Witchcraft at the supermarket

It was with a little disbelief bordering on horror I heard a conversation taking place in my local supermarket. Two black females with about three children were discussing witchcraft.  One of them had the view as a Christian church goer she was sceptical of it existing.  While it seemed the other was curious and on the verge of accepting she actually believed such a thing did exist.  There was a persistence about this woman, it was as thought this witchcraft thing was something she was going to hang onto with relish because she had found something important or powerful.  It could well have been a belief system one upmanship she was practising while they walked down the aisle with shampoos one one side and headache pills on the other.  This is London I thought, this is a Western society I live in and here on my very doorstep was someone who was taking back the learning of hundreds of years of reason.  Witchcraft does not exist.  It is not real.  It is something used by a few to manipulate others and more so to those who are no educated.  Who don't understand things and hold beliefs which the UK had disbanded to mental illness also hundreds of years ago.  Such belief systems can not be compatible in today's enlightenment.  But they are.

Are such minds weak and feeble I ask myself.  This can not be true.  It could be due to upbringing and cultural beliefs which are completely alien to my own.  What is acceptable in one society and in one country is not always acceptable in another.  In regard to witchcraft there have been too many high profile news items of children being abused by relatives who thought their children were possessed.  There have been murders and torturing as well.  These are gross violations of human being by other mislead ignorant humans.  It is not enough for them to be sent to prison for such things should not be happening in the first place.  I am nearly fifty years old.  In my life I have not seen a single paranormal event, I have not witnessed anything of the nature.  I have gone from believer, to agnostic to atheist.  In a gradual process of understanding and enlightenment.  It begins at an early age, probably with the notion of the nativity, false belief is then rewarded by such things as the tooth fairy.  Cultural and religious ceremonies are used to bring groups of society together for a single purpose, family and friends are then bound as being part of an event no matter how false it is.  The christening of a child for instance.  They are there to ingrain or breed awe in those who attend so they have a deference.  If you don't hold such deference then these things would be the equivalent of anathema.  Personally, I've got to accept other people have their own ideas.   Even when I get to the point I do not want to advise such individuals beliefs are false, but don't because mentally this could damage them.  Maybe this is what the belief in witchcraft would do to those persons as well. 

It is sad we persist to hold onto false belief systems and  even try and make other people believe the same things.  When I walk down the street and am stopped by religious nuts I waste no time with them.  Unless I happen to be in a cantankerous mood.  I don't see atheists standing at tables trying to convert believers, but they have every right to.  I don't see Satanists standing in the high street but they to have every right to propound their beliefs.  If we are a tolerant and acceptant society even these groups should be allowed their say.  Equally I don't see tables where lesbian and gay people stand and discuss gender identity, but they have an equal right as well.  Such public lobbying of belief systems should therefore be banned unless all belief systems are invited to lobby as well.

Those who believe in Child Witches are in ignorance

I have just watched the most appalling documentary on how children in the Delta region of Nigeria were branded as child witches. How fundamental so called Christian pentecostal churches set themselves up to accuse children of being possessed with the devil. Then they would offer their parents to do an exorcism for a charge. An extortionate charge. Many children were being branded by adults, many became outcasts of entire communities and there were those who died from the torture put upon them. Somehow in a misguided way, ordinary Christians had mingled their underlying belief in the supernatural together and were being conned by bogus priests to pay up and then starve, burn and kill their own children. It is staggering to consider in today's age there are country's and places who still believe in witchcraft. How their poverty is scapegoated by blaming children. Rationality has no say in such matters.

Within two minutes of watching the Dispatches documentary on Channel 4 on demand I was in tears. I could not help myself and had to make a donate to the charity (Stepping Stones) trying to combat these beliefs. As the program went on, I got to learn it was a follow up episode from an earlier one perhaps a year or more ago. The strength of the program was such it had helped a new law be passed in Nigeria against cruelty to children. It had also had a follow up from with the help of a Nigerian football player who visited the charity's orphanage set up to help these outcast children. Together things are moving in the right direction. However there was a part of the program which highlighted this abuse was far from over.

A woman called Helen Ukpabio had encouraged the stigmatization of children as witches by creating various films. In one the film portrayed possessed children eating human flesh, being possessd of evil and causing a man's eyes to pop out. They looked like two ping pong balls suspended by string from his face. This woman Ukpabio presides over 150 churches the program stated. She even instigated a raid on the orphanage by the police and her lawyer. They were looking for the director so as to deal out their own form of justice. This was obvious when a gun was openly pulled out and some children who tried to stop the four plane clothes police men were assaulted, two were knocked unconscious. Being the head of so many churches it is in Helen Ukpabio's interest to continue to propagate the interest in supernatural and evil events attributable to children. The bottom line is financial. It is a wealthy business Dispatches stated. When interviewed and asked reasonable questions about the abuse of children Helen Ukpabio became defensive, even racist against the white female interviewer who asked these questions of a black woman in Nigeria. One question she asked was simple "where does it say in the bible about children being evil or possessed?" Ukpabio could not answer, although she said there were 100s of places.

If evil does exist in this world, it is in people who pick on the vulnerable, the poor, the ill educated, the weak, the old and the young. If evil does exist and the devil does exist, then one of his servants would be such a woman, without prejudice of course.