I think I probably posted about this a while back. But have any of you read "The Mists of Avalon" by Marion Zimmer Bradley?
It's basically a retelling of the Arthurian legend from the point of the women, specifically "Morgaine"/Morgana. In the book she's a Druid priestess on the isle of Avalon. And Mordred was conceived in a Beltane rite." In those times, the Beltane rites were when people gathered in the woods/outdoors and had one big orgy. It was their way of praying for fertile crops.
Sexual rituals are very common in pagan religions. It's ironic in a way that fertility (of both crops and people) is such a focus for them when pagans have so often caused their children to "pass through the fire". I haven't read that book but I do find that to be interesting that it was pointed out. Druids are notorious for having murdered people with strangulation and other methods.
I used to know a family who said they were into generational witchcraft. I was friends with the daughter of the family who spilled the beans and her mother wasn't very happy about that but ended up admitting it. They had a lot of witchcraft related things in their house, including symbolic items, hair clippings of the family members, tarot cards, occult books, etc. and lots of porn magazines and movies as well. I learned a lot about their beliefs from knowing them. The daughter said she'd had intimate relations with a spirit and I don't know if I believe that or not, but I think that she believed it. The girl said that she had told her mother that she didn't want to be involved in witchcraft because she was tired of having to deal with certain phenomena and her mother had told her she was born to it and could never leave.
What makes this situation even more unfortunate is that the daughter had a Jewish father and considered herself to be Jewish as well as a witch. I didn't know much about halacha at the time and I believed her when she said she was Jewish. When I showed her what the Bible said about witchcraft and asked her how she could say she followed Judaism too, she just acted really confused and scared. I think that's a good argument against intermarriage. Instead of having a Bible-believing Jewish daughter, this Jewish man had a wife and daughter who were into occult practices.
I don't think they actually hurt anybody physically ever, but they did use rituals for their self-interest and I saw the results of this so it was really interesting to think about in retrospect. I guess if they were doing something really bad there wouldn't be any way I would know about it, but I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.
For those who don't believe that such things have real power think of Pharoah's sorcerers performing their magic tricks and then Moses with the power of God behind him outdoing them. I saw stuff you probably wouldn't believe so I won't get into too many details on the open forum. As much power as evil may have though, God is always more powerful and will always be superior to any false or evil power.
Don't forget that the ultimate pagan religion is Sh*tlam, which worships the moon god (aka Iblis) and a big black rock and requires sacrifice of their children to him on a regular basis via holy "martyrdom".
That's a very good point. I feel sad when I think about otherwise innocent children who are raised in hatred and then sacrificed to the evil pagan deity of Islam.