Where would we be without Florida Men?:

Two years ago, Augustus Sol Invictus walked from central Florida to the Mojave Desert and spent a week fasting and praying, at times thinking he wouldn’t survive. In a pagan ritual to give thanks when he returned home, he killed a goat and drank its blood.

Now that he’s a candidate for U.S. Senate, the story is coming back to bite him.

This passage from the AP story includes the political quote of the year:

“I did sacrifice a goat. I know that’s probably a quibble in the mind of most Americans,” he said. “I sacrificed an animal to the god of the wilderness … Yes, I drank the goat’s blood.”

But wait, there’s more:

Invictus, 32, is an adherent of a religion called Thelema, established in the early 1900s by occultist Aleister Crowley. Invictus was expelled from the religion’s fraternal organization, Ordo Templi Orientis, but denies Wyllie’s specific claim about dismembering a goat.

“I have never dismembered a goat in my life. I have performed animal sacrifices as part of my religion,” Invictus said. “I was expelled from the order for political reasons. And animal sacrifice was part of it. But that is a deliberate misrepresentation by Wyllie.”

His real name is allegedly Austin Gillespie. It is reported that his Southern accent is fake, that he only turns it on when he’s giving speeches. And:

“I want you to take LSD and practice sorcery,” he says at one point. “I’m also Old World Pagan and a white Southerner. So I know what it’s like to be treated like a wolf in a hen house.”

Oh, Florida, you are truly the Giving Tree of states.