On Statecraft and Religion: Modern Evils
Many Faithful and secular today see demons as a thing of the past, even though Biblical accounts and human history are replete with them. Let's trace a potential line to our modern-day.
Photo by paola capelletto on Unsplash
Money, war, religion, markets, geopolitics, social dynamics, the human condition, and societal implications. As everyone with a platform spends their time hyperfocused on single issues that draw you in, this is my attempt to step back to show the larger picture (and potential implications or concerns).
The ever-changing media cycle seems built to give us the attention spans of fruit flies - but there are issues that we should take the time to focus on and understand.
These are those issues.
Topics covered in this post
Introduction
The 3,000-year-old Ugaritic tablets - did the Canaanites create the Greek and Roman pantheons?
Why did the Hebrews believe that satan lived in Rome?
Pergamon in Revelations 2, The Prince of Rome/Zeus temple now in Berlin
Issac -> Esau -> Edom -> Herod -> Spartans -> Rome
Nero prophesied and written about as the antiChrist
Is the “mark of the beast” Nero’s name (in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin)?
Demons and Darkness in Plain Sight Today
Aleister Crowley (Thelema) and his summoning of demons
A very recent summoning of Pan (Hellier)
Pro-Clinton covens in Brooklyn & 3rd wave feminist witches
Marina Abramovich in DC, Hollywood & Microsoft Commercials
Hollywood depictions of real-life (first-person claims of) possessions
Fin
Introduction
As always, this has taken me longer, gone far deeper, and into other directions than originally planned.
This series began with a dive into different groups that are right out in public, who publish their dates and beliefs on websites and in books, and have their works spread across an unknowing public on the national and global stage.
If anyone calls attention to the dark symbolism or intentions of the groups, their members, or their works, they are widely mocked by the media as hyperbolic alarmists, tinfoil hatters, Bible thumpers, throwbacks to the “satanic panic,” or old school Puritans.
The act that led to the writing of this series, that Olympics opening ceremony, saw the media able to stifle those members of the public who were horrified. They were not able to stop the governments of Iran & Turkey from admonishing France for its sacrilegious depiction of the Last Supper.
I do find it amusing that neither the media nor the ceremony planners understood that Jesus is an aspect of all Abrahamic Faiths, including Islam, as is His Mother Mary. They do not see Him as the Messiah, but they do all believe in Him (Isa in Islam, Yeshua in Judaism).
Or, they simply didn’t care, which is its own barrel of worms to untangle.
Perhaps more interesting is that the US politicians whose entire “schtick” is being “principled men of Faith” had nothing to say about it, or the cojones to do so, while those Islamic governments did.
Did any of the US megachurch preachers stand up to call it out?
Did the people who are currently telling Christians to refrain from voting because they use bad faith arguments to pretend Trump getting Roe v Wade sent back to the states and out of the Federal government's hands was somehow pro-abortion have anything to say about that sacrilege?
No? They only use their “Faith” to tell people not to vote for the guy who got the pro-life movement precisely what they’ve asked for over the past several decades?
Incredibly telling as to their intentions, isn’t it?
We went through the large list of groups that “normies” often lump into the same “satanic” pile, although as we covered in the Identifying the Darkness post & podcast, there are many variations and differences under what many people believe are one in the same.
Then we went through the historical background in Ancient & Modern Evils to show that while the names, categories, and depictions may differ, humanity across cultures and time has believed in demons, with even the New Testament ascribing a significant number of exorcisms to Jesus Christ and His apostles.
While this post will be starting in ancient history, it will contain a thread that takes us up to our modern day.
The modern-day versions will not just include groups that seem to be working with or for darkness, either intentionally or unintentionally, but that often have very public displays of it.
The media immediately races to label anyone who calls attention to these things as alarmist, as you will see in an article linked towards the end of this post calling out the “right wing outrage” that Microsoft would put someone in their commercials that anyone of Faith - on the political left or right - may have serious issues with.
Faith should not be a politicized issue, but it has become one in our era of hyper-politicization of everything. There are many aspects discussed in this post that should not be yet are, many of which most people are completely, utterly unaware of.
To fix any problem, we must first understand and be able to name the problem accurately. That has been my attempt over the past 3 posts and podcasts, and I hope that you have a far better understanding at the end of this one than you did when you began the first.
Ugly truth > beautiful lies and/or ignorance
So let’s dive in.
The 3,000-year-old Ugaritic tablets - did the Canaanites create the Greek pantheon?
I’ve spoken several times in the previous 2 podcasts of this series about the HBO show 30 Coins.
This was most likely my first step of the serendipity/synchronicity/God’s “nudging” me in a certain direction about this whole Canaanite pantheon, its worship of dark entities (child sacrifice-demanding demons like Moloch, as with Marduk for Babylon, Chemosh for Moab, and Dagon for Philistia), and how its adherents may still be among us in significant numbers today.
It’s a series made by HBO Spain so the first season was originally in Spanish with English dubbed over, but it’s done remarkably well. If you’re a fan of history, deep religious history that most of today’s Faithful probably have no idea about, and the demonology aspects of the last post/podcast, you’ll love it:
Season 2 even had Paul Giamiatti as the guy trying to destroy humanity in his works for dark forces:
For a very high-level understanding of the show, and how it ties in here (although it’s a fictional show, bear with me)...
The title 30 Coins is in reference to the 30 pieces of silver that Judas Iscariot was paid to betray Jesus.
That’s a quite significant part of the show, as a dark group of Canaanites who have infiltrated The Vatican (more on that in the section below) are hunting down each of the coins due to a belief that anyone who wields them all (or any relic that has to do with the crucifixion of Christ) will have enormous power.
Non-Catholics may see this as hogwash, but there is a significant, real-world focus put on the power of these same types of relics within the global Catholic Faith.
There’s a series that I’ve been watching that goes into this called Mysteries of the Faith that goes through them if you are unfamiliar with the topic of Christian relics in modern times.
The Crown of Thorns, Holy Grail, Shroud of Turin, and other relics that include the signpost that was placed over Jesus by the Romans when he was on the cross, relics built around splinters of the cross itself, and others that claim to have drops of His blood within them.
Did you know that the Crown of Thorns was housed at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris when it was burned down?
Or that there are several churches that each claim to have the Holy Grail right now in our modern times? And that each is on permanent display or is brought out for public display by the church with relative regularity?
This is another great series for those interested in deep Christian history that most of the Faithful don’t know:
https://www.netflix.com/title/81435357
So what in the world do Canaanites, HBO, and Netflix shows have to do with ancient evils and 3,000-year-old clay tablets?
We’re about to go on a 3,000-year journey that seems mostly lost to history, but understanding that journey could help to shine light on some very dark things in our present day.
These are not simply conspiracy theories made up out of thin air - they are connecting dots between archaeological findings, architecture, temples, and writings that shine new light on very old things.
Perhaps after going through this, you will be of the belief that it’s all nonsense and adds up to nothing - but I will let you decide that for yourself.
Let’s dive down those rabbit holes for you to interpret as you choose.
The House of Baal, The Baal Cycle -> Zeus -> Jupiter
Before we dive into this, it’s probably wise to remind everyone that in terms of the ancient history that we’re covering in this series, the timeline of who ruled “the known world” was:
Egyptians -> Assyrians & Babylonians -> Persians -> Greeks -> Romans -> Byzantine & Arabs -> Mongols -> Ottomans
When Alexander of Macedon (aka Alexander the Great) picked up his father’s army and set on his quest to conquer the known world (which required him conquering the same Persians who killed “the 300” Spartans under King Leonidas at “The Hot Gates” (or Gates of Fire), he took a different tack than many of the world’s previous conquerors had taken.
While the Assyrians, Babylonians, and others would uproot people and often force a change of religion, under interpretatio graeca the Greeks would use their own pantheon to understand others. As stated in the previous post, however, it is supremely interesting that what survived history was the Canaanite version with Greek names.
Either that or it just so happened that both pantheons organically aligned in such a one-for-one way that it would be highly improbable.
We can know the myths and characters that survived were Canaanite in origin because they are found on these clay tablets which we are covering in this section that pre-date the Greek campaign.
Take the most well-known and understood members of the Greek pantheon whose mythologies you are likely to know or at least recognize from the various stories that they’ve been used for in modern times.
Here’s a basic chart showing that every one of them, and their stories, has a direct one-for-one equivalent between the Canaanite and Greek representations:
From what they represented to the families they came from (and even the same numbers of brothers/sisters), rivalries, weapons they used, and even animals or locations, they are direct equivalents.
If this sounds outlandish to you, it will get more so.
As always, don’t take my word for it: here’s a paper that outlines all of their stories, representations, and even the numbers of every major aspect of their mythologies that line up between the Greeks and Canaanites:
https://www.academia.edu/34948537/FBPBV48_THE_HOUSE_OF_BAAL
Again, we’re not just talking about the major characters or “heroes” of the mythologies here. It’s like they took the Canaanite pantheon and resold it as Greek, simply renaming the characters but keeping everything else the same.
Since not everyone will click the link to read the source docs, let me outline the subject at hand specifically so you can see the direct comparisons between Baal (Canaanite) and Zeus (Greek).
Dominion: Baal (Mt. Zaphon) Zeus (Mt. Olympus) - both were storm gods
Weapon: Baal (spear that flashes lightning) Zeus (trident that flashes lightning)
Line of succession: Baal (youngest son who likes to fight) Zeus (youngest son who likes to fight)
Sister who is their principal consort: Baal (Anat) Zeus (Hera)
Nickname: Baal (cloud gatherer or cloud rider) Zeus (cloud gatherer or cloud rider)
Associated animals: Baal (eagle and/or bull) Zeus (eagle and/or bull)
Final enemy to battle: Baal (Yamm) Zeus (Typhon)
Both also battled “death” (Mot for Baal and Hades for Zeus) on behalf of an angry mother for allowing her daughter into his domain (Asherah/Anat for Baal and Demeter/Persephone for Zeus) whose mother was willing to destroy the world and cause great famines to get her back using verbiage that greatly aligns with the planting, reaping, and sewing cycles of nature.
While the PDF linked above will take you through the meta-level similarities between the entire pantheon of Canaan and Greece, the one below focuses on one specific story/myth called The Baal Cycle.
By zeroing in on this single story, one can see the extreme similarities not only to the Greek pantheon and mythology but also the similarities of oral traditions turned to writing much like Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad.
Even down to the literary style of “freezing” events in time to give both sides of a battle completely without interspersed “cuts” to freeze the temporal flow of the story, the familial rivalries, “natures of the gods,” and the way that epic battles between the gods and their supporters are described, these almost seem as if they are written within the same cultures.
https://www.academia.edu/50361658/The_Baal_Cycle_as_a_Myth_of_Cosmic_Unification
But what in the world does a similarity between 3,000-year-old clay tablets, the Homeric epics, Greek mythology, and pantheons have to do with the modern incarnations of evil?
Step back for a moment to understand the greater tapestry being woven within this and the previous 2 posts/podcasts.
We started with Identifying the Darkness, laying out the various modern-day groups that publicly state their allegiance, dedication, or lineage to satan, lucifer, ancient demon-worshiping cults, or “extremism for the sake of extremism” to the point of trying to turn themselves into demons.
In Ancient & Modern Evils, we went way way back in the wayback machine to show that nearly all of human history has been writing and talking about demons, which they seem to have very much believed were all around us - even in the Bible and other biblical sources.
Rather than those macro versions of every dark and nefarious form of worship, we are now focusing on one - which just happens to be the one that is mentioned frequently in The Bible, and which led me down this path of specific research in the first place.
Most of the modern Faithful read and consider The Bible as ancient history, things that are purely historical in nature, but no longer exist or apply to our modern times.
We’re about to go down a path to show that those things that started my research (Asherah and Baal, as mentioned in The Bible), began in the land in which God told Moses to kill every living thing because they had defiled both the nature of things and the land itself, survived through the Greek and Roman conquests, made their way back to Greece and Rome, and are alive & among us today.
Why did the Hebrews believe that satan lived in/was The Prince of Rome?
“The oppressor of God’s people shall be inhabited by demons for a long time.”
Deuteronomy 4:35
*Also reflects Jeremiah 51:37 and Isaiah 13:2
Now that we understand the Canaanite pantheon and how it potentially influenced the Greek and Roman pantheons and mythologies, it’s time to go a little bit further down this rabbit hole.
In the previous post (Ancient and Modern Evils) we went through the many variations of demons and the devil throughout the recorded history of mankind.
If you read The House of Baal and The Baal Cycle white papers linked above, you probably understand that it was also written in the oral tradition, meaning that is also probably far older than the clay tablets themselves.
The white paper below is from an author working on his master’s degree at the Denver seminary, who wanted an answer to the same question that led to me writing the last post: who/what was Baal?
His research focused almost exclusively (as it seems from his output) on the Old Testament, and his final answer makes it seem as if he was unaware or did not include any research into the topic listed above in this post (Baal within the Canaanite pantheon).
Unfortunately, this is the same issue that I see as having befallen author John Marco Allegro in his work The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth. Each was obviously well-versed in a niche, specialized field, but didn’t take into account many of the other accounts of the topics at hand for their time & region.
Just as Allegro totally missed that St. John the Baptist was undoubtedly an Essene, that Simon Magus was regarded by the early Church Fathers as an antiChrist, and other major historical points that were missed, Doug Van Dorn (author of the paper below) seems to be incredibly accurate on most of his points but missed that Baal was an actual entity within the Canaanite pantheon (and thusly a different entity than satan, at least to them).
Despite that big miss, his tying together Biblical passages, beliefs of the Hebrews, and a temple to the “Prince of Rome” that’s on exhibit in Germany is potentially a pretty big piece of a puzzle that helps to tie things together.
If you would like to read his paper in its entirety, here it is. I will work to summarize and tie it into the greater tapestry of this topic to the best of my abilities:
https://www.academia.edu/39252068/Satan_Zeus_Baal_and_the_Prince_of_Rome
If you’ve read the Biblical Book of Romans or understand the history of Roman occupation of ancient pre-Israel, you could probably understand why it may be seen today as a hyperbolic statement to say the Hebrews believed that the devil himself lived in Rome.
Of course they would think of the Romans (their occupiers/tormentors) as metaphorical devils. It seems, however, that’s not the case.
There are some archaeological and historical findings that make it seem like it may have been a belief that satan lived there in the literal, not metaphorical, sense.
Now, there is a bit of housekeeping that needs to be done before we dive down this rabbit hole that may make some people upset, may challenge your own Faith slightly at first glance, and may seem like I’m attacking something that I most certainly am not.
I’m still metabolizing and trying to understand what this really means myself, to be honest. But it’s worth discussing in this greater context, as these are all simply data points - but important ones if we’re actually trying to put all of the biggest puzzle pieces together on what this world really is and what we’re in the middle of.
I began to feel pulled toward Catholicism after entering the Army. One of my battle buddies in basic training was Irish Catholic, and something about the traditional nature and catechisms called to me at a very deep, visceral level. More recently I’ve been pulled towards far older versions of the Faith in line with the earliest Church fathers, but that’s splitting hairs a bit.
At this moment in time, I have a handful of friends who themselves have accrued an assortment of Catholic priests (including a Benedictine, which is important if you understand what that is), nuns, and other elements of the Catholic Church who have been excommunicated for refusing to toe the line for the current Pope.
Archbishop Vigano, the former Nuncio (representative of the Vatican in the USA) was quite publicly excommunicated for calling out what he called outright heresy & blasphemy within the Vatican.
I don’t know, nor do I have any way to verify whether any of what Vigano or these other priests & nuns believe to be true is accurate, but it does remind me of an interview that I saw many years ago and had resigned to the deepest of memory banks until recently.
The interview was purported to be with an Italian mafia hitman who wrote a book and gave a few interviews saying that he and his “crew” had been hired to assassinate Pope John Paul II. In his telling, they used some sort of tasteless liquid dropped into his daily tea that made it look like he had a perfectly natural heart attack or stroke.
The mafia guy said they’d been let into his personal quarters by the Vatican insiders who had hired him because they had to get the former Pope out of the way.
He (Pope John Paul II) was threatening to root out corruption within the Vatican (this was over the stock fraud, and more recently there has been a significant real estate fraud from the Vatican bank), and they couldn’t allow that.
This all sounded like total hogwash to me at the time, which is why I wrote it off completely.
In our current moment, however, if you look at who has followed him in that position (the Nazi Pope and the current one who is excommunicating those who refuse to follow the rainbow jihad)...well, it doesn’t sound all that crazy anymore.
The current Pope has angered quite a few Catholics with some of his pronouncements that seem to go directly against long-held teachings and dogma, and there have been many excommunicated for refusing to go along with his program.
As we went through in the previous post’s introduction, Marxism takes over your institutions and wears them around like a skin suit, demanding that you pretend like everything is normal. I can’t say with any certainty that’s what this Pope is up to, but I certainly can’t write it off immediately like I would have a decade ago.
Here’s the specific section of the interview mentioned above with ex-mafia hitman Anthony S. Luciano Raimondi. It’s worth the listen, and this segment is just under 6 minutes long:
If you want the full interview, it can be watched here:
And just in case you think my friend Jordan Harbinger is bringing in ringers just to juice his popular podcast, here are a couple of articles on the same subject:
What follows is not me attacking Catholicism by any means. This is me passing along some very interesting things that I’ve been led to while researching totally different topics, yet wondering aloud if it fits into this larger, macro picture.
With that out of the way, let’s get into those data points that may indicate the ancient Hebrews weren’t just being hyperbolic about their former captors, overseers, and tormentors.
The picture above is of the Great Altar of Zeus (Roman Jupiter, Canaanite Baal) that was originally built in Pergamon (modern-day Bergama, Turkey), which was a center for pagan worship, home to an extensive library that rivaled Alexandria (our modern word parchment comes from the name of this ancient city), and for which members of the Church were excoriated in Revelation 2 for abusing the principle of liberty that was enunciated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23.
The altar to Zeus was moved piece-by-piece to a museum in Berlin where it now resides, but its original home was in Pergamon, which was a specific region in what is now Turkey that housed 7 churches arranged in a large circle. Each of these Churches faces rebuke in Revelation 2, including Pergamon itself (where this temple was located) being called the home of satan.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s Revelation 2 with insights listed below the Biblical text per the website for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Pay attention to the Letter to Pergamum (Pergamon) parts and insights:
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/revelation/2
If you don’t want to click the link, let’s call out one important aspect here from Revelation 2:13:
“I know that you live where Satan’s throne is, and yet you hold fast to my name and have not denied your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was martyred among you, where Satan lives.
We know that Baal likely became Zeus (Greek), which became Jupiter (Roman). We have an altar/temple built to Zeus in Pergamon, and Revelations 2 calling that city the home of satan’s throne and the place where satan lives.
As it turns out, there are others who call this altar pictured above satan’s throne.
Without going through piecemeal citations, here are a handful for you to go through if you’d like to dig more deeply into this topic:
Bible and Spade (1977) 6, no. 4 (1977): 115. See also Robert G. Bratcher and Howard Hatton, A Handbook on the Revelation to John, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1993), 52; G. K. Beale,
The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle, Cumbria: W.B.Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 1999), 246.
There is another deep cut of Jewish history required to understand that many of the Rabbis associated Rome and King Herod (who was a representative of Rome in Jerusalem) with Esau, through whom Edom was populated and so Esau = Edom (the sons of Issac and his barren wife Rebekah were Jacob and Esau, whom God told Isaac would become two nations with one subservient to the other).
Let’s also remember that throughout time, Israel has been a name for:
A person
A people
A nation
At the start, it was Isaac whose name was changed to Israel, thereby being the “first Israel.”
Here’s the history from TheTorah.com on how Rome became associated with Esau (Edom) through the millennia:
https://www.thetorah.com/article/esau-the-ancestor-of-rome
There is another incredibly interesting exchange that is not well known by non-Biblical adepts, but was documented in both 1 Maccabees 12 and in Josephus’ Antiquities that the Spartans found out they were descendants of Esau/Edom, making them also descendants of Abraham:
https://hebrewnations.com/articles/bible/esau/esaurome.html
If you remember Genesis 27:40, this also tracks extremely well with what we remember the Spartans for today:
Genesis 27:
39 Then Isaac his father answered and said to him, Behold, OF the fatness of the earth shall be your dwelling, And of the dew of heaven from above.
40 "By your sword you shall live, And your brother you shall serve; But it shall come about when you go down [i.e. "depart from the land", OR "when the time comes for you to rule"], That you will break his yoke from your neck."
If you want to go down a rabbit hole amongst rabbit holes, there is a belief that Rome itself was founded by Lacedemonians (Spartans), which would mean the line of progression would be Esau -> Sparta -> Rome.
Again, let’s remind everyone that in the grand timeline of ancient history, the timeline of who ruled “the known world” was (at least to the quasi-modern timeline):
Egyptians -> Assyrians & Babylonians -> Persians -> Greeks -> Romans -> Byzantine & Arabs -> Mongols -> Ottomans
Now that we’ve gone into a bit about why the Hebrews and early Christians saw Rome and Pergamon as the homes of satan in a physical sense, let’s dive a little deeper into one specific Roman ruler.
This one, whose name has become synonymous with the basest of human morals and hedonistic impulses, was also written about by biblical & extra-biblical (apocryphal) authors, oracles, and civilians as an antiChrist who would return to earth after his death.
Nero Prophesied and Written About As the AntiChrist
When we’re talking about ancient history, it’s often easy to remember the notable names yet difficult to place exactly where they fall in the great timeline of history. That’s why I keep reminding you of the nations which ruled the “known world” along that timeline because it can get “jumbled” in one’s memory.
The emperor Nero is a name that is oft remembered, but with so many Caesars, emperors, senators, notable philosophers, and others from the entirety of Rome and the Holy Roman Empire, it’s easy to be confused about where each lands within that specific subsection of history.
For those who don’t know exactly where to place Nero on the historical or biblical timeline, let’s bring up an amalgamation of ancient historical writings concerning Nero and his persecution of Christians for the fire at the Circus Maximus that began on July 18, AD 64 and raged for 9 days.
Many believe that Nero himself set the blaze, and then used Christians as scapegoats:
Although many of the populace believed that Nero intentionally had started the fire (Dio, LXII.17.18.3; Pliny, Natural History, XVII.1), he himself blamed the Christians. Because of their supposed hatred of mankind, he had them thrown to dogs, nailed to crosses in his gardens, and burned alive (the traditional punishment for arson) to serve as living torches in the night (Tacitus, XV.44; this passage also contains the earliest non-Christian reference to the crucifixion).
Probably taking place in the Vatican gardens where Nero had his private racetrack, the emperor strolled among the crowd in the guise of a charioteer. It also was to Nero that Paul had appealed from the tribunal at Caesarea (Acts 25:10ff) and in whose reign Peter and Paul traditionally were thought to have been executed at Rome (e.g., Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, II.25.5-8; Tertullian, The Prescription Against Heretics, XXXVI).
It therefore is not surprising that Nero was perceived by Christians as a persecutor of their faith. For Eusebius, he was "the first that persecuted this doctrine" (II.25.4); for Tertullian, "the first emperor who dyed his sword in Christian blood, when our religion was but just arising at Rome" (Apology, V); for Sulpicius Severus, "he who first began a persecution" of Christians (Sacred History, II.28).
The above and what follows are taken largely from a page on the University of Chicago’s website:
https://penelope.uchicago.edu/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/nero.html
If you would prefer to steel-man (or see the 180-degree opposite argument) of this Nero-antiChrist belief that was so heavily present in Biblical times that many believe the “number of the beast 666” is the very name of Nero (in the Greek, Roman, and Hebrew letters with their numerical representations), you can find that below.
The link below is for a book from the Cambridge University Press called The Nero AntiChrist: Founding and Fashioning a Paradigm.
The thesis is that the writers of the actual time during and closest to Nero (Josephus, Pliny, the earliest Church Fathers, St. John writing Revelation, etc) were either too predisposed to animosity towards Nero, or wrote him in the worst possible light for the benefit of his subsequent Roman rulers.
My personal experiences over the past 4 years or so have awakened in me a fierce belief that “going to the source” is typically the only way to discern truth in matters, and that intermediaries who grow ever further from or present their “takes” on matters typically only serve to morph the truth of the matter, whether purposely or not.
Those of you who follow my writings/posts or know me can probably understand why I would have those personal convictions, now more than ever.
It is wise, however, to also look at both sides of every argument when possible. This is the basis of empathy, and the “middle way” is often wise to at least attempt or understand when there is disagreement on an important issue.
So here is the antithesis to the Biblical and ancient writers’ thesis that Nero was the antiChrist, or that the antiChrist would reappear as Nero (depending on the source):
https://www.academia.edu/42210860/The_Nero_Antichrist_Founding_and_Fashioning_a_Paradigm
I first found references to this historical belief and prophecy (Sibylline Oracles) of Nero as the antiChrist in the book on demonology that was linked in and used for the last post (Ancient and Modern Evils).
Digging into that nugget specifically, I was once again amazed at how much had been written about it yet seems to be widely unknown. So let’s try to summarize and expand on exactly what that is/was for you below.
The fire at Circus Maximus, from which the phrase, “Nero fiddled as Rome burned” comes, happened in AD 64.
Some ascribe this to an earlier version of Hitler’s Reichstag Fire, as Nero quickly blamed this on a group he hated (Christians) and used it to round up and kill as many of them as possible in extremely horrendous ways.
In yet another interesting tidbit, I did not know that this was done at the Vatican gardens where Nero had his personal racetrack.
4 years later, in 68 AD, Nero was dead.
Another interesting tidbit from the annals of history is that he was not un-alived by the Praetorians, as one would expect of such a tyrant. This is an aspect that some of those who try to paint the memory of Nero as not as bad as those of the time wrote to use in order to say perhaps he wasn’t quite as bad as we are told.
Rather, the story goes that he committed suicide with the help of his personal attendant. Despite there having been a funeral for him that cost Rome “2,000 pieces of gold” and a funerary shrine made for him - the sources of the time seem to say that his dead body was never actually seen/recovered.
Weird.
This led to some very interesting ancient “conspiracy theories,” called Neronian myths, that Nero had in fact escaped and was building an army that would come back from the East to lead.
Strangely enough, many accounts of the period attest that multiple people turned up claiming to be Nero over the next 20 years after his death, or at least his funeral (I’m not taking any position on whether or not his suicide/death was real at the time prescribed by history).
Accounts of the time say that between 3 or 5 people (differing sources have different numbers) appeared claiming to be Nero who looked like him, sounded like him, played the lyre (which Nero was well known for), and even convinced the Parthians that he was in fact the emperor.
Is the “Number of the Beast” Nero’s Name (in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin)?
Let’s get into a quick tidbit of history that is extremely important to know before this can sound like anything even remotely realistic to you.
We’ve discussed previously the many translations of languages (and differences they may have caused) as The Bible progressed from Aramaic -> Hebrew -> Greek -> Latin.
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin are all languages that have numerical identifiers for letters - you may recognize this from “Roman numerals,” but all 3 languages had this. In Hebrew and Greek, Aleph and Alpha are the number 1 (respectively), for example.
This literation of numbers and numeration of letters is known as isopsephia by the Greeks and gematria by the Hebrews.
Discrete Arabic numerals, the ones that we use today, were not invented or used for another 500 years after the Book of Revelation was written by St. John at the Island of Patmos.
In other words, when St. John listed 666 as the mark of the beast - it was not written as 666 in the way that we know it today.
It could not have been, as writing those numbers in that way did not exist yet.
To make this even more interesting, there are currently 4 surviving ancient codices written in the uncial script that preserves The Bible in its original Greek writing:
Codex Sinaiticus (at the British Library)
Codex Vaticanus (at the Vatican)
Codex Alexandrinus (at the British Library)
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (National Library of France)
There is also a small fragment of papyrus from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri at Oxford University, dated to the late 3rd or early 4th century, that contains a section that we’re discussing.
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus lists the mark of the beast as 616, written in its original Greek, as does the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Sinaiticus list it as 666. Codex Vaticanus does not include Revelation.
Is there one name that could include the same name and numbers across all of these languages and translations?
It seems so.
In his work The Life of Nero, Suetonius discusses the graffiti that began to show up around Rome in both Greek and Latin lampooning Nero (indirectly) after he had his mother killed (matricide).
In Greek, both “Nero” and “killed his own mother” have the same numerical representation (1005).
If the Greek spelling of Nero Caesar (Neron Kaisar) is translated into Hebrew (nrwn qsr) it equals 666 - but remember that Arabic numerals did not exist yet, so this was written as letters of the alphabet or written in full when Revelation was written.
In Greek, that would be hexakosioi hexekonta hex, or the numerical values of the Greek letters themselves (chi = 600, xi = 60, and stigma = 6).
From Greek to Hebrew, we have nrwn qsr which is 50+200+6+50+100+60+200 = 666.
While adding the “n” to make the beginning of this name Neron instead of Nero seems like an odd mistake - that writing is what appears in both the Talmud and the Qumran document (Dead Sea Scrolls).
From Latin to Roman numerals, that is written as DCLXVI. WC Watt in his book Semiotica adds an interesting insight to the Latin version, adding that this is the antithesis of the Alpha and Omega term used by John to describe both Christ (22:13) and God (1:8, 21:6).
In that language, D=500 and I=1, so Alpha and Omega (first to last or beginning to end) is transposed with the largest number coming first and the smallest coming last -> the opposite of God or Christ, thereby the antiChrist.
Remember some important things about Nero as we’re diving into this theory that perhaps he was described as the antiChrist, or perhaps an antiChrist:
He killed his own mother (matricide)
He proclaimed his divinity on coinage as the “savior and benefactor of the world”
He was the first emperor to persecute Christians specifically, and he did so viciously
If we remove the spelling oddity from above and go with Nero Caesar, it still adds up. Dropping the final “n” which has a numerical value of 50 in Hebrew would add up to 616 - which aligns with the mark of the beast written in the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus.
As 1 out of 3 is different from the other 2, there is a chance that the copyist purposely dropped the “n” knowing that it didn’t add up to 666. We’ve previously discussed the importance of numbers to the ancients, and 666 has one number less than 777 each.
As we’ve covered, 7 was an especially important (perfect) number to many cultures and Faiths across the timeline of humanity, with 7 being the number of planets (that they knew of), heavens (as discussed in the last post), and even days of the week.
Regardless of whether it was meant to be 666 or 616, there is only one name that it can be attributed to.
Remember that Revelation specifically calls it “the number of a man,” which helps outline how understanding both the numbers and letters is more than just being cookey tinfoil hat numerology stuff.
Writing a century after Revelation, Irenaeus was the first Church Father to comment on the mark of the beast in his book Against Heresies.
For Irenaeus, the name of the Beast "possesses the number six hundred and sixty-six, since he sums up in his own person all the commixture of wickedness which took place previous to the deluge....and also sums up every error of devised idols since the flood" (Against Heresies, V.29.2) which, he says, came in the six hundredth year of Noah.
By analogy, too, the golden image set up by Nebuchadnezzar (who cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the fiery furnace) was sixty cubits high and six cubits wide (Daniel 3:1).
This "being the state of the case, and this number being found in all the most approved and ancient copies....I do not know how it is that some have erred following the ordinary mode of speech, and have vitiated the middle number [L] in the name, deducting the amount of fifty from it, so that instead of six decads they will have it that there is but one" (V.30.1).
One might add that the wealth acquired by Solomon in a year was "six hundred threescore and six talents of gold" (I Kings 10:14, II Chronicles 9:13).
If one begins the count from Julius Caesar, Nero was the 6th emperor of Rome.
From Revelation 17:10: "And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come."
The sixth (and last) of the Julio-Claudian emperors, it is Nero who "is" but who has been "wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed" (13:3).
This is the theory of Nero redivivus, those early “conspiracy theorists” who thought that Nero had been wounded but healed (by satan or demons) to come back to take power over Rome.
Demons and Darkness in Plain Sight, Today
I made mention in the last post & podcast that the “satanic panic” seems to have been one thing that, like the “McCarthyism” epithet, caused much of America to totally write off anything they see right in front of them that puts it in alignment with dark forces on full display.
Do you remember the media mockery when a former congressional candidate destroyed a statue of Baphomet in the Iowa State capitol around Christmas last year that had been put up by the satanic temple of Iowa?
They pressed charges, and of course, there was a public outcry back and forth.
Hey, I think we went over the satanic temple & church of satan in the first post of this series, didn’t we?
I’m not going to dive into the freedom of religion aspect of the 1st amendment, but if you need a refresher on who started the satanic temple & church of satan, what they actually believe/believe in, and what the Abrahamic Faiths (the most populous basis of Faith on the planet when all 3 are added up) all ascribe as what happens to nations that allow false idols to be put up and worshiped in their nations, the last 2 posts of this series cover these things.
If you remember the biblical and apocryphal works from the last post & podcast, many of them ascribe the worship of false gods directly to demons influencing man.
A number of those entities required child sacrifice (Moloch for Canaan, Marduk for Babylon, Chemosh for Moab, and Dagon for Philistia), Kasdeja was a satan said to teach early pre-Diluvian sorcery to kill babies in the womb, and we have modern-day groups that trace their lineage back to the most ancient demon worshiping cults, with some groups of accelerationists working to turn themselves into demons.
Let’s go through some other very modern examples of where it seems an awful lot like America, once a largely Faith-based nation, looks to have become the ancient pre-Israel described in the books of Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others when public displays, attribution, and worship of dark forces don’t even move the needle for much of the population.
Hellier and the conjuring of pan
In 2019 a show called Hellier was first released on YouTube and then Amazon Prime. Here is season 1 episode 1 on the Planet Weird YouTube page:
The show quickly became popular, and I was turned onto it by a podcast that I had been turned onto.
Interestingly, as it turns out, both the podcast that turned me onto it and Hellier itself quickly devolved into things other than what they were originally crafted, sold, and began as.
As many of these Substack posts of mine take unexpected turns when I find something in my research that leads me into completely new directions or rabbit holes that I never even knew existed (the infamous “unknown unknowns”), I can’t really blame or give a demerit to the creators of either for that happening to them as well.
The popularity of Hellier found the show moving from YouTube exclusively to other “pay-what-you-want” platforms and even onto Amazon Prime. According to Wikipedia the show picked up production for a third season in September of last year - although knowing how the 2nd season ended, which we will get into, I can’t really see where they would go from there.
If you haven't watched or even heard of the show, I’ll give a very high-level summary of it.
A group of paranormal researchers receive emails from someone claiming to be a doctor in Kentucky whose family is being besieged by small, nefarious creatures. That may make some (many) of you stop right off the bat and lose interest, but there are some aspects of that that aren’t generally known and make it appealing to many.
Kentucky is not only home to the largest underground cave complex in the USA, but is also home to centuries of local lore, some of which has gone national at times, about both paranormal activity and these small creatures.
I’ve always been intrigued by things that not only defy rational explanation but whose legends can survive for many generations and stay astoundingly similar as new occurrences supposedly happen.
Being professional paranormal investigators whose profession is looking into such things, the husband & wife duo travel to the town that the show is named after (Hellier, Kentucky) and find plenty of strangeness. While the supposed doctor had been infrequently emailing them before they saddled up to make the trip, the emails abruptly end before they make the trip.
When they arrive, it turns out that nobody in the town has ever heard of this guy, and no records of him exist.
The duo tries to figure out where he lived, as his claims were that these things come from an abandoned mine near his property. They never find the doctor, and before they give up and head home they begin receiving messages from another individual who pushes them to investigate further.
The team heads home, and returns later (Season 2) to another nearby town called Somerset with more of their paranormal investigator friends. They never find any goblins (spoiler alert), but between the locals they do encounter and a visit to the International Paranormal Museum and Research Center they pick up other tales of very strange things that seem to be and have been going on in the area for a very long time.
A summary really doesn’t do the show justice, and it is a good watch if you’re interested in the paranormal research/high strangeness/unexplained phenomena genre.
The thing that really set a bell ringing in my head was the last episode in which they decide to enter into one of the caves at the center of the local lore to do a magical invocation and ceremony to summon the demigod/demon pan.
Yeah, that doesn’t really add up with a paranormal investigator crew that’s supposed to be hunting goblins, does it?
As the crew began to encounter stranger and stranger things throughout the 2nd season, the team would tell the audience about messages they are receiving from viewers - who just happen to be ritual magicians.
These strange things include a local female 3rd-grade teacher who claims that she encountered occult groups participating in ritualistic sacrifices and ended up framed & in jail to prevent her from continuing her own investigation or talking about it to the public.
They actually do Zoom calls with the woman from jail, so it’s not just a verbalized local lore. I can’t verify if her story is legit or not, but the show is full of total curveballs like that.
Yeah, as I said, no goblins but plenty of other strangeness.
The ritual magicians sending messages tell the investigators that the high strangeness and synchronicity that they keep encountering are an initiation, a magical ceremony in and of itself that they have been thrust into without their knowing.
In episode 9, that leads the team to bring in a professional hypnotist and occult practitioner to do a sort of hypnotism/spirit consultation to try to connect with spirits to get answers about the paranormal activity and what it is.
The answers given in the hypnosis ceremony are that Hellier is a gateway, and Somerset is a “liminal space,” which is a place or state of change or transition.
In the spiritual, occult, or paranormal world, this is typically used to describe a place where the “veil,” or metaphysical barrier between the physical & spiritual worlds, is either extremely thin, more permeable than in others, or non-existent.
This is what eventually leads the team to perform an invocation of pan within the cave complex which they were investigating. I am not the only one who saw this and immediately was alarmed, but probably not in the way or for the reason that you think.
While “spiritists” are one of the things that God directly tells Moses should not be allowed into their society in the first place, my alarm at the ceremony doesn’t only come from that. I don’t believe the paranormal research crew behind the documentary are “spiritists,” and I don’t think they were being intentionally nefarious in any way.
They seem to be genuinely curious and well-intentioned people who have no idea what they were messing with.
The professional hypnotist and occultist that they brought in to do this spirit consultation, however, I view it quite differently, but that’s my personal opinion.
In the last post & podcast, we went over not only the ancient names, types, and accounts of demons and demon worship or fighting against demons throughout all of recorded history but also the demons that work specifically to fool humans into doing their bidding.
We also spoke about the “Hollywood-ization” of demons, most notably with the jinn becoming popularly replaced with the Disney version of a genie in a bottle.
Pan is quite similar.
The wife of the documentary duo is a wiccan, which people often mistakenly view as satanic but, as per the first post, that is an incorrect categorization. They are certainly pagan, but their focus is more on nature worship, sometimes focusing on deities or spirits that the Celtic ancients associated with nature (fae or faeries and others).
Again, the Hollywood version of Tinkerbell is very different from the ancient belief in the fae.
As a wiccan, her belief that she espouses is that pan is a god of nature, the “green god” who can help them in a positive way to open this gateway and, she believes, protect them.
If you trace pan back to ancient times, that’s not likely what the deity/demon is/was.
Many today associate pan with Peter Pan or a little happy spirit with a flute. Original versions were of a half-goat, half-human trickster that had nefarious intent.
Other tricksters include Loki (not the happy Marvel version but a malevolent one), and many believe pan was either a demon or an early version of lucifer himself, given the half-human & half-goat physical manifestation.
Even Hellier viewers who were not especially religious were alarmed that people who didn’t know what they were dealing with would knowingly go into a place that had been described to them, by unknown outside forces, and follow the suggestions of ritual magicians (whose intent was unknown to the team) to purposely invoke the spirit of something they didn’t understand, and which students of ancient Faith structures know was believed to be a nefarious demonic entity.
Moreover, that video was uploaded to YouTube in December of 2019 and has nearly 130k views there. It was also published across multiple platforms, including Amazon Prime, for which it is much more difficult to know the total view count which is likely much higher, given the distribution of that platform.
Essentially, that invocation was not only done in that cave itself but was then broadcast across the world to an untold number of viewers, homes, and locations.
Rituals and invocations like that are believed to have more power with the larger number of participants, but also with repetition of the incantations.
You can call this harmless and say that worrying about it is simply Bible-thumping alarmism.
But ask yourself; has the world gotten better or remained the same since December 2019, or has it become far more chaotic?
The death of the gorilla Harambe is often jokingly referred to by many (myself included) as the “timeline jump” that made everything in our world seem to go topsy-turvy.
I’m more inclined that it may have been a summoning of a demon by people who didn’t know what they were doing, egged on by ritual magicians and potentially demonic forces themselves, to have it broadcast repeatedly around the world.
Aleister Crowley (Thelema) and his summoning of demon(s)
If the name Aleister Crowley or his nickname as the “wickedest man in the world” don’t ring a bell for you, perhaps this picture will:
We discussed Crowley a bit in the Identifying the Darkness post, as he was the founder of the OTO and AA (not Alcoholics Anonymous, but Astrum Argentinum). Since we’re on the topic of people summoning demons into this world, let’s go through Mr. Crowley’s own attempts - some which have been said were unsuccessful, but some other accounts say they were.
Crowley was born into a well-to-do religious British family (his father was a pastor), baptized under his Christian name of Edward Alexander. By all accounts, it seems he adored his father but hated his mother or at best was ambivalent to her, with many of his biographies accounting of his treating her like a servant.
As was the way of the children of his station, he was sent to boarding school in his youth. When his dad died early, the young man made a sharp turn in his belief structure - or, to be more accurate, which side of that dark/light battle he poured his focus into.
There’s a book that covers the aristocratic occult movement in Victorian England, which never really got anything close to the level of popular understanding as the traditional accounts that we’ve been taught about that era.
A chapter of that book is dedicated to Crowley, and the entire chapter can be found here on the University of Chicago’s website:
https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/642011.html
Crowley was an avid outdoorsman, an aspiring poet, and a voracious reader of occult materials.
A chance encounter on a climbing trip with a famed climber found Crowley trading wits and occult knowledge with a member of one of the early occult groups of the Victorian era, a group that itself drew people from a wide range of occult groups - some of which were focused on intellectual pursuits, and others with darker intentions.
After that meeting, Crowley found or worked his way into the highest levels of that order, until the “inner circle” denied him further progression due to his drug-fueled and lascivious ways. There are other accounts, even from Crowley’s own books, that he may have either been in or working for British intelligence on a trip where he climbed the Himalayas to make his way into China to investigate opium and its trade.
Spy or not, there are multiple accounts of Crowley working to summon demons in various places and for various reasons across the world.
This website that focuses on China news talks about him summoning one in Shanghai. This entity was the one that Crowley called Aiwass and who he says dictated his Book of the Law that would become the founding document of his own occult group focused on magick (it was Crowley himself who added the “k” to the end that is now used by those who call themselves “practitioners” rather than illusionists).
This site goes into detail about 4 different entities that Crowley invoked or evoked, including one he called Lam that he says, “opened up a gateway” to our world which allowed others to travel through behind him:
https://occult-world.com/crowley-aleister/
The first link (UChicago) and the one above (Occult World) both describe Crowley’s trip to the desert outside of Algiers where he and a partner said they used specific and centuries-old “Enochian keys” for ritual and ceremonial magick.
These keys (Enochian = from Enoch) were said to have been angelic language or ways to communicate with various angels discovered by Agrippa from King Solomon himself, then refined by a man named John Dee for use in practical application.
The UChicago book has the most detail about this trip, and the accounts from both Crowley and his partner to summon Choronzon, the demonic dweller or master of the abyss. Both men provided very specific details about this demonic summoning, how it was done, and what happened.
None of us were there to verify whether it was real or not, but one thing that is historically accurate is that the lives of both men fell into complete shambles after that trip.
Crowley died in a boarding house from heroin addiction relatively shortly after it, and the acquaintances of his partner, poet, and fellow Cambridge graduate Victor Neuburg, said that Victor never recovered mentally or spiritually after that trip.
There are many who will ascribe the accounts of sacrifices and bloody rituals of groups like Crowley’s and others to “satanic panic” or hyperbole.
What we do know is that before that trip to the desert, Crowley bought an abbey in Cefalu, Sicily that ended with a dead aristocrat scion and public outcry leading to Mussolini kicking him out of the country.
The women of Crowley’s life showed a path of destruction that he led through them, with many of them devolving into alcoholism, drug addiction (heroin or opium), and some ending up in asylums.
He tried to sue sculptress Nina Hammett for libel because she wrote a book claiming that he engaged in black magic and human sacrifice. The judge stated he had “never heard such dreadful, horrible, blasphemous and abominable stuff,” stopped the trial and found in favor of Hammett.
The press at the time had a field day with Crowley, but his influence and popularity have only grown in the years since his death. The organizations that he founded continue to this day, and the practitioners of his “arts” say that he added an untold wealth of resources to their aims.
Again, as I’ve said numerous times, it does not matter if you believe in this stuff - highly motivated and organized people & groups do.
Pro-Clinton Covens in Brooklyn & 3rd wave feminist witches
When I say that this stuff is right in our face but most laugh it off or look away & ignore it, this may be one of the best modern examples that one can provide.
Here’s the not-insignificant platform Politico talking about the witches who convened a coven on the 25th floor of Trump Tower to “put a hex” on Trump in June 2016:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/12/when-a-witch-hunt-finds-real-witches-215368/
From the opening of that article:
As it turns out, there is a good reason for the witch hunt President Donald Trump keeps complaining about. Witches exist, and a handful of them convened a coven on the 25th floor of the Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, on the pretext of casting a hex on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
If you don’t like Politico, here’s The Guardian discussing why (3rd wave) feminists have turned to witchcraft to oppose Trump:
I’m not a fan of “only reading headlines,” but the subtitle from the above article is worth a mention:
Whether it’s hexing the president, chatting in WhatsApp covens or featuring in TV reboots, radicalized women have been finding strength in the ancient pagan arts
And the opening under that is a banger, for those who immediately laugh this stuff off:
‘This is the time for getting scary,” the writer Andi Zeisler told Elle magazine on the eve of the 2017 Women’s March. “We need to go full witch.”
At the dawn of the Trump administration, witches were suddenly everywhere in the US. Neo-pagans used blogs and social media to circulate popular rituals for hexing Brock Turner (who served less than three months in jail after he was convicted of sexual assualt), the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh (accused of sexual assault, which he denies), and Donald Trump himself.
The Trump curse was enacted by thousands of people, including the singer Lana Del Rey. “I’m a witch and I’m hunting you,” declared Lindy West in the New York Times; Jess Zimmerman and Jaya Saxena wrote a self-help book, Basic Witches, in which they explained: “If you speak when you’re told to be quiet, take pride when you’re told to feel shame, love what and who you love whether or not others approve, you’re practising witchcraft.”
Half the women I know called their group chats “covens”. Trump developed a penchant for tweeting the phrase “WITCH HUNT” in caps whenever he felt persecuted, which the conservative political cartoonist AF Branco dramatised exactly the wrong way around, with the Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi depicted as gun-toting witches on the hunt for a helpless mortal man.
Again, whether you believe in this stuff or not, other highly motivated and organized groups and individuals do.
As discussed in the Hellier section above and the previous post, it doesn't matter if someone gets into this for kicks, or because they think it’s “edgy” or “cool” or for political support, as The Guardian article makes it seem.
As with the Olympic opening ceremony, there are always “useful idiots” who get groomed into these things through such measures.
Behind those useful idiots, however, is always someone or something that knows exactly what is going on.
Did you ever see the interview with the self-proclaimed “trained Marxist” founders of BLM talking about the slogans that they got massive crowds of people to chant were actually incantations based on West African occult practices?
Here’s an article breaking it down with the Zoom video linked within if that’s news to you:
https://www.afa.net/the-stand/culture/2020/08/blm-movement-driven-by-occultic-practice/
Yet again, this stuff has been right in your/our face(s), but if the media doesn’t report on it credibly, or does its work to avoid or downplay it, most Americans have no idea that it exists.
Marina Abramovich in DC, Hollywood & Microsoft Commercials
Marina’s name is one that will often quickly land you with the “conspiracy theorist” label if brought up when asking questions about what’s going on in DC these days, but ask yourself…why is she so popular among the DC and Hollywood crowds?
Pain eating, huh? How edgy.
And why/how did she end up in commercials for Microsoft?
The serpent imagery is certainly not too subtle.
Edgy artistry, or making people comfortable with graphic imagery of a specific nature?
You can make your own conclusions about what Marina and her artistry are there for, why the media is so quick to launch an attack against anyone who questions it, why it’s so popular with the Hollywood, media, and DC crowds, why she is sought after to train celebrities in her methods, and how a large company like Microsoft wouldn’t realize - or didn’t care - that there would be a public outcry over her being in their commercials.
For this post, it’s purely another data point to add to the repository.
Hollywood depictions of real-life (first-person claims of) possessions
Far fewer people will recognize the names of Ed & Lorraine Warren than those of the Hollywood depictions of their lives’ work: The Amityville Horror, The Conjuring series, The Exorcist, and one that jumped into the real world media reporting in a major way, the man accused of murder in New England that tried to use demonic possession as his defense.
That defense was widely mocked by the media and refused by the judge, although interestingly it did have precedent abroad as having been used in cases in England previously.
If you had no idea that the most popular Hollywood franchises about demons & demonic possession came from the real-world work & investigations by Ed & Lorraine Warren, here’s a documentary about their lives:
https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Road-Lorraine-Warren-Season/dp/B08HKM5FQS
Like anything surrounding this topic, there will of course be two sides to the story.
Here is a documentary about that murder case that led to the “devil made me do it” defense as the media portrayed it.
Even the family involved in this alleged possession is split on whether it was real or not, as they are split on whether the Lorraines were a godsend or charlatans:
As we went over multiple times in the Ancient & Modern Evils post & podcast, even if you don’t believe in demons and demon possession, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches do, to the point that they have exorcists on staff and students of demonology to this day.
They believed in Ed Warren enough to make him the only non-ordained person who had the authority of the Catholic Church to conduct exorcisms. Again, believe in it and the Warren’s stories or not, but the Catholic Church certainly seemed to.
“The Amityville Horror” is an interesting one, and like many of these stories that gained attention, the media and many detractors would often paint them as people seeking attention and/or money via hoaxes.
If you look at the actual stories behind them, however, many of the real life families closed themselves off and did the opposite, trying to stay out of the limelight.
The Luntz family of Amityville Horror fame was especially difficult for reporters who got wind of the story to find - which is kind of the opposite of what attention and fame seekers would do.
Another interesting aspect that didn’t get written into the Hollywood version was the claim that Luntz himself was into the occult. Some say it was just reading, but others say he was quite involved.
If you didn’t know, there is a documentary called My Amityville Horror that came out just a few years ago of one of the Luntz children, and the original investigative reporter who successfully tracked them down after several weeks of trying to find them.
This very recent documentary is telling the whole thing from their point of view and experiences.
Luntz’s stepson seems to add credence to the idea that Luntz viewed the occult as more than a reading habit in this documentary:
Beyond the Luntz family and their experience (real or not) that gained a lot of attention, the family murders that took place in the house before they moved in seem to defy explanation on their face.
Again, I’m intrigued by the unexplainable, and the fact that all of the murdered DeFeo family members were found in their original sleeping positions is a circle that doesn’t square from rational explanations.
If you don’t know that story, Ronnie DeFeo killed 5 members of their family with a .35 caliber rifle as they slept in their beds. Toxicology reports showed that none of them were drugged so…in a small house, how in the world does nobody wake up at the sound of multiple rifle shots?
Even sisters sharing a room?
Is it all a hoax, was there some force in the house already when the Luntz family moved in, or was there something that Luntz’s occult experience and/or practices brought in?
Certainly an interesting question if you dig into the particulars outside of their Hollywood depictions.
Nefarious
There is one more extremely modern movie (released in the past couple of years) that I will highly implore you to watch if you haven’t already.
While this is a purely fictional movie that is not based on real-world events, it is centered around a question for those who don’t believe in this stuff: if satan and his demons were real and were trying to totally corrupt mankind…would they be doing anything differently than what is currently happening all around us?
Set in a prison with a prisoner on death row on the night he is scheduled to be executed, the movie is mostly dialogue between him and a psychiatrist who has been brought in to determine if the prisoner can be deemed mentally fit for execution by the state.
What entails is a commentary on modern society by a fictional demon inhabiting a body that he has possessed, explaining how all of the things brought forth in the name of modernity and enlightenment are in alignment with the things that satan would like: celebrated abortion on demand and for any reason, rampant crime and murder, deaths by despair & poverty, the destruction of the nuclear family and Faith, etc.
It really is brilliantly done, and worth a watch as we end out this series:
Fin
One of the greatest takeaway lines from the movie The Usual Suspects was that, “the greatest trick that the devil ever played was convincing the world that he didn’t exist.”
Cultures and Faiths have believed in spirits and malevolent demons for as long as there has been recorded history, and likely far beyond that. Yet somehow, in our modern day, we seem to believe that it’s all hocus pocus, Hollywood scriptwriting, or people raising alarm over things that have a rational explanation that just seems to defy us.
Or, it’s ignored completely.
Even people of Faith who read about these things in their Holy books, hear about them from sermons, or can quote Scripture of Jesus and His apostles casting out demons seem to be of the mind that while The Bible is real, there’s no way that those things could exist in the modern day.
Why? I don’t think I’ve ever heard any explanation as to their explanation of “why” these things just magically stopped after The Bible was written, in their minds.
There are multiple depictions in the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic texts of malevolent spirits, with some that we went through not only having the ability to harm mankind but also very specific places on the earth where they were said to dwell.
While the movie Nefarious linked above is entirely fictional, it may be the first place that I’ve seen that the question was asked on such a large platform or stage: if the devil and demons did still exist today, would they be doing anything differently?
As you look at the world around us and what it’s devolved to, and after reading the past 3 posts or listening to the podcasts, it may be wise to ask ourselves that question.
Do not go gently into that good night.
Rage, rage, against the dying of the Light.
I’m terrible at asking others for things, but…
It’s my intention to keep this platform free to read, but with the ability for people to donate if they are so inclined and feel the content here is worth their hard-earned dollars. These posts take quite a bit of time and research, but as I work it into my routine the flash-to-bang on new posts should reduce dramatically.
If you are so inclined and feel this is worth your time to subscribe for updates, share with others, or become a paid member, I’d greatly appreciate it.
Regardless, we’re all in this shitshow together. I’m going to do what I can to help you see the bigger picture and keep your eyes on the things that matter.
Until next time,
RPL