Why is it that a kid wearing a MAGA hat smiling at a Native American drumming in his face can become a national scandal, but a mainstream performance can have a performer surrounded by demonic figures, dancing in flames, and show depictions of the Statue of Liberty in ruins—and nobody seems to bat an eye?
I’m, of course, referring to Madonna’s performance at Eurovision 2019 in Israel. Keep in mind that Eurovision is no minor event. In 2018, it had almost 190 million viewers, which is nearly double the Super Bowl’s 98 million.
Openly Satanic imagery is fairly common in Madonna’s performances—and with performances by major pop singers, overall—so this wasn’t especially unusual for her. But the seeming lack of attention these issues receive says something about how warped the standards in entertainment have become.
The real irony is that of all the things the legacy news outlets could have had problems with during her performance, the criticisms focused on the sound quality, and that she apparently called for peace between Israel and Palestine by showing performers with the countries’ flags on their backs at the end.
Madonna’s performance began with her 1989 song “Like a Prayer,” and showed dark, hooded figures on a staircase with a horned devil face projected behind them in red light.
Joshua Philipp
This moved into a performance of one of her new songs, “Future,” alongside rapper Quavo. The dancers pulled off their robes to reveal some wearing white or black costumes, and World War I gas masks. Madonna pretends to caress, then kill, the ones in white, as she declares, “They think we’re not aware of their crimes, but we are just not ready to act,” as a screen in the back shows images that resemble Catholic priests.
She then asks, “Can’t you hear outside of your supreme hoodie, the wind that’s beginning to howl?” She then blows on the backup dancers, who pretend to die, and the set is then engulfed in hellish flames. She then declares: “Not everyone is coming to the future. Not everyone that’s here is gonna last,” as the background image shifts to show a broken and crumbling Statue of Liberty in a destroyed New York City, and transitions into other hellish scenes, such as showing the stage engulfed in flames.
The performance is filled with demonic imagery and dark occult symbolism.
Some viewers pointed to the fact that Madonna wore an eye patch with an “X” on it, supposedly representing her new “Madame X” persona. Of course, it’s possible that she just wore the eye patch because she thinks it’s stylish, but her previous uses of the symbol of covering one eye, and the frequent use of the symbol by other pop stars, has raised some suspicions as to its meaning. Many point to the “Eye of Providence” or the “Eye of Horus” as being the reference. While this was later understood as a Freemason symbol, it goes back further, to Illuminist and Luciferian sects.
In the early Luciferian initiations of the Rosicrucians, an initiate would be led blindfolded through a maze, then would have their blindfold ceremonially removed. Covering one eye, and uncovering the other refers to seeing through the manufactured illusions of the world. This has other meanings from within the dark occult, where Lucifer is seen as the “light-bringer” who “illuminates” followers with knowledge—which plays on the story of the Garden of Eden, where the devil convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
Those in the dark occult often pursue worldly knowledge with the belief that it can give them power over others. In Luciferian sects, they invert the story of man’s fall from Eden, to paint Lucifer’s deception as a gift—referring to him as the “Prometheus” and the “morning star.” Playing on the illuminist concept of Luciferian light, Madonna states: “We can light up the dark. Everyone has a spark.”
In Western occultism, the idea that “everyone has a spark,” pulls from the concept of internal duality. They believed that each person had an angel and a demon, and many try to use these in their own pursuits of worldly power and knowledge—believing they can manipulate angels and demons to their whims. King James warned of these practices in his 1597 book, “Daemonologie,” that in their belief they can control these forces, individuals are deceived by their pride and are enslaved by demonic forces they believed they had dominated.
This also relates to the “above and below” concept, where the “Magician” is depicted as pointing upward and downward. A well-known depiction of this is the Satanic image of the goat-headed demon Baphomet, often shown pointing both upward and downward. Madonna and other pop stars have often depicted this same symbol.
As someone who studies Kabbalah, it’s unlikely that Madonna is doing this by chance. In the dark occult, pointing upward is regarded as a reference to the “white moon” of Chesed in the Tree of Life, while pointing down refers to the “black one” of Geburah.
A common belief in the evil “left-hand path” of the dark occult is that both good and evil will merge into the same result, and that they can achieve “salvation through sin.” Madonna appears to depict this at the end of her performance, when the performers in both white and black follow her as she and Quavo fall backward off the stage—a likely reference to their dive into the abyss, where good and evil are united in apocalyptic destruction.
Of course, it’s possible that these pop stars have no idea what they’re doing, and they’re just trying to be edgy. But how is it that society can casually watch demonic imagery like this and have no problem—even when shown to almost 200 million people—yet even the suggestion of values that oppose their “do as thou wilt” motto can become a national scandal?