The opening of Little Shop of Horrors warns,
Shing-a-ling-shing-shing-a-ling-thing, what a creepy thing to be happening
Look out, look out, look out, look out!
Shang-a-lang, feel the sturm and drang in the air…
I hope we are all paying attention because now there’s a new occult threat; and yes, we’re part of the problem. But this time, we are at least joined by Popular Mechanics. It’s a break from last week’s deer-eating witches, but also in the same stream of anxiety-provoking panic.
Six weeks ago, I mentioned in an editorial the rising rhetoric of spiritual warfare. At the time, I had run across a couple of articles including one in Popular Mechanics, referencing Brad Steiger and his 1976 book, Gods of Aquarius. The book itself is referencing, of course, the Age of Aquarius, when the vernal equinox enters a 2,160-year period of peace, brotherhood, and equality and also great technological and scientific advancement.
Steiger predicted the presence of Star people or starseeds, individuals – humans on Earth – who believe they have incarnated on Earth from other planets or star systems. Starseeds possess a deep sense of longing for their true home in the cosmos and often feel disconnected or out of place on Earth. Starseeds have voluntarily come to Earth during this time of great transformation and shift in consciousness. They are believed to carry unique qualities, abilities, and wisdom from their home star systems, which they can use to assist in the awakening and evolution of humanity.
There are also different types of starseeds, each associated with a specific star system. For example, some claim to be Pleiadian starseeds, indicating their origin from the Pleiades star cluster, while others identify as Sirian starseeds, claiming connections to the Sirius star system. These designations are often based on personal experiences, intuitions, or channeled information.
Also, as Carole Anne noted, “They’re here.”
If you think, you’ve seen this movie before, it’s probably because you have.
The 1960 film Village of the Damned is a British science fiction horror movie directed by Wolf Rilla. Based on the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, the film revolves around the mysterious events that take place in a small English village called Midwich. The film was remade in 1995 and a TV series was released in 2022.
One day, as often happens in the dreamy bucolic paradise of the Cotswolds, the entire village falls into a strange and unexplained trance, causing everyone within its boundaries to lose consciousness for several hours. When they awaken, life seemingly returns to normal, until it becomes apparent that every woman of childbearing age in Midwich is pregnant, even those who were previously celibate or unable to conceive.
As time passes, the children born from these pregnancies are revealed to possess extraordinary mental abilities and glowing, otherworldly eyes. They exhibit a cold and detached demeanor, lacking emotions or empathy. They develop at an accelerated rate and display remarkable intelligence, easily surpassing their peers.
The children, known as the “cuckoos” due to their parasitic nature, use their psychic powers to manipulate and control others, making them dangerous to the community. As their powers become more potent, the villagers grow increasingly fearful and suspicious of the children’s intentions. A Russian village is equally plagued.
Dr. Gordon Zellaby, a local scientist, realizes the grave threat posed by the children and attempts to find a way to neutralize them, in this case blowing them and himself up. The Soviet Union nukes the Russian village. As we learned from Warrant Officer Ripley, “It’s the only way to be sure.”
The Cold War period of sci-fi films was wholly obsessed with McCarthy-esque worries about ferreting out Communists and other hidden enemies ready to snatch away our freedoms at a moment’s notice.
In many ways, the period anticipated the Satanic Panic of the 1980s with books, articles, and testimonies of those who claimed to have been involved in “Satanism.” Most of them later recanted their stories but not before some individuals were sent to prison, daycare locations and other services were closed by unfounded allegations of Satanic abuse, and children suffered through anxiety and depression.
The chemistry and tinder of that period are now fresh again.
Setting aside the science of psychological phenomena like the Barnum effect (formally called the Forer Effect), starseeds have attracted the attention of Evangelicals and other conservative Christians’ and, of course, ultimately connected to Witchcraft practices and hand-wringing about them.
Jenn Nizza, a “Former psychic medium saved by the grace of Jesus!” and Hannah, an “ex light worker saved by Jesus,” are sharing the spiritual and Satanic dangers of starseeds.
This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows the heart of M74. Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee, and the PHANGS-JWST Team. Acknowledgment: J. Schmidt
“When you don’t have a foundation on Christ Jesus, you are susceptible to all of the lies of the evil one,” Nizza told Christian Broadcasting Network which includes brands like the late Rev. Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club. “And he loves to prey on vulnerability.”
In the same interview, Hannah added, “Teaching your child that they have powers, or psychic abilities, or palm reading, or anything like that, it opens them up to demonic possession.”
Then suddenly and predictably, and I’m sure unrelated to last year’s TV series release, Hannah shared, “The biggest problem of being a starseed is you lose the ability to remember what it is to be human … you stop seeing yourself as being made in the image of God… You lose the ability to actually communicate with humans and receive communication from them. So, then you don’t feel loved, and then you’re only love is your obsession with the occult.”
Collectively, they are capitalizing on a phenomenon that is not rarified; and they also squirreled in topics relevant to our community. As The Conversation noted, “an internet search for the term [starseed] brings up over 4 million results and there are scores of people posting videos on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook who believe they originate from another world. Indeed, content with the term #starseed has over 1 billion views on TikTok.”
As I noted in that previous editorial, Christian rhetoric rarely stays in Christian circles. We may not be in a full-on Satanic Panic Again, but we’re getting close. The fuel is everywhere between the self-serving conservative rhetoric and purposeful inhibition of critical thinking. The current Christian starseed crisis is only part of the machine to spread spiritual fear.
The reports of animal mutilations and demonic are already trending since earlier this year from mutilations being left at a pro-life center in Florida, to cows in Madison County Texas, and previously in Moscow, Idaho, and now sheep in the UK involving New Forest “Satanists“, and just this week in Wales.
Last month in Catholic Culture, the organization’s president laments that we are returning to the ways of Molech because “the family has imploded as infidelity, sexual perversion, abortion and infanticide have become common in nearly all pagan cultures…. and it is not at all surprising that such practices are proliferating once again—complete with government patronage—wherever Christianity is being driven underground, as it is throughout the West today, and in many other places as well.”
While such an opinion is likely not shared by the wider Catholic or broader Christian community, it is another voice out there for Christian hegemony and suppression of other beliefs.
Unfortunately, we should take note of the Christian Evangelical commentary about starseeds and their ill preoccupation with “paganism” and “false gods.” On its first go around, the Satanic Panic did fulfill its dream of fomenting distrust of minority religions and spiritual practices including Wicca and Paganism. We live with the consequence of that period in the 1980s not only with the dangers of moral panic but also with the loss of critical thinking. Its return is unwelcome.
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