While most doomsday prophecies and new age soothsayers place significance on Dec. 21 as the date of the apocalypse or other surreal events, one Texas man was so convinced something big would happen on 12-12-12 he carved a pentagram into his six-year-old son's back, reported The Star-Telegram.
"I shed some innocent blood," Brent Troy Bartel told a police dispatcher from Richland Hills, Texas in a phone call just after midnight.
Pressed to clarify what he meant by the dispatcher, Bartel responded matter-of-factly, "I inscribed a pentagram on my son."
"OK, why did you do that?" the 911 operator asked.
"'Cause it's a holy day," Bartel said.
Police say the young boy's mother was simultaneously calling authorities from a neighbor's home to alert police Bartel was hurting their son.
The young boy was found in a state of shock when authorities arrived at Bartel's home, standing shirtless with a massive blood-red pentagram carved into the skin on his back. Police discovered the boy's blood smeared on the front door of the house, CNN reported.
A five-pointed star, the pentagram is an ancient symbol with significance to numerous religions and belief systems. The pentagram has had links with many of the world's religions and cults throughout time, including Christianity, Judaism, and Paganism, and has also been used in certain forms by magicians and Satanists.
"There was a large pentagram carved into his back which covered the majority of his back," Richland Hills police Sgt. Nathan Stringer said in a news release. "The child was ... shivering in the cold so officers wrapped him in a jacket."
When police arrested Bartel he was "flat and emotionless," according to Stringer. He has since been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on a family member. Bartel is in the North Richland Hills Jail, with bail set at $500,000.
Bartel's stepfather, John Ponce, said he had been on a spiritual quest for truth.
"He is deep into the Old Testament," Ponce said to CNN. "There's a possibility with all of this pain and marital strife and such, he may have resorted to Old Testament references and then convoluted them."
"If you know about the Old Testament, the Passover marks on the door frame were done with a sacrificial lamb, definitely not sacrificial children," he added.
Police believe a box cutter recovered from the scene appears to have been used in the crime. Authorities are awaiting laboratory tests.
As the supposed Mayan end of times approaches on Dec. 21, anxitey and fear are running high, inspiring some wild predictions and behavior. People are frantically preparing for Armageddon the world over, flocking to such far off spiritual destinations as Bugarach, France and Mount Rtanj, Serbia to await alien saviors, a new dawn that will "upgrade" human consciousness, a door opening up another dimension and other surreal phenomena to occur.
"At least a once a week I get a message from a young person - as young as 11 - who says they are ill and/or contemplating suicide because of the coming doomsday," said David Morrison, a planetary astronomer and senior scientist for NASA who answers questions from the public about astrobiology, in an interview with Time.
According to police, Bartel's motivation still remains unclear. "This is a very bizarre case," Stringer said.
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