Herbert W Armstrong

   In this age of Lunar Landing, Skylab, the technology and science millions have, it seems, lost their heads over demonism, satanism, witchcraft, and the occult. This is the age of the dawning of Aquarius and the age of the waning of science or at least so it seems with millions upon millions of people becoming more and more involved in astrology, horoscopes, fortune-telling cards, black magic, Ouija boards, seances, and even books on magic and the occult. Is there really something to this trend or are people losing their heads over an exercise in futility?

   The age of Aquarius is with us. They say it's possible to buy zodiac coloring books, zodiac cookbooks, and even a horoscope designed especially for your dog. I don't know why they left out black cats. San Francisco even has some demoniacal idiot that runs about slashing and murdering people who calls himself the Zodiac. A Ouija board has become a household items these days. ESP, telepathy, and even voodoo are everyday words. One airline, believe it or not, offered a two-week occult tour through Great Britain. And if you feel lost, you will no longer be thought strange. If you try astrology, the Yi Jing, tarot cards, or spiritualism, American Astrology is now a 200 million dollar a year business with an estimated 10 to 12,000 professionals. If that's the word to use, astrologers as one skeptic said, the stars may affect no one but astrology affects everyone.

   So, what sign were you born under?

   I'm sort of Scorpio and with this little leaf of horizon.

   I think it happened about 10 years ago, before that, I doubt of one person in 70 or 80 knew what their astrological sign was.

   What sign were you born under?

   Scorpio.

   Scorpio, what kind of person does a description go for?

   Very secretive, very magnetic, very sexual.

   What sign were you born under?

   Scorpio?

   Scorpio, what is a scorpion like?

   You feel like Sex?

   Like what? Sex? What else?

   That's all that counts.

   You take this seriously do you, or a?

   When it comes to that I will, but.

   I've taken a course in astrology. My mother and my sister are astrologists.

   I see, they make a living at it.

   No, we do it for friends more, people that we meet and friends. I don't believe in making money on astrology.

   If the occult is religion to some, it's business to others. The motion picture industry has adopted it as a favorite subject. Remember Rosemary's Baby? Television has conjured up such programs as UFO, about an organization that defends the earth against alien invaders, and several series about playful white witchcraft. In 1969, the Dell publishing company alone had some 49 horoscope publications in press and sold over 8 million copies of its annual Astrological dope sheet. William Brat, his recent novel, The Exorcist, about the possession and exorcism of a young girl, was on the bestseller list for over a year. And today, your local bookshop might offer titles ranging from the Psychic Fair to the Complete Werewolf. Ten years ago, it was hard to find a good, if that's the term to use, book about witchcraft. And now you have no trouble finding hundreds of them. This includes even store and grocery store shelves. A great number of occult magazines have sprung up specializing in topics ranging from UFOs, life in outer space, to psychic powers.

   And although the occult explosion is largely thought of as a youth phenomenon, the bulk of the commercial effort, that's the books, the magazines, the games, the thousands of trinkets, cards, and the like, is aimed at the middle class and now storefronts vie for attention with porno parlors in our big city streets about demoniacal or witchcraft objects and articles, the occult supplies. You can see them in practically every American city of practically any size but still what may be accurately called an occult revival is primarily a youth movement. And here we find not just any interested dabblers, but rather serious seekers of truth, at least truth to them. And they are seeking answers to life's biggest questions. It's amazing, isn't it, that the pendulum has swung from materialism and the age of science? The idea that God is dead all the way back to a fantastic rise in demonism, satanism, witchcraft, and the occult, as people sincerely oftentimes seek for the answers to the biggest questions that really perplex them in life. Is there life outer space? Is there a spirit world? What are we? What about humankind? What is our psyche? What is our mind?

   What about mind over matter, mental telepathy, ESP, perception, things that happen, stories you've heard about somebody dying in a faraway country that is relative to someone, you know, and they knew it precisely the instant when the person died. Almost anyone is familiar with at least some aspects of the trend toward meditation among young eastern-style people.

   America had its first experience with meditation in the late eighteen hundreds. Even then it was a sensation. And today there are many, many forms that you can choose from. Everybody has to have his guru, especially in the entertainment field. The guru responsible for most of the publicizing of the art was called Maharishi Mahesh, better known as the Yogi who attracted both Mia Farrow and the Beatles.

   The Yi Jing is much less heard of but still a leader in the occult revival, claiming about 600,000 followers in America. It's not a religion or occult but rather a book about divination. The Yi Jing claims to find answers to difficult questions by tossing sticks or coins and then noting how they fall from those who have dabbled in the thing. They tell me it's far more difficult to learn how to toss it in the air, how to get in the right attitude of mind in the right position, this and that, than it is perhaps to read something out of a bunch of sticks as they fall to the ground. But like astrology, its most serious followers prefer to use it not so much for answers to mundane questions, but rather in a search for meaning and purpose and the entirety of the universe. And in human life, also big among today's youth is the occidental counterpart of the Yi Jing, the tarot. It's a deck of cards supposedly able to impart wisdom and answers to those who know how to interpret it, and to use it. To me, it looks like a kind of a series of children's playthings that no one knows how to decipher much less the guys who drew the pictures on the card. But then that's my personal opinion.

   In all these aspects of demonism, witchcraft, satanism, the occult, the mysterious and occult, of course, means that which is hidden, mysterious, difficult to be understood that which is otherworldly and pertaining to the spirit world, the two most capable of possessing, that's the right word to use, isn't it? Possessing? Newspaper headlines seem to be witchcraft and satanism. Most famous of the many brands of satanism is that formulated by Anton LaVey, who operates the San Francisco-bay Church of Satan. I think he calls it the first church of Satan. I talked about this in the past. It's a put-on as far as he's concerned. He claims to believe in neither God nor the devil, but he marries people in coffins and presides over the marital ceremony. I think with both the bride and the groom lying in a coffin and they slowly rise out of these pronouncing incantations over them. He operates more on a kind of a have your fun as long as it doesn't hurt anybody's philosophy and doesn't really claim to believe even in what he's doing.

   However, there definitely have been gory crimes of newspaper fame committed by those involved in witchcraft and demons. By far, the most famous of these was the Charles Manson murders, the infamous headline that was seen here Manson death threat. As long as the picture wasn't, there didn't look quite so weird just about like an average headline, something about sex murder, a terrible plane crash death or something. But when you saw that picture on the life magazine cover of those wildly staring eyes and the flying beard and hair. It looked like all that is embodied in total demon possession in case of such satanic happenings, drugs and weird sex are nearly always prominent, extreme emotional and psychological problems are being found in some involved in the more sinister aspects of these cults. But despite a few who grab headlines, many of those involved in strange right are relatively normal in society.

   I am a witch and a lot of people call that the pagan religion, or old world religion.

   So, a person let's say who is a witch quote unquote is virtually undetectable.

   That's right, very undetectable.

   There's a witch call up all over this country and there's people into witchcraft all over this country.

   That is correct because one of our customers came in and his mother passed away and he went back east and found that she was a witch.

   We saw today a age of rationalism of secularism.

   Should people be turning to the supernatural?

   I can't possibly imagine.

   One of the most confusing aspects of the occult is witchcraft. Some witches claim that the craft is a religion going so far as to say it's the oldest religion in the world. And when one notes the squabbling between the various branches, it becomes apparent that it is at least in this respect, like organized religion, they actually vie for attention and are in competition one against the other.

   There are all sorts of splits and schisms and divisions and branches of different aspects of the occult. Some witchcraft takes a nature worship form and may be complete with the adoration of various gods. The less serious witch is probably more concerned with casting spells for the sake of obtaining lovers, jobs, or maybe even good grades for patrons. At any rate, it's all highly commercial.

   For centuries, the occult arts have been kept hidden behind closed doors. But now, in today's society, many have turned to the methods and secrets of the ancients. Decisions are made according to the chance fall of a card, the pungent odor of incense, or the shifting position of the planets. Probably people you know dabble in the occult. Maybe you wonder whether there truly is help and guidance in a crystal ball. But the future can actually be known from tea leaves or from the lines in the palms of your hands.

   The booklet, "The Occult Explosion - What Does It Mean?" explains what's really behind these organs and divinations and examines why so many in these enlightened times have turned to mysticism for answers. Write today for your free copy of the booklet, "The Occult Explosion - What Does It Mean?" Send your request to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales.

   The revival of the occult today in the space age, the age of emancipation from superstition, black magic, voodoo, and witchcraft seems especially puzzling. Back when I was in high school, we heard about various things about astrology, having been a former mythological interpretation of what led eventually to the modern scientific method of astronomy. But nobody really thought that anyone including sonologist took it very serious anymore. What we thought was that anybody with a good mind in any kind of education simply couldn't delve into black magic and witchcraft. But amazingly enough, the middle class and many very intelligent people are delving into the black arts these days. Even so long ago as the 1920s, though Sigmund Freud postulated that as man's scientific knowledge grew, religion would all but die. But Freud didn't live to see us pass in the age of computers to the age of Aquarius. Most amazing of all the forefront of the occult revival is among the ignorant and the middle class and the intelligentsia. It recognizes no one single class of society.

   Fifteen years ago, maybe a lot of people thought only a nut would have brought up the subject of practicing magic on a college campus. And he might have been written off the campus on a rail, who knows. But today the campus is in the thick of an occult revival. Colleges, universities, and even high schools have begun offering courses in black magic, witchcraft, and astrology. And the classes are very often over-enrolled. A professor at MIT made this observation about a seminar some of the best students in this prestigious scientific institute were taking. And I quote his words, "I cannot recall the exact progression of topics, but it went something like this." He said, beginning with Asian philosophy, it moved on to meditation, then yoga, then Zen, then Yi Jing, then astrology, astral bodies, auras, UFOs, tarot cards, parapsychology, witchcraft, and magic. Nor were the students dallying with these subjects? They were on drugs, they were eating brown rice, they were meditating hours on end, they were making their decisions by Yi Jing which is divination, which one student designated the most important discovery of his life, end of quotation.

   But when asked why they are turning to the occult, the most common answer given by these students is the failure of science. As one student said, "Science is dead." While the newspapers and the magazines were giving all the attention to the so-called alleged death of God. It looked like science was the one that was really dying.

   This is a world of secularism, in the world of the 360 computer and all that sort of thing. Why should people, college students in particular, be turning to the supernatural, the non-rational?

   Well, my opinion would be that people have kind of, they've existed and they've searched and they've learned in school and it's really led to a zero, they've had their knowledge and they've had their middle-class Seria, they don't have satisfaction. People are looking for the religious truth and the truth of the world today. And they're looking to their political leaders and their political leaders are failing them. They're looking to science and science cannot answer all their questions and they have to turn to something and they have to turn to the truth and the way that, that, that man, that man's soul is looking for the truth and, and when he wants to find the truth, he turns to where his soul tells him to and his soul tells him to turn to the, uh, to the supernatural.

   What, what's your background, let's say, as far as these things are?

   Well, my background is I was in the witchcraft for five years and now that I, now I'm a Christian and I've accepted Jesus Christ as my savior.

   People are alienated, cut off in the sensation of reality. Well, we found some experience that for the most part, man cannot live in a state of undiluted reality. He doesn't have a meaning. He suffers psychologically.

   And I believe that the Jesus people movement is an answer largely to the death of religion. I don't believe when the newspapers sensationalize the statement "God is dead." They really were attacking the idea of God so much as they were attacking those who tried to market God. I believe the religions of this country and of the world have lost their power. I believe that millions were turned off by the empty formal ceremony of religion. And I believe that those millions could not find the identity, the real answers to life's problems inside the dimly lit interiors of big churches where organ music and a soft intonation of polished pastors voices lulled them to sleep as they stared at flies crowing on the little green felt hat of the ladies in front of them. I believe that people couldn't see the relationship between what went on in the darkened interior of a giant church building and the busy humdrum life of dog eat, dog competition, drugs, crime, divorce, violence, sex, Vietnam, and all the threats of the world outside. I believe then, that really what was happening was a challenge for the entire churchianity of the United States of America and what they were really trying to say was religion is dead. God to be sure was not. But religion was certainly on the downgrade.

   Today. The young people are searching for answers. Many of them have turned to Jesus Christ. I only hope and pray that they are finding the right one.

   If you ever heard someone say of the literary classic Gone With the Wind, "I've never read it." And I don't like books about science or I understand it's all about life in Russia. Wouldn't you want to say? Well, why don't you just read the book? That's all it would take to understand, Gone with the Wind. The same solution works equally well with the most widely distributed and misunderstood book in the world. The Bible, just read the book. We can't send you a Bible, but we can help you understand it with the keys explained in a free booklet we have for you titled, "Read the BOOK." You'll see Bible misconceptions answered and a captivating history of Bible preservation. If you want to write for your free copy of "Read the BOOK," if you've always thought that the Bible wasn't meant to be understood, you need this booklet. Its title is "Read the BOOK." Send your request to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales. That's Ambassador College Box 345, GPO Sydney, New South Wales.

   Students say the failure of science and materialism is largely the reason for turning to the occult. But you can also say there was no alternative except apparently the occult, at least in the churchianity of the world. There wasn't anything, I guess, either mystical enough, inspiring enough, exciting enough or at least claim to have the answers to the mysteries of life that turned young people on having part and parcel to do with the drug culture. As we shall see, the occult was heavy fair for youngsters who were trying to seek the big answers to the big questions in life.

   The world today doesn't offer much assurance and security. Rather, it's chaotic and frightening and the answers aren't readily available, especially to those young people who have been told they will be shouldered with the responsibility of saving this world. The entire planet seems terribly susceptible to any number of horrible catastrophes. And on top of all of this, the pop culture began producing a completely new set of artists who proceeded to lead their youthful followers into meditation, astrology, and many other new cults. The recent ecology crisis, as a matter of fact, served to convince many that somehow man's future was mystically intertwined with the future of the earth and with living things. And so a kind of a earthy pseudo-scientific occultism began to spring up.

   At the same time, organized religion was definitely on the wane. It seemed to have little to offer, especially the youth. Some of the earnest theologians and pastor types began to respond to this having rock operas inside churches. One young pastor doing a dance down the aisle, I don't think he took up a collection, and addressing themselves to subjects such as sex and drugs and the like and trying to get the young people to come back via all sorts of youth programs, youth drives, and the like. But it wasn't until the Jesus people revival, sensationalized articles all over the United States, Britain, and Canada that talked about mass baptism in the surf. And then some of the big meetings in giant outdoor football stadiums along the lines of a revitalized youth-oriented kind of a youth for Christ thing, but not that movement by itself, a full-scale effort to get youth involved in Christianity. The new idea of a Jesus to replace Maharishi Yoga or some of these other people. This, of course, was part and parcel of the new revived interest in the occult. The fact that religion itself had become dead religion in its traditional forms simply didn't fulfill youth.

   I have been inside religious structures. Shall I call them in many parts of the world? Including the orient? I have been inside giant churches where you would have thought you were in a graveyard, dark bank dimly lit and no doubt festooned with bodies. As many of them are with bones, bits and pieces of the skeletons and maybe the hair of some alleged saint. Uh, in reality, what you see going on in some of the occult meetings such as then Buddhism is mystical. I can't understand it. Neither could you, you don't know what's going on. But then when you get right down to it, would you understand what is going on in some of the more formal ceremonies of some of the more state religions?

   The same MIT Professor said, summing up the occult rage on his campus and I quote, "the human mind stands ready to believe anything. Absolutely anything. As long as it provides an alternative to the totally desacralized, mechanomorphic outlook of objective science." You can tell he's a professor by that statement. So the society responsible for the highest standard of living in all the history of the world are jet age, space age with all of our problems of food shortages and fuel shortages with men's footprints and television cameras and lunar landing vehicles still firmly implanted on the surface of the moon with Skylab and Watergate and the 10 years of agony in Vietnam over a modernistic, fantastic, glowing, beautiful, big complex of the industrial giant of all the history of the earth. Yet here we are in the midst of a fantastic occult revival, the society that produces science and this vast GMP has also produced at least a vacuum which has given rise to the occult as one student said. And I quote, "what we're really concerned about is whether anything is real. I mean, whether it is really real, is there something that is so powerful that it can even make us real?"

   Well? I'll tell you this, what they are delving in is real. Oh, there's no question about the reality of some of the demonism and the witchcraft that goes on, because I'm here to tell you that there is such a thing as a spirit world. And you can prove and you can demonstrate that. Time and again, in a series of programs both on television and radio, I have proved by disproving evolution as well as offering many other proofs about the Bible and about the existence of God that there is a Divine, all-wise Creator being of superintelligence, who made all of this creation, who made the earth and who put humankind upon it.

   I have proved the Bible is his inspired word. And I have also proved that Jesus Christ of Nazareth did live and walked the earth, that he did die and that he was resurrected and that he also is going to come back to this earth at some time in the future. Now, I'm not hedging on that because even he did not set dates. What you may not realize is, as we're going to show the next couple of times, that the Bible has a great deal to say about black magic, about superstitions such as witchcraft, voodoo, ogres, trolls, giants of all sorts, those that peep and mutter, those that practice the alleged black arts. And it does imply that there is a reality to this because you see the Bible reveals that there is a vast hierarchy of evil spirits. That's right. It really does. And that is not a children's beddy-bye tale or something to frighten people. It ought to be frightening because those who tamper with such things as witchcraft and demonology are just like a little boy playing in front of a gas jet with a lighted match. They don't know what it is they're really tampering with. And if they did, it would scare the living daylights out of them.

   They just don't really seem to know what can happen to the human mind and eventually the entire human personality as a result of opening up one's mind to powerful influences and forces that are just as vital and just as living and just as real as you are except they are far more powerful than a human being. The Bible condemns any such thing soundly, thoroughly, and continually from the earliest days of Ancient Israel, God told them they were to put out from their congregation any such evil. And actually, it even at one time carried the death penalty. Now, I am not one for quote burning witches end quote. And I am familiar with what happened in medieval Europe and England where witch hunts and witch burning was pretty much a popular pastime of people who got their kicks in those days out of the blood orgies and the burning at the stake of people who may have been a political enemy or even a neighbor they just didn't like.

   No, I'm not in favor of witch hunts, but I am in favor of each individual thinking for himself. Uncovering basic sources of truth. Is this the basic source of truth? Ye Jing Book of Chance is Chance and Caprice where it's at? Is that where the answers to life and to the future are found? Or is the book called the Bible, the Holy Scriptures, which is a handbook from God to humankind about what we are, why we are on this earth and where we are going? What are the principles that lead to a happy and successful and productive life? How to have a happy and a wonderful marriage, how to rear children, how to be productive and successful on your job, how to live at peace with your neighbor, how to avoid the physical aches and pains and illnesses and certainly above all and perhaps most precious of all, how to guard the door to your mind.

   Your most precious possession is your mind. You wouldn't think for one minute of putting rock sugar, gravel and what not into the gas tank of your automobile, you're probably fairly selective, at least about what you put into your mouth in terms of food. We all have heard about botulism and the like. And yet it's amazing to me and it should be to you that most of us even modern space age America are awfully careless about what we allow into our minds. We seemingly willingly will toy with the idea of superstition of astrology of bumps on your head of black, dark suppositions and suspicions and fears of predictions for the future and of having all of the accouterments and paraphernalia of black magic scattered about the Apostle Paul says the idol is nothing and therefore meat that was offered to it is nothing.

   I'm not tainted by standing here in the midst of some of these idiotic symbols with which I violently disagree in order to tell you beware of them, think for yourself and find out whether or not there is a God, whether his word is true and whether or not you can trust it and depend upon it.

   And above all, guard the door to your mind. Write for this booklet on, Why were you BORN? What is the real purpose in human life? Does life, after all, have any real meaning? It goes into the origins, the question of where we came from, the question of human survival, how we are creatures not of instinct but of brain. Whether or not science, a little amok, and lost its way in giving us, we human mortals, the wherewithal to annihilate ourselves but not really telling us what we are. What is the real cause of evil in the world? And are we really God's workmanship or did we just happen? What is redemption? What is salvation? What is the purpose of our living? And what is this thing about being born again? It's in this booklet, Why were you BORN?

   Is the ultimate purpose in your life just to acquire material possessions, honestly or dishonestly, as rapidly as you possibly can, to enjoy the interim, as much as you possibly can, and then to do whatever it is that happens when people die? You want to write for this booklet, Why were you BORN? I know a lot of you have heard that advertised many times. You put it off, you're driving your car right now, or you're sitting there and maybe you're not too close to a pencil. So, you think, well, I'll get around to doing that someday.

   You know, it's amazing how even a simple little human chore like picking up an envelope and writing an address down on it sometimes is very difficult for us to do. You do it, promise yourself you're going to do it before you do anything else. And all you need to do is to request it by sending your letter to, Post Office Box 345, Sydney, New South Wales. Be sure to tell us the call letters of your station. We need that. That's all there is no cost. But tell us the name of the radio station to which you've been listening to call letters and then send your letter to, Box 345 Sydney, New South Wales.

   Until next time. This is Garner Ted Armstrong saying goodbye, friends.

   You have been listening to the World Tomorrow. If you would like more information, write to Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales. That's Ambassador College Box 345 GPO Sydney, New South Wales.