Ritual Abuse and Fathers’ Day

* SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) offers virtual support groups for all survivors, male survivors, and family and friends of survivors. A listing of all meetings is at: https://www.snapnetwork.org/events

* And SNAP announced that it will be holding a free virtual conference, instead of an in-person event in Denver. The date will be September 25 – 27. Information is in the middle of their home page. https://www.snapnetwork.org/

* You can find more information on the following holidays at:
Summer Solstice (corrected text): https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2013/06/15/well-this-is-embarrassing/
Lammas: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/category/lamas/
August Ritual Dates: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/07/23/august-ritual-dates/
Feast of the Beast/Bride of Satan: Part 1: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/the-feast-of-the-beast/
Feast of the Beast/Bride of Satan: Part 2: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/feast-of-the-beast-part-ii/
Fall Equinox: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/the-fall-equinox/
Halloween (personal): https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/10/11/halloween/
Halloween (background): https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/samhainhalloween/
Thanksgiving: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/11/20/thanksgiving/
Yule/Winter Solstice: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/12/15/yulewinter-solstice/
Candlemas: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/candlemas/
Valentine’s Day: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/valentines-day/
Spring Equinox: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2012/02/13/the-spring-equinox/
Easter: (personal): (for background, see Spring Equinox) https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2014/04/21/easter-blues/
Walpurgisnacht/May Eve: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/walpurgisnacht
Beltane: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/beltane/
Mothers’ Day: https://ritualabuse.wordpress.com/2016/04/26/mothers-day/

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I haven’t written about Fathers’ Day. My parents did not celebrate it, and the cult did not consider it a traditional Satanic holiday. In some other cults, it is a holiday, and children are made to do all sorts of nasty things in honor of their fathers. Satanists can think of an excuse to celebrate absolutely anything. 

I find that it is useful to know the background of a Satanic holiday. Often traditions are lifted from the legitimate holiday and perverted. I Googled Fathers’ Day and found very slim pickings. I also found precious little when I looked up “fathers in ancient Rome,” “fathers in ancient Greece,” etc.

Here’s what I did find.

“The nation’s first Father’s Day was celebrated on June 19, 1910, in the state of Washington. However, it was not until 1972 – 58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official – that the day honoring fathers became a nationwide holiday in the United States.” 

“On July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nation’s first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died in the previous December’s explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday.” 

“The next year, a Spokane,Washington woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Mother’s Day for male parents. She went to local churches, the YMCA, shopkeepers and government officials to drum up support for her idea, and she was successful: Washington State celebrated the nation’s first statewide Father’s Day on June 19, 1910.”

Other states followed suit over the years. 

“In 1972, in the middle of a hard-fought presidential re-election campaign, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Father’s Day a federal holiday at last. Today, economists estimate that Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.”

“In other countries–especially in Europe and Latin America – fathers are honored on St. Joseph’s Day, a traditional Catholic holiday that falls on March 19.”

From https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/fathers-day

 

“In Ancient Rome, fathers were endowed with nearly limitless power over their family, especially their children. This patria potestas, or “the father’s power” gave him legal rights over his children until he died or his children were emancipated. These powers included the right to arrange marriages or force divorce, expose a new born child if he did not want him/her, and even disown, sell, or kill his child. Even though a father had these legal rights, it did not mean these acts were common. Fathers wanted their children as heirs for the continuation of their bloodlines.”

“In infancy, a new born was either accepted into the family by his/her father in a ritual called tollere liberos or the child was exposed by the father, often without the consent of the mother. Exposure differed from infanticide and the abandoned child was often taken and raised by someone else. A child was considered an infant until he/she was seven years old.

“Girls remained in the household to learn the skills they would need as wives and mothers. Legally, a girl was considered a child until she was twelve years old and a boy until he was fourteen years old. Young girls were often engaged at twelve years old and married at thirteen to a man chosen by her father.

“Children cared for their elderly parents because of their belief in pietas, or a sense duty to their parents and the gods.”

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_in_ancient_Rome

 

I don’t think the quotations about Ancient Rome have much to do with Fathers’ Day, but I included them because they are interesting and because they clearly show the origins of patriarchy in the Western world.

The key phrase in the article on the history of Fathers’ Day is, “Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.” It started as a sweet thank you to a good man who raised six children alone in the 1800s and rapidly turned into a marketing ploy.

What are my personal feelings about Fathers’ Day?

I am sure that, if my family had observed it, I would have dutifully given my father a hand-made greeting card, which he would have looked at and set aside, probably without a thank you. Perhaps there would have been some candy bought with my allowance. There would have been little emotion involved.

My father, at his best, was not big on feelings. He wasn’t big on expressing love, either in word or actions, because he really didn’t know how to love. He told me to my face that children should be born when they are twelve and have the ability to think logically. 

That made sense. When I was about twelve, he became interested in me and tried to control me in many ways. He looked at my English and history homework and made corrections. He demanded to see the poetry I had started to write and corrected that, too. He forbid me to go certain places and to see certain people. This was attention, if not love, and I became more attached to him. At the same time, I resented it, and wanted to be left alone. I wanted freedom! 

About that time, I entered puberty, and he became interested in me in an additional way. I didn’t understand why, and his attention was very unwelcome. As with everything else in my family, this was not to be spoken of.

So I hit the books. Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” and James George Frazer’s “The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion” were two of the most influential. I remember carefully examining the Oedipus complex as it pertained to me. I came to the conclusion that I did not envy men for their penises; I envied them for their status, money, and opportunities. I considered having sex with my father and decided that he was unattractive and that I had no desire for him. 

Looking back, I was seeking answers to problems I did not know I had. I continued trying to figure out what was wrong with me until the very day I got my first ritual abuse memory. I no longer had to wonder what was wrong with me, I just had to figure out what to do about the damage my abusers had caused.

After my father died, I was a total mess for about two years. Gradually I let go of my negative feelings toward him and I found acceptance and peace. I understood that he had been abused in the cult, just as I had. I understood that he, too, was struggling with issues he did not even recognize and that he had been depressed most of his adult life. 

I could see his avoidance of me as a child as fear of hurting me. I could see his trying to control me as a misguided effort to protect me. I wished he had been given the gift of living in a time when survivors had started to talk openly about ritual abuse. He might have felt less bewildered, less alone. Perhaps he would have had his aha! moment. Perhaps his life would have changed completely, and he would have had a chance to heal, just as I have had.

When I think of him now, I no longer feel angry, I feel sad.

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Upcoming Holidays

June
6/21 Fathers’ Day
6/21 Annular solar eclipse. Visible from parts of Africa (including the Central African Republic, Congo, and Ethiopia), south of Pakistan, northern India, and China. A partial eclipse is visible in south/east Europe, much of Asia, the north of Australia, and much of Africa, Pacific, Indian Ocean. See https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2020-june-21
6/23 Midsummer’s Eve
6/24 St. John’s Day
July
7/4 Independence Day
7/4 Full moon
7/4-5 Penumbral lunar eclipse. The moon will turn a shade darker during the maximum phase, visible in North and South America, and Africa. Most penumbral lunar eclipses cannot easily be distinguished from a usual full moon. See https://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/map/2020-july-5
7/25 St. James’ Day/Festival of the Horned God
August
8/1 Lammas/Lughnasadh
8/3 Full moon
8/15 Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
8/24 St. Bartholomew’s Day

Dates Important to Nazi and Neo-Nazi groups
6/6 D-Day: invasion of France in WW2
7/30 Tisha B’Av (Day of Mourning)
7/29 Hitler proclaimed leader of the Nazi party

(NOTE: Not all groups meet on Jewish holidays. Some groups also mark Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas, Halloween, the solstices and the equinoxes.)