted 'false memories.' The FMSF crowd falls into this category.
The debate between these two camps has taken place in the media, in courtrooms, within political institutions, and among scientists. As Silver asserts, it is telling that many of the personalities driving the FMSF can be connected to intelligence agency programs and known pedophilia advocates. But part of the reason for the success of the FMSF's public relations campaign is that this campaign had a fair amount of solid science behind it. For example, if the question is whether or not a false memory can be implanted, the answer is that it can.
The powers that be know all about false memories. Tools exploiting our susceptibility to memory manipulation are used regularly to extort false confessions, manipulate witness testimony to influence the outcomes of investigations, and selectively rewrite history in the minds of individuals or groups of people.
So the perpetrators of the 'false memory hoax' didn't need to lie about the science. They merely needed to produce a few examples of therapists that used memory recovery techniques that could be shown to sometimes implant or recover false memories. They also produced a few examples of SRA claims that were provably untrue, then used the media to associate all claims of SRA with these examples, thereby creating the public perception that all such claims were inherently not credible.
The investigations triggered by the public outcry that this debate provoked did find a large volume of verifiable ritual abuse claims, but the vast majority of these were connected with traditional religious beliefs.
SRA
Is Satanic Ritual Abuse a threat to communities across the country? I sort of doubt it, but many have feared SRA since the satanic panic decades ago. Consider the 1994 Final Report to the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect titled 'Characteristics and Sources of Allegations of Ritualistic Child Abuse,' which said:
"Lay and professional worries about children being abused in ungodly ritualistic ways have resulted in new legislation in several states that makes "satanic" or "ritualistic" abuse punishable more severely than abuse that does not have anti-religious connotations. Our results suggest, however, that religion-related abuse is actually more common than satanic abuse. As one of our respondents, the head of a child and adolescent psychiatry unit at a prominent mental health center, commented: "I am convinced that the publicity about ritual abuse has led to unfounded beliefs in many people. The cases I report herein are ... bad enough situations without having the general population alarmed about some sort of satanic conspiracy." We agree. Our research leads us to believe that there are many more children being abused in the name of God than in the name of Satan."
Also consider that in 1992, a Supervisory Special Agent with the Behavioral Science Unit National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime at the FBI wrote in a report that he was "concerned about the credibility of the child sexual abuse issue and outraged that, in some cases, individuals are getting away with molesting children because we can’t prove they are satanic devil worshippers who engage in brainwashing, human sacrifice, and cannibalism as part of a large conspiracy." His entire report clarifies the complex issues around investigating SRA, and is available here.
The Occult Conflation
With regard to the occult connection, Lifting the Veil incorrectly conflates the 'Satanic' in SRA with the occult in general. The misinterpretation of Aliester Crowley's writing and role in SRA/trauma-based mind control practices is particularly glaring. Crowley spoke and wrote about individual sovereignty, and adamantly opposed any practice that impinged upon any person's free will. His most popular quote is: "Love is the law; Love under will."
Chapter 13 of Lifting the Veil states: "The idea of active widespread satanic and other occult activity in the United States certainly seems ludicrous. But there is an historical precedent. Consider these two quotes from the works of Aleister Crowley, founder of the Church of Satan in the year 1900..."
Silver calls Michael Aquino a satanist after Crowley, which is sort of like calling Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh a Christian after protestant reformer Martin Luther. It doesn't quite fit. In fact, it was not Crowley but Anton LaVey who founded the modern Church of Satan, from which Michael Aquino broke to found the Temple of Set in 1975. At this time, Aquino began recasting Crowley's work to make it seem more aligned with Aquino's satanic dogma than it actually was.
Personally, I regard the occult as psychology plus theater. I don't know if Crowley was good or bad, but I know he wrote theatrically, in symbols rather than in ideas to be taken literally. Drawing a line from him to any modern CSA network is a stretch.
Conclusion
Silver has done us a great service by so succinctly introducing the pathocracy and some of its more egregious crimes against humanity. Although I disagree with some of the book's ideas, the work makes for an excellent crash course in our society's dark side. I recommend it, but it's pure nightmare fuel, not casual reading.
The connections between the pathocracy and the occult warrant further investigation. From Bohemian Grove to the strange design of Epstein's island temple, there are examples of elites embracing some kind of occultism. At the same time, various occult practices help countless people every day. And most satanists I know are kind of assholes but basically harmless, like Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley.
Read my novels:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS and as a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt.
- The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
See my NFTs:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
- History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
- Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.