Hello all,

So here’s part two of my series about the craft. Today I’m talking about the SOT Tenets, the SOT’s use of force in recruiting certain members, and DNA/Genes. Fun stuff, eh!

SOT/DSV religion Tenets

Here’s the full version of the Tenets:

There is no such thing as good or evil, no such thing as absolute right or wrong. There is only energy and agenda. Forces of will and reason. Everything is relative.

The conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the superconscious mind work together to create each individual’s own reality.

Evolution did not happen, neither did creation. Life cannot be tied down to a sole event, but is the result of a summation of processes that we may never comprehend.

Love is a figment of the imagination, as is hatred. We desire sex, and we desire revenge. These things should not be labeled as something noble: love; or something wrong: hatred.

Equity, liberty and fraternity are the building blocks of civilization. Psychological cleansing is the pathway to enlightenment. The superconscious mind puts us in touch with divine infinite divine infinite intelligence by which mankind, too, may aspire to divinity.

Basically, it’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo that I made up. It’s the SOT’s statement of faith if you like. I did some reading about occult beliefs, and all the things I read made no sense to me. It just sounded deep, while simultaneously sounding like nonsense. It’s all just mystical and ‘spiritual’ and ‘we are all divine’, ‘we believe in the wind and the rain’, ‘we are God’. Just reading that stuff freaked me out. Seriously, ha ha. I think the devil likes to deceive people into thinking they’re deep and wise when really they don’t have a clue what they’re on about (British slang there). That’s one hallmark of the devil: confusion. He likes to confuse people. And he likes to sound all philosophical, when really there’s nothing to him. He’s just a deceiver.

Use of Force

Ah, this was another sore point for some readers; the SOT’s use of force to recruit Crystal. I usually get two main questions:

1. If that’s how secret societies and cults work what’s stopping them from just grabbing anyone off the streets and making them join?
2. Even if they can do that, Christians are off-limits right? They can’t force a Christian to join can they?

In answer to the first question, I don’t believe cults can just target anybody they want. I believe there’s usually a method to their madness. There is definitely a method to the SOT’s madness. They target Crystal because she was promised to them by a blood covenant her grandfather made, offering four generations to the cult. So, it wasn’t just a random thing. I hope that answers question 1. (This is all explained in Searchlight, by the way).

In answer to the second question, the devil can try to get what he thinks belongs to him, but if you’re saved you can rebuke him and he will flee. In Searchlight and some of Surrender, Crystal is religious, but not a Christian (like many churchgoing young people). She has moments of crying out to God, but He’s not really her God. He’s her parents’ God. She knows there’s power in the Name of Jesus, but her turning point doesn’t come until her parents kidnap her from the Victoria’s secret show In Surrender and she is prayed for. Things are still bad, and the SOT still try to manipulate her, but now that she has woken up to her authority in Christ they are powerless. This is illustrated by the fact that she is now able to leave the SOT.

Taking this further, let’s forget about cults for a moment and think of the horrific persecution that Christians have faced both in the past and present day (yes, there are parts of the world in which Christians suffer gross persecution today, because of their faith). The SOT and other occult people in the Crystal series are constantly trying to get Crystal to renounce her faith. Doesn’t the devil harass Christians, or does he only harass non-Christians? Do bad things happen only to bad people or do bad things happen to good people too? I personally do not believe that being a Christian means the devil won’t try to get at you, or that you won’t go through hard times. Or that you won’t face persecution. Therefore, Christians were not off-limits in the Crystal series. The SOT targeted whoever they felt belonged to them, Christian or not.

Another way in which the SOT used force was in ensuring that people within the organization don’t leave. In Searchlight, the only people who had ever managed to leave the SOT were Pastor John (from the Beauty for Ashes series), Jace, Dan and Simone Rivers. They only managed to get out with God’s help. No one else had ever been able to leave. In fact, Luke, the leader of the SOT, made sure every member committed some kind of crime (often murder) so that they would be afraid to leave for fear of being exposed. Isn’t that the way the devil works? He makes us feel like we’re too bad to change, he wants us to believe we can’t leave him. He throws our mistakes in our face all the time.

DNA/Genes

This one is deep. I read some stuff about reptilian DNA and the elite and those who are ‘truly in charge of this world’. Who knows whether this stuff is all just conspiracy, or if it’s true. Whether or not it’s true, some people truly believe in it, and it was handy for emphasizing the hierarchy of the occult in the Crystal series. Some practitioners, no matter how good at the craft they are, are limited in how far they can go because they don’t have the right genes. I thought it was a nice touch since it got me thinking of Hitler and how obsessed he was with genes. Hitler’s Lebensborn program encouraged people with certain traits to mate so that they could produce more people with those traits. I also wanted to a true sense of some people being elite and others not measuring up, as a contrast to Christianity. In Christianity we are all the elite, and we are all ‘nothing’ at the same time. We’re all a royal priesthood, kings and priests, and we’re all also servants. I love that. I don’t know if this elite system based on genes is truly a trait of the occult, but they do seem to be very concerned with bloodlines.

Hope all this isn’t too freaky for you. Do you now understand why I stopped doing research? I really don’t want to know. Most of the cult stuff in the Crystal series is my imagination, although I did try to base it on certain basic principles.

Have a good Sunday xx