A UK man has confessed to dressing up like Darth Vader and attacking two men who founded a church based on Jedi teachings. It claims to have about 30 members locally and “thousands worldwide”.

Hughes admitted two charges of common assault.

The court heard he has a “chronic alcohol problem” and had drunk the best part of a 10 litre box of wine.

Mrs Lloyd said: “He was wearing a black bin bag and a cape and had a metal crutch in his hand.” Mrs Lloyd said he was shouting “Darth Vader”.

source

BANGKOK, Thailand — Embattled Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a firm believer in astrology and the supernatural, conceded Friday that the stars have not been in his favor lately, but said his political enemies were taking it a step too far.

“They are using all kinds of means to try to destroy me, including black magic and the supernatural,” he told a meeting of civil servants at Government House, the prime minister’s offices. Without naming names, Thaksin said his critics were using photographs and voodoo-like dolls to cast spells.

“But don’t worry, I have talismans and various Buddha amulets with me to ward off their magic,” he said.

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Ever felt your prayers went unanswered? Try sending a letter to God and chances are it will end up — as many do each year — at an Israeli post office in Jerusalem, where they are read and sent on to the holy Western Wall.

The letters come from all over the world in a host of languages. The elderly ask for good health. Others seek heavenly remedies for debts, relationship assistance, or help finding jobs. Children mainly ask God to spring them from homework assignments. The trickle of requests turns into a flood around Christmas and the Jewish holidays.

One writer asked God to answer a friend’s prayers, and in a postscript gives the friend’s address, adding, “But you knew that.”

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PORT MORESBY (Reuters) - Police in Papua New Guinea have arrested 320 people for practicing sorcery and religious cults, the National newspaper reported Thursday.

Belief in sorcery is widespread in this jungle-clad, mountainous South Pacific island nation where some villages only encountered Western civilization in the 1930s.

Police raided three villages Monday near the city of Lae on the north coast and arrested leaders of a “cargo cult” and their followers, the newspaper said. Those arrested were aged between 20 and 70.

Cargo cults believe that Western goods or cargo, first encountered through missionaries and explorers, are created by ancestral spirits. They have been known to build airstrips in the jungles in the belief that planes would land with cargo.

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Abdullah Hashem is still making movies, but this time the location is a little different and the subject much more serious.

A year ago Hashem wrapped up production on the movie “Apache Tears,” which used Mooresville and central Indiana for many of the scenes. Since then he has been working on a documentary about the Raelians, a religious group often called a cult, that believes the human race was started through genetic manipulation by extraterrestrials.

Hashem hopes to discredit the group and ultimately cause it to disband.

The Raelians first came to Hashem’s attention several years ago when they claimed to have cloned a baby named Eve. They have never produced the child for genetic testing to show if this is true, according to various news reports.

Hashem, a 2001 Mooresville High School graduate and IUPUI student, said it was then that he began following them in the news.

Many of their activities, which Hashem says include brainwashing members and using sex as coercion to gain access to its members’ finances, prompted him to take action.

“I’m not a religious nut, but according to my beliefs, when people wear shirts that say there is no God, I have to do something,” Hashem said.

[continue story]

Visit the film website at raelexposed.com.

GENERAL SANTOS CITY — Fear grips residents of remote villages in the boundary of Jose Abad Santos town in Davao del Sur province and Glan town in Sarangani province after the leader of a cult allegedly involved in cannibalism managed to elude arrest.

[See inq7.net for the story]

HAZARIBAGH: Can witches survive in India. Not if they hail from Palani village in Jharkhand. For here, those identified or suspected as witches are thrashed black and blue with the connivance of the local police.

[via newindpress.com]

When it comes to dabbling in the black arts, former U.S. President Bill Clinton has much in common with deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Saddam reportedly wore a stone around his neck to ward off evil. When he was ensconced in his Iraqi palaces, he summoned up the jinn (genies) to do his bidding.

According to historian Joel A. Ruth, a Voodoo sorcerer, supplied to Clinton by the exiled-by-coup John-Bertrand Aristide, once put a curse on incumbent President George W. Bush, “by manipulating a doll made in the president’s image.”

[via Canada Free Press]

A woman, accused of practising witchcraft, was publicly beaten up and her face blackened following the death of a girl at the holy town of Trimbakeshwar.

[via The Hindu]

A little over 300 years ago we would have thought nothing of this in the “New World” and we all would probably be cheering them on.

Mr Poussaint sees nothing wrong with what he does. It is, he insists, work that has to be carried out.

“If the child is not exorcised then it will grow up to be horrible. I get results,” said the 75-year-old, who is originally from Benin in West Africa.

[via The Telegraph]

This is the first I’ve personally heard of “exorcism” outside of the Christian & Catholic realm (in this case Voodoo), but I guess that shouldn’t come as a shock since during the slave days Catholic beliefs were melded with ancient voodoo (more of a disguise…Wikipedia has more background info if you’re curious).