Occult

An advisory committee voted yesterday to recommend removal of a book on the occult from Howard County elementary school libraries after hearing a Columbia mother's complaint that it was a virtual "how-to" manual on demonic worship.The school system committee took its vote behind closed doors after hearing testimony from Karen Trotsky about "Curses, Hexes, & Spells," a book by Daniel Cohen that is available in the libraries of four county elementary schools and two middle schools.People close to the committee, who asked not to be identified, said its members voted to recommend the book's removal from elementary libraries, but for its retention in middle and high schools.

So, did you hear the one about American soldiers playing with dead baby parts found in a mass grave in Iraq? No, wait - how about the guy who loved to drive Bradley armored vehicles so he could knock down concrete barriers and mow down little doggies sunning in the road? Or this one: U.S. soldiers in a chow hall making fun of a woman whose face was "more or less melted, along with all the hair on that side of her head" from an IED? These are but a few of the claims made by one "Scott Thomas," otherwise known as the "Baghdad Diarist," allegedly a soldier serving in Iraq who has sent three dispatches to The New Republic since January.

A Columbia parent who found her 10-year-old son following directions on how to cast a spell in a book he checked out at school is demanding that it be taken off the shelves of school libraries -- one of two such controversies brewing in Howard County.Karen Trotsky, whose son Shaundemas attends Thunder Hill Elementary, believes "Curses, Hexes, & Spells" promotes the occult -- a complaint also raised against the book in Frederick County and in at least two other states."Anyone should have known by a glance at the cover that this book was not for children," she said.

A lucky break in the clouds Monday evening could give stargazers a glimpse of a 2-day-old crescent moon as it slides past the ringed planet Saturn. It's this year's closest conjunction of the moon and a planet. They'll be just a fraction of a degree apart. Look low in the western sky 45 minutes after sunset. Saturn is the star-like object just to the right of the moon. Binoculars will help. Observers in Peru or Chile will see the moon "occult" (pass in front of) Saturn.

A police officer stumbles on a circle of witches worshiping outdoors. The witch in the center is holding a sword. The officer calls her over.To leave the circle, she brandishes the sword to cut a doorway in the air. The officer worries that the witch is getting ready to attack. What should he do? Prepare to shoot or back away and let her continue?Choice No. 2, according to law enforcement officials and an Anne Arundel County witch who spoke at a conference in Dundalk yesterday designed to sensitize officers to the practice of witchcraft and other alternative rites.

Retired police occult investigator Don Thompson doesn't think parents should burn their children's Halloween costumes. But the former Baltimore County policeman, who is speaking at a Glen Burnie church today, does think parents should be aware that the holiday has a dangerous side."

Clive Barker has seemed one of those outlaw artists who pay fealty not to society or to art but only to the mandates of their own id. A horror novelist turned filmmaker ("Nightbreed," the original "Hellraiser"), he's drawn to imagery from the most recondite of sexual practices and is completely unafraid to push the limits of taste. He's a nasty boy, but he's got guts.But his new film, "Lord of Illusions," isn't the Bosch-stoned-on-peyote masterpiece he seems capable of making. Perhaps the major studio contract and big budget undercut his willingness to go beyond the beyond; perhaps the marketing boys got to him; perhaps he lost his nerve; perhaps the true curse of success is not damnation but banality.

On a field behind an Ellicott City elementary school Halloween night, a Satanic ritual was performed using six dead animals, most of which apparently were killed by blows to the head, Howard County police said yesterday.Police officers combed the residential neighborhood in the 3700 block of Font Hill Drive yesterday asking residents if their cats were missing and possibly killed by those who were engaged in Satanic worship near Centennial Lane Elementary School.At least two of the animals appeared to be road kills, but the remaining four died from "head traumas," police said.

The Historian By Elizabeth Kostova In this smart retelling of the Dracula story -- a 2005 bestseller -- a young girl's discovery of a mysterious book, blank save for a sinister woodcut of a dragon, impels her father to divulge, reluctantly, details of his vampire-hunting days back in grad school. Halfway through his tale, which is told over several sessions in various atmospheric European locations, he vanishes. His daughter's quest to find him is interwoven with letters that reveal the past in full.

A lucky break in the clouds Monday evening could give stargazers a glimpse of a 2-day-old crescent moon as it slides past the ringed planet Saturn. It's this year's closest conjunction of the moon and a planet. They'll be just a fraction of a degree apart. Look low in the western sky 45 minutes after sunset. Saturn is the star-like object just to the right of the moon. Binoculars will help. Observers in Peru or Chile will see the moon "occult" (pass in front of) Saturn.

The Historian By Elizabeth Kostova In this smart retelling of the Dracula story -- a 2005 bestseller -- a young girl's discovery of a mysterious book, blank save for a sinister woodcut of a dragon, impels her father to divulge, reluctantly, details of his vampire-hunting days back in grad school. Halfway through his tale, which is told over several sessions in various atmospheric European locations, he vanishes. His daughter's quest to find him is interwoven with letters that reveal the past in full.

Darkness and Light John Harvey Snapshot Garry Disher Soho Press / 310 pages Crime writers in translation are getting much-overdue attention in North America, but let's not neglect far-flung authors who speak the same language. Australia's long history of crime writing excellence began with Patricia Carlon in the 1950s and continues with Garry Disher, whose police procedural novels rival American notables for crisp plotting and strong emphasis on character. Snapshot is the third book to feature homicide inspector Hal Challis (last seen in 2005's Kittyhawk Down)

Hospice will hold Tree of Lights ceremony Dec. 8 Hospice of the Chesapeake Auxiliary's annual Tree of Lights ceremony will begin at 5 p.m. Dec. 8 at Our Lady of the Chesapeake Church, 8325 Ventnor Road, Pasadena. The ceremony is an opportunity to remember a loved one during the holiday season. The ceremony will begin with the lighting of the Tree of Lights, followed by meditation and music. For a contribution of $25, participants will receive a china star ornament, handpainted with the name of a loved one, and a dove bearing the name of their loved one will be placed on a memory wall.

PHILADELPHIA - They're trying to muzzle the Muggles. Throughout the country, parents, school districts, religious groups and others are trying to censor the best-selling Harry Potter series of children's books by J.K. Rowling because of the books' alleged occult/Satanic theme, witchcraft, wizardry, encouragement of dishonesty, religious viewpoint, anti-family approach and violence. According to the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, the books in the Harry Potter series have topped the list of books most challenged for two consecutive years.

An 18-year study of more than 46,000 people has found that a simple but little-used screening test might help prevent people from getting colon cancer. The test, known as fecal occult blood screening, looks for traces of blood in the stool, a possible sign of a cancer or benign polyps that can be precursors to cancer. When these polyps are removed, cancer is prevented. In the study, the colon cancer rate was reduced by as much as 20 percent among people who had the test. The federally financed study, described in today's New England Journal of Medicine, was conducted by Dr. Jack S. Mandel, a vice president of Exponent, a Menlo Park, Calif.

"The Embrace: A True Vampire Story," by Aphrodite Jones. Pocket Books. 384 pages. $23.Aphrodite Jones is a vulture of crime. Every year or so she swoops down in the aftermath of some bizarre murder, picks over the grisly details and a few months later regurgitates a book. She's on daytime talk shows; Hollywood's got her phone number.Her latest bit of journalistic voyeurism, "The Embrace," examines the sensational murder of a Florida couple in 1996. Sensational because the accused were five teen-agers who dabbled in ritual blood-sucking and occult practices.

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. -- A newly developed laser technique being tested at the Johns Hopkins Hospital Wilmer Eye Institute in Baltimore could open the way to therapy for a previously untreatable eye disease that afflicts millions of elderly people.Until recently, laser therapy was used to treat only select cases of the disease, "occult" macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in people over age 65. More than 75 percent ofpatients who suffer a hidden form of the disease could not be helped.

"The Aryan Christ," by Richard Noll. Random House. 352 pages. $25.95. Here is an effort to provide a complete description of the neo-romantic, pseudo-religious, indeed pagan ideas that Carl Gustav Jung employed in his psychotherapy. It is the second book on Jung by Richard Noll, a clinical psychologist and lecturer in the history of science department at Harvard. Like the first book, it proclaims that Jung intended to build a cult from permissive pagan themes to enmesh those discouraged by the void of meaning in modern science and disenchanted by Judeo-Christianity's stern commandments.

Clive Barker has seemed one of those outlaw artists who pay fealty not to society or to art but only to the mandates of their own id. A horror novelist turned filmmaker ("Nightbreed," the original "Hellraiser"), he's drawn to imagery from the most recondite of sexual practices and is completely unafraid to push the limits of taste. He's a nasty boy, but he's got guts.But his new film, "Lord of Illusions," isn't the Bosch-stoned-on-peyote masterpiece he seems capable of making. Perhaps the major studio contract and big budget undercut his willingness to go beyond the beyond; perhaps the marketing boys got to him; perhaps he lost his nerve; perhaps the true curse of success is not damnation but banality.