An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Ritual Murder

In recent years, the western world has been appalled by the slaying of the beautiful film star, Sharon Tate, and the other victims of ritual killings in California. (See MANSON, CHARLES.) Ritual murder has been all too much in the news. One of man’s most primitive and truly savage rites has been shown, in the grimmest manner, to have survived into our own day.

Hideous as these stories are, they are by no means the only evidence of ritual murder in connection with black magic, to be found in modern times. There are still sorcerers who believe that ’the blood is the life’, and that the life-force of a sacrificed victim can give their dark rituals the power to succeed.

It is idle to pretend that black magic does not exist. There are many power-hungry people in the twilight regions of the occult, who seek merely the most direct means to get what they want. Sometimes they put forward the old argument that the end justifies the means, forgetting that the means also conditions the end.

In more primitive days, the sacrifice of living things was a regular part of religious ritual of all kinds. Blood sacrifice on a considerable scale is enjoined in the Old Testament upon the worshippers of Jehovah. On one occasion, in the case of Jephthah’s daughter, it is quite clear that a human sacrifice was demanded and given.

The sacrifice of the Divine King was distinguished by the fact that in this case the victim was a voluntary one. He knew what accepting the office of king meant. In the eyes of his subjects also, his death would not have been murder at all; simply the following of ancient and sacred custom.

Some Egyptologists now believe that the earlier Pharaohs of Egypt died sacrificial deaths, probably by the bite of the sacred serpent. This sheds a new light on the way in which Cleopatra, the last heiress of the Pharaohs, died. By accepting the fatal bite of the asp, she met death in the traditional manner of her proud ancestors.

The cult of the Thugs in India, who worshipped the goddess Kali, regarded ritual murder as a sacred religious duty. This cult survived until the early nineteenth century, and accounted in its day for the killing of literally thousands of people. Its organisation was complex and thorough, and the slaying of the victim was carried out according to a strict prescribed ritual. He was swiftly and expertly strangled by a scarf, in which a silver coin, dedicated to Kali, had been knotted.

In many primitive societies ritual murder was closely associated with ritual cannibalism. Garry Hogg, in his book Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice (Robert Hale, London, 1958), points out that the motive for cannibalism, while sometimes sheer hunger for tasty flesh-meat, was more often a magical one. It was based upon the belief that by eating the body, or some part of it, or drinking the blood of a sacrificial victim, one could acquire that victim’s ’soul-substance’ or life-force. An example of this was found in England, when archaeologists investigated a long barrow near the great earth-work called Maiden Castle, in Dorset. It was evidently a burial-place of some importance, as it extended for nearly a third of a mile. The skeleton of a man was found buried within it; and from the condition of the bones, the archaeologists formed the conclusion that ritual cannibalism was involved. The man had been killed and eaten. He was probably a sacrificial victim; perhaps a Sacred King.

Such ceremonies belong to our primitive past. When ritual killing takes place in our own days, its aspect is truly dark and terrible, and belongs to the realm of black magic. Yet take place it does, as many of the police forces of the world could amply verify.

In 1963, a well-attested story of human sacrifice for black magic came from Spain. On 21st May of that year, a 10-year-old girl called Maria Diaz, of Figueras, disappeared. She was never seen again; but a piece of her dress was found, in strange and suspicious circumstances, upon the Holy Mountain of San Salvador. This mountain is crowned by an old, roofed-over sanctuary or altar-place, built in former days by monks. In the small hours of the morning after Maria disappeared, a shepherd heard strange sounds coming through the darkness, from the summit of San Salvador above him. He listened in fear to shrill wailings, a kind of chanting, and wild cries. The next day, he climbed up to the old altar-place, to see what had been happening. He found various symbols drawn upon the dry earth of the floor. The embers of a fire were still smouldering. A smell of incense hung in the air. There were the burnt-down remains of black candles. And there was a piece of charred cloth, with a faded pattern of pink check. Maria’s mother later identified this as being from her daughter’s dress. Police enquiries unearthed the fact that Maria had been last seen getting into a large car, driven by two men in bright-coloured summer shirts. The authorities believed it to be a case of black magic, and probably ritual murder.

One of California’s Satanist cults has found a nastily ingenious way to hold a ’human sacrifice’ and yet keep within the law. Their Satanic chapel is the basement of an old building, where a 6-foot-tall crucifix hangs upside down over an altar made of oak, and adorned with weird carvings. Skulls are used as chalices, and the scene is dimly lit by flickering candles. But the naked girl victim who lies upon the altar is actually a realistic, life-size plastic doll.

The doll is hollow, and inside is a plastic bag filled with fake ’blood’ and ’entrails’. In the course of the ritual, the self-styled priest of Satan gashes the figure open with a knife, and the ’blood’ flows freely, to the accompaniment of wild yells from his congregation, many of whom are young girls. Magic signs are drawn upon the girls’ bodies in ’blood’, and the ritual ends with a sexual orgy.

One may dismiss this sort of thing as merely childish mumbo-jumbo; but what ideas might it suggest to a person of precariously-balanced mind, who attended a ritual like this?

When the bodies of Dr Victor Ohta and his family were found in Santa Cruz, California, in October 1970, the Santa Cruz authorities had no doubt that they were dealing with yet another ritual killing. Five people died in this massacre; and at the scene of the crime police found a note which read as follows:

Today World War Three will begin as brought to you by the people of the Free Universe. From this day forward anyone and/or company of persons who misuses the natural environment or destroys same will suffer the penalty of death by the people of the Free Universe.

I and my comrades from this day forth will fight until death or freedom against anything or anyone who does not support natural life on this planet. Materialism must die or mankind will.

The note was signed “Knight of Wands”, “Knight of Cups”, “Knight of Swords”, and “Knight of Pentacles”. There was much speculation as to what these strange signatures meant. They are, of course, the four knights or horsemen of the Tarot pack. (See TAROT.) My own theory is that in this context they were meant to symbolise the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the embodiments of Plague, Warfare, Famine and Death.

Another grisly idea from the distant past has appeared in the horrific series of murders in San Francisco, perpetrated by a killer who calls himself Zodiac. Evidently influenced by the occult, this man sent messages to the police claiming that when he died he would be reborn in paradise, and all those whom he had killed would be his slaves. This is reminiscent of the beliefs behind ancient sacrifices carried out at the tombs of kings, when their slaves and concubines were sent to accompany them in the next world.

The combination of a smattering of occultism and the use of hallucinogenic drugs, without any deep knowledge of either, can undoubtedly produce a kind of uprush from the abyss of the collective unconscious, with highly dangerous results. This, it seems to me, is a possible explanation of the events in California which have shocked the world.

Another form of ritual murder was the foundation sacrifice; that is, a sacrificial victim killed when the foundations of a building were laid. The blood of the victim was offered to the gods, and his soul was believed to become a guardian ghost, keeping watch over the building.

In 1966 archaeologists excavated the remains of a Roman fort at Reculver, on the coast of Kent. Beneath the foundations of the building no less than eleven skeletons of infants, young babies between two and eight weeks old, were discovered.

The archaeologist who made this discovery, Mr B. J. Phelp, gave his opinion that three of these infants were definitely foundation sacrifices, laid down sometime during the third century A.D.

A strange sidelight on this grim discovery was afforded by a local ghost story. There was a tradition that the ghostly crying of a child could be heard by night on the shore, where the fort once stood. People avoided the place after dark. This is one of many instances, where an old ghost story has been found by archaeologists to have some sort of basis in fact.

Today, the ceremony of laying a foundation stone is still carried out; and apart from the speechmaking by the mayor or some distinguished visitor, there still remains an echo of the older rites. Very often coins, or some objects of interest or value, are laid beneath the stone. This is the modern form of the foundation sacrifice.

A remarkable thing is that the custom of foundation sacrifice, and even of a human victim, did not by any means cease with the coming of Christianity. Quite a number of old churches have yielded proof of this, when their foundations were for some reason dug up. Many strange details on this subject can be found in Builders’ Rites and Ceremonies: the Folk Lore of Masonry, by G. W. Speth (privately printed for the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, London, 1931).

A notable example was Holsworthy Church in Devonshire. When some restoration work was being done here in 1885, a skeleton was found beneath one of the walls. The evidence indicated that it was that of someone who had been hurriedly buried alive, undoubtedly a foundation sacrifice.

Sometimes animal bones have been discovered, concealed in old churches and other buildings. We may deduce from this that as time passed, animals were substituted for human victims; and later still the bones of animals were supposed to be sufficient, perhaps with the original purpose half forgotten.

When the roof of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, was repaired in the nineteenth century, some bones of animals were found concealed there. A similar discovery was made when Old Blackfriars Bridge, over the River Thames in London, was pulled down in 1867. The foundations of one of the arches were found to have been laid upon a quantity of bones, some of which were human.

This custom of foundation sacrifice prevailed all over Europe and also in Eastern countries. Nor is it entirely forgotten in the present day. It was reported in 1969 that a bizarre rumour was frightening people of Mexico City. A new underground railway was under construction; and fantastic stories were being circulated, that children and adults were being kidnapped and buried under the foundations of the subway, in order to make it safe against earthquakes and subsidences. Official denials of the ’human sacrifice’ story were made; but some superstitious Mexicans remained unconvinced.