Nathan Zamprogno now runs a blog called The Palimpsest. He’s running a three part series on his investigation of Darnell’s organization and his experiences, although as of this writing he’s only up to part two.

The first post, Who are the Shepherd’s Heart and what do they believe?, lays out his take as an amateur journalist examining the organization from the outside.

The Darnells believe they have a special calling. For years, they have received people (disproportionately, women) whose initial presentation may only be of emotional distress. Some may have diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illnesses. They believe that their calling is to assist their subjects recall, acknowledge and then heal from trauma, even abuse, experienced earlier in life. Critically, the subject may be entirely unaware they had endured this abuse and trauma until the Darnell’s techniques produce distressing recollections that then have to be interpreted and processed.

One of the interesting things is that John Darnell has acknowledged that he believes that the British Royal Family are actually reptiles. That means that Darnell is a fan of British conspiracist David Icke. I have a hard time thinking of a more damning statement.

The second post, In which Nathan’s wife is stolen away by a cult, is more painful:

I lost my wife, Kylie, to a cult. I believe their influence ruined her health, her career, and robbed a 6 year old boy of his mother. That they unpicked the threads of her life and of her mind. That she cast aside her home, her wider family, even her name for the sake of a pseudo-Christian group that she had never met six months previously. She now goes by a name given to her by the cult, Hope, after she was told that the person named Kylie had never existed. At a point where she was mentally unwell and exceptionally vulnerable, this cult misdirected her therapy, providing instead what a psychologist identified as a “treatment program” written by a group who believe Nazi-built, demonically piloted UFOs kidnap women and impregnate them to create a race of half-demon super soldiers. They took the most febrile delusions occasioned by her illness and convinced her they were real; that she was the victim of Satanic abuse; that she could speak to Jesus Christ and had a gift of prophecy; that her multiple personalities were evidence of demons that had to be exorcised; that she was involved in spiritual warfare against “astral travellers” from local covens who psychically bombarded her and the group; that her real family were evil. Crazy, evil stuff.

Darnell is particularly frightening, because he seems to combine the charismatic cult-leader style with the paranoia of a conspiricist. Consider the cover of his book Satanic Strategies: UFO’s, satanic ritual abuse, nephilim, church infiltration … clearly this man has never met a conspiracy that he didn’t like.

As always, Richard Bartholomew has more information.

The whole review was interesting, but this passage stood out to me:

Hubbard had frequently compared life to a game, and he didn’t want to be ‘playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn’t cute or something to do for lack of something better.’ The game hinged on the idea that we can choose what we perceive to be ‘true’, and discard everything else as an illusion. Yet soon Hubbard’s postmodern religion strove to become a ‘real’ one. His followers – among them hippies as well as educated and ambitious young people – surprised him with the intensity of their belief. Hubbard told a group of doctoral students in Philadelphia in 1954 that his followers were more convinced of Scientology’s cosmology than he was. ‘I’m just kidding you mostly,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe any of these things and I don’t want to be agreed with about them … All I’m asking is that we take a look at this information, and … let’s see if we can’t disagree with this universe, just a little bit.’

That’s a very different way of looking at Hubbard than I’m used to, and that quote is very telling. I’m used to seeing Hubbard and his followers as either scammers, lunatics or dupes. But if you are (for lack of a better word) postmodern enough to believe that you can create your own reality, then what better way to shape this new reality than by creating a religion?

And this might go some way towards explaining why so many of Scientology’s most prominent followers are actors or authors. These are people who work at creating a new reality for their audience.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

According to Chivers, the prosecuting lawyer, Giuliano Mignini, is a bit of a loop, with a thing for finding conspiracies and satanic cults that don’t actually exist. Apparently he had it out Knox becuase she was ‘”a diabolical, satanic, demonic she-devil” who “likes alcohol, drugs and hot, wild sex”. ‘

What’s interesting is that Chivers then goes on to ty this case to the “Satanic Panic”. This may be old hat to you, but since I’ve avoided the story it’s news to me:

It’s all very reminiscent of another Satanic panic which flared up a couple of decades or so ago in the US and Britain. “Satanic ritual abuse” became something of a buzzword after the 1980 publication of a book, Michelle Remembers, apparently detailing the childhood memories of the eponymous Michelle, uncovered using hypnotherapy, in which she claimed to have been abused by her mother and others in part of a Satanic cult in Victoria, Canada. Shortly after, a parents’ group in California decided that their children’s school was being run by Satanists, after a schizophrenic woman made claims about practices at the school, and the children – under lengthy questioning after initial denials – started making up tales of abuse. Suddenly, hundreds of similar cases were cropping up, on both sides of the Atlantic, frequently based on similarly hypnosis- or psychotherapy-derived memories.

At its height, there were claims that thousands of people had been killed by a global conspiracy-cult. But it all transpired to be imaginary: no evidence of actual Satanic murders or torture was ever uncovered, and the techniques used to glean the “memories” have since been thoroughly discredited. By 1995 the panic had by-and-large died down: Gary Clapton, a University of Edinburgh social-work academic, writes that the furore drew attention away from real child abuse issues, by pushing imaginary Satanic abuse to the top of the seriousness pile, relegating very real physical and sexual abuse down the order. The staff of the California school, incidentally, were all acquitted after a seven-year court case, then the most expensive in US legal history.

Nice work from Mr. Chivers in spotting that similarity. I’m sorry that religious mania seems to be the only thing we Americans can seem to export these days.

The gay overtones of this got the attention of Westboro Baptist Church. Spinner quotes their website (which I don’t link to):

“The entertainment industry is a microcosm of the people in this doomed nation: hard-hearted, hell-bound, and hedonistic,” leader Fred Phelps wrote on the church’s website. “These people have a platform and should be using it to encourage obedience to God; instead they teach every person who will listen all things contrary to him: fornication, adultery, idolatry, fags.”

Naturally, Westboro shows up to picket a concert. But as they brought out their picket signs, a truck pulling a parade float drives up. On the float were the Foo Fighters, dressed in the hillbilly outfits from the “Hot Buns” video, singing a parody country song “Keep it Clean.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

I think I see a new American sport in the making: baiting Westboro. Provoking them into doing their usual bit, them making them the butt of the joke.

*shudder*

One of the NAR efforts that the Pagan community has been tracking is called “DC40,” the goal of which is to create “eternal change in our nation’s capitol so our elected officials can govern from a new position of uncompromising light and understanding as we change the spiritual atmosphere over Washington DC forever.”

How will this work? One of the Wild Hunt contributors describes it:

DC40 plans to have teams in the capital cities of all 50 states and Washington DC linking state capitals to the nation’s capital to help harness the intents and wills of thousands of Christians for this working. [...]

The 51 day events start in Hawaii on October 3rd and moves to each state in reverse order of its entry into the union and continues until November 22. Christians in the state for the day are to “take point” in praying for the District of Christ, the repudiation of Columbia and other non-Christian deities and religions, and the election of Christian God-fearing candidates.

That last bit is one of the symbolic goals of the movement, to remove the “pagan goddess” Columbia from Washington D.C. and replace her with Christ.

Honestly, I don’t know what to think. Every time I think I’ve got the NAR figured out, they turn the weirdness up another notch.

Doubt it.

Fantz does a good job of making her two subjects – Sheila Martin and Clive Doyle – seem like just plain folk. Which, I suppose, they are. They’re just plain folk who got caught up into a cult of personality infused with religion. Here’s how Doyle explains his continued obedience to the memory of David Koresh:

There are three crucial points to understanding the Branch Davidian brand of religion.

First, God can appear in the flesh as a man. Second, that man doesn’t have to be a good person. Third, if you question whether that man is God, then you are questioning God. In other words, the devil is responsible for your doubt.

“Now,” Doyle asks, “are you going to give the devil control?”

That second part explains how they could remain members, even as Koresh slept with Doyle’s 14 year old daughter.

But the most heatbreaking part comes at the beginning, as Shelia Martin shops for memorial flowers:

Sheila Martin’s children burned alive. God, she says, wanted it that way.

“I don’t expect you to understand,” she says, leaning her bird-tiny frame against a full shopping cart in the nursery aisle at a Super Walmart. Her pink shirt, flats and purse match the lilies, hydrangeas and clusters of jasmine she’s buying.

The problem is, I think I do. If this isn’t part of God’s end times plan, then the children burned for nothing. That would mean they died because David Koresh was deluded and Martin and dozens of others got pulled into his delusions.

That doesn’t make Marin anything more or less than human, but it’s still a hell of a thing to face every day of your life. How much easier must it be to cling to those old beliefs, rather than admit that your mistake cost your children their lives?