Seek and Ye Shall Find

Among the convulsions of the English Civil War was a fear of black magic and witchery. It was to save the people from these handmaidens of Satan that there appeared on the scene one Matthew Hopkins, Witch-Finder General. Matthew Hopkins would arrive in town with an offer to seek any witches that resided therein, and charge twenty shillings for every one he found. Matthew Hopkins became a very wealthy man.

To discover a witch, Hopkins used a variety of methods--some traditional, some he invented. Among the tried and true tests was the search for the "Devil's Mark." Any person who made a pact with Satan was given a spot on her body that would feel no pain. So Hopkins would strip the suspect and jab a knife into every mole, every bump and blemish until she stopped screaming. An additional proof was the Ordeal of Prayer. God would never permit His sacred words to pass the lips of the unholy, and so the suspected witch was ordered to recite the Lord's Prayer--as fast as possible. Then Vespers, then Matins, then the Prayer of Communion, again, and again, faster, FASTER! If she hesitated, if she fumbled a single word, then the Good Lord had obviously stopped her voice.

And if by some miracle the poor woman managed to pass this ordeal, then that showed what a clever witch she was, an especially powerful servant of the devil who required sterner tests to expose. So Hopkins employed his own unique test: The Test of the Familiar. Every witch had a "familiar," an animal who served her evil bidding. This animal was usually a cat, but it was well known that witches could use other creatures. And so Hopkins would confine the woman to a room, and station lookouts to wait for the familiar to come to her aid. The assistants had to keep a close watch, since her familiar could be anything: a mouse, a spider, a fly, an ant. To make sure it was a fair test, they kept all the windows open. Matthew Hopkins became a very wealthy man.

Of course that was long ago. We today are different. We are wise and enlightened and utterly PC. We have different witches. Our witches may be communists, imperialists, political enemies, or shadowy conspirators, but the attitude is the same: they are guilty until proven guilty. Once a helpless woman was tortured until "by her own admission" she was duly "convict and brynt." Now we subject our suspects to costly court battles or secretive committees. If they plead innocent we charge them with perjury. And if they beat that rap, we try them in the media and soil their characters for all time. It happened to Alger Hiss, it happened to Clay Shaw, and there are people who would like to make it happen to Neil Armstrong.

I don't think David Percy, Bill Kaysing, et al. are bad persons. I'm sure they're good to their partners and kind to animals. Yet when it comes to the Apollo project, they can be downright bigoted. They study it not to learn, but to find "evidence" of their pre-formed opinions. Any rumour that supports them is eagerly accepted as "documented" fact. Anything that looks odd is hailed as "further proof." No alternative explanation is permitted; anyone who disagrees with them is a liar or a dupe. Absence of evidence is proof of coverup, while an abundance of contrary evidence means widespread deception.

It is an attitude that is, sadly, not confined to the Apollo deniers. An entire nation of thinking people plunged themselves into mass murder because a man with a moustache spoke of a "Jewish conspiracy." Today there are people who deny the Holocaust ever happened, and their methods of nit-picking and perverted science to expose the "Holohoax" echo those used by the "Apollohoax" crowd. Whether a Percy or an Irving, these denying Davids may fancy themselves toppling the Goliath of established deception, but the reality is that their Goliath doesn't exist. There is no conspiracy to bring down, no lies to uncover, no proof to find. The events of history cannot be changed or argued away. The Davids are firing their slingshots into empty air, and the only victims are innocent bystanders.

So what can you, dear reader, do when you get knocked on the head by one of these random pebbles? It can be difficult to think under such circumstances, but it has to be done. Whether the pebble is a screamer headline in the tabloids, a book in the store's "Alternative" section, a shock documentary on TV, a fast-talking salesman or politician with all the answers, or an email inviting you to move gobs of cash from an impoverished nation, they have one thing in common: they don't want you to think. And that's when you have to think like never before. Critical thinking is a high art, easy to extol, difficult to master, and the subject for another diatribe. Stay tuned.

As for Matthew Hopkins, his depopulating career finally came to a dramatic end. One group of villagers had enough of his antics, so they tried him with one of his own tests--namely, The Ordeal of Water. History is unsure whether he drowned or survived to be brynt.