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Occult Imagery on the Rise in Pop Culture

Two years ago last month, I wrote an article entitled, The Ascendancy of the Devil. In it, I described various accounts indicative of a surge of demonic activity in the world, which has since only been confirmed as a continuing trend by various sources of mine, including priests on the front lines of the spiritual battle.

This week, 1P5 contributor William Briggs has a related story at The Stream that is, I think, very important. In it, he describes the alarming increase of blatant occult imagery — some of it overtly satanic — in popular culture, from music videos to advertisements:

Who’s up for some child torture? No, seriously. Wouldn’t strapping a boy into a chair and frightening him with satanic rituals, then electrocuting him, then doing something worse be loads of fun?

It’s what happens in the new video LA Devotee by a band called Panic! At the Disco, perhaps the most unapologetically evil entry of pop culture today.

The video opens with a girl being abducted by what appears to be a witch. The view switches to a boy being strapped to a chair by more witches. The chair is in a dungeon filled with gruesome images, like a bloody skull, Baphomet-like masks, and so forth. A video camera is shown to be filming the affair. Who is watching? Witches terrorize the boy, and at one point display a large knife before they disappear behind the boy, emerging later with a fresh heart.

The girl who was earlier kidnapped feeds the boy a drink; after drinking the boy goes in and out of a trance. Later, witches strap electrodes to the boy and then — what else? — electrocute him. The boy is shown in great pain.

Now throughout all this are interspersed images of Panic’s singer, who appears on a screen in the dungeon, sometimes with a maniacal look, sometimes with Satanic imagery overlaid on his face. The video closes with the singer, demonically grinning, emerging from the screen while snapping on rubber gloves. The last scene shows the singer lurching towards the boy, clenching his gloved fists.

Except perhaps for the lyric hinting of “the black magic on Mulholland Drive,” the music is utterly incongruous with the video. There is nothing redeeming in it. Nothing. It is pitiless, brutal, boastful. It is immoral.

It is evil.

[…]

What is plain is that occult symbols, whether based in reality or only imagined, are showing with greater frequency. These are a mixture of the Satanic, of tokens from secret societies like the Illuminati, and of mind-control programs, all of which are mixed together in some black soup, and which are most popular in the music industry.

[…]

If one wanted to characterize the dark framework around which Hollywood and the rest of the ephemeral industry is coalescing, not necessarily by design, but by merely copying what is popular, it is this. The Illuminati, a secret Satanic organization, uses mind control techniques on the innocent, especially children, because of the pain it causes them, and women, for sexual purposes. The aftereffects of mind control is the theme behind Katy Perry’s Wide Awake (notice the butterflies and her imaginary young, innocent self).

If one wants to become a success, one must be initiated into the occult world. This video by The Weekend, the first of a trilogy (part two, three), tells us the (necessary) deal made with the Devil is irrevocable.

I emphasize that this is the story they are telling, and am making no claims whatsoever about its veracity.

On the whole, it is a measured, incisive, and gripping piece. It deserves to be read in its entirety.

As parents, protecting our children from the malicious aspects of our culture while still equipping them to be functional in its midst is one of the most difficult balancing acts we face. I have moral certitude that I have failed in some very serious ways, in large part by simply failing to be sufficiently aware, even though I have always been more well-versed, culturally speaking, than good number of my peers, and even than my older children. But it wasn’t enough, and the effects will be long-lasting.

I urge you, especially if you think you’ve got your finger on the pulse of the world and know what to look out for, to give this some serious consideration. We’re no longer dealing with just Gramsican subtlety; evil is being offered undisguised, and we’re far enough gone as a society that we accept it as cool.

34 thoughts on “Occult Imagery on the Rise in Pop Culture”

  1. What is your tactic for dealing with the spiritual damage done to your older children? I feel my oldest is also at risk. I woke up just a little too late.

    Reply
    • I don’t have a good answer. It can be as insidious as the common depiction of relationships and romance, leading to false impressions of what marriage should be, etc. These ideas are incredibly hard to remove once they’re planted. And when you’re dealing with a young (legal) adult, you have moral authority but no real power.

      You just have to do your best to tell them you were wrong, and why; to steer them right; to pray that God and Our Lady will sort them out, even if it takes hard lessons.

      It’s the tragedy of brainwashing by culture. You rarely see it happening until it’s too late to be easily fixed.

      Reply
    • I think Job is instructive here:

      Job and His Family
      4 His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each on his day; and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, “It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually. – Jb 1:4-5 (RSVCE)

      And in the Opus Dei Family, St. Saint Josemaría encouraged his children (members of Opus Dei) to say a memorare each day for their fellow siblings especially for the one in the most need.

      Reply
        • oops, pressed up vote instead of reply. Lucky it wasn’t down vote I guess 😉

          Sorry i’ve taken so long to reply.

          I have 7 children (8 in a few weeks ;), the eldest is 16. There is so much I wish I had known earlier too. I would highly recommend you listen to the following conference: http://catholicconferences.bandcamp.com/album/forming-catholic-children-frs-beck-themann-sspx Especially the one on love. If you listen to nothing else listen to this one! It is absolutely critical to understand what Father has to say.

          Have you enthroned your home to the Sacred Heart of Jesus? I have written something on my blog about it here: http://thewildestofadventures.blogspot.com.au/2015/06/enthronement-to-sacred-heart-of-jesus.html

          Fill your house with as many saint’s books, spiritual books, good literature as you can. Perhaps a bookshelf in the toilet lol. People will often read anything in the toilet. I often joke with one of my children that I should put their school books in there (which is not so funny since we moved and now have only one toilet). But seriously, in the surrounding culture (often even in our own families) we have no reference to what a Christ centred society should look like. When our children’s heads are filled with pictures from good books from the past, an image of a rightly ordered society is then a reality, a structure as real as they one they see surrounding them.

          Do you pray the Rosary as a family? I remember hearing a sermon where the priest said praying the Rosary can heal a person (think it was from the below linked Luke 1128.org). But listen to the conference given above first. It gives helpful advice on this. It advises not to push the child if unwilling. The conference deals more with the details on this.

          Feed your child’s desire to know. My eldest really enjoys listening to online sermons. I don’t ask her to listen. I put them on and she hangs about to listen. Our favourite is http://www.reginaprophetarum.org/#/ but http://luke1128.org is probably a good beginning choice, depending on your situation, because Father gives great sermons but he takes a softer path than RP. But take a listen and decide if either suit. There is also Sensus Fidelium https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3x3gDTqUYy_bFZWS-U_mZQ
          I usually listen rather than watch the video’s though due to images the channel director sometimes uses.

          Actively pursue your own holiness (if you aren’t already). A good daily read like Divine Intimacy can help https://www.baroniuspress.com/DivineIntimacy

          Don’t be the doom and gloom one. What ever you say might be correct, and you do have a right to say it, but if the only thing they ever see and hear from you is a sad grumpy person, they won’t understand why they should love God. Find the peace of God.
          Be fun to be around. Do fun things. Be a listener. A lot of the time they know what you mean, they just want to say it themselves.

          Don’t forget Proverbs 22:6 ‘Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.’ If we have passed on the truths of the faith to our children, they may rebel against it, but you as a parent have done your duty. They know what is true. It will be there for them in hard times. They may depart, but they have something to come back to.

          I wasn’t raised Catholic. But I had the tiny bits of influence from my Catholic grandparents. They lived far away and so we saw them seldom. But it was enough. God can work with a mustard seed, plant mustard seeds in your child’s life.

          I’m not sure if this relates or not but if you homeschool and are a mother and your child is a boy, as they move into their teens they will find it hard to receive instruction and correction from their mother. I remember listening to a Fr. Ripperger conference (on youtube, ‘How to raise a man’, I think) and he said that this is where they have to really learn to obey the commandment to honour their mother and do what is hard for them for love of God.

          Do have a listen to the ‘6th generation’ video, also by Father Ripperger linked above. I found this a very helpful video to listen to. Explains much about our children’s generation.

          Hope there is something helpful here. I know the sadness and the fear, but God is with us!
          Pray for your children daily!

          Please say a prayer for me and my family, I will say one for you and your family!

          God bless!

          Reply
  2. When I’m waiting for a movie I missed in the theatres to be released on DVD, I occasionally check out the recent updates on the local “Family” Video website. Many of the new films that come out are released straight to video and never see the big screen. And every couple of weeks, without fail, there are at least two new titles that are overly about Stan ritual stuff; it’s really disturbing.

    https://www.familyvideo.com/new_releases/

    Reply
  3. This kind of reminds me of an article I saw a year or so ago on some trad website about “OMG GOTH CULTURE is corrupting our children!!!!11” As someone who had a dorky high school goth phase complete with dyed black ponytail, I’d almost be glad if “kids these days” were listening to decent bands like the Cure instead of this Panic at the Disco crap.

    Reply
    • I’m not sure I’m understanding you, are you saying that that Panic at the Disco music video doesn’t trouble you, excepting the fact that you don’t like the band? Is that what I’m getting?

      Reply
  4. Well I can say yes this is most definitely on the rise. Especially when the international headquarters of the satanic temple move into the town next door. When satanists want to “teach” a class to elementary school children, when they want to be given equal rights to say a “prayer” before city council meetings. Then you have TV programs which just come right out as being satanic, even cartoons on adult swim on the cartoon network.

    Reply
    • Last year, I taught sixth and seventh graders. In on class, I caught a couple of students playing “Charlie, Charlie.” I flipped out on them in unusual proportion to what they no doubt believed was the severity of the crime. But I did not want demons, either in my classroom, or more importantly, my students

      Reply
  5. The tragic thing is that, in current culture, popular music which traffics in outright evil, “trangressive” matter tends to come across as cool, while it seems almost impossible for popular music with a healthy, positive message to come across as anything but lame and cringeworthy. (Exhibit A of the latter case: “Christian rock.”)

    However, there’s been one huge exception to that rule lately: a Columbus, OH duo named Twenty One Pilots, who, ironically enough, share the same record label (Fueled By Ramen) as Panic! at the Disco. Their music is wildly and successfully eclectic, blending elements of pop, rock, reggae, hip hop, EDM, and even Hawaiian. Their songs’ melodies are major ear worms. To judge from what I’ve seen on YouTube, their live shows are organically theatrical and thoroughly engaging. And while their lyrics deal with unmistakably dark themes, such as teenage insecurities and suicidal impulses, these themes are approached with compassion, understanding, and exhortations to struggle against our dark sides. (Sample, from the song Polarize: “Wanted to be a better brother, be a better son/Wanted to be a better adversary to the evil I have done.”) Many of their tunes have a plainly Christian devotional slant, without ever mentioning one Person of the Trinity directly – shades of Tolkien! And most encouraging of all, for a band that is by no means a household word, they’re remarkably popular, having placed two songs in Billboard’s top five in the same week in August, a feat matched in the past by only Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

    Granted, that’s one glimmer of light in the almost complete darkness of modern pop. (Adele’s another – OneRepublic and Imagine Dragons have their moments.) But while driving out the darkness is a priority, it’s best done by bringing in light where it can be found. Twenty One Pilots have two CDs out – Vessel and Blurryface – they’re both wonderful – check ’em out.

    Reply
  6. Want a perfect example of what the article talks about? Check out Gravity Falls by Disney. Increíble. Never trust Disney any more.

    Reply
    • Could you really trust Disney before Gravity Falls?

      I am a big fan of Gravity Falls. There are definitely Illuminati and occult references in the show, but they are meant to be jokes. I do completely understand the danger of children watching this though.

      What always really bothered me about the show is that on several occasions, characters summon “demons” and ghosts using nonsense Latin words. These scenes are frightening, even for adults. There is one scene in one episode that I will skip every time I watch it.

      Reply
      • I know, Disney has been known to have an evil agenda for a while now.
        Jokes? It may look like that, but the thing is very well thought-out. Nothing there is by chance. Training kids to be comfortable wit the demonic is no joke. A neighbor asked me to hold on to “book 3” for a while so her kid would not find it. That is how I met the show. I looked through it and it was awful. It was so esoteric and creepy I put it inside cabinet with 2 images of Mary on it.
        I read the Latin. It all makes sense and it is not made up. I do ot think there are references. The whole thing is one big in-your-face dose of it.

        Reply
  7. Belloc: “The Old Paganism had a strong sense of the supernatural. This sense was often turned to the wrong objects and always to insufficient objects, but it was keen and unfailing; all the poetry of the Old Paganism, even where it despairs, has this sense. And you may read in those of its writers who actively opposed religion, such as Lucretius, a fine religious sense of dignity and order. The New Paganism delights in superficiality, and conceives that it is rid of the evil as well as the good in what it believes to have been superstitions and illusions.

    “There it is quite wrong, and upon that note I will end. Men do not live long without gods; but when the gods of the New Paganism come they will not be merely insufficient, as were the gods of Greece, nor merely false; they will be evil. One might put it in a sentence, and say that the New Paganism, foolishly expecting satisfaction, will fall, before it knows where it is, into Satanism.”

    http://www.catholictradition.org/Classics/belloc2-1.htm

    Reply
  8. I must admit, I do despair for the future of the young generation. What was white Is now black and that are embedded in a leftist view of the world.

    Reply
  9. I recently listened to a video by Fr. Ripperger that is about the last 6 generations. It was really very interesting to hear what he had to say about each generation, though very disturbing too, particularly as he gets to talking about the last and current generations.
    https://youtu.be/27dWrv_jM64

    Reply

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