26 Oct 2014

Well It May Be the Devil, Or It May Be the Lord

Religious 33 Comments

…but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

Since I am relatively new to this stuff, I thought some of you–whether believers are not–would be interested to hear of it as well. As I’m sure you can imagine, I have a circle of friends/acquaintances who are Bible-believing Christians, and I have a circle who share my skepticism of the welfare/warfare State and ostensibly humanitarian organizations like the United Nations.

Generally speaking, the people from both groups wouldn’t get along. Although the people in my church, for example, are hardly fans of Barack Obama, they are extremely proud of the U.S. military and would probably be astonished at certain libertarian positions. On the other hand, many of the people who like my economic and political writings also think “the Church” is a malevolent institution just like “the State,” which exists to control people’s minds and convince them to send in money in order to avoid catastrophe.

However, there is a small intersection of the two groups, and that’s where things get really interesting. For people with that worldview–who understand the “secular” critique of the efforts to establish One World Government, etc., but who also believe in the book of Revelation–they will tell you that it’s obvious why all of these various organizations throughout history seem to be operating in a coordinated effort to take away our liberties. It’s not a coincidence, according to these people. No, it’s a conscious plan designed by the prince of this world.

As I say, I am quite new to this stuff. It was only a few years ago that I had even heard of, say, the Bilderberg Group and the other icons in the “conspiracy theory” toolbox.

What I’ve found as I explore this stuff is that at first, you hear the most (apparently) outrageous, absurd allegations. But then when you go and investigate it, you find evidence in support of the allegation that you wouldn’t have thought possible.

The most recent example that prompted today’s post, was someone mentioned to me that these elite, One World organizations were openly pledging their allegiance to the devil. He cited as an example the Lucis Trust, which is affiliated with the United Nations (though I can’t get a good idea of what that really means, apart from claims made in the obvious “conspiracy” websites).

Putting aside for a moment the issue of how much attention we should be paying to the Lucis Trust, there is no doubt about their origin. This is from their own website:

There are comments on the World Wide Web claiming that the Lucis Trust was once called the Lucifer Trust. Such was never the case. However, for a brief period of two or three years in the early 1920’s, when Alice and Foster Bailey were beginning to publish the books published under her name, they named their fledgling publishing company “Lucifer Publishing Company”. By 1925 the name was changed to Lucis Publishing Company and has remained so ever since. Both “Lucifer” and “Lucis” come from the same word root, lucis being the Latin generative case meaning of light. The Baileys’ reasons for choosing the original name are not known to us, but we can only surmise that they, like the great teacher H.P. Blavatsky, for whom they had enormous respect, sought to elicit a deeper understanding of the sacrifice made by Lucifer. Alice and Foster Bailey were serious students and teachers of Theosophy, a spiritual tradition which views Lucifer as one of the solar Angels, those advanced Beings Who Theosophy says descended (thus “the fall”) from Venus to our planet eons ago to bring the principle of mind to what was then animal-man. In the theosophical perspective, the descent of these solar Angels was not a fall into sin or disgrace but rather an act of great sacrifice, as is suggested in the name “Lucifer” which means light-bearer.

Anyway, the purpose of this post is mostly just to make you aware–in case you didn’t realize it–that in addition to people who openly revere God, there are those who openly revere Lucifer.

For one final remark, consider this: Even those of you who are agnostic/atheist can surely recognize that a genuine believer in the power of God might, in certain circumstances, be able to achieve things because of his faith. So by the same token, if there are people walking around out there who genuinely believe they’ve achieved their position of earthly power because they “made a deal with the devil”…you can expect atypical behavior from them. I submit that adding that feature to your mental model of powerful people might allow you to better explain the world we see.

33 Responses to “Well It May Be the Devil, Or It May Be the Lord”

  1. Andrew_FL says:

    I don’t believe most leftist politicians believe they serve the devil.

    I do sometimes wonder if their prayers are on call redirect, though, to the more appropriate recipient.

    (You might have mentioned Alinsky’s dedication of Rules for Radicals to Lucifer, as well)

  2. Travis says:

    I’m anti-state, and also believe in (and trust) God. Most agents of the state are not concious servants of the unseen dark powers in the world, but I am increasingly inclined to think that some of the ruling elites are devil-worshipers. I do believe that the state is a satanic institution to one degree or another. Recall that when the devil tempted Christ in the desert, he offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world, which implies that the state is the domain of evil, owned by the devil himself. After all, what else does the state do other than kill, steal, and deceive?

    • K.P. says:

      Interestingly, there was an individualist anarchist publication called Lucifer the Lightbearer at one time.

      • Harold says:

        And a brand of matches, later becoming slang for all matches, as immortalised in the WWI song “pack up you troubles in your old kit bag.” “When you’ve a Lucifer to light your fag” might be interpreted differently.

  3. Grane Peer says:

    Dr.Murphy, Alice Bailey knew damn well what she was doing when she named it Lucifer publishing. The fundamental deity of the new age movement is the Lord of the Rings, Saturn. Saturnalia has permeated all the major religions including the black cube worship of the Muslims and the blasphemous image of not jesus with the glowing rings of Saturn above his head. If you read lucis-Triangles great invocation it should be obvious what “god” they are talking about. Of course without reading revelation it’s difficult to realize the Catholic Church is condemned by the bible as well as Christmas yet the faithful don’t seem to care.

    • khodge says:

      It’s kind of tough believing that the Catholic Church is condemned in a book of the bible when, in fact, the bible was written and canonized by the bishops of the Catholic Church.

      • Grane Peer says:

        Canonized, yes. Written…

  4. Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa says:

    Abuse of authority is not inherent in human beings — and certainly, from my atheist point of view I don’t see much difference between someone abusing his authority as a religious leader or follower, and someone who supposedly worships evil who does the same thing. Some situations call for leaders to take over, but such a situation can easily devolve into tyranny when there are no effective constraints on their authority. For example, when Christianity had a lot of power, it abused it and there was little true freedom. Of course that was in a time when little freedom had ever existed in the first place. So, when states broke the church and local authority and gained ascendancy it also abused its power. The whole point of classical liberalism is constraining authority so it is useful instead of harmful.

  5. Tel says:

    I always liked the Norse approach to deism. Thor represents solving problems by brute force… the ancients obviously were well acquainted with “everything looks like a nail” mentality. If the TV doesn’t work, hit it with a hammer, if the service in the tavern is a bit sluggish, slam the table, if someone gives you some lip hit them with a hammer. The only thing you can get wrong here is you might need to hit harder, or perhaps a few more times (as the Keynesians say, whatever it takes).

    Now Loki is about solving problems by wit and cunning. Think about ways to get the job done without working hard. This method is so efficient, you get time left over to play tricks on people. Stealing is easier than working, especially when you don’t get caught so the most important thing is not getting caught. Stealing from under people’s noses, and still not getting caught is even more amusing, better still trick people into just giving you what you want… you can probably pick up the general idea.

    Neither of these two is exactly good or evil, it’s a value judgement, which approach you prefer. The trouble with genuinely evil characters is you get stuck with recursive contradiction… Judas was necessary for Jesus to save us, Lucifer is necessary in order for people to have something to struggle a against that they may choose God, free will is necessary to allow people to be good at all in any meaningful sense, and Osama bin Laden is necessary to get people to accept the Patriot Act. Someone always gets the job of playing the bad guy. But if the bad guy is necessary, what makes him so bad? Why not just call him the necessary guy. That’s a bit more culturally sensitive.

    As the Norse would say: Frig that.

    It’s tough being an Atheist, always needing to stay strong and pure, guarding against the temptation of believing.

  6. Enopoletus Harding says:

    I think it’s fairly easy to get yourself represented at the U.N. -the Center for Inquiry is represented as well:
    centerforinquiry.net/unitednations
    As Bob says, it’s interesting to speculate regarding politicians’ religious beliefs. They continue to piss off atheists like me with their National Prayer Breakfast:
    whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/02/06/remarks-president-national-prayer-breakfast
    According to Jason Colavito, the origins of the Ancient Astronaut theory lie in theosophy as well.
    jasoncolavito.com/blavatsky-on-ancient-astronauts.html

  7. khodge says:

    Bob, I find it very difficult accepting your extreme anarchist libertarianism. It is the libertarians who point out that a pencil is a work of a community; it is you who have formed a community with your karaoke friends; it is you who have accepted a Bible-believing community. To my way of thinking, sharing a common government adds to the stability of these groups, many of which are not inherently stable. (I was looking at an older post of yours and most of the commenters were different from the group that you have now.)

    The bottom line, for me, is your extreme libertarianism (and the others I follow: CafeHayek and TheBigQuestions, for example) work much better as single factor variables rather than a real world mufti-variate model. The flip side is that religion is a real world mufti-variate model that everyone wants to turn into a single factor variable.

    • Andrew_FL says:

      This is called freedom of association. Did Bob do any of those things with the threat of violent force?

      • khodge says:

        And therein lies the problem of politics. Bob did not do any of those things with the threat of violent force, nonetheless, he was born into a family, in a city, in a neighborhood, in a state, in a country. He was educated through his PhD, hired, paid &c, &c. At which point did he choose to opt out? At which point did he choose to become an anti-social jerk? His counterfactuals seem much more fanciful than some of the stuff Keynesians dream up.

        • Andrew_FL says:

          Wow, you didn’t understand my point at all. Congratulations.

          • khodge says:

            I understand coercion and the abuse of power. It happens in free association, too. Like I said, a single variable in a multi-variable world.

            • Ben B says:

              How does coercion happen in free association?

              Do you just mean that at any given moment individuals who have historically formed their relationships by free association can begin to use coercion?

        • Ben B says:

          Opting out of the state is not the same as opting out of society. Libertarians aren’t misanthropes; at least not by nature.

          • Bob Murphy says:

            Ben B wrote:

            Libertarians aren’t misanthropes; at least not by nature.

            Perhaps, but are you on Facebook?

            • Ben B says:

              Ha. I might have to reconsider this; I recently opted out of Facebook.

              I can just imagine a world where there is a mass exodus of libertarians out of a government-infested society and into the open wilderness. This causes many state pundits to clamor, “see, I told you libertarians hate society, and not just the state.” Of course, this would be like watching the movie Arachnaphobia, and then coming to the conclusion that people in the movie don’t like living in houses, in general, because they are seen leaving their killer spider-infested homes.

          • khodge says:

            News Google Felicia Day and doxxing. She was in an informal, very libertarian group and subject to some pretty extreme coercion. I don’t see a lot of evidence that unfettered Libertarians are especially honorable people and I do encounter occasional news articles that suggest precisely the opposite.

            • Ben B says:

              Ok, I googled Felicia Day and doxxing, and I didn’t see anything that referenced extreme coercion, ie, rape, murder, slavery, on the part of libertarians. Sure, some people seemed to act like real jerks towards her, but whether or not they had read Rothbard wasn’t in any of the reports.

              If this is your go-to news reference about the horrors of unfettered libertarianism, then I can only imagine how much you must think of statists and their level of honor.

    • Ben B says:

      What do you mean that the groups aren’t inherently stable? Are you referring to intra-group or inter-group stability? If you are referring to intra-group stability, then I don’t see how an inter-group government is necessarily going to create stability within a particular group; at least not simply because it is shared by other groups. If you are referring to inter-group stability, then why should an inter-group government necessarily be able to bring these groups together? Especially if this “association” is based on violence; violence tends to be a destabilizer and not a stabilizer.

      Besides, what is so great about stability? And in what context? Personally, I find intra-group instability neutral; it simply means that members within the group are changing their ideas, whether good or bad.

  8. Josiah says:

    I always like that Dylan song.

    I went to the Lucis Trust website. They seem like a bunch of new age cranks. They clearly like the UN, but it’s not clear anyone at the UN has ever heard of them.

    • John says:

      I like the Dylan song too. Look, fellas, I work in an urban environment with a bunch of Ivy League types who many on this site would describe as left-wing kooks, and who I would describe as leaning liberal. Many of them go into government after they leave Their private sector jobs. Some have risen fairly high. I’m just going to say it: NO ONE IS A SATAN WORSHIPPER. That is not the problem with people in government any more than it is the problem with Libertarians. Bob, I know you are religious and I respect that, but the Prince of This World is not responsible for its problems; we are. People. And we hardly need any supernatural help to to screw this world up to a pretty stunning degree. Don’t freak me out, dude. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.

      • Bob Murphy says:

        John, I’m curious, do you agree that there exist people on the planet who literally worship Satan, and you’re just emphatically claiming that not a single one is a high-ranking government official?

        Or do you deny that there are people who actually believe they are followers of Satan?

        (Note, this question doesn’t rely on you endorsing the existence of such a being. I hope you believe that there are plenty of people who believe in God, even if you yourself are an atheist.)

        • John says:

          No, it’s a fair point. There are worshippers of Satan, I’m pretty sure, and I wouldn’t absolutely rule out the possibility that some high ranking government official somewhere secretly worships Satan. Whether any high ranking official in the US does is a tougher question for me. There are very few secrets for government officials any more, and since worshipping The Fallen One generally disqualifies a person from most elective office, I think it’s probable that in fact there are no high ranking government officials who serve Lucifer. But there still might be. What I feel very sure of, based on my own personal experience, as well as my general exposure to the, say, historical evidence, is that Devil worship is categorically not playing a significant role either in the achievements or mistakes of the U.S. government. In othe words, Obama really is doing his best. It may not be very good, but his performance is not motivated by his desire to please Satan, any more that it is motivated by his desire to make America like Africa using Ebola, or to vindicate his father’s ideas about colonialism, or by any of the other unsupported peculiar ideas lurking on the Internet.

          In all seriousness, I know it’s important to keep an open mind, and the world is full of surprises, but it seems to me before one seriously starts entertaining the notion that either Satan himself, or the worship of Satan, is causing the conduct of any first world capitalist democracy, I think one has to demand a very high degree of evidence, because personally I believe we have enough completely specious ideas being promoted in this country. On its face, the important role of The Son of Perdition in government strikes me as potentially another such idea. In part, this may be because I don’t believe in Satan — and maybe I’m wrong about that — but I also think it’s because the claim of Satan worship just doesn’t remotely comport with my experience of the world the way, say, a claim that a politican is lying, unfaithful, or corrupt does. Despite their protestations to the contrary, as a general matter, politicians and people in govnment generally don’t believe in any spiritual life at all, much less the existence of Powers and Principalities. In short, in this case I suspect a very healthy dose of skepticism is warranted.

    • Enopoletus Harding says:

      Compare:
      google.com/search?q=site%3Aun.org+lucis+trust&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb#safe=off&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&q=site:un.org+%22center+for+inquiry%22
      google.com/search?q=site%3Aun.org+lucis+trust&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb#safe=off&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&q=site:un.org+lucis+trust

      The Lucis Trust exists, but its U.N. presence is negligible compared with the Center for Inquiry. And we know how popular the message of the Center for Inquiry is in international politics.

  9. Daniel Kuehn says:

    You have to be careful with this, though. Sure, the theosophists and related people look to Lucifer – but a big detail that needs stating is that they think Christians have misinterpreted scripture when they claim that Lucifer fell and was evil.

    Satanism without the evil isn’t quite as salacious.

    Still enough heresy to make your fellow congregants uncomfortable, of course. But not quite Satanism as you seem to be thinking of it. There IS that sort of Satanism too of course, but as far as I know it doesn’t have so many conspiracy theory tie-ins.

    • Major.Freedom says:

      Socrates said nobody knowingly does wrong.

      • Andrew_FL says:

        Was it Socrates, though, or Plato putting words in his mouth, per usual?

  10. Daniel Kuehn says:

    Anyway, I think a non-secular world government is not a world government worth having.

    • Daniel Kuehn says:

      btw – “secular” is always a fun word to talk about in church too. I grew up in the environment, and I was just as guilty – it’s often more or less treated as synonymous with “atheism” except “atheists” are those people that say they don’t believe in God while “secularists” are those people that don’t believe in God but refuse to even bring the issue up in conversation.

  11. knoxharrington says:

    I was watching The Omen: The Final Conflict last weekend and it raises a question similar to Bob’s – why would the Catholic monks/priests (why is it always the Catholics?) even attempt to kill the Anti-Christ when the Anti-Christ represents a fulfillment of prophecy and his reign will ultimately end defeat anyway? If you watch Jack Van Impe or Hal Lindsey or John Ankerberg you see non-stop “end times” analysis (which never actually comes to fruition) where all this fear-mongering takes place. Why bother? If you really believe it is inevitable and the story’s end is already written then why worry? To me it just further speaks to the mythological nature of the belief system and the lack of mental evolution in the believer.

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