WASHINGTON – The U.S. entertainment industry is entrenched with devil worshipers who are actively working to promote and normalize satanism in American culture, experts of the "spirit world" are warning.

Karl Payne, author of "Spiritual Warfare: Christians, Demonization and Deliverance," told WND the entertainment industry is largely to blame for a clear rise in demand for exorcisms.

Hollywood and the media, he said, are programming the public to not only become more secular, but they are desensitizing society to evil.

"All you have to do is turn on your television or head over to the movies, and you are going to see something in your home or something on the big screen that glorifies the occult, glorifies Spiritism, glorifies demonism," said Payne, who is also pastor of Leadership Development and Christian Education at Antioch Bible Church and the former chaplain of the NFL's Seattle Seahawks.

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He continued: "If you have more and more people who are watching programming on demonism, on Spiritism, on occultism, on Satanism, you are going to have growing number of people who get scared.

"The Bible, in particular the New Testament, is not bashful about the reality of the devil and demons. They do not talk about them metaphorically or allegorically. They very clearly say they were real. They spoke, and they controlled people."

Americans are now witnessing music icons using occult imagery on album covers and even selling perfume and face cream containing blood and human body parts. During the 2016 presidential election, they learned that Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta had been invited to an occult "spirit cooking" event. Meanwhile, satanists' latest efforts to infiltrate schools, colleges and the military is making regular headlines in the news.

Furthermore, exorcism – the ancient rite of casting out Satan and his demons from the souls of the possessed – is in urgent demand in the U.S., according to a report on mental health issues facing the church published by Theos, a U.K.-based Christian think tank.

In the U.K., the problem is even more severe, and exorcisms are now reportedly a booming industry.

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The report published by Theos attributes the rise in exorcism to the growth of certain migrant communities and Pentecostal churches, for which the practice is common. Experts from the Catholic Church in Italy and the U.S. claim the spike in demand is a result of a sharp rise in people dabbling in satanism and the occult.

Payne, who has performed hundreds of exorcisms, said the U.S. is seeing a "post-Christian" culture in which Spiritists, which are anti-Christian, are the status quo in North America. As a result, Christianity is attacked and degraded by the media and Hollywood.

"We live in a culture that would make the satanic priest on TV look like a hero, and the Catholic preacher or Protestant preacher, they are always the geek, or they are always the homophobe," he said. "They are always the serial killer hiding behind their collar."

The culture, he said, is "dominated by secularism on one side of the coin, or Spiritism on the other – Satanists are part of one of those groups. They are simply groups that are part of an atheistic movement, or a theistic movement that says anything but Jesus or Moses," he said.

Payne said the more secular America becomes, the more the public is susceptible to engaging in Spiritism and adopting satanic ideology.

"We live in a post-Christian culture. What surprises me is people who are not overtly Christian would still want to see so much of the blood, guts and gore and the things that typically accompany all of that," he said. "But I don't expect non-Christians to live by Christian principles. Many professing Christians don't live by Christian principles."

Christopher Everard, author of the book "Stone Age Psychedelia" and director of the documentary series "Spirit World," warned that there has always been an anti-Christ thread running through Hollywood.

"There were movies being produced and made by satanic cults before talking films even existed – back in the silent era. Some of the very first films that were ever produced were produced by satanists," Everard told WND. "When you analyze these movies, they are using the real satanic symbolism and real sigils, and magical symbols – psychology that speaks directly to the human subconscious."

Everard, who began directing and producing documentaries about the occult in 2007 , explained that satanists engage in bizarre rituals that involve using human blood and excrement to be "reborn in the empire of Satan."

Satanic imagery, like the all-seeing eye, is rife in the entertainment world, and even celebrity endorsement of products that contain human bodily fluids and parts should raise concern, he warned.

"Singer Katy Perry's latest album cover is brazen with satanic iconology. Lady Gaga claims her 'Fame' perfume contains her blood in homeopathic-diluted state and human semen," he said. "The foreskin of babies is actually being used to create a face cream that has been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey.

"Network satanists deliberately expose themselves to excrement, filth, bad language, horrific experiences. They do this to 'un-zip' their upbringing and to become a 'reborn' person in the empire of Satan," he explained. "Satanists are taught to have no respect whatsoever for the goodness in the spirit of people, no respect for gender roles and no respect for the actual body. Their end goal is total nihilistic destruction of the entire biosphere."

It's not just celebrities who appear to have disturbing spiritual proclivities. Politicians also have participated in eyebrow-raising activities.

During the 2016 presidential race, WikiLeaks released stolen emails belonging to Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta revealing an invitation by his brother to a "spirit cooking dinner" at the home of artist Marina Abramovic.

Practitioners of the bizarre and gory ceremony mix blood, breast milk, urine and sperm together and use the mixture to paint messages on the walls.

Last June, several European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, attended a ceremony to commemorate the opening of Gotthard Tunnel, the world's longest tunnel. The ritual, which was widely been interpreted as depicting satanic scenes from hell, was performed by a man with a goat's head mask. The other performers in the ceremony appeared to worship him.

In yet another example of the rise of satanism in America, The Satanic Temple, or TST, which has seven chapters in the U.S. and Europe and claims a membership of 100,000, is increasingly seeking to erect Satanic monuments and statues around the nation.

The latest instance of its effort to attack religion and promote satanic ideology took place in Belle Plaine, Minnesota, where members of the city council voted to eliminate a free-speech zone it had established in a veterans memorial park. The free-speech zone was designed to allow displays by different faith groups at the site.

A two-foot-high sculpture titled "Joe," depicting a silhouette of a soldier holding a rifle and kneeling before a cross-shaped headstone, was installed in the park last year.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation, or FFRF, a leading atheist group, claimed the statue was too religious for public property. FFRF reported the issue to police and threatened a lawsuit if the satanists were not allowed to erect a display.

Concerned that the Christian monument could be seen as discriminatory toward other religions, the city removed the sculpture in January to avoid lawsuits.

Veterans and Christians in the area protested its removal and demanded the city council return the monument to the park.

Acquiescing to public demand, the council voted to create a free-speech zone in the park, and the monument was returned to its location.

The Satanic Temple learned about the opportunity to place a monument in Belle Plaine and petitioned for permission to create a satanic monument for the veterans memorial grounds.

The proposed monument consists of a steel cube engraved with inverted pentagrams on each side. On top of the box sits an upside-down soldier's helmet, which purportedly memorializes fallen soldiers and serves as an offering bowl.

The Satanic Temple describes the bowl as a place for visitors to leave cards or flowers, but it also calls it a "Baphomet bowl." Baphomet is an ancient, goat-headed idol often depicted in occultism.

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Plans by the Satanic Temple to set up a pentagram sparked so much outrage, the council decided to kill the free-speech zone entirely – including for Christians.

In yet another example of the growing influence of satanism, atheists in Boca Raton, Florida, erected a large metal Satanic pentagram just 20 feet from a Nativity scene weeks before Christmas last December. The pentagram did not stay standing long. Vandals reportedly attached a chain from a vehicle to the sculpture and yanked it down.

The most famous representation of Baphomet, Everard claims, is a depiction of George Washington that can be seen at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.

"It's George Washington, naked from the waist up, carved in marble. George Washington is sitting in what's known as the Baphomet posture," he explained. "His entire physique is completely wrong for his age."

Christian repudiation of Luciferian worship in Minnesota is impeding the efforts of occultists to mainstream Satanism. But explicitly satanic groups are intent on drawing attention to themselves by working to embed Lucifer in public venues.

One of the primary objectives of the Satanic Temple is to indoctrinate children in U.S. public schools. The organization has established afternoon clubs called "After School Satan" in cities across America.

There are nine Satanic after-school clubs in public schools throughout the U.S., including Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; and Salt Lake City, according to the group's website. An elementary school in Washington state opened its doors to an after-school Satan club right before Christmas last December.

Last July, Iris Fontana, a member of The Satanic Temple was allowed to make an opening prayer to Lucifer at a local council meeting in Alaska, during which the Satanist asked assembly members who stood in a circle to "embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the tree of knowledge."

Fontana concluded the prayer with the words "Hail Satan."

In July 2015, a crowd of several hundred gathered in Detroit to witness the unveiling of a nine-foot, 2,000-pound statue of Baphomet.

Payne told WND there are no signs of the satanism trend letting up. He predicts American culture will continue to precipitously decline.

"There are some camps of theology that truly believe the church is going to rise up and defeat all of this and it will be part and parcel to the return of Jesus and giving back to him a world that has been Christianized," he said. "There are other people who say that things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get a whole lot better, and it looks like we are in that process – I don't expect to see things get better.

"I would love to see a spiritual awakening where people start going, 'This is too much. This has gone too far. Enough is enough. There has to be sanity,'" he continued.

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