From: darktormentum@lake_of_fire.org

 

To: pain_fear_death@tormentmasters.com

 

 

Well, Wormrot!

 

So you come to me and ask me how to create a popular theologian for the masses, eh? This is a most intriguing question you have asked me as a first year student of the damning arts! I must say, we appear to be in general getting a much better quality of imp in our schools as of late, and such bodes well for the future of human damnation.  

 

Somehow you have come to realize that the humans we so despise are easily manipulated by those whom they regard as having either power or authority.  You appear to  also have come to realize two of the most potent areas in which the concepts of power and authority are percieved to reside - religion and politics. I don't know if you were told this or came to this conclusion by making your own observation of the hairless apes over the centuries, but as your instructor I am impressed, and that is no small matter. This is heady stuff for a first-year student of the damning arts to be bantering about. Usually I have to keep you first-year imps from merely playing with your subjects in a manner similar to how the humans pull the wings off flies when they are bored.

 

The pictures I have posted above this text are four of our best servants - two of history and two of modernity. Let's begin by discussing the chaps on the left first. After years of fairly futile searching our intelligence department presented us with these two specimens of rebellion as potential traitors to the Enemy's Church. Over the centuries we had managed to field a few rotten popes, that nice schism of 1054 AD between the East and West, and some corrupt bishops here and there, but nothing that really amounted to a hill of spit in terms of achieving a large scaled of mass damnation. What we really needed to find were leaders who could sway the ignorant masses - the "massa damnata" as Augustine so aptly put it - to forsake the Enemy's Church for some half-baked theological nonsense which would send them directly down to us.

 

In preparation for this move, it was noted by our intelligence department that thanks to a decent amount of corruption in the Church, the population of Europe was pretty well fed-up with the antics of the clerics in the Church. My hell were they corrupt! There were a few good ones scattered here and there, but by and large, the whole Church was a putrid cesspoll of corruption, so bad that the average peasant knew about it, discussed it over dinner with his wife, and seethed under his breath watching it take place in his town. And this was long before the Internet and social media. It was wonderfully bad, which made the average illiterate in the pews ripe for something that sounded Christian but was not, as long as it was not associated with our Enemy's corrupt Church!

 

Now here's the thing: regardless of the condition of the Church or the clerics in it, the Eucharist remains the source of eternal life for these hairless vermin. What we saw, with the Church being so corrupt, was an opportunity to establish a new religion in which there was no faith in the Sacraments, and thus no chance of eternal life for anyone foolish enought to throw the Enemy's Church and the Sacraments overboard. Thus, we create a new religion in which the subjects use the name of the Enemy without giving those who use His name access to His Person. Stroke of genius, really!

 

Luther, the chap on the far left, got everything rolling for us. He was a perfect specimen because he had two things going for him that made him attractive to the masses - he was a monk and he was highly educated. He was also bat-shit crazy, compliments of his father, who would be described today as a "dysfunctional parent." Luther could never satisfy his old man, and it was easy to transfer his fear of his father to the Enemy, who also has the nerve to describe Himself to the humans by that title. When Luther spoke, the peasants figured that he knew what he was talking about because he was a monk and educated, and they were just rotten sinners. It really doesn't take much to dazzle these ignorant savages. A nice black robe, some high sounding Latin words, and the next thing you know, Luther had a whole country full of "Lutherans," even though it was not his original intent to start a new religion. The people loved Luther because he hated Rome. They hated Rome, he hated Rome, it was a real love-fest of utter disdain for a Church which had lost its way and cared more for money than for the souls of the people for which it was supposed to care.

 

POINT NUMBER ONE:  Look for that person who is eloquent and looked up to by the masses. Eloquence can make human beings do things they would never believe they were capable of in a million years. If you want to see a fine example of this, go to the Screwtape Wing of the Brimstone Intermediate School for Imps and check out Scruffomulous' WORLD WAR II - DAYS OF DELIGHT AND DAMNATION. In that book you will find a rather lengthy chapter on Adolph Hitler and how Pusglommus made him into one of the outstanding specimens of human damnation of the 20th century. The German people did things for him that they still talk about to this day in embarrassed whispers of disbelief, and it was all because he was a master orator who played upon Germany's fears and the treatment the country received at the Treaty of Versailles.

 

Luther was that person in the sixteenth century. He was looked up to because he was a monk, he was respected because he had the audacity to speak out against the corruption in the Enemy's Church, and he was eloquent in describing his opposition to what the clerics were doing. The people loved him. Therefore, when he began to interpret the Bible according to the understanding that we placed in his mind - i.e. "salvation by faith alone" - the people believed him and followed him. By the time the Church cleaned up its act, the damage was done, and all we have had to do since then is watch the steady stream of souls fall into our clutches.

 

POINT NUMBER TWO:  Look for one who is utterly consumed with himself and his religious performance. That was Luther. He would have denied it if you said it to his face, but he was abundantly filled with pride and vainglory. Everything in Luther's life was about Luther, which is why he had those five-hour sessions in the Confessional that sent the other monks running for cover when they saw him coming. A man like that, obsesssed with himself, is an easy target. It did not take much at all to manipulate that pride and make him think that he was smarter than the Holy Father of Rome. There came a point in his life where he was so proud, that if our Enemy Himself had come to Luther in person to rebuke him, Luther would have cursed Him as he cursed the Holy Father of Rome. So you must examine your potential specimen closely to see if he has pride. There are many eloquent men and women in the world, but they are useless to us because they are reasonably humble.

 

POINT NUMBER THREE: Create something which appeals to the emotions of the humans, but has none of the firepower of the truth for their souls. Remember that the hairless apes are easily duped by using their emotions, so if  you can sing them weepy tunes about their grandmother being in heaven because she was a good follower of your new religious ideas, you will lock them into your belief system. We have come up with some of the most nauseating musical crappola in history for the 30,000+ non-Catholic religions on earth and the humans lap it up like pigs at a sty full of garbage. Why? Because it gets to their emotions. Gregorian chant (Brrrrrrrr....ugh....horrid music!) makes them think about heaven and the hereafter. Jimmy Swaggart pounding on a piano freezes their intellectual capacity and makes their bodies twitch. Learn the difference.

 

The emotion Luther played with was a very primal one - fear of damnation. The Church - Tetzel in particular - had been beating on the poor for years with the subtle insinuation that if they didn't give enough money to the Enemy's Church, their relatives would spend all of eternity with us, and it would be their fault. Damnation or not, there is only so much of such a shakedown racket that one can take before it gets very vexing to the spirit of a man. Imagine then the emotions the humans felt when Luther convinced them that penances, confessions, buying indulgences, and all the other teachings of the Enemy's Church were not necessary at all. When their minds accepted what Luther was teaching, they were like caged birds suddenly set free - and they were not interested in returning. The taste of such freedom, the exhilaration of soul and spirit they felt, was like a narcotic.

 

That's enough for today. Be about your books and ponder what I have written to you. You are an interesting specimen of evil, Wormrot, and I think I see a good future for you in the damning arts.

 

With regards,

 

 

Master Trainer Infernus