Abortion Ritual
From Fox News
Satanic Temple joins backlash against Texas abortion law
The Temple pledges to ‘highlight religious hypocrisy and encroachment on religious freedom’
A group of Satanists is bedeviling the restrictive new abortion law in Texas.
The Satanic Temple, a religious group based in Salem, Massachusetts, has joined the backlash against the measure, which bans abortion after six weeks and allows anyone to file $10,000 lawsuits against those who help violate it.
The organization lobbied the FDA to provide abortion pills to its Texas members, arguing it qualifies as an exemption as a faith-based group that supports the procedure, according to The San Antonio Current.
The Temple, which pledges to “generate attention and prompt people to reevaluate fears and perceptions,” and “highlight religious hypocrisy and encroachment on religious freedom,” reportedly cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which allows Native Americans to use drugs in religious ceremonies.
“I am sure Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — who famously spends a good deal of his time composing press releases about Religious Liberty issues in other states — will be proud to see that Texas’s robust Religious Liberty laws, which he so vociferously champions, will prevent future Abortion Rituals from being interrupted by superfluous government restrictions meant only to shame and harass those seeking an abortion,” Temple co-founder Lucien Graves reportedly said.
*** *** ***
My comment:
I note the Satanist jargon, particularly when speaking of reevaluating fears and perceptions, rather than, for example, speaking about the truth of the matter, is indistinguishable from modern Woketopian Political Correctness jargon.
Both are nihilistic, that is, concerned with perception over reality, and both are fallacious, that is, taking for granted that all opposition to the party line is and must be based on illegitimate motives, as fear or hypocrisy meant only to shame and harass. The idea of a woman who desires not to see small babies killed, whether her own or not, is airbrushed out of thought and speech.
To themselves, even the Luciferians attribute only the noblest motives, as a desire for freedom; in this case, freedom from reason and right reason. Logical fallacies offer escape from the intolerable prison of truth and sanity to enlightened and benighted alike.
Without ad hominem, there is nothing the self-anointed enlightened who call themselves Woke can say, nor, so it happens, the the self-anointed benighted who bow to devils.
But this column has a particular personal interest to me, because it adds weighty testimony to an old controversy that once brushed up against my work.
Here is my one-sided version of events. Be warned my recollection is foggy, my testimony is not under oath, and I speak to amuse my readers, not report the facts.
Not long ago, as the Elder Ones count time, my favorite work of what I had written, ‘One Bright Star to Guide Them’ was honored by fans by being promoted as a candidate for a Hugo Award.
My wonted professional humility, of which I am so justly proud, was set aside, as this is the sole thing my pen fathered which I deem worthy of an award.
It was an award — you might not have heard of it — once held in high esteem in my field. Then, the award was for mastery of storytelling; now, it is for submission to goodthink.
Alas, my fans were wrongfans, and the admiration they had for the work was wrongthink, and so the most influential writers and editors on the field — including my wife’s then editor at Tor books — conspired secretly and crusaded openly to deny my fans the courtesy of a fair hearing or fair vote on the matter.
During this unsightly and unprofessional kerfuffle two literate men decided to read and debate the merit of the work. One was my bold editor. Then other was a cringing snarling jackanape who shall go unnamed, but whose cybername refers to two syllogistic forms containing an ontological fallacy.
In an act of pitch-perfect irony, the one passage which the jackanape singled out for criticism was a moment of dialog in the yarn where the devil-worshipping villain boasts of using the aborted children in his occult rituals.
The jackanape’s criticism was not that the scene was not effective, not well written, lacking in character development or descriptive power, nor anything of the kind. You know, literary criticism.
His criticism was about the accuracy. As an occultist himself, he said that abortion was not a sacrament of occultist practice, nor did satanists nor pagans conduct rituals involving child-sacrifice.
Be it noted that the villain in the text did not specify which brand or branch of witchcraft was his. The jackanape, of his own accord, identified it with his own, with no prompting by the author. He read a passage, and saw himself.
I thought it odd that an atheist onlooker (for so I was when I wrote the work) knew more about his own occult belief and practice than he himself did.
In any case, this critic was unwilling to see the passage as an apt metaphor for modern, worldly corruption (which was the theme of the tale) even if, according to him, it was not literally accurate. Because literal accuracy is paramount in fairy-tale fantasy stories, donchaknow.
Real literary critics apparently grasp nothing about figures, similes, metaphors, or anything which might allow a writer, by poetic license, to use abortion as a modern symbol for ancient child-sacrifice. Nor grasp when it is not a symbol at all, but actually is literally accurate.
Of course child sacrifice is an has been part of pagan worship wherever Moloch rears his ghastly altars, nor are the sacred trees of Norse gods free from human blood, nor the pyramids of Mexico. And if the legends of Saturn hold an echo of older practice, even in the shadow of Olympus, dark and sanguinary deed were done in the name of chthonic gods.
So the protests of a modern neopagan and occultist concerning the purity and enlightenment of his ancestral practices displays a naivety difficult to believe.
In any case, were their any doubt, an official spokesdevil for Uncle Screwtape, speaking on behalf of the Lowerarchy has clarified any ambiguity:
In the column above, the spokesdevil for the satanists is asking, nay, demanding that their Abortion Rituals (his words, not mine) be free under the First Amendment to continue slaughtering and shedding innocent blood to the glory of Lucifer.
Let none entertain any doubts further about the real issue involved, both in the current profound controversy concerning the sacredness of human life, now reduced to livestock, and in the trivial controversy mentioned above concerning the integrity of a once well-meant award, now reduced to rubbish.
The Prince of Darkness is a jealous master, and will have nothing sacred, nor even pleasing, to endure in this world, which serves not to flatter the pride and damn the soul.
Let us pray, in this case, the Texans overcome the Devil.
God bless Texas!
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
