Message #10819 - Metaphysical (Magicknet) 
   Date : 25-Oct-90 06:39
   From : Thomas Frost
     To : All
Subject : S.j. Mercury News Article (3 Of 3)
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                          The Witching Hour
                           By Joan Connell
                 Mercury News Religion & Ethics Editor
                San Jose Mercury News - Sat. Oct. 20 1990

                       The right to disagree [cont.]


    "Larry and I are beginning to look like a couple of wackos," says Bernal.
"The misconception is that we're a bunch of narrow-minded goody-two-shoes.
San Francisco's a city where everybody has parades; I wanted our people
to be a presence, too. We weren't going to call down fire on anybody; it
was not going to be a confrontation, just a little show of force.

    "But the war on Satan will go on - inside the auditorium. There won't
be any pussy-footing around," Bernal promises. "There'll be singing, 
preaching and speaking in tongues. It'll be wall-to-wall spiritual warfare."

    Bernal, a former ironworker and self-described hell-raiser who says
he was born-again a dozen years ago, has gained some fame himself as a 
televangelist and spiritual warrior.

    After the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Bernal traveled to
Beijing and in a much-publicized ceremony, annointed the stones of the
square with oil to drive the devil out.  He also has prayed to cast the
devil out of several sites in the South Bay, including the San Jose
Mercury News.

    Bernal says he respects the rights of Wiccans to worship as they
please.

    "They're sweet, sincere people, who are operating out of ignorance,
not malice." Bernal says. "I don't condemn these poor people; I want to
convert them. I was a dope-smoking, LSD taking hippie myself once.  Some
of our greatest pastors today are old, burned-out hippies."

    To Eric Marsh, a 36-year old software engineer from Fremont who is a
practicing witch, Bernal's attidue demonstrates the stereotypes that are
inflicted upon Wiccans.

    "Fifty percent of big-city witches are involved in high-tech; 90
percent are computer literate.  That's because people in high technology
puersuits have innovative and inquiring minds," says Marsh, who
established a computer bulletin-board network for Wiccans who use the
technology to keep abreast of a variety of spiritual, philosophical and
environmental issues.

    What bothers Eric Pryor of San Francisco's New Earth Temple is the
automatic linkage of Satan and Wicca.

    "Satan is the best friend the church has ever had. Satan's the
bogyman who has kept them all in business," Pryor says. He adds that the
members of his temple, who follow a Welsh tradition of Wicca and have been
very private about their beliefs in the past, are starting to be more
public.

    "People can come in here anytime and see we don't sacrifice babies,
we don't worship Satan and we're not lunatics," Pryor says.  "And the
only good thing about this kind of campaign (that Lea is waging) is that
it makes us open up more and be more accessible."

    Carl Raschke, a sociologist at the University of Denver and a
specialist on Satanism in America, regards the pending Christian-Pagan
holy war with a certain amount of amusement.

    "This sounds like the gunfight at the metaphysical OK Corral,"
Raschke says.  "There are Satanists out there: criminal Satanists, who do
violent things in the name of the devil.  There are religious Satanists,
who dress up in black robes and do strange and essentially harmless
things.  And that's part of the whole, exotic religious flora and fauna
that is unique to the Bay Area.

    "Doing spiritual battle with Satan is an established tradition going
back to Jesus himself," Raschke says, adding that most spiritual warfare
is done quietly, through the power of prayer and laying on of hands.

    "But in the age of TV, there's an impulse to make religion into a
public spectacle.  And the whole thing strikes me as supreme street
theater.  We haven't had a good, crazy religious spectacle since the
harmonic convergence," Raschke says.

    "And now, on the streets of San Francisco on Halloween night, you'll
have neo-pagans doing ceremonial magic vs. Pentecostal Christians praying
up a storm.  This is probably better than skinheads bashing Geraldo with
a chair."


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