In 2016, a video of an mock human sacrifice at CERN went viral. It’s fake, but whoever made it wants you to think it’s real. A human sacrifice is shocking enough, but the fact that it took place at CERN, in front of a statue of the Hindu god Shiva, and that CERN employees were performing the ritual, made the incident fodder for conspiracy theorists.
James Purvis, Human Resources Department Head at CERN, issued a statement condemning the prank, which begins:
The richness of our Organization comes from our people; with diverse cultures, backgrounds and interests, we are able to achieve the incredible—pushing the frontiers of knowledge. Regrettably, the behaviour of some members of our community occasionally undermines our collective ambitions and the opportunity we have to work at CERN. Currently, the senior management, HR, computer security, legal service and communications teams are managing the consequences of the actions of a small group of individuals, which is having significant and widespread repercussions for our Organization[…]
CERN launched an internal investigation into the incident. As an organization, it’s obvious that CERN is aware of its responsibility to the public, and of the danger that misunderstandings might pose. With clarity, detail, and patience, the Frequently Asked Questions section of their site addresses many of the accusations made by conspiracy theorists.
But the damage has already been done. For many, the mock human sacrifice video confirmed what they’d long suspected about CERN. No official explanation (however reasonable, however true) will be sufficient.
The stated purpose of CERN, or the European Council for Nuclear Research, is fascinating and pretty wonderful. They “probe the fundamental structure of particles that make up everything around us, […] using the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments.” Workers in aerospace application, medical technology, and a variety of other fields use the technology that CERN developed. Their website states, “Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist at CERN, invented the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1989.” So if you’re enjoying this article, you’ve got CERN to thank.
But in a few of the weirder corners of the internet, people say that these intrepid scientists are up to something positively devilish. Do some poking, and you’ll find plenty of articles and videos claiming that CERN is trying to open up an interdimensional gateway, or even a portal to Hell.
Old Suspicions made new
CERN was founded in 1952, but these anxieties are far older. You’ll find them in texts written thousands of years ago, and the opening of infernal or celestial gateways is a running theme among apocalyptic thinkers. It is unsurprising, given this history, that conspiratorially minded folks might view CERN with suspicion. It’s quite strange, though, that some of CERN’s employees would deliberately play into the most paranoid speculation.
The CERN mock human sacrifice video, from all available evidence, is a hoax. Those behind it seemed intent on feeding a strange and ancient narrative. Science has long dabbled in practices deemed occultic—in fact, for much of our history, science and spirituality were wedded. To give just one example, many medieval doctors considered astrology an essential tool in medicine. According to the British Library:
Ideas of astrology in medieval Europe were a long way from today’s star sign horoscopes. Although some medieval astrologers were thought to be magicians, many were highly respected scholars. Astrologers believed that the movements of the stars influenced numerous things on Earth, from the weather and the growth of crops to the personalities of newborn babies and the inner workings of the human body. […] By the end of the 1500s, physicians across Europe were required by law to calculate the position of the moon before carrying out complicated medical procedures, such as surgery or bleeding.
Jack parsons: Satanist and Scientist
A flirtation with the mystical, even an outright embrace of it, is hardly a relic of an earlier, more superstitious time. When Jack Parsons, a pioneering rocket scientist and one of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, died in an explosion at the age of 37, one headline read, “Slain Scientist Priest in Black Magic Cult.”
The headline was sensational, but it wasn’t inaccurate. Parsons had been deeply involved in Ordo Templi Orientis, which counted Aleister Crowley and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard as members. The O.T.O. wasn’t your average church group. According to VICE magazine:
At these gatherings Parsons watched as strange rituals were performed, most notably the ‘Gnostic Mass’, a weird take on the Catholic mass. On a black and white stage stood an altar embossed with hieroglyphic patterns, a host of candles and an upright coffin covered with a gauze curtain out of which the group’s caped leader would appear. Poetry was read, swords were drawn, breasts kissed, and lances stroked. It was a highly charged sexual atmosphere. Wine was drunk and cakes made out of menstrual blood were consumed.
In Parsons’s day, rocket science was an equally fringe pursuit. A college dropout, he wasn’t the kind of guy you’d expect to change the face of space travel. But, for Parsons, scientific questions were spiritual ones. VICE notes:
Parsons could be heard chanting Crowley’s pagan ‘Hymn to Pan’ prior to igniting his rockets. And the scorching flames and frequent explosions added a suitably infernal backdrop to his interests in the supernatural.
Trust the experts
For all the lives it’s saved or bettered, the history of science is littered with corpses. “Trust the experts,” they say—and that’s generally good advice, but we’ve seen the acquisition of specialized knowledge create an attitude of election in those who possess it. Experts, perhaps justifiably, might see themselves as exceptional. Pretty much all of us lack the intelligence, ambition, and competence to become, say, particle physicists. Even if the folks at CERN could explain, in the simplest and clearest terms possible, precisely what they’re working to achieve, it’s safe to assume that we wouldn’t get it.
It is knowledge inaccessible to us—we can’t get it, and that’s fine, but this creates a divide between those who know and those who don’t. Knowledge is power, and power corrupts, and, far too often, those who know have felt entitled to determine which laypeople are expendable in the service of a greater good. Science, after all, gave us the atom bomb, the Tuskegee Experiment, and the sweatshop. The last few centuries have been plagued with atrocities committed, sometimes with the best intentions, in the name of progress.
The CERN mock human sacrifice video is a practical joke, and a funny one. The participants are thumbing their nose at anyone stupid enough to believe such wickedness is afoot at CERN. But what were the atom bomb and the Tuskegee Experiment if not human sacrifice?
This guy doesn’t trust the experts
Is CERN a tower of babel?
During my research, I found a fascinating blog post in one weird corner of the internet. It articulates perfectly the popular suspicion of science in general and CERN in particular. It weaves a thoughtful and complex web of conspiracy theories, backed by unique (if inaccurate) interpretation of scripture.
Over the course of several articles, I’ll be analyzing this post. It’s called “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened.”
It’s a tough one to read—it’s dense, and requires a considerable familiarity with the Bible and some of its more arcane interpretations. A reader must also withhold judgment before claims that, on their face, seem rather outlandish.
And plenty of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and The Gates of Hell Opened” is outlandish. But the more deeply I looked, and the more carefully I attended to how the author was interpreting, the more surprised I became. Many of his ideas echo those in ancient texts, but he doesn’t just parrot old views: on the contrary, he refashions them into a fresh and startling hypothesis.
Why it’s worth analyzing
It looks like it’s from the early days of the web. There’s a handful of low-resolution images at the top, and the text is written with a sincere desperation—the kind that comes from real belief. Imagine a street preacher—someone offering himself as a living sacrifice on the altar of public indifference, the kind of guy who’d give you the shirt off his back if you’d dare to ask (and you wouldn’t), who’s lost friends because of his unpalatable opinions and who prays for those friends not despite, but because of their rejection. He wants them to see the truth, too.
To dismiss such people is to sin against our common humanity. Maybe we don’t share the street preacher’s theological commitments. If not, we can at least admire his sincerity. He has something most of us don’t: a conviction that is nearly absent in all but those on the spiritual and ideological fringes.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but it probably does, so I’ll state—in case it’s not already obvious, and it ought to be—that this theory is sincere, but it’s wrong. It also asks questions that most of us wouldn’t dare to—questions about the acquisition of forbidden knowledge, and the consequences to those who seek it.
the dance of shiva
The post I’m reading is called “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and The Gates of Hell Opened.” There are grammatical errors, and loads of awkward phrases. In order to present the author’s views as accurately as possible, I’ve kept them all. This is how it begins:
In this article we will look at the tower of Babel and today’s CERN particle collider. Back in the days of the tower of Babel an attempt to open a door into the spiritual realm was made. Today, CERN is another attempt at doing the same thing. Even though different methods were used, the goal is the same. That goal is to open a bridge or doorway to another realm or dimension where many evil and demonic creatures dwell. A secondary goal would to be able to make an attack against God. I’m sad to say that evil people will succeed in opening the door to the bottomless pit where the demonic dwells. However, they will not be allowed to do it today. There is an appointed time which will come and the doorway to the bottomless pit will be opened. The appointed time is the blowing of the 5th trumpet during the wrath judgments of God.
The post names Sergio Bertolucci as director of CERN, which is true enough. But it goes on to state that Bertolucci’s, and CERN’s, ultimate goal is the opening of a portal into another dimension. There’s no citation given, and you might think that’s because Bertolucci never made such a statement. But, according to a 2009 piece in The Register:
A top boffin at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) says that the titanic machine may possibly create or discover previously unimagined scientific phenomena, or “unknown unknowns”—for instance “an extra dimension”.
“Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it,” said Sergio Bertolucci, who is Director for Research and Scientific Computing at CERN […]
an interdimensional gateway?
On their website’s FAQ, CERN states that it “will not open a door to another dimension. If the experiments conducted at the LHC demonstrate the existence of certain particles it could help physicists to test various theories about nature and our Universe, such as the presence of extra dimensions.” This is exciting stuff—and, in context, it doesn’t indicate any desire to trigger the apocalypse. But it’s easy enough to see how someone might take it that way.
“The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” then notes that CERN’s logo “is 3 6’s (666) together in different positions.” CERN provides a less fantastic (and more convincing) explanation: “[t]he interlaced rings, […] are a simplified representation of the accelerator chain and the particle tracks.” The post continues:
CERN has a statue of a pagan deity prominently displayed on the premises. This is a Hindu false god of destruction. CERN is dedicated to this pagan god of destruction.
The workers in CERN have even been videoed doing a dance to Shiva. This is a pagan way to worship and give honor to to this Shiva demon. Here is a question. If CERN is just “science” then why is there Shiva and worship dances to Shiva? This false god of destruction and transformation is not a good symbol to represent anything. Dancing to this evil demonic false god is not “scientific” in any way. This alone proves the occult nature and purposes of CERN. The “scientists” at CERN are evolutionists that reject the God of the Bible. Instead they turn to Satan and Shiva. The evil ones at CERN seek to destroy matter and reveal all the hidden sub-atomic things. With this knowledge they will be able to have the knowledge to open the door to the bottomless pit. All thanks will be given to Satan or Shiva the destroyer. These evil men want nothing to do with the God of the Bible. Instead, they display a false demonic entity called Shiva at their facility and do dances to it. This lets one know where they are coming from and who they serve. This is not science.
cERN and shiva
Shiva is in no way the equivalent of Satan. According to CERN, the statue is a gift from India, and a celebration of that nation’s decades-long relationship with the organization. CERN provides an illuminating statement on the Shiva statue and its significance:
In the Hindu religion, this form of the dancing Lord Shiva is known as the Nataraj and symbolises Shakti, or life force. As a plaque alongside the statue explains, the belief is that Lord Shiva danced the Universe into existence, motivates it, and will eventually extinguish it. Carl Sagan drew the metaphor between the cosmic dance of the Nataraj and the modern study of the ‘cosmic dance’ of subatomic particles.
But the author of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” is hardly alone in attributing a demonic origin to a non-Christian deity. Many of the earliest Christians—some of them truly sophisticated thinkers—believed the same thing. To take one example from a multitude, we can cite Justin Martyr, a brilliant second century philosopher and convert. In his letter to the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, Justin has this to say about “pagan” gods:
For the truth shall be spoken; since of old these evil demons, effecting apparitions of themselves, both defiled women and corrupted boys, and showed such fearful sights to men, that those who did not use their reason in judging of the actions that were done, were struck with terror; and being carried away by fear, and not knowing that these were demons, they called them gods, and gave to each the name which each of the demons chose for himself.
The author of “The Tower of Babel, CERN, and the Gates of Hell Opened” might scramble some essential details, but he echoes a line of thought held by some of the earliest Christians. And we don’t need to make any theological conclusions about Shiva to see that the pranksters, in a performance deemed offensive by many Indians, sought to frame the Hindu deity as a bloodthirsty demon.
In the next article in this series, we’ll examine the Biblical narrative of the Tower of Babel, and continue our exploration of science and the occult. This rabbit hole goes much, much deeper than you might think…
NOTE: This series of articles is based on a documentary I made, called Funny How The World Ends. Watch it below: