Day: October 18, 2017

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:

It was the night of Halloween, and ironically, I was working on a chapter about Halloween for my book Like Lambs to the Slaughter: Your Child and the Occult
when the doorbell rang. I was greeted by an adorable bunch of little
kids doing their level best to look like gruesome Witches and vampires. I
bent down as I distributed apples and oranges in response to lusty
cries of “trick or treat!”

“You kids want to know something?” I asked very softly.

“Yeah!” came a unanimous chorus.

“With the Lord Jesus, there is no trick. He loves every one of you very much.”

Several little faces beamed up at me through
their ghoulish makeup. “That’s neat!” exclaimed one little girl. “Yeah!”
chimed in a few others.

“This is Jesus’ night,” I said. Why I said
that, I’m not really sure. I was poignantly aware of the fact that it is
a night the devil has made a point of claiming for himself.

“No it’s not!” snarled a hidden voice. “It’s
Jason’s night!” A boy who was taller than the rest stepped out from the
shadows. He was wearing the white hockey mask of “Jason,” the demented,
ghoulish killer in the movie Friday the 13th and was
brandishing a very realistic-looking hatchet. I have to admit that the
boy gave me a start, but I stood my ground and dropped a banana into his
bag.

“No, ‘Jason,’ this is still Jesus’ night!” I
repeated. And indeed it is, even though it is most assuredly the night
set aside for the glorification and worship of idols, false gods, Satan,
and death. “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He
might destroy the works of the devil.”1

“Jason” evidently resented the competition,
however, for he ripped our mailbox right out of the ground and left his
banana squished on the stair.

PET GHOSTS?

Most of us in the United States have grown up
observing Halloween in one form or another. From the time we are in
preschool, we make drawings or cutouts of sinister black Witches—the
haggier the better. We make paintings of gruesome black cats with
gleaming, evil, orange eyes; we hang up smirking paper skeletons with
dancing limbs; we glue together ghost and bat mobiles; and we design
demoniacal faces for our pumpkins.

For several years, one thoughtful kindergarten
teacher in Southern California even provided ghosts for her pupils to
commune with at Halloween. I spoke with one of the mothers from that
school who told me that her little boy was sent home with a note from
the teacher informing the parents that their child would be bringing
home a “special friend” the next day. The child was to nurture his
“friend,” name it, feed it, and talk to it—all as a part of a special
class project that was designed to “develop the child’s imagination.”

The next day, the little boy came home with a
sealed envelope along with explicit instructions that his parents were
not to touch it; only the child was allowed to open the envelope. Mom
said, “You bet!” and promptly opened it up. Inside was six inches of
thick orange wool string with a knot tied a quarter of the way up to
make a loop resembling a head. The mimeographed “letter” that
accompanied it read as follows:

Haunted House
001 Cemetery Lane
Spookville

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your order. Your ghost is
exactly what you ordered. You will find that your ghost is attached to
an orange string. Do not untie the special knot until you are ready to
let your ghost go.

Your ghost will tell you when it is hungry
and what it prefers to eat. It will sleep in the air beside you all day.
It especially likes quiet places where there are cobwebs, creaky boards
and corners.

If you follow the above directions, you will have a very happy ghost.

Yours truly,

Head Ghost

The mother, a Christian, didn’t approve of the
idea of her son taking in a pet ghost, however housebroken. She was also
a little suspicious of her six-year-old being addressed as “Dear
Customer.” So she confiscated the thing and put it in the garage on a
shelf until she could decide what to do with it. The next day, her
sister was in the garage on an errand, unaware of the matter of the
“ghost in the string.” Suddenly she was frightened by the sense of a
threatening presence around her. She heard the sounds of a cat hissing
in the corner and something like a “chatty doll” mumbling incoherently
at her. Later that night they threw the “ghost string” into the garbage
pail, prayed to the Lord to remove the entity, and were never bothered
by the “presence” again. This family had no trouble whatever believing
that a spirit had indeed been sent home with their little boy and that
it didn’t much like having been assigned to a Christian household.2

The Halloween ghosts were given out again the
following year by the same teacher. The Christian mother managed to get
hold of the envelope, orange ghost-carrier and all, and sent it to me.
It is possible, of course, that the teacher meant nothing sinister by
it. Perhaps to her it was just a cute exercise in imagination for her
kindergartners. Nevertheless, in light of the stated intent of many
Transpersonal (i.e., a branch of psychology that focuses on mysticism
and the occult in the search for transcendence) educators to introduce
children to spirit guides, I can’t help but be a little curious about
any teacher who sends the children home with “imaginary friends.”

CHURCH-SPONSORED HORROR

Even in the church, Halloween is a time of
spooky fun and games. Any number of evangelical churches, ever mindful
of their youth programs and ministries, will sponsor haunted houses
designed to scare the wits out of the kids. From 1970 to 2001 in
Bakersfield, California, Youth for Christ’s Campus Life was a co-sponsor
of “Scream in the Dark,” an event that was held every night for about a
week before Halloween. At least 20,000 people “brave[d] the chilly
corridors and dark passages” every year to face ghoulish figures,
terrifying tunnels, and screams in the dark.3

While many churches have switched from
Halloween activities to alternative events on Halloween such as Harvest
parties, countless Christians still allow their children to celebrate
Halloween with door-to-door trick or treating and dressing up in scary
costumes. Christian actor Kirk Cameron (Left Behind films and Fireproof)
has come out publicly defending Halloween. In an interview in a popular
online Christian magazine, Cameron stated that Christians “should have
the biggest Halloween party on your block.” Cameron said he had no
problem with Christians dressing up in devil, ghost, and other
traditional Halloween costumes because they could do it as a way to
witness to unbelievers.4

But is this church-sponsored horror a good
idea? There are a number of reasons it is not. For one thing, terror can
kill. When my husband was a teenager, the family next door to him lost
their toddler one Halloween when the little one opened the door to
trick-or-treaters. Their hideous appearance and shrieks so traumatized
the child that he literally dropped dead on the spot. That may be a rare
example, but the fact remains that terrorizing children is dangerous.

Church-sponsored horror isn’t a new phenomenon.
My husband’s Lutheran church in New York always sponsored a “Chamber of
Horrors” when he was a boy, complete with fluorescent skeletons, scary
pop-ups, peeled grapes to simulate dead eyeballs, and a bowl of cold
spaghetti that was supposed to be . . . well, you know. Anyway, they
made you stick your hand into it, and any number of kids spent the rest
of the night throwing up.

Halloween has become a full-fledged national
children’s play day, but for hundreds of thousands of people in the
Western world (and their numbers are growing steadily) Halloween is a
sacred time, the ancient pagan festival of fire and death.

FESTIVAL OF THE DEAD

The origins and traditions of Halloween can be
traced back thousands of years to the days of the ancient Celts and
their priests, the Druids. The eve of October 31 marked the transition
from summer into the darkness of winter. It marked the beginning of the
Celtic New Year. The Feast of Samhain was a fearsome night, a dreaded
night, a night in which great bonfires were lit, according to some pagan
traditions, to Samana the Lord of Death, the dark Aryan god who was
known as the Grim Reaper, the leader of the ancestral ghosts.5

On this night, the spirits of the dead rose up,
shivering with the coming cold of winter and seeking the warmth and
affection of the homes they once inhabited. And even colder, darker
creatures filled the night: evil Witches flying through the night,6
hobgoblins, and evil pookas that appeared in the form of hideous black
horses. Demons, fairies, and ghouls roamed about as the doors of the
burial sidh-mounds opened wide,7 allowing them free access to the world
of living men. These loathsome beings were usually not in a particularly
good mood by the time they arrived, and it was feared that unless these
spirits were appeased and soothed with offerings and gifts they would
wreak mischief and vengeance by destroying crops, killing cattle,
turning milk sour, and generally making life miserable.

So it was that families offered what was most
precious to them: food—a “treat” which they fervently hoped would be
sufficient to offset any “trick” which the ghostly blackmailers might
otherwise be tempted to inflict.

The ancient Celtic villagers realized, however,
that merely feeding the spirits might not be enough to speed them on
their way. The ghoulies might decide it would be rude to eat and run, as
it were, and might just be tempted to stick around.

That simply would not do. So arose the practice
of dressing in masks and costumes: Chosen villagers disguised
themselves as the fell creatures at large, mystically taking on their
attributes and powers. The “mummers,” as they were called, cavorted from
house to house collecting the ancient Celtic equivalent of protection
money, and then romped the ghosts right out of town when they were
through.

They carried jack-o’-lanterns to light their
way—turnips or potatoes with fearful, demonic faces carved into them
which they hoped would duly impress, if not intimidate, the demons
around them.8

SACRIFICE AND FIRE

As a part of their ancient New Year’s ritual,
massive sacred bonfires were lit throughout the countryside of Wales,
Ireland, and France—fires from which every house in the village would
rekindle their hearth fires (which had been ritually extinguished, as
they were at the end of every year). The villagers would gather and
dance round and round the bonfire, whose light and heat they believed
would help the sun make it through the cold, dark winter.9

But the great fires served another purpose as
well: On this night, unspeakable sacrifices were offered by the Druid
priests to the Lord of Death. Lewis Spence in his book The History and Origins of Druidism says:

Certain writers on Celtic history have
indignantly denied that the Druidic caste ever practiced the horrible
rite of human sacrifice. There is no question, however, that practice it
they did. Tacitus alludes to the fact that the Druids of Anglesea
“covered their altars with the blood of captives.” If the words of
Caesar are to be credited, human sacrifice was a frequent and common
element in their religious procedure. He tells us that no sacrifice
might be carried out except in the presence of a Druid.10

It is in his Commentaries that Caesar speaks of
the great wicker images “in which the Druids were said to burn scores
of people alive.”11

Some modem Witches may still deny that the
Druidic religion, on which many of their beliefs and practices are
based, ever practiced human and animal sacrifice as a part of their
“peaceable nature religion.” But some noted Witches have indeed
acknowledged the murderous bent of the ancient religion:

Propitiation, in the old days when survival
was felt to depend on it, was a grim and serious affair. There can be
little doubt that at one time it involved human sacrifice—of criminals
saved up for the purpose or, at the other end of the scale, of an aging
king; little doubt, either, that these ritual deaths were by fire.12

The Druids (from the Gaelic word druidh,
meaning “a wise man” or “magician”13) would carefully watch the
writhing of the victims in the fire (whether people or animals) and from
their death agonies would foretell the future of the village. The Feast
of Samhain was by no means the only celebration at which the Druids
practiced human sacrifice. Sacrificial victims were also burned in their
sacred fires during the spring festival of Beltane held on the eve of
the first of May as part of their fertility rites.14 So it would seem,
according to ancient historians, that human and animal sacrifice was a
particularly noxious and pervasive habit among the Druids.

The Farrars, well-known authors and practicing
Witches in Ireland, tell us that “Later, of course, the propitiatory
sacrifice became symbolic . . .” but then mention that the royal
sacrifice at Samhain may have lingered in the form of animal
substitutes. The Farrars tell us of at least one animal sacrifice they
knew of that took place in their village “within living memory.”15 We
can only hope that “the old days when survival was felt to depend on
human sacrifice” will never return.

THE SPIRIT OF HALLOWEEN

One Halloween several years ago, I watched a rerun of Garfield’s Halloween Adventure.
Garfield was thrilled at the realization that Halloween was a night
where he got to rake in free candy. “This is the night I was created
for,” he exclaimed with as much enthusiasm as Garfield ever seems to
muster.

He decides to sucker poor unsuspecting Otie, an
exceedingly dumb (though endearing) doggie, into going with him so that
Garfield could double his personal candy haul. Well . . . maybe he’ll
give Otie one piece of candy for his troubles.

Then suddenly Garfield pauses in his
Machiavellian musings and wonders, “Am I being too greedy? Should I
share my candy with those less fortunate than I? Am I missing the spirit
of Halloween?” Wouldn’t it be nice if that were in fact the spirit of
Halloween! But nothing could be further from the truth.

The “spirit of Halloween” is more accurately
discerned in the horror movies and DVDs traditionally released in honor
of the season.16 Popular cinematic “treasures” like Halloween (and its three sequels), Friday the 13th (three of those), Halloweennight, Tale of Halloween,
and any number of slasher, blood-and-gore, murder- and-terror flicks
are truer to the original “spirit of Halloween”—the spirit of sudden
death and murder—than is the sight of little Linus sitting all night in
his “sincere” pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin, or of
Garfield in his relentless quest for candy.

SPIRITED COMMUNION

Modern Witches would vehemently deny that their
celebration has anything to do with the demonic horrors depicted in
such films as Friday the 13th. To them, Halloween is one of the
four greater Sabbats held during the year. It is the time of Harvest
Celebration—that season in which the Great Goddess goes to sleep for the
long winter months, giving way to the Horned God of Hunting and Death,
who will rule until her return on the first of May. It is a time of
ritual and for ridding oneself of personal weaknesses,17 a time for
feasting and joyful celebration. It is also a time for communing with
the spirits of the dead.

Witches Arnold and Patricia Crowther say that—

Halloween has always been the Festival of the
Dead and was believed to be the best time to contact those who had
passed over. Today, spiritualists try to contact the departed by means
of “spirit guides”—American Indians, Chinese men, nuns, priests and even
little girls. Witches tried to make contact through the god of Death
himself. So when the bonfire had burned down, the priestess, in her new
role as the god, held a skull between her hands, using it as a
crystal-gazing ball. This was the kind of necromancy practiced centuries
before the Fox Sisters, with their poltergeist tappings, started the
modern craze for spiritualism.18

The Celts, say the Crowthers, would sometimes
lie on graves during Halloween, hoping to hear some word of wisdom from
the spirits of the corpses beneath them. And the Crowthers boast that
“the high priestesses were just as successful in contacting the dead as
are our own mediums.”19 According to a longtime Witch with whom I once
spoke, they still are. Communing with the spirits of the dead is a
regular feature of their covens’ Halloween rituals.

Several years ago, an article in the Los Angeles Times featured
a story on a certain coven’s celebration rituals during Halloween. The
story described the ritual and then told that it “will be repeated
throughout the Southland today as Witches celebrate their most important
holiday, Samhain, or Halloween, when they believe the veil between the
worlds becomes thin, making visits with spirits possible.” Some Witches
will use the Ouija board to contact the dead. Others will use a darkened
scrying-mirror into which they stare until the faces of their beloved
departed supposedly appear. Others may use a crystal ball or “sit
quietly round the cauldron, gazing into the incense smoke, talking of
what they see and feel.”20

SATANIC REVELS

While the Witches are spending the Halloween
season tucking in their Goddess for her long winter sleep and frolicking
in joyful communion with the spirits of the dead, there is another
religious group that is equally serious about its Halloween
celebrations: the Satanists. Halloween to them is a more sinister and
direct celebration of death and Satan. Unlike the Witches, of whom most
do not even acknowledge the existence of Satan, the Satanists are quite
candid about exactly who the dread “lord of death” happens to be, and
they celebrate Halloween as one of his two highest unholy days.

As is the case among the Witches, different
“denominations” of Satanists have their own peculiar traditions,
beliefs, and practices on this night. For some of them Satan is not a
real, specific entity but rather the personification of evil resident
within all men, a “dark hidden force in nature responsible for the
workings of earthly affairs.”21

Other Satanists however—cult
Satanists—understand that Satan is very real indeed. To them, the
sacrifices he demands are not symbolic at all.22 They believe that the
blood sacrifice of innocence which Satan demands as the ultimate
blasphemy and sign of devotion to himself must be very literal indeed.
At various times during the year, but especially during the month of
October, police across the country report finding the remains of
animals—some with the blood drained, others with various organs missing,
some carefully skinned while keeping the tortured creature alive. They
are frequently found at sites which indicate that some form of ritual
took place. When no altar or pentagram or other symbolism is in
evidence, it is entirely likely that some neophyte or self-styled
Satanist is simply practicing to make sure the “sacrifice” is
letter-perfect for the ceremony.

Because of its innocence and frailty, a tiny
child is viewed by these Satanists as the perfect sacrifice to their
Master. The infant is seen as a representation of the Christ Child, and
it is He whom they are blaspheming and symbolically destroying in the
prolonged and brutal torture and slaying of the child. After the death
of the baby, the members will all eat a portion of the little one’s
heart and will drink its blood.

RECRUITERS FOR SATAN

Halloween is also a prime recruiting season for
the Satanists. Much as the government will plant undercover narcotic
agents in various high schools to find out who is pushing or using drugs
on campus, so some Satanists may plant kids at the schools who are
there solely for the purpose of discerning potential members or victims
among the students. The Dungeons and Dragons clubs are key hunting
grounds for them, as are other groups and clubs based on medieval
themes.

Church-sponsored “haunted houses” are also
fertile recruiting centers. The Satanists watch for those kids who show a
marked bent for the macabre and the sinister, and they invite them to a
“real good” party being held elsewhere, which proves to be a
lower-level ritual held for the purpose of initiating these kids into
Satanism.

IMITATORS OF GOD

So . . . should your family participate in the
traditional Halloween celebrations? Absolutely . . . if you and/or your
children are Witches, Satanists, humanists, atheists, pagans, or
anything other than born-again Christians (or Orthodox Jews). For a true
Christian to participate in the ancient trappings of Halloween is as
incongruous as for a committed cult Satanist coming from a blood
sacrifice on Christmas Eve to set up a crèche in his living room and
sing “Silent Night, Holy Night” with heartfelt, sincere devotion to baby
Jesus.

Ephesians 5:1 admonishes us to be imitators of
God. Can you picture the Lord Jesus dressing up as Satan, or as one of
the demons He cast out that week, or perhaps as a Druid priest, just
because it was the Feast of Samhain and His disciples were giving a
nifty party that night in honor of the tradition? Or can you see the
apostles disguising themselves as temple prostitutes or as worshipers of
the god Moloch, to whom the Canaanites (and even the Israelites in
their darker days) sacrificed their children?23

Halloween is a day in which virtually every occult practice that God has called “abomination” is glorified.

When you come into the land which the Lord
your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations
of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes
his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices
witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,
or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who
calls up the dead.  For all who do these things are an abomination to
the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives
them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your
God. For these nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers
and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such
for you. (Deuteronomy 18:9-14, NASB*)

“But it’s only for one night!” some cry. “It’s
only in fun for the children!” If this is how you feel, then you need to
understand what the Word of God says to you:

Learn not the way of the heathen! (Jeremiah 10:2)

Be ye not unequally yoked together with
unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with
unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what
concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth
with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?
for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell
in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my
people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith
the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. (2
Corinthians 6:14-17)

But I say, that the things which the Gentiles
sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not
that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye cannot drink the cup of
the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s
table, and of the table of devils. (1 Corinthians 10:20-21)

CREATIVE ALTERNATIVES

There are any number of creative alternatives
that can be provided for children on Halloween without participating in
the ancient religious traditions of the Witches and Satanists.

Some families view the occasion as a witnessing
opportunity and handout Gospel tracts along with the treats. Some
churches are now sponsoring “Bible Houses,” in which the kids go through
and hear different Bible stories read or acted out—a godly alternative
to the haunted-house routine!

Other Christian families choose to spend the
night remembering the saints who have gone to be with the Lord during
the year. Saints aren’t just those who have been canonized as such by
some church. A saint, according to the Bible, is anyone who has believed
in the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Messiah. Perhaps you could
spend this night talking about the martyrs who were willing to die
rather than compromise their belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christian parents can also make a difference in
the way the schools their children attend celebrate Halloween. In
Colorado, parents protested the traditional celebration of Halloween in
several public schools, including at least one elementary school on the
grounds that it is a “high holy day in the satanic religion, and as such
is an inappropriate holiday for schoolchildren.”24 One mother said that
she “would like to see the same measures applied to the Halloween
parties as have been taken with the Christmas parties.”25 In light of
the present distress, I fully agree. Since God and Jesus have been
banned from Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving celebrations in most of
our schools, why should the government-recognized religions of
Witchcraft and Satanism get free promotion on Halloween from these same
institutions?

One thing Halloween should not be for the
Christian is a time of fear. It should be a time to rejoice in the fact
that “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might
destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8)! Spend at least part of
this night worshiping God by singing hymns. Above all, spend time in
prayer and intercession for the children.

It is tragic that many people in the church
have forgotten that “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of
power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7), and that
includes on Halloween! Too many of our children have been made
vulnerable to a spirit of fear and to the occult where we allow faith in
God to be extinguished by participating in the darkness of this world.

After the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in
England in 1951, the Witches and Satanists experienced a revival which
is currently in full swing. You might not know too much about Witches or
Satanists, but I guarantee you that most kids do in today’s
computerized, Internet, social-media world.

For ye were sometimes [formerly] darkness,
but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light . . . And
have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather
reprove [expose] them. (Ephesians 5:8,11)

To order copies of HALLOWEEN! A Warning to Christian Parents, click here. 

Endnotes
1. 1 John 3:8.
2. Back in 1985, there was an outfit that called
itself “Adopt-a-Ghost” based in Hollywood, California. For a paltry
$10.00 to cover adoption papers and conjuring fees, you could adopt a
ghost for your house, condo, apartment, or office . . . like a Cabbage
Patch Kid, only cheaper and considerably livelier. Hauntings were
guaranteed, and the ghost even came with written tips on ghost-raising
to make sure it would stick around.
3. Connie Swart, “Event Still a Scream,” the Bakersfield Californian, October 16,1982, p. 13.
4. Emma Koonse, “Kirk Cameron on Halloween: ‘Christians Should Have the Biggest Party on the Block’” (Christian Post,
October 20, 2014, 
http://www.christianpost.com/news/kirk-cameron-on-halloween-christians-should-have-the-biggest-party-on-the-block-128345/#Jx3ZzPQLf0A8bigp.99).
5. Barbara G. Walker, The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row Publishers, 1983), p. 372.
6. Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (London: Octopus Books Ltd., 1974), p. 166. Introduction by Hans Holzer.
7. Janet and Stewart Farrar, A Witches Bible, vol.1, The Sabbats (New York, NY: Magickal Childe Publishing, Inc., 1981, 1984), p. 122.
8. The lantern was also called a “corpse
lantern” or”fairie fire,” or a will-o’-the-wisp, and numerous
fascinating legends about its origins have risen up around it. Some
thought it was the spirit of a child which had been buried in the swamp.
Others thought it represented the lights fairies used to beckon fools
to watery death in the swamps. Another legend tells of a clever fellow
named Jack who got himself barred from hell as well as heaven for being
something of a Faustian smart aleck and was doomed to run about earth
for all eternity with the burning coal he snatched from hell itself with
the turnip he was eating just before the gates slammed shut. This story
makes little sense to me at all. I mean, would you be eating a turnip
while standing at the gates of hell politely requesting admittance?
Doubtful. One version of this tale found in an elementary school
teacher’s “Halloween Fun” manual observes that the devil threw the
burning coal at Jack to drive him away and that Jack caught the thing in
his turnip. This makes more sense. Anyway, the Celts carved
jack’o’lanterns out of turnips, nonetheless. They probably used turnips
because they didn’t have pumpkins. They had to come to America to
discover them, which they did during the mass immigration to America
during the great potato famine of 1886. They soon realized that pumpkins
are a whole lot easier to carve than turnips. They also make nicer
pies.
St. James Church in the Los Angeles area held a
“Pumpkin Mass” in 1987 in which the priest blessed the parishioners’
Halloween costumes (to be brought in boxes or sacks) and the pumpkins
which were to be carved and placed in the sanctuary. The verse quoted
for the occasion: “Ye are the light of the world. . . . Let your light
so shine before men” (Matthew 5:14, 16).
9. Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, p.166.
10. Lewis Spence, The History of Origins of Druidism (Great Britain: EP Publishing Ltd., 1976), p. 104.
11. Ibid.
12. Farrar and Farrar, A Witches Bible, vol. 1 The Sabbats, op. cit., p. 122.
13. Raymond Buckland, Witchcraft from the Inside (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1975), p. 16.
14. Lewis Spence, The History of Origins, op. cit., p. 105.
15. Farrar and Farrar, A Witches Bible, vol. 1, The Sabbats, op. cit., p. 122.
16. James Frazer records in The Golden Bough
(New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1922) that in some areas
“people who assisted at the bonfires would wait till the last spark was
out and then would suddenly take to their heels, shouting at the top of
their voices, “The cropped black sow seize the hindmost!” The saying
implies that originally one of the company became a victim in dead
earnest” (The Golden Bough, p. 736). The “cropped black sow”
was a representation of the Goddess Cerridwen in her dark aspect as the
Crone, according to Welsh mythology (A Witches Bible, vol.1,
The Sabbats, p. 125). She is still worshiped in that aspect by Wiccans
today, as well as in her more appealing forms of Maiden and Mother.
As the Farrars point out in A Witches Bible,
vol. 1, The Sabbats, p. 725), “All these victim-choosing rituals long
ago mellowed into a mere romp, but Frazer had no doubt of their original
grim purpose. What was once a deadly serious ritual at the great tribal
fire had become a party game at the family ones.” They may have
“mellowed in time,” in most places, but nevertheless, it was the terror
of the original sacrifices and demons that most accurately represents
the “true spirit” of Halloween. The true “spirit of Halloween” is that
of sudden death and murder.
17. Raymond Buckland, Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1986), p. 68.
18. Arnold and Patricia Crowther, The Secrets of Ancient Witchcraft with the Witches Tarot (West Caldwell, NJ: University Books, Inc., 1974), pp. 67-68.
19. Ibid., p. 68.
20. Farrar and Farrar, A Witches Bible, vol 1, The Sabbats, op. cit., p. 135.
21. Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible (New York, NY: Avon Books, 1969), p. v of introduction.
22. Anton LaVey clarifies his position on human
sacrifice on page 88 of his Satanic Bible, in which he says:
“Symbolically, the victim is destroyed through the working of a hex or
curse, which in turn leads to the physical, mental or emotional
destruction of the ‘sacrifice’ in ways and means not attributable to the
magician. The only time a Satanist would perform a human sacrifice
would be if it were to serve a two-fold purpose; that being to release
the magician’s wrath in the throwing of a curse, and more important, to
dispose of a totally obnoxious and deserving individual.”
23. Ezekiel 16:20,21; Jeremiah 32:35; 2 Kings 17:17; Isaiah 57:5.
24 Rebecca Jones, “Halloween Parade Off” (The Eagle Forum, vol.8, no.4, Fall 1982), p. 17.
25. Ibid.

*Scripture verses in this booklet are taken
from the King James Bible, except on page 14 where one verse is taken
from the NASB. Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible(R),
Copyright (C) 1960, 1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975, 1977,1995 by The
Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

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About the Author

Johanna Michaelsen is a noted author, lecturer, and authority on the occult. Her internationally best-selling autobiography, The Beautiful Side of Evil,
tells the story of her involvement with the occult, Yoga, Silva Mind
Control, a well-known psychic surgeon in Mexico City, and her eventual
rejections of all such practices. Published by Harvest House in 1982, it
has been translated into German, Dutch, French, Indonesian, Bulgarian,
Polish, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, and Spanish.

Her second book Like Lambs to the Slaughter: Your Child and the Occult (available
through Amazon), also a best seller, clearly and extensively documents
the invasion of occultism and dangerous religious practices into
America’s public education system, movies, television, books, games,
holidays, and more.

Since Johanna Michaelsen’s exit from the occult
in November of 1972, she has devoted her time to studying current
trends and occult practices for the purpose of warning and equipping the
church in these last days. Her books, tapes, audio-book, seminars, and
lectures have helped thousands find freedom and peace in Jesus Christ.

Johanna is available for interviews and
seminars and can be reached at Johanna@michaelsenministries.org. You may
visit her on the web at: http://michaelsenministries.com.