mangoe@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) (03/06/91)
Personally, I find the peace symbols theories implausible. But there is a
wider issue at stake here.
I have sitting next to me a copy of _Ravaged by the New Age_ by Texe Marrs.
Texe and his wife Wanda are a little cottage industry unto themselves of
christian conspiracy theory. Let me quote you one short passage whose
authority I'm sure many will recognize:
We can easily trace the roots of New Age occultism all the way back to
ancient Babylon, the headquarters from where Satan first set up his
worldwide church. Nimrod, the first of the great Babylonian rulers,
was also declared to be the first of the man-gods. The teaching was
given out that Nimrod had attained his crown and his authority because
he was an advanced evolutionary being, superior to other men. His
sultry but vicious wife, Semiramis, was the first of the Great Mother
Goddesses.
New archaeological finds, you say? Actually, this is taken from Alexander
Hyslop, a source dear to conspiracy mongers.
Texe goes on in this book to name Satanic influences too numerous to mention
even in brief. I will content myself with but a few.
He attacks a Bazooka Joe strip in which the dialog runs as follows:
["why are you sitting in a lotus position?"]
"Practicing Meditation. [...] After two minutes my mind is completely
blank."
"Gee, I thought he was born that way."
Now, leaving aside the fact that when I was young, I thought Bazooka Joe was
the dumbest comic strip in the universe, is this not rather unfriendly to
the New Age?
I'll bet you didn't know that _Fantasia_ (the Disney film) is full of
satanic influences too, trying to sell psychedelia through the movies?
(Incidentally, Texe and his wife rather frequently show that they don't know
much about their subjects. He cites Mickey Mouse in the "Sorceror's
Apprentice" scene as though it were a separate movie, for example.)
I'll bet you didn't know that Girl Scout and NASA patches show Satanic
influences, such as [gasp] TRIANGLES!?!?!?
And how about C.S.Lewis? (I'm not kidding. I have yet to see a Texe&Wanda
production that didn't spend time attacking Lewis and Tolkien.) Or
Madeleine L'Engle, who has committed the double crime of being the librarian
at St. John the Divine AND having a rainbow on the cover of _A Wrinkle in
TIme_. (Never mind that the original cover had no such imagery.)
How about _The Muppet Show_?
Texe and Wanda are in fact doing christianity a great disservice. They are
unwittingly selling the opinion that christians are ignorant rubes by acting
like ignorant rubes and insisting that all good christians must do likewise.
Their allegations are based on coincidence and wishful thinking-- as often
the wishful thinking of those he cites on the "other side" as of his own.
In the book I've just cited, Texe Marrs refers to the peace symbol as
"a Satanic cross within a circle, its bars twisted downward. In
occultism, the circle containing an upside down, twisted cross
signifies that Satan is victorious over Jesus Christ and that he will
reign forever and ever (thus the unbroken line of the circle)."
I can only wonder what perverse reading he would make of the windows in the
doors of a church near here, which depict an upside down latin cross with
the banner, "St. Peter". Those of us who know our church tradition now what
this means-- it is hardly satanic. Texe does not provide any citation to
back up this assertion.
Texe and his compatriots in conspiracy all sound like refugees from
_Foucault's Pendulum_. I cannot see any reason to pay any heed to this
stuff; this morbid fascination with "Satanism" is surely unhealthy.
--
C. Wingate + "Give rest, O Christ, to your servants with your saints,
+ where sorrow and pain are no more,
mangoe@cs.umd.edu + neither sighing,
mimsy!mangoe + but life everlasting."bobert@uunet.uu.net (Robert Murphy) (03/09/91)
In article <Mar.6.00.21.05.1991.24882@athos.rutgers.edu> mangoe@cs.umd.edu (Charley Wingate) writes: >Texe and Wanda are in fact doing christianity a great disservice. They are >unwittingly selling the opinion that christians are ignorant rubes by acting >like ignorant rubes and insisting that all good christians must do likewise. This is a behavior which is, unfortunately, by no means limited to Texe and Wanda. I have found it to be endemic in fundamentalist circles among both "shepherds" and "sheep", and it was one of the main reasons for my exodus from those circles after ten years of involvement. Basically, I got fed up with people who equated faith with credulity, and simplicity with stupidity, and insisted "that all good christians must do likewise." Or, as I used to say, "They checked their brains along with their coats when they went into church, and only remembered their coats on the way out." Bob Murphy bobert@autodesk.com