Chapter Six - The Origins of Other Occult Holidays Observed in Christendom

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Worldly Christendom has adopted as their own a number of holidays that originate and have “evolved” into the pagan and occult religious observances. However, the majority of professing Christians today—who observe these holidays are simply unaware of their origins. Little do they understand that beneath the Christianized veneer of these holidays lie “mysteries” that continue within “non-threatening” secret societies, occult groups and witchcraft covens—that include a long and bloody history of human sacrifice to the god of death, Satan the devil!

Human Sacrifice in Ancient and Modern Occult Worship

In ancient civilizations, the practice of human sacrifice was an open part of occult worship. In his epochal work, The Golden Bough—A Study in Magic and Religion, Sir James George Frazer exposes the occult practices and holidays that have been accepted in every age and nation in the world as part of the idolatrous worship of the sun, moon, planets and stars. (The reader is encouraged to read Frazer’s single-volume Abridged Edition, The Macmillan Company, 1972.). Frazer details how human sacrifice was an integral part of such religious ceremonies. The following pages reference some of the countries where this occurred: Mexico, 91, 680; South Sea Islands, 110-111; India, 130, 324; Sumatra, 134-135; Japan, Annam, Senegambia, Scandinavia and Scotland, 169; Sweden, 325; Carthage 327; Greece, 337-338, 670; Western Asia Minor, 340; Phoenicia and Moab, 341; Phrygia, 411; Philippine Islands, 412; Egypt, 439, 441; Thrace and New Guinea, 440; Eastern Caucasus, 662; Europe, 706; also Scotland, 715; by the Celts, 757; and by the Druids in Europe, 761-762. These references show that the practice of human sacrifice was nearly universal.

Frazer writes: “Sometimes these human gods [i.e., men proclaimed to be a god or demigod—undoubtedly demon possessed] are restricted to purely supernatural or spiritual functions. Sometimes they exercise supreme political power in addition. In the latter case they are kings as well as gods, and the government is a theocracy. Thus in [the] Marques or Washington Islands there was a class of men who were deified in their lifetime. They were supposed to wield a supernatural power [demonic powers from Satan and his principal demons] over the elements: they could give abundant harvests or smite the ground with barrenness; and they could inflict disease or death. Human sacrifices were offered to them to avert their wrath. There were not many of them [god-men], at the most one or two on each island. They lived in mystic seclusion. Their powers were sometimes, but not always, hereditary. A missionary has described one of these human gods from personal observation. The god was a very old man who lived in a large house within an enclosure. In the house was a kind of altar, and on the beams of the house and on the trees round it were hung human skeletons, head down. No one entered the enclosure except the persons dedicated to the service of the god; only on days when human victims were sacrificed might ordinary people penetrate into the precinct. This human god received more sacrifices than all the other gods; often he would sit on a sort of scaffold in front of his house and call for two or three human victims at a time. They were always brought, for the terror he inspired was extreme. He was invoked all over the island, and offerings were sent to him from every side. Again on the South Sea Islands in general we are told that each island had a man who represented or personified the divinity. Such men were called gods, and their substance was confounded with that of the deity. The man-god was sometimes the king himself; [more often] he was a priest or subordinate chief” (Ibid., pp. 110-111, bracketed comments and bold emphasis added).

Human sacrifice was an accepted part of the worship of gods in ancient civilized Greece (e.g., to the sun god, Zeus) and also in Crete. Frazer describes human sacrifice to the sun-idol Minotaur on the island of Crete: “Stripped of his mystical features [it] was nothing but a bronze image of the sun represented as a man with a bull’s head. In order to renew the solar fires, human victims may have been sacrificed to the idol by being roasted in its hollow body or placed on its sloping hands and allowed to roll into a pit of fire. It was in the latter fashion that the Carthaginians sacrificed their offspring to Moloch [Molech]. The children were laid on the hands of the calf-headed image of bronze, from which they slid into the fiery oven, while the people danced to the music of flutes and timbrels to drown out the shrieks of the burning victims” (Ibid., pp. 326-327).

The most bloodthirsty were the Aztecs and Mayans in Central America. In their occult devotion and worship of the sun god, the high priest (high atop a steep pyramid) would cut open the chest of a human victim and quickly cut out his or her heart and thrust it still beating into the air in sacrifice to the sun. Frazer writes: “The ancient Mexicans conceived the sun as the source of all vital force; hence they named him Ipalnemohuani, ‘He by whom men live.’ But if he bestowed life on the world, he needed also to receive life from it [i.e., the beating heart of the human sacrifice]. And as the heart is the seat and symbol of life, bleeding hearts of men and animals were presented to the sun to maintain him in vigour and enable him to run his course across the sky. Thus the Mexican sacrifices to the sun were magical rather than religious, being designed, not so much to please and propitiate him, as physically to renew his energies of heat, light and motion. The constant demand for human victims to feed the solar fire was met by waging war every year on the neighboring tribes and bringing back troops of captives to be sacrificed on the altar. Thus the ceaseless wars of the Mexicans and their cruel system of human sacrifices, the most monstrous on record, sprang in great measure from a mistaken theory of the solar system” (Ibid., p. 91, bracketed comments added).

The Mexicans also conducted special human sacrifices to represent the growth of maize from planting to harvest. “For when a god is represented by a living person, it is natural that the human representative should be chosen on the ground of his supposed resemblance to the divine original. Hence the ancient Mexicans, conceiving the maize as a personal being who went through the whole course of life between seedtime and harvest, sacrificed newborn babes when the maize was sown, older children when it had sprouted, and so on till it was fully ripe, when they sacrificed old men. A name for Osiris [to whom human sacrifices were offered in Egypt] was the ‘crop’ or ‘harvest’; and the ancients sometimes explained him as a personification of the corn [or grain]” (Ibid., p. 441, bracketed comments added).

The Aztecs were consumed and obsessed with human sacrifice, perhaps more than any other ancient culture. Frazer writes: “By no people does the custom of sacrificing the human representative of a god appear to have been observed so commonly and with so much solemnity as by the Aztecs of ancient Mexico. With the ritual of these remarkable sacrifices we are well acquainted, for it has been fully described by the Spaniards who conquered Mexico in the sixteenth century, and whose curiosity was naturally excited by the discovery in this distant region of a barbarous and cruel religion which presented many curious points of analogy to the doctrine and ritual of their own church. ‘They took a captive,’ says the Jesuit Acosta, ‘such as they thought good; and afore they did sacrifice him unto their idols, they gave him the name of the idol, to whom he should be sacrificed, and apparelled him with the same ornaments like their idol, saying, that he did represent the same idol. And during the time that this representation lasted, which was for a year in some feasts, in others six months, and in others less, they reverenced and worshipped him in the same manner as the proper idol; and in the meantime he did eat, drink and was merry. When he went through the streets, the people came forth to worship him, and every one brought him an alms, with children and sick folks, that he might cure them, and bless them, suffering him to do all things at his pleasure, only he was accompanied with ten or twelve men lest he should fly. And he (to the end he might be reverenced as he passed) sometimes sounded upon a small flute, that the people might prepare to worship him. The feast being come, and he grown fat, they killed him, opened him, and ate him, making a solemn sacrifice of him.’

“This general description of the custom may now be illustrated by particular examples. Thus at the festival called Toxcatl, the greatest festival of the Mexican year, a young man was annually sacrificed in the character of Tezcatlipoca, ‘the god of gods,’ after having been maintained and worshipped as the great deity in person for a whole year. According to the old Franciscan monk Sahagun, our best authority on the Aztec religion, the sacrifice of the human god fell at Easter or a few days later, so that, if he is right, it would correspond in date as well as in character to the Christian festival of the death and resurrection of the Redeemer” (Ibid., p. 680).

Abortion—the Sacrifice of the Unborn: Just as it was in ancient civilizations, in today’s modern society human sacrifice (to Satan the devil) is still being committed with full government sanction. It is legalized murder, and it is called abortion. Under the feminist ideology that women have a “right to choose,” millions of unborn babies are killed in the womb— sacrificed to the god of this so-called “right to choose.” Thus, the modern abortion clinic becomes the temple, the abortion table becomes the altar, and the doctor becomes the high priest attending to the bloody sacrifice. Scientists, as well, become gods, experimenting with the body parts of the sacrificial offerings.

In addition to the open sacrificial slaughter of the unborn, secret adult human sacrifice is being conducted on specified occult holidays. Mac Dominick has written about this at his web site, http://www.cuttingedge.org/newsletters/newsalertarchives/newsalert-Feb-08-2008.htm. [See "America's Occult Holidays."] Some of the following material has been adapted or quoted from this site with his permission.

How America Has Copied Occult Holidays

Too many Christians are enthusiastically celebrating pagan holidays, thinking they are Christian. Once you understand how thoroughly pagan America and the rest of the Western world have become, you will see why God’s judgment cannot be far behind.

God reveals His coming judgment against all the systems of the world—religious, political and economic—in the book of Revelation: “And he [the mighty angel] cried out mightily with a loud voice, saying, ‘Babylon the Great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a habitation of demons, and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hated bird; because all nations have drunk of the wine of the fury of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the power of her luxury.’ And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, ‘Come out of her, My people, so that you do not take part in her sins, and that you do not receive of her plagues, for her sins have reached as far as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities’ ” (Rev. 18:2-5).

The Corruption of Christianity. During the reign of Constantine, Christianity began to be thoroughly corrupted by pagan practices. With state and religious authority, Constantine permitted the apostate practice of combining Christian doctrine, art, and objects with those of paganism (a process called “syncretization”). While Constantine sanctioned the practice, the Roman Catholic Church perfected it!

In Satanism, the obelisk is the symbol of the male phallus, while the circle represents the female vulva. (Remember, paganism is defined as worshiping the creature rather than the Creator—Romans 1:25—and one of the easiest aspects of creation to worship has been sex.) Whenever Satanists wanted to represent the sex act, they merely placed the phallus of the obelisk into the vulva of the circle.

Catholic popes have falsely believed that they could “Christianize” a satanic symbol of worship by praying over it and/or anointing it with “holy oil,” thus making the object suitable for Christian use. For example, as one can see in any picture of St. Peter’s Basilica, there is an obelisk standing in the middle of the huge circular assembly area. Look closely at this obelisk and you will note that it is standing in the middle of an eight-fold path of Satanic Enlightenment. One of the greatest ironies of all time is that the Roman Catholic Church has had (since the seventh century) this permanent symbol of satanic sex worship standing in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, where the pope faces it daily—even though the Vatican is the world’s greatest proponent of celibacy!

For the past 1,400 years, the Roman Catholic Church has led Western Civilization down the horrid road of syncretization, where satanic worship has been mixed with Christian worship. Once we understand their pagan foundations, we can then find it easier to refuse to participate in those holidays that have their origins in the world of Satanism and the occult.

Occult Holidays and Sabbats

The Satanist believes that numbers contain inherent power—thus, they literally order their lives by occult numerology. Such numerology also is a key component in astrology, another system of divining that Satanists observe very closely. The occult solar calendar is divided into four segments of thirteen weeks each. These periods are as follows, with significant dates noted:

Winter Solstice: 13 weeks—Minor Sabbat

• December 21-22—Winter Solstice/Yule; one of the Illuminati’s human sacrifice nights.
• February 1 and 2—Candlemas and Imbolg, (Groundhog’s Day); one of the Illuminati’s human sacrifice nights.
• February 14—Valentine’s Day

Spring Equinox: 13 weeks—Minor Sabbat, but does require human sacrifice.

• March 21-22—Goddess Ostara; Easter is the first Sunday after the first new moon after Ostara; March 21 is one of the Illuminati’s human sacrifice nights.
• April 1—All Fool’s Day, precisely 13 weeks from New Year’s Day!
• April 19-May 1—Blood sacrifice to the beast; fire sacrifice is required on April 19.
• April 30-May 1—Beltaine Festival, also called Walpurgis Night; this is the highest day on the Druidic witch’s calendar. May 1 is the Illuminati’s second most sacred holiday; human sacrifice is required.

Summer Solstice: 13 weeks—When the sun reaches its northern most point in its journey across the sky.

• June 21-22—Summer Solstice
• June 21—Litha, one of the Illuminati’s human sacrifice nights.
• July 4—America’s Independence Day, 13 days after the Day of Litha.
• July 19—13 days before Lughnasa.
• July 31-August 1—Lughnasa, Great Sabbat Festival; August 1 is one of the Illuminati’s human sacrifice nights

Autumnal Equinox: 13 weeks—Minor Sabbath, but does require human sacrifice.

• September 21—Mabon, one of the Illuminati’s human sacrifice nights.
• September 21-22—Autumnal Equinox
• October 31—Samhain, also known as Halloween, or All Hallows Eve. This date is the Illuminati’s highest day of human sacrifice.

The annual calendar for the entire Western world is ordered by these satanic festival times and days!

Specific Dates within the Occult Solar Calendar

December 21-22, Yule

When the sun begins its northward trek in the sky, and days began to grow longer again, pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice by burning the yule log. Since the sun had reversed itself and was now rising in the sky, pagans believed this was a sign that the human sacrifices carried out in Samhain (Halloween) had been accepted by the gods. Yet, as professing Christians, we continue to sing, “Deck the halls with boughs of holly ... troll the ancient Yuletide carol ... See the blazing Yule before us. Fa la la la la la la la la” (Pagan Traditions of the Holidays, David Ingraham, p. 71).

The Roman Catholic Church later changed the Winter Solstice celebration to December 25, calling it “Christmas.”

Christmas. The festival of Christmas was celebrated by pagan societies many centuries before the birth of Christ. Historian Alexander Hislop wrote extensively about this festival in his book, The Two Babylons. Regarding its origin, he states, “Indeed, it is admitted by the most learned and candid writers of all parties that the day of our Lord’s birth cannot be determined [However, today it can be determined with great accuracy that Jesus was born near September 2, 5 BC—see A Harmony of the Gospels in Modern English: the Life of Jesus Christ, Coulter; York Publishing Co.; Hollister, California; ISBN 978-0-9675479-2-3], and that within the Christian Church no such festival as Christmas was ever heard of till the third century, and that not till the fourth century was far advanced did it gain much observance. How then, did the Romish Church fix on December 25th as Christmas-day? Why thus: Long before the fourth century, and long before the Christian era itself, a festival was celebrated among the heathen, at the precise time of the year, in honour of the birth of the son of the Babylonian queen of heaven; and it may fairly be presumed that, in order to conciliate the heathen, and to swell the number of nominal adherents of Christianity, the same festival was adopted by the Romish Church, giving it only the name of Christ.

“That Christmas was originally a Pagan festival, is beyond all doubt. The time of the year, and the ceremonies with which it is still celebrated, prove its origin. In Egypt, the son of Isis, the Egyptian title for the queen of heaven, was born at this very time, ‘about the time of the winter solstice.’

“The Christmas tree, now so common among us, was equally common in Pagan Rome and Egypt. In Egypt that tree was a palm-tree; in Rome it was the fir; the palm-tree denoting the Pagan Messiah, as Baal-Tamar, the fir referring to him as Baal-Berith. The mother of Adonis, the Sun-God and great mediatorial divinity, was mystically said to have been changed into a tree, and when in that state to have brought forth her divine son. If the mother was the tree, the son must have been recognised as the ‘Man the branch’ ” (Hislop, The Two Babylons, pp. 92-93, bold emphasis and bracketed comments added).

The Word of God reveals that the custom of the “Christmas tree” is vanity. “For the customs of the people are vain; for one cuts a tree out of the forest with the axe, the work of the hands of the workman. They adorn it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, so that it will not move” (Jer. 10:3-4). While God calls such customs an abomination, people have been misled into believing that such practices honor God. Yet, every year at Christmas time, religious leaders and historians readily admit that Christmas was originally a holiday in celebration of the pagan sun god. Hislop writes: “Therefore, the 25th of December, the day that was observed at Rome as the day when the victorious god reappeared on earth, was held at the Natalis invieti solis, ‘the birth-day of the unconquered Sun’ ” (Hislop, The Two Babylons, pp. 97-98).

The birthday of the “unconquered Sun” is further described by Samuele Bacchiocchi in his book, From Sabbath to Sunday. “The adoption of the 25th of December for the celebration of Christmas is perhaps the most explicit example of sun-worship’s influence on the Christian liturgical calendar. It is a known fact that the pagan feast of the dies natalis Solis Invicti—the birthday of the Invincible Sun—was held on that date…. It was a solemn rite among the pagans to celebrate the festival of the rising of the sun on this very day, December 25th.

“That the Church of Rome introduced and championed this new date [December 25] is accepted by most scholars. For instance Mario Righetti, a renowned Catholic liturgist writes: ‘… the Church of Rome, to facilitate the acceptance of the faith by the pagan masses, found it convenient to institute the 25th of December as the feast of the temporal birth of Christ, to divert them from the pagan feast, celebrated on the same day in honor of the “Invincible Sun,” Mithras, the conqueror of darkness.’

“It is sufficient to notice that the adoption of the date of December 25th for the celebration of Christ’s birth provides an additional example not only of the influence of the Sun-cult, but also of the primacy exerted by Rome in promoting liturgical innovations…. J. A. Jungmann summarizes it well when he writes that ‘Christianity absorbed and made its own what could be salvaged from pagan antiquity, not destroying it but converting it, Christianizing what could be turned to good’ ” (Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday, pp. 256-257, and footnote 72; 260-261).

In The Golden Bough, Frazer further instructs us about the preeminence of Christmas in the pagan world: “An instructive relic of the long struggle [between true Christianity and occult Christianity (Mithraism)] is preserved in our festival of Christmas, which the Church seems to have borrowed directly from its heathen rival. In the Julian calendar the twenty-fifth of December was reckoned the winter solstice, and it was regarded as the nativity of the Sun, because the day begins to lengthen and the power of the sun to increase from that turning point of the year…. The Egyptians even represented the new-born sun by the image of an infant, which on his birthday, the winter solstice, they brought forth and exhibited to his worshippers [called a “nativity scene” today]. No doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess; in the Semitic lands she was a form of Astarte [the queen of heaven]. Now Mithra [the infant savior] was regularly identified by his worshippers with the sun, the Unconquered Sun, as they called him; hence his nativity also fell on the twenty-fifth of December” (Frazer, The Golden Bough, p. 416, bold emphasis and bracketed comments added).

Almost identical to the ancient Egyptian practice, “Christians” have for centuries (in their churches, cathedrals and city squares) exhibited a nativity scene, replete with a crib, the little infant “Jesus,” and Mary and Joseph. “The Church celebrates the Nativity on December 25…. Many churches and homes set up a crib at Christmas. This custom, although of very ancient origin [in ancient pagan Egypt], was popularized by St. Francis of Assisi. In the year 1223, he visited Pope Honorius III and sought approval of his plans to make a scenic representation of the Nativity. Having obtained the Pope’s consent, Francis left Rome and arrived at Greccio on Christmas Eve. There in the church he constructed a crib, grouping the images of the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph, of the shepherds, the ox, and the ass. At the Midnight Mass St. Francis acted as a deacon. After singing the words of the Gospel, ‘And they laid Him in a manger,’ he knelt down to meditate on the great gift of the Incarnation. And people around saw in his arms a Child, surrounded by a most brilliant light. Since then the devotion to the crib has spread far and wide” (Morrow, My Catholic Faith, p. 71).

Worshiping a baby in a manger has continued in modern times to be a prominent theme of the Christian Christmas. The birth of the Savior is reenacted each year at the same time that pagan cultures anciently re-enacted the “birth” of the sun. In spite of its clearly pagan origin, Orthodox Christendom has made Christmas a major holiday for its faithful, perpetuating the lies associated with its celebration (such as Jesus having been born in December at the time of the Winter Solstice).

Consider the pagan roots of these popular Christmas symbols:

New Year’s Day

As the nation of Israel was preparing to leave Egypt, God instructed Moses concerning the beginning of the year: “This month [of Abib; March/ April on the Roman Calendar] shall be to you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you” (Ex. 12:2). This understanding was necessary for the proper observance of God’s feasts and holy days—which do not include the first day of the year. In fact, nowhere do the Scriptures teach that Christians are to celebrate the beginning of the year.

Like most of the world’s so-called “Christian” holidays, the celebration of “New Year’s” is an ancient practice, steeped in paganism. The earliest known celebration of the new year took place in Babylon around 2000 BC, in mid-March, and was associated with the spring equinox. A variety of other dates tied to the seasons were also used by various early cultures. The Egyptians, Phoenicians and Persians began their new year with the fall equinox, and the Greeks linked their new year to the winter solstice.

In ancient Rome, the first day of March was designated as the beginning of the year. (At that time, the Roman calendar only had ten months, beginning with March; the month of January did not exist until around 700 BC, when Pontilius, the second king of Rome, added the months of January and February). The first of January was initially celebrated as the beginning of the year in 153 BC in conjunction with the start of the civil year, as January was the month in which Roman consuls were elected to begin their oneyear term (www.infoplease.com/spot/newyearhistory.html) .

Julius Caesar introduced a new, solar-based calendar in 46 BC— the Julian Calendar—in which January first was officially decreed to be the beginning of the year. In most of the Roman world, January first was consistently observed. But dissention eventually arose. In the Middle Ages, for example, the Roman Church actually attempted to abolish January new year celebrations, claiming they were pagan. The result was that a variety of Christian dates were used throughout the Middle Ages to mark the new year (Ibid.).

In 1582, the Gregorian Calendar was adopted throughout Europe and January first was again proclaimed to be the beginning of the year. The Catholic Church followed suit immediately, but the calendar was only gradually adopted in Protestant countries (Ibid.).

January was named by Pontilius for the Roman god Janus, who was said to have two opposing faces—one looking forward, one looking backwards. Julius Caesar believed Janus’ two faces symbolized looking back at the old while looking ahead to the new. The Greeks paraded a baby in a basket at the start of the new year to represent the “spirit of fertility.” Hence the modern New Year’s symbols of a newborn baby picturing the coming new year, and an elderly man winding up the old year (http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/newyearshistory/).

In most parts of the world the new year was celebrated as a religious, cultural and social event—usually marked by traditions symbolizing the casting off of the old and the embracing of the new. Roman pagans observed the new year by engaging in drunken orgies, which they claimed were to “reenact the chaotic world that existed before the cosmos was ordered by the gods” (Ibid.).

January First and Anti-Semitism: Even before the Gregorian Calendar was officially adopted, many areas of Europe had already begun to celebrate the first of January for another reason. Being the eighth day from December 25 (falsely taught to be Jesus’ birthday), the first day of January was celebrated as the Feast of Circumcision—based on the biblical command that male babies be circumcised on the eighth day. (However, the Bible nowhere commands the celebration of one’s circumcision.)

But there was a sinister side to this seemingly innocent tradition. In the Roman Church, Jesus’ circumcision was believed to have “initiated the reign of Christianity and the death of Judaism.” Thus, throughout the Medieval Period, the first day of January was blatantly anti-Jewish. On that day, synagogues were ransacked or burned, Jewish books were publicly burned, and Jews were tortured and killed.

In keeping with this anti-Jewish trend, Pope Gregory XIII decreed— on New Year’s day, 1577—that all Roman Jews were to attend a special Catholic “conversion service” which was to be held in Jewish synagogues every Friday night. A year later—on New Year’s day—Gregory signed into law a tax on Jews to pay for a “house of conversion” used to convert Jews to Christianity. Again, in 1581, on January first, Gregory ordered the confiscation of all sacred literature from the Jewish community, leading to the death of thousands of Jews.

In Catholicism, each “Saint” is awarded a particular day on which to be honored. December 31—New Year’s eve—is “Saint Sylvester Day,” and celebrations dedicated to his memory are held on that night. Who was this saint? Sylvester was the Roman pope who reigned during the Council of Nicaea (325 AD). Prior to the council, Sylvester managed to convince Constantine to ban Jews from Jerusalem. Then, during the council, Sylvester “arranged for the passage of a host of viciously anti-Semitic legislation.” Even today, Jews have nothing but contempt for January first, and the nation of Israel refuses to recognize the day as a public holiday (http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/newyearshistory/).

The idea of celebrating any kind of “New Year’s day” is clearly without scriptural backing. And the fact that our modern celebration of January first as New Year’s day is linked directly to paganism and prejudice should give pause. New Year’s is just one more example of man’s rejection of the Word of God while illicitly taking from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”

February 1 and 2: Candlemas and Imbolg—or Groundhog’s Day

The popular “Punxsutawney Phil” groundhog comes out of his burrow to divine the next few weeks of weather. If he sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of bad weather until spring finally arrives; if he does not see his shadow, the next seven weeks before spring will be good weather. What most people do not realize is that the pagan view of Groundhog’s Day (Imbolg) represents the Earth Mother. Consider the uncanny parallels between the groundhog and the Earth Mother: as the Earth Goddess sleeps inside the earth during the winter season, so does the groundhog; both the goddess and the groundhog awaken in the spring; both the goddess and the groundhog represent the cycle of “rebirth” and “renewal”; and, both the goddess and the groundhog complete the “cycle of reincarnation.”

February 14: Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day is a pagan festival that encourages physical lust. It is celebrated precisely thirteen days after Imbolg, thus it carries the number “thirteen”—Satan’s number of extreme rebellion. While most people view this day as the day to honor your wife or your lover, this celebration is steeped in paganism. Consider the camouflaged occult gods of Valentine’s Day: 1) Cupid, the son of Venus, is really Tammuz, son of Semiramis; 2) Jupiter, the head deity and sun god, is Nimrod, Semiramis’ husband; and 3) Venus, the daughter of Jupiter, is really Semiramis herself—the “queen of heaven.”

Nigel Pennick, author of The Pagan Book of Days, describes February, the month in which Valentine’s Day falls. “The name of this month comes from the Roman goddess Februa and St. Febronia (from Febris, the fever of love). She is the patroness of the passion of love…. Her orgiastic rites are celebrated on 14 February—still observed as St. Valentine’s Day— when, in Roman times, young men would draw billets naming their female partners…. This is a time of clear vision into other worlds, expressed by festivals of purification. On the 1st of February is the celebration of the crossquarter day, or fire festival (Imbolg), a purificatory festival. It is followed on the 2nd by its Christian counterpart, Candlemas, the purification of the Virgin Mary” (p. 37).

Valentine’s Day is a day of “orgiastic rites” in which pagans encouraged the flow of lustful passion.

Ostara, Ishtar or “Eostre”

Easter is a shifting date using the common practice of astrology. It is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first new moon after Ostara. This date has nothing to do with the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ! Rather, this day in the pagan tradition celebrates the return of Semiramis into her reincarnated form as the spring goddess. Pagans observe an “Easter Friday,” which has historically been timed to be the third full moon from the start of the year. Since the merging of pagan Easter with Jesus’ resurrection, however, Good Friday has been permanently fixed on the Friday prior to Easter.

The Babylonian goddess, Ishtar, the one for whom Easter is named (Ingraham, Pagan Traditions of the Holidays, p. 9), is another pseudonym for Semiramis, the wife of Nimrod, and the real founder of the Babylonian cult. After Nimrod died, she created the legend that he was a Divine Son born to her while a virgin. She is considered to be the co-founder of all occult religions.

Easter, or the day of Ishtar, is celebrated widely among various cultures and religions. According to a Babylonian legend, a huge egg fell from heaven, landing in the Euphrates River. The goddess Ishtar broke out of this egg. Later, the feature of “egg nesting” was introduced—a nest where the egg could incubate until hatched. A “wicker” or reed basket was used to nest the Ishtar egg (hence the Easter-egg basket).

The Easter egg hunt is based on the notion that if anyone found Ishtar’s egg while she was being “reborn,” she would bestow a blessing upon that lucky person. Because this was a joyous spring festival, eggs were colored with bright spring (pastel) colors.

The Easter Bunny: Among the Celts, custom dictated that “the goddess’ totem, the Moon-hare, would lay eggs for good children to eat…. Eostre’s hare was the shape that Celts imagined on the surface of the full moon...” (Ibid., p. 10).

Since Ishtar, or Eostre, was a goddess of fertility—and because rabbits procreate quickly—the rabbit became associated with the sexual act, and the egg became symbolic of “birth” and “renewal.” Together, the Easter bunny and Easter egg symbolize the sexual union that produced Tammuz, the son and false messiah of Semiramis, the queen of heaven.

It is a very serious spiritual matter, indeed, when so-called “Christian” churches participate in the pagan Easter tradition—complete with an Easter egg hunt for “resurrection eggs”—by which they are clearly guilty of combining Christianity with paganism. Such a combination is a lethal cocktail the Lord Jesus will always reject! “ ‘Therefore, come out from the midst of them and be separate,’ says the Lord, ‘and touch not the unclean...” (See II Cor. 6:17).

Easter offerings: These were derived from a tradition in which priests and priestesses brought offerings to the pagan temples for Easter. A popular Easter offering was freshly made or purchased clothes. The priests wore their best clothes, while the vestal virgins wore newly made white dresses. They also wore headgear, like bonnets, and many adorned themselves in garlands of spring flowers. They placed freshly cut spring flowers on the altar of the idol they worshiped. In addition, they carried wicker baskets filled with foods and candies to offer to the pagan gods and goddesses.

Easter sunrise services: They originated with the Babylonian priesthood to symbolically hasten the reincarnation of Ishtar.

Easter Traditions and Queen of Heaven Worship: The Easter hot cross buns and traditional dyed eggs have their earliest origins in similar ancient Chaldean pagan religious traditions. Hislop informs us about these early traditions: “The popular [Easter] observances that still attend the period of celebration amply confirm the testimony of history as to its Babylonian character. The hot cross buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now. The ‘buns,’ known too by that identical name, were used in the worship of the queen of heaven, the goddess of Easter, as early as the days of Cecrops, the founder of Athens—that is, 1500 years before the Christian era…. The origin of the Pasch eggs is just as clear. The ancient Druids bore an egg, as the sacred emblem of their order. In the Dionysiaca, or the mysteries of Bacchus, as celebrated in Athens, one part of the nocturnal ceremony consisted in the consecration of an egg. The Hindoo fables celebrate their mundane egg as of a golden colour. The people of Japan make their sacred egg to have been brazen. In China, at this hour, dyed or painted eggs are used on sacred festivals, even as in this country [England]. In ancient times eggs were used in religious rites of the Egyptians and the Greeks, and were hung up for mystic purposes in their temples” (Hislop, The Two Babylons, pp. 108-110).

Through the prophet Jeremiah, God warned of impending judgment for the practices associated with worshiping the queen of heaven. “Do you not see what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger. Do they provoke Me to anger?” says the LORD. “Do they not provoke themselves, to the confusion of their own faces?” Therefore thus says the Lord GOD; “Behold, My anger and My fury shall be poured out on this place, on man, and on beast, and on the trees of the field, and on the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be put out” (Jer. 7:17-20).

Lent: This is a commemoration of Tammuz’ death. The legend of his death claims that he was killed by a wild boar when he was 40 years old. Therefore, Lent is celebrated one day for each year of Tammuz’ life (Doc Marquis, America’s Occult Holidays). Participants are to express their sorrow over Tammuz’ untimely death by weeping, fasting, and selfchastisement. Lent was observed exactly 40 days prior to the celebration of Ishtar/Esotre and other goddesses by the Babylonians and, at times, by the ancient Israelites. Lent is observed today by Mexicans, Koordistanians, Roman Catholics and by liberal Protestant churches. We can see God’s anger over the celebration of Lent in Ezekiel 8:13-18—and God’s judgment for such abominations is described in Ezekiel 9. (We suggest you read these passages carefully, for God has stated that He will similarly punish any nation who does not hear and obey His commands— Jeremiah 12:17.)

April 19, Blood Sacrifice to the Beast

April 19 is the first day of the 13-day satanic ritual relating to fire—the fire god, Baal, or Molech/Nimrod (the sun god). Fire sacrifice is required on April 19, with an emphasis on children. To pagans, this is one of the most important human sacrifice days.

A number of historic events have been staged on April 19 in order to meet this blood sacrifice. For example: the Battle of Lexington & Concord in 1775, which made the Masonic-led Revolutionary War inevitable (war is a most propitious way to sacrifice, for it kills both children and adults); the storming of the compound of David Koresh at Waco, Texas in 1993, which fulfilled the basic requirements for a human sacrifice (trauma, fire, and young sacrificial victims); and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (once again, many young children were killed).

April 30-May 1, Beltaine Festival

Since the Beltaine celebration officially begins the night before Beltaine, a tradition has developed among occultists to celebrate Beltaine as a two-day ceremony. Great bonfires are lit on the Eve of Beltaine, April 30, in order to welcome the Earth Goddess. Participants hoped to gain favor with this goddess so that she might bless their families with procreative fertility. The Royal House of Windsor lights a Beltaine “Balefire” every year (Marquis, America’s Occult Holidays, p. 30).

The “Maypole” observance originated from the celebration of Beltaine. Since fertility is being asked of the Earth Goddess, the Maypole becomes a phallic symbol around which a circular dance is performed. The dance circle is symbolic of the female sex organ. Four, six-foot ribbons with alternating red and white colors are connected to the pole. Men would dance counterclockwise, while ladies danced clockwise. The union of the intertwining red and white ribbons symbolized the act of copulation.

Such are the origins of the occult holidays practiced by Orthodox Christendom.

Obviously, the majority of those who observe such holidays are not involved in the secret, esoteric, demonic occult practices (such as human sacrifices). Most professing Christians, however, continue to celebrate these days because they are simply ignorant of their satanic origins. Furthermore, religious leaders have assured their “faithful” that the “church” has sanitized, Christianized and sanctioned such holidays. Consequently, people believe that they are at liberty to embrace such practices, since they are no longer celebrating them to honor Satan, but to honor Jesus Christ.

In the next chapter we will learn that God the Father and Jesus Christ do not accept worship toward them through the means of pagan practices and occult holidays. In fact, quite the opposite is true—because God commands us not to learn the way of the heathen.

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