The Prodigal Witch Part III: John Todd

Part I

The only positive thing I can say about the late John Todd is that he makes everyone else in this series look pretty good by comparison. At the height of his fame as a “former witch” he was also a sexual predator, a military imposter, and a practicing witch who used several aliases.

John Todd emerged on the Christian scene around 1968, at least four years before Mike Warnke (according to the Cornerstone article on Warnke, he accused Warnke of stealing some of his Illuminati material), but never gained the level of mainstream popularity that Warnke did. His tales of Satanic intrigue were just too dark and outlandish for the average Christian. Frankly, you would have to be either blissfully innocent or profoundly stupid to buy any of Todd’s b.s.
He was ultimately relegated to the far-right fringe, preaching to militia members and Christian Patriots about the endtimes and the need to establish armed strongholds. One of his last known locations before his arrest was Iowa, where he attached himself to a paranoid young couple named Randy and Vicki Weaver. He convinced the Weavers they needed to get away from populated areas and prepare for the end of the world. We all know how that turned out.

Even though his anti-occult invective wasn’t as appealing as Warnke’s, Todd still has his fans. Old audio recordings of his diatribes have popped up on YouTube, where he is vaunted as an Illuminati insider, framed by The Powers That Be. Henry Makow still promotes his story.

Who is John Todd?

No one really knows. His background is so occluded that even the year of his birth is in doubt. Possibly he was born in Ohio around 1950. He was taken into foster care as a youth. He suffered epileptic seizures throughout his life.
He was fairly good-looking and extremely tall (about 6’4″).
Given his peculiar fascination with daytime television and gay porn movies, I strongly suspect he was a failed actor.

Todd first surfaced on the fundamentalist Christian scene in Arizona in 1968, performing as a Pentacostal preacher. He was about 19 or 20 years old, married to a slightly older woman named Linda. Earlier that year he had been arrested in Columbus, Ohio for malicious destruction of property.
He told Pastor James Outlaw of the Jesus Name Church that he had recently been saved at a Pentacostal church service after practicing witchcraft in the Navy, and wanted to be re-baptized as a Jesus Only believer.
He then vanished for several years, resurfacing in 1973 as a born again warlock. He again said he had been saved at a Pentacostal church service, and identified himself as an independent Baptist, but preached mostly to charismatics. He was now married to a woman named Sharon Garver.
He went on the fundamentalist lecture circuit in Cali, educating churchgoers about the international Satanic conspiracy. His talks were a blend of pop conspiranoia, anti-occult fearmongering, and tell-all braggadocio.

Todd said his real name was Lance Collins, and he had been born into a powerful family of devil-worshiping witches with ties to the Illuminati. The Illuminati is the life’s blood of conspiracy culture today, but until the publication of Gary Allen’s None Dare Call It Conspiracy in 1972, it was largely forgotten. Allen and Todd helped nudge it back into prominence within conservative circles. It is extremely likely that Todd’s interest in the Illuminati was sparked by Allen’s book; we know that he was at least aware of it, because during one of his talks a woman in the audience mentioned it and he recited the title along with her.

The Collinses were direct descendants of Scottish Druids who posed as Puritans and imported witchcraft to America before helping to establish the Illuminati.
Todd’s mother was so ashamed of her witchy behaviour that she ended up in a mental hospital, hooked on barbituates. His foster mother, on the other hand, was the high priestess of all the witches in California, and his sister was made the high priestess of Ohio at the tender age of 13.
Todd was perhaps the first “former Satanist” to come from a Satanic family, but within a few years this would be the norm.
The hereditary Satanism he described bears little resemblance to Doreen Irvine’s “black witchcraft”, and no resemblance whatsoever to Mike Warnke’s “third level” Satanism. Presumably, as an Illuminati member, Todd was privy to knowledge that Warnke never imagined.

He was reared on a diet of “occult” teachings: ufology, spells, Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis.
Witch parents aren’t allowed to love or discipline their children; kids belong to the cult. At age 13 or 14, boys are sent to witch schools called Outer Courts to be trained as Satanic priests. Todd was initiated into the priesthood at 14. His sister became such a powerful high priestess that she could summon demons in the form of UFOs.
At age 18, while serving as a Green Beret, Todd became the high priest of his coven.

The Illuminati Todd describes is a configuration of pure evil represented (in part) by Freemasons, Mormons, international finance, Communists, and – paradoxically – the John Birch Society. He explained that very few Jews belong to the Illuminati, but the Rothschilds are at the top of the pyramid, totally controlling the illustrious Council of 13. All Illuminati members, whatever their supposed religious affiliation, are actually devil worshipers.
He claimed to know a great deal about the inner workings of Freemasonry, yet always called it “Masonary”. He also called the Trilateral Commission “the Trilateral Council”, and the Council on Foreign Relations “the Council of Foreign Affairs”.
Clearly, he was somewhat familiar with John Birch literature. But he never explained why the John Birch Society, as part of the Illuminati conspiracy, would expose all these real Illuminati fronts.

Let’s move on to the Satanism. Todd was, of course, a high-ranking Satanist within the Illuminati. He belonged to a Grand Druid Council headed by Raymond Buckland, the man hand-picked by Philippe Rothschild to head the Illuminati and a professor of anthropology at Columbia. Buckland revealed to Todd many things known only to high-level witches; lower-level witches were hand-fed disinformation and nonsense. He also received some witchcraft training from Ruth Carter Stapleton, sister of future president Jimmy Carter.
Buckland, as you may know, was indeed a very prominent witch. But he never taught at Columbia, and wasn’t an anthropologist. He was a flight attendant for British Airways. (For more information on Buckland, see my post “John Todd Addendum“.)

According to Todd, Satanists don’t congregate. This is quite a contrast to Doreen Irvine’s gatherings, which attracted up to 1000 black witches, and to Mike Warnke’s San Bernadino-area coven of 1500.
In Todd’s form of witchcraft, Satanists dealt directly with their high priests. They didn’t even know the other members of their covens.

The central scripture of Satanism is the Necronomicon, but copies are rare. The only copies known to Todd were kept in St. Petersburg, Glasgow, and the British Library.
In case you’re keeping track, that makes three different sacred texts in just three different “ex Satanist” accounts: The Book of Satan (Doreen Irvine), The Great Mother (Mike Warnke), and a book that doesn’t freaking exist (Todd). But hey, at least we’ve heard of the Necronomicon. Those other two books don’t seem to exist even in the realm of fiction.
All three cults were supposedly organized on a national level, and two encompassed the whole planet. So why aren’t all these Satanists using the same books?
And just for the record, Lovecraft stories never named St. Petersburg or Glasgow as locations of the Necronomicon. There were copies at the British Museum, Harvard, the Biblioteque Nationale, the University of Buenos Aires, and Miskatonic University.
Todd also referred to the book several times as the “Necromonicon“, just as he called Masonry “Masonary”.
Sheesh, he couldn’t even get his bullshit right.

Apocalypse Not

In ’69, Todd enlisted in the military. Illuminati witches are exempt from military service, but he wanted to set up some covens in other countries and this was a convenient cover. He served in Vietnam as a Green Beret before being transferred to Germany. One night, in Stuttgart, he got crazy drunk and high and (for reasons known only to him) engaged in a firefight with one of his former commanding officers. The man was killed. From military confinement, Todd phoned his foster mother in L.A. and asked her to cast a spell on the members of the jury at his imminent court martial, to make them believe he was innocent. (It would have been simpler to cast a spell on the commanding officer in charge of the court martial, but what do I know? I’m not a Satanic Illuminati witch.)
Instead, someone pulled major strings for Todd. A Senator, a Congressman, and two generals personally escorted him out of his cell. He received an honorable discharge, no questions asked. The Army even destroyed all Todd’s military records to help preserve the secrecy of the Illuminati.
In reality, Todd’s papers were not destroyed. And they tell a slightly different story: He served as a clerk in the Army from February 1969 to July 1970 without ever setting foot in Vietnam. He was stationed in Germany for less than a month and was discharged under a Section 8. You know, that thing Klinger was always trying to get by running around in drag? I wonder just how unstable a person would have to be to get a Section 8 during ‘Nam. I’m guessing “Charlie Sheen”.
Anyway, Todd had been making death threats and false suicide reports. A psychiatric evaluation conducted in ’69 found he suffered emotional instability, pseudologica phantastica, and possibly brain damage as well. He was also treated for a drug overdose at an Army facility in Maryland in 1969.

Devil Rock

Like evangelist/exorcist Bob Larson, Todd claimed to be a music industry insider. After ‘Nam, he was a manager at Zodiac Productions (variously described as “the largest music conglomerate in the world” and “the largest booking agency”), so he knew that every rock musician in America had to become a witch before he could get a recording contract, and that every master recording was taken to a Satanic temple to be possessed by a demon. Each major record label had its own temple.
In one of his anti-rock lectures, he recounts a conversation he had with David Crosby after his conversion:

Todd: “Do they still bring the master [recording] to the Temple…and conjure demons into the master? Is the purpose of rock music still to use witchcraft, cast spells…?”
Crosby: “Of course. You know that, Lance.”

The only moderately successful Zodiac Productions operating in the U.S. during the early ’70s was a film company that produced one film (a ’74 gay porno called The Portrait of Dorian Gay – NSFW) and several episodes of the ’60s variety show The Hollywood Palace. It did not have a music division.
To explain why no one recognized this mammoth media conglom, Todd said Zodiac was forced to change its name because of the negative publicity he brought to it. He did not divulge the new name.

World Domination and Stuff

In ’72, the Grand Druid Council received a diplomatic pouch from headquarters in London, containing an eight-year plan for world domination (culminating in December 1980). It involved economic breakdown, a military strike force comprised partly of prisoners, the execution of millions, and a Third World War that would spare only Jerusalem.
Around the same time, a letter from Satanic HQ announced the discovery of a man believed to be Lucifer’s son. He would serve as a false messiah to lead the masses astray. Todd later identified this Antichrist as fellow Baptist Jimmy Carter.

It was shortly after this that Todd was supposedly saved at a Pentacostal church service. Sometimes he placed this event in California, sometimes it occurred in Texas.

After his conversion and defection in ’73, the Satanists made many attempts on Todd’s life. This campaign of terror echoes the assassination attempts described by Mike Warnke and his first wife, and was equally unsuccessful. How is that these international Satanists can pull off world wars, but they can’t bump off two regular dudes?
Todd wouldn’t have been hard to find. He was working at a Pheonix, Arizona coffeehouse run by Pentecostal Ken Long, a local leader of the Jesus movement.

Todd’s extant lectures overflow with such stupefyingly retarded bullshit. Just a few examples:

• Ayn Rand fans are Communists. Atlas Shrugged was commissioned by Philippe Rothschild (Rand’s lover) as a blueprint for the destruction of the U.S. and the Communist/Illuminati takeover of the world. Rand inserted racy passages in the book to keep Christians away from it. Todd doesn’t explain why Rothschild didn’t just write it himself. (One wonders, too, why the Satanists concocted an eight-year plan in the ’70s if Rand had already produced a step-by-step instruction manual for global domination back in ’57. I guess the Illuminati doesn’t mind busywork. Also, Rand’s hinky sex life has been exhaustively documented – I mean, seriously, TMI – and it didn’t involve any Rothschilds.)
• JFK faked his death. Wait, no he didn’t. As “personal warlock” to the Kennedys, Todd met with JFK many times in the early ’70s. He never went into detail about this. In later talks, he said JFK was assassinated in 1963 because he was born again in Tampa, Florida.
  
• Epilepsy is a medical condition, but the seizures are caused by demonic possession and/or medication. Todd actually instructed his epileptic listeners not to take their medication.
  
• The supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows was based on the history of the Collins family. Todd was asked to bring a family diary to Hollywood, all expenses paid, one summer. He spent several months as a consultant to the writers while the series was being developed. I’ve never seen Dark Shadows, but my mother tells me most of the main characters were vampires and werewolves rather than witches, and there wasn’t any explicit occult content other than maybe a few black candles. Episode synopses at Wikipedia indicate the plot elements were culled from classic Gothic lit and popular novels.
• Most of the cast of the Star Wars movies were gay men who had slept with the producers, culled from The Young and the Restless. The Y&R cast contained so many witches that Todd referred to it as an “occult soap opera”. But none of the primary Star Wars actors were ever in it. Mark Hamill was on General Hospital. Harrison Ford was never on a soap at all. Nor was Alec Guinness. James Earl Jones was on The Guiding Light and As the World Turns. Billy Dee Williams was on The Guiding Light; even though he still does a lot of soap work, he has never been on Y&R (interestingly, though, Ford and Williams appeared in some of the same films and TV shows: The Conversation, The F.B.I., and The Mod Squad). All of these men had considerable acting ability and would certainly not have to sleep with any producers to get work. Aside from Guinness, who was reportedly bi, not one of them appears to be gay. Maybe the Modal Nodes were gay warlocks?
• Actress Cindy Williams (Laverne and Shirley) and her boyfriend started a witch cult. I suspect Todd singled out Williams because she and Penny Marshall co-wrote a screenplay about the Salem witch trials, Paper Hands. She was also in The Conversation, the tale of a man who lets paranoia and his imagination get the better of him. Hmm.
• Most Israeli license plates contain the number 666. Todd was taking a big risk with this one. Any listener who had traveled to Israel would know he was full of it.
• All of the people executed during the Salem witch trials were born again Christians rather than Puritans, and this is why the Collins family and other secret witches had them killed.
• The Illuminati gave him $8 million to start the Christian record label Marantha Records, to corrupt Christian youth via Satanic rock music. Marantha would later produce such hardcore Satanic albums as Psalty’s Funtastic Praise Party.
• The Dunwich Horror, starring Sandra Dee, was the most accurate representation of witchcraft on film. LOL. I’ve seen this movie, and about the only thing it accurately represents is Grade B cheese.

Part II

Move over, Burzum…