Wicca Turns 50 -- Sex-Crazed Satanic Roots of a New Religion

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WICCA TURNS 50 -- SEX-CRAZED SATANIC ROOTS OF A NEW RELIGION

by Vanessa Cortez, staff writer. [April 4, 2004]

[WeeklyUniverse.com] Wicca turns fifty years old in 2004 -- making it one of the newest religions in the world!

Wiccans brag that theirs is the 'Olde Religion' [sic], an ancient, pre-Christian 'nature religion,' but the shocking truth is that Wicca was invented only 50 years ago by sex-crazed Brit, Gerald Gardner, a man who enjoyed being whipped.

Even more shockingly, Gardner's religious theories were influenced by Aleister Crowley, a sex-crazed heroin fiend and Satanist! Crowley's own bizarre brand of religious "worship" included eating sh*t off an altar -- which his mistress, Leah Hirsig, had pooped for him!

In his shocking biography, Aleister Crowley: the Nature of the Beast, Colin Wilson writes [p. 162]:

"The law that made witchcraft illegal in England was repealed in 1951, and three years later, a 'witch' called Gerald Gardner published Witchcraft Today, alleging that there are still dozens of covens -- groups of witches -- practising all over England. He explained that they were followers of a nature-religion called wicca.
Gardner was a friend of Crowley's, and an initiate of the OTO, and Crowley authorised him to set up his own magical group."

Once he'd established his own Wiccan coven, Gardner worshiped in his own favorite way -- with lots of kinky sex! Wilson continues:

"Gardner liked being flagellated, and his own version of wicca laid heavy emphasis on sex rites in which everyone was nude. Understandably, it quickly gained hordes of disciples.
Crowley's version of 'magick' was, naturally, much in evidence in these covens. Many members of such groups lost interest as they got older; others developed a wider interest in magic, and studied seriously the Enochian system of John Dee, the magic of the Golden Dawn, and Crowley's own sex-oriented system."

Sex and drugs were big parts of Crowley's Satanic system, and over his lifetime (1875-1947) he indulged every kind of sex and drug imaginable. His drug use inspired his novel, Diary of a Drug Fiend.

Crowley also had dozens of lovers -- and maybe hundreds! -- of both sexes and all ages. He said sex was a way of contacting beings from higher spiritual planes, and he claimed to hear "voices" and see "visions" after kinky sex.

On page 93, Wilson writes:

"On December 3, 1909, Crowley and Neuberg climbed Mount Dal'leh Addin, near the village of Bou-Saada, and Crowley tried to enter the fourteenth plane or Aire. But there was some obstruction -- he only encountered layer after layer of blackness. Crowley decided to call it a day, and they proceeded to descend the mountain.
Then Crowley was seized by a sudden inspiration. He and Neuberg went back to the mountain top, and proceeded to practise an act of buggery, in which Crowley was the passive partner; they dedicated it to the god Pan ...

[L]ater that evening, he tried the invocation again, the veils of blackness were drawn aside, and he was admitted into a circle of stones, which he soon recognized to be veiled Masters."

Neuberg was a faithful disciple of Crowley's sex magick. Wilson says [p. 95] that even Crowley complained in a letter "that he was having an awful job of keeping Neuberg away from Arab boys for whose brown bottoms he had a 'frightful lust.' "

But perhaps most shocking of all Crowley's sex acts was the night his mistress, Leah Hirsig, "demanded the 'Eucharist' -- that Crowley should eat her excrement, which lay on the consecrated plate on the altar."

Wilson reports [p. 123] that Crowley cleaned his plate of poop under Hirsig's stern gaze, then described the experience: "My mouth burned; my throat choked; my belly retched, my blood fled whither who knows, and my skin sweated. She stood above me, hideous in contempt."

How Hirsig's holy 'Eucharist' may have appeared.

Gardner was so inspired by the sex-crazed Satanist who ate poop, he commissioned Crowley to create rituals for his new wicca religion. In the 1979 edition of Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshipers, and Other Pagans in America Today, Wiccan high priestess Mary Nesnick is quoted as saying [p. 64]:

"Fifty percent of modern Wicca is an invention bought and paid for by Gerald B. Gardner from Aleister Crowley. Ten percent was 'borrowed' from books and manuscripts like Leland's text Aradia. The forty remaining percent was borrowed from Far Eastern religions and philosophies, if not in word, then in ideas and basic principles."

Of course, young Wiccans who get they spiritual lessons from TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer or pop paperbacks may prefer not to know the true roots of their religion. But either way -- Happy 50th Birthday, you zany, nature-worshiping, wacky Wiccans, you!

Vanessa Cortez is a Los Angeles based tabloid reporter who investigates the occult underbelly of the entertainment industry. Read more about her journalism in Hollywood Witches.

FUN FACTS:

During his lifetime, the press called Crowley "the wickedest man in the world." Horror filmmakers took note. Although Edgar G. Ulman's The Black Cat (1934) takes its title from an Edgar Allan Poe story, "it draws its inspiration far more from the career and personality of Aleister Crowley," writes William K. Everson in Classics of the Horror Film [p. 122].

Other Crowley-inspired films include the Curse of the Demon and The Devil Rides Out.

Readers may also enjoy Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality.

Says the Los Angeles Times: "Anyone interested in the true origins of Wicca should read Philip Davis's Goddess Unmasked. He discusses with great precision and clarity how Wicca does not draw on ancient traditions themselves so much as on relatively recent theories and speculations about ancient traditions."

Library Journal says: "a thorough, well-researched, scholarly study of a new religious movement."

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