Abomination: Devil Worship and Deception in the West Memphis Three Murders (29 page)

After a year at the maximum security prison in Tucker, Arkansas, Damien Echols told a story about being beaten and raped by fellow death row inmate Mark Edward Gardner. Echols claimed that a cinder block was loosened between his cell and the adjacent cell, allowing Gardner to slip in and rape him. He claimed to have been raped forty times. He also told an interviewer that after he was dead he “would like to stick around awhile, just sort of hang around after I was dead.”
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I
n
1996,
Damien Echols provided an interview for the website Witchcraze. He provided his opinion of the actual killer:

Rick: If you have any theories about the actual killer(s) of Christopher Byers, Steve Branch, and Michael Moore, please elaborate.

Damien: I have no doubt that the actual killer is John Mark Byers. He had the knife with his son's blood on it, not to mention the fact that he could never keep his alibi straight. It was also proven in court that whoever killed those children had the skill of a surgeon and Byers was a jewel cutter. There was also testimony that his knife could have made the wounds on the children because the blade was consistent with the cut pattern.
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Mara Leveritt, author of the book about the West Memphis Three titled
Devil’s Knot,
also
interviewed Echols in 1994. He talked to her about his interest in occultism and Raymond Buckland’s
Complete Book of Witchcraft
:

I was interested in Stonehenge. It aroused my curiosity. So then I went and looked up the Druids. I would go off on, like, research binges.

He read that paganism had existed before Christianity. "I figured, if they're the first, maybe they were right and we've just strayed off the path...

...And last week, he was told that he would not be allowed to receive two books he had mail ordered from a Memphis bookstore. Prison authorities described the book on their refusal form as "unauthorized material."

Echols asked that the books be turned over to this reporter. One, titled, "
Helping Yourself with White Witchcraft
" by Al G. Manning, is superficial to the point of silliness, with tips on warding off evil eyes, concocting love potions, and spells to attract money and prosperity.

The other is the "
Complete Book of Witchcraft
" by Raymond Buckland, a far more serious explanation of witchcraft's history, beliefs, and rituals.

Neither book contains any reference to Satanism, other that to dismiss is as a slander Christians have historically leveled against pagans. The only violence depicted in the books appears in Buckland's section on history, when he recounts the tortures and executions of witches (and of thousands of people who were merely accused of being witches), from 1484, when Pope Innocent VII issues his infamous bull against witches, to this country's colonial era and the infamous Salem witch trails.

It's ignorance," Echols says of the prison's decision. "They let in other non-Christian books. They let the Koran in here. You see? Even here, it's all this religion thing.
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Echols with long fingernails

D
rawing of child sacrifice by Damien Echols

A baby rattle rests among four tombstones with pentagrams.

Note the “energy” ascends towards the sky to a pentagram

during the night of a full moon.

11. History of Witchcraft:

the occult basis for the murders

The great secret of magic, the unique and incommunicable Arcana, has for its purpose the placing of supernatural power at the service of the human will in some way. To attain such an achievement it is necessary to KNOW what has to be done, to WILL what is required, to DARE what must be attempted and to KEEP SILENT with discernment.
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Eliphas Levi

ALEISTER CROWLEY

(note the thumbs)

Edward Alexander Crowley (1875-1947) was born into a wealthy, Puritan family in Royal Leamington Spa, England. Possessed of a first rate mind and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, Crowley intended to be “one of the glories of the future.” At Cambridge he changed his first name to Aleister, abandoned the Christian faith of his parents, and began an in depth study into the occult:

The forces of good were those which had constantly oppressed me. I saw them daily destroying the happiness of my fellow-men. Since, therefore, it was my business to explore the spiritual world, my first step must be to get into personal communication with the devil.
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As the foremost Devil worshipper and accumulator of occult knowledge in the late 19
^th
and early 20
^th
Century, Aleister Crowley (self-titled The Great Beast 666) based his works upon preceding magicians, writers, and philosophers, incorporating their ideas, and his own, into a new religion for a New Age. All modern occultists eventually hear of and read Crowley, and I have found few unmoved by the breadth and depth of his thought. Much of the information about Crowley and the religious systems he formulated are intentionally concealed from public understanding. In my book
Prophet Of Evil
, I provide a detailed analysis of his life.

Crowley emphasized the importance of numbers in defining the universe and his ideas. For Crowley, the number eleven is of supreme importance:

“Firstly”, 11 is the number of Magick in itself. It is therefore suitable to all types of operation.

“Secondly”, it is the sacred number par excellence of the new Aeon. As it is written in the Book of the Law:

“...11, as all their numbers who are of us.” “Thirdly”, it is the number of the letters of the word

ABRAHADABRA, which is the word of the Aeon.
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Crowley spelled his version of magick with a K to differentiate his ideas from common parlor magicians. Scientific Illuminism in his view was far different from the rabbit and hat magic tricks of a top-hatted showman.

In 1900, Crowley determined to access his Holy Guardian Angel by way of the Abramelin operation detailed in the grimoire
Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-melin the Mage
. The book dictates that one must set aside six months of austerity to complete a magical working whereby the practitioner can obtain the Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel (HGA).
The Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
was translated by S. L. MacGregor Mathers, magical mentor of Aleister Crowley, from a 15th century French manuscript found in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris. The author is Abraham of Würzburg, who writes it as advice to his young son Lamech. Written in three separate books, Abraham recounts many fantastic adventures in which he sought magical powers from various notorious wizards and sorcerors. However, he was unimpressed by all of them, until he stumbled across Abramelin by the Nile. The book aims at the utter subjugation of the demonic princes of the world; this is achieved by months of prayer, supplication and ritual. It is the medieval magical philosophy of constraining demons by divine authority. In the book, one has to evoke the Four Great Princes of the Evil of the World, their eight sub-princes and the 316 servitors, which will charge previously prepared talismans. These charged talismans will enable the magician to gratify his needs and desires. One can then command these spirits by use of symbols, letters and signs.

Aleister Crowley considered the
Book of Abramelin
very important and made it part of his magical system in his secret society, Ordo Templi Orientis, or the O.T. O. Crowley streamlined his idea of the Abramelin ritual into Liber Samekh, the book written under the number 800, which promises the same Knowledge and Conversation of one’s Holy Guardian Angel (HGA).

Crowley planned to start the Abramelin operation on Easter, 1900. He began the preliminary steps by consecrating robes, oils, implements, and searching for a secluded location. He found a suitable house in the August of 1899 in the Manor of Boleskine overlooking Loch Ness in remote, far northern Scotland.

Eerie events occurred upon commencement of the Abra-melin operation. Crowley stated in his
Confessions
“the demons connected with Abra-melin cannot wait to be invoked; they come unsought.”
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The spirits afflicted nearby residents: a workman employed to renovate Boleskine house attacked Crowley and had to be forcibly restrained in the cellar. His housekeeper went on a three day drinking binge and then tried to kill his wife and children. While consecrating the necessary talismans, Crowley saw his lodge and terrace “became peopled with shadowy shapes, sufficiently substantial, as a rule, to be almost opaque. I say shapes; and yet the truth is that they were no shapes properly speaking.” Locals began avoiding all travel near Boleskine Manor.
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In 1904, Crowley received the most important information in his life from a discarnate entity named Aiwass. While in Cairo, Egypt, he was instructed to transcribe a document, which he titled “The Book of the Law.” The book became the centerpiece of his new religion.

In his magical masterwork,
Magick in Theory and Practice
, Crowley expounds upon the efficacy of blood sacrifice:

In any case it was the theory of the ancient Magicians, that any living being is a storehouse of energy varying in quantity according to the size and health of the animal, and in quality according to its mental and moral character. At the death of the animal this energy is liberated suddenly. The animal should therefore be killed within the Circle, or the Triangle, as the case may be, so that its energy cannot escape....But the bloody sacrifice, though more dangerous, is more efficacious; and for nearly all purposes human sacrifice is the best.
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