I'm starting to think the main reason I don't believe in demons/paranormal explanations is because I don't want to, and I don't think that's a good reason.
I’m a fairly strict materialist who doesn’t believe that angels and demons are literally “real” but the older I get, the more I find myself using that language to describe things I see in the world.
Much like ancient myths, these theological concepts describe social and psychological truths more vividly and efficiently than rational, scientific language.
See the discussion of EGREGORES at Rebel Wisdom (UK) and hwfo.substack.com
It is all about evolutionary psychology and the weird way that collective intelligence goes off the rails, seeing patterns that aren’t real, but that cause moral panics.
On a lighter note...my ex is a bit out there. She jumps from one thing to another never really sticking with anything. At one point she said she was becoming a metaphysician! She was taking a course to become a doctor of metaphysics. I saw her a month later and asked how it was going. She was quitting it, of course. But she showed me a picture. This was pre internet. It was a printed pic. It was her and three friends taken standing in front of a big bush. Taken by another friend. She said they had been instructed in her class to bring photos of themselves in nature. She asked me if I saw the little being in the pic. I glanced at it and said no. She said look carefully. I humoured her. Still no. She drew a circle around one area with her finger. ‘Look there’. Still no. She said ‘its a gnome’. Still no. Then she said ‘okay, here are his little leather boots. There is his hat. Can you see his face now?’ And for crying out loud, there was a little gnome sitting on a branch. He had his hands on his knees. He was smiling into the camera. He was a little gnome with leather boots and a floppy hat EXACTLY like the children’s books. The old fashioned ones from England. She said no one could see the beings until the teacher pointed them out. And in nearly every pic there was a gnome or a sprite or a fairy, just like the old illustrations. For me there were two fascinating aspects. One...THERE WAS A GNOME ON A BRANCH! But two, I couldn’t see it. It had to be pointed out to me in detail before my mind accepted it. I didn’t need special vision or some sort of celestial power. I just had to be open. This little guy was plainly visible. So....are there angels all around us? And slouchy demons walking on our streets? Could I see an ugly demon wrapped around some poor soul walking along, having his life sucked out of him? Only I don’t see this because I am not wanting to, or not accepting?
The "serious" work being done in this area is still pretty thin.
But if you want to look into an academic approach, then check out the work of Ian Stevenson, who has now been replaced by Jim B. Tucker. They have developed a body of data suggesting that human memory (and perception) is separable from the human body. That is the first step to realizing that we are essentially non-physical beings. This of course presents a huge problem for materialists and will be fought by them. But their work is reasonably conclusive.
I found out about this many years ago through another researcher, but this group has that academic conservatism that many people value.
That's the fatal flaw in the liberal Humanist project: it cannot account for spiritual evil. But the biological and social explanations for this kind of psychopathy are inadequate. Some people are just evil. Of course, being open to the possibility of spiritual evil makes you open to the possibility of spiritual good. Great post! (And a horrifying case study!)
I am not sure this follows. Some people just being evil is not quite the same as spiritual evil as I understand it to be used here. That is, why can't a human just be evil without requiring a disembodied spirit to possess him? I agree that there are many explanations that seem to try and avoid "This guy is just evil" as an answer, and that those explanations seem to be wrong in many cases, but that doesn't require a spiritual evil so much as just evil people.
In other words, saying "Nothing happened to this kid, he was just always an evil shit" does not imply a need for the spiritual side of things, just that people can be evil without the normal excuses made by those who cleave to a blank slate view of humans.
"Spiritual" is one of those terms that's hard to define and conjures up bad concepts from hack religious traditions. I personally believe consciousness is more fundamental than matter -- or at the very least that consciousness is not an emergent property of material phenomena (i.e. I do not believe non-conscious matter and/or energy patterns create consciousness). When I speak of spiritual evil, it is in this sense that some malicious consciousness exists and acts upon whatever our world is, and that such maliciousness has its genesis in consciousness rather than non-conscious material causes. I don't think the "consciousness as emergent property of material phenomena" can account for true psychopathy. Greed and violence and an indifference to the suffering of others, yes. But relishing the suffering of others for its own sake? I don't see it. But this goes to first principles. I can't prove consciousness is more fundamental than non-conscious physical matter/energy, although it seems warranted to me to begin with that presumption, especially since all we can know immediately is our own consciousness and its contents, whereas we can only infer the independent existence of the material phenomena we observe.
While not empirical proof (such a thing is not possible), Chris Langan’s CTMU is a very comprehensive logical argument for the idea that consciousness is more fundamental than physics.
The opposite is we have to believe inanimate strings of proteins came together to ‘create’ individual awareness. Something we don’t have a clue what it is. It’s like saying ‘I really wanted a son, so I bought Lego. We all know Lego forms itself in such a way that a boy is created to make the Lego into shapes.’
Renunciate, Axial religion was an evolutionary adaptation that improved survival for people in complex social hierarchies in agrarian city states after the Bronze Age Collapse. It took the biologically evolved capacity of humans to INHIBIT their non-cooperative personality traits to a whole level. See Iain McGilchrist’s book on evolutionary psychology (or various podcasts where McGilchrist discusses spirituality and religion.
This gets down to the question of what a human being actually is. There is now good evidence that any person - any living thing actually - must be animated by a "being" that is essentially non-physical to be considered alive. This being has a long history and can develop a quite unique personality in the process of living all those lives for all those centuries. With this model, one cannot assess personality without considering what many of us call "spirit."
In this context, possession is a whole other subject. Some insist that it happens. But it is not a requirement for creating an evil personality. It just becomes an additional complication.
People need to believe we are all born equal and are children of God. Thus, the outside force explanation. Also gives people hope it can be reversed with the opposite outside force. Rob Zombie should've made Michael Myers have a normal, loving childhood.
The concept of what is often called "spirit" is poorly understood by many, if not completely rejected.
Though it makes logical sense that the physical world would have a non-physical origin, there is an intellectual problem with this along the lines of: How can this be demonstrated? There is also a mental problem with this which, apparently, has been installed by some sort of propaganda process.
I now take the "reality" of Spirit as a given. I see a good argument for it in the academic work done on past life memories (reincarnation). It has also been found by querying human memory directly by various techniques. However, the forensic techniques used by the academics working with childhood past life memories will be more convincing for some people.
Thus we can assign a definite entity, or type of entity, to the concept of "spirit" or "spiritual." Evil, then, can be seen (and has been found) to be something that developed in some spiritual beings a very long time ago under conditions so extreme that they would today be considered by most people to be unimaginable. The ways a being can be tortured are varied and can be quite extreme. It can be convinced of things about itself that aren't true. Once this type of personality has been "installed," it is very difficult to alter it.
I have mercifully not experienced so radically evil a person. But I have, without a shadow of doubt, experienced the presence of evil entities. Going into a meeting once with others for whom I had caused organizational upset and revealed behaviours they wanted to remain covert, I was suddenly aware of a freezingness. It was not a cold day but it was as though my body warmth had been vacuumed out. The others were all smiles and bonhomie while my teeth were literally chattering. None of them was chronically evil, but I came to realise they had made space, unconsciously, for that power hungry cold, dark presence.
People who tell me they don't believe in the demonic often tell me they do believe in God. They don't really know what or how to act on that knowledge. I tell them if they believe in God then they should also believe there is a Devil. If you come to the realization that God and Satan exist in a spiritual realm that somehow parallels us. Then one should also believe in Angels and by consequence... Demons. I spent close to 20 years in Law Enforcement and I can tell you Evil is real. They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. I have met criminals whose eyes were completely empty and devoid of a soul. In it's place in this vacuum was a malevolent force or energy that has no empathy for anyone or anything else. It was unsettling to say the least and caused me to examine my spiritual bonafides. I also found that they could be very persuasive and influential to others they encounter. People who are often unsure of themselves or uncertain about their place in life. It really was a matter of Wolves and sheep. I tell you as a warning to be cautious, put up your spiritual antenna and be on guard. There is evil among us...the Devils greatest trick is getting society to discount and doubt his existence.
When we talk of the nature of evil we are moving in deep and dark waters. The beast is out there somewhere but it won’t show it’s true face, It’s in the shadows, in the corner of our eye and when we turn our head to look at it straight it’s gone, because the evil wasn’t in the corner of our room but in the eye itself, like a radar station searching the sky for something that’s inside the radar station.
The language of dream, myth and metaphor is maybe all we have. Modern American tribes have Star Trek but more ancient tribes had theirs too.
I was recently reading the story of “Little Red Riding-hood” to some kids and explaining it to them as much as dared. It seems incredible to me now that I’d known that story for years, four decades and more before I could see that was a detailed account of a sexual predator, a rapist of children and a murderer of the elderly.
Don’t forget that the brothers Grimm didn’t CREATE those stories, they COLLECTED them. They're folk memories from times when people really were eaten by wolves in the dark forests of northern Europe. It’s entirely plausible that those stories were told to children in Neolithic times. What once looked like a goofy silly story about a talking wolf, as real or as important as Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, looks a lot more important once you can see that a wolf with the characteristics of a man is also a man with the characteristic of a wolf.
A very clever and charming man talks to a naïve young girl in a lonely place, gets some useful information from her, tracks down and kills an old woman who is of no use to him except for her clothes which he wears to lure in and capture a child. That’s not an entertaining fantasy, that’s a lesson for the tribe’s children and a warning from the past.
The Wolf-Man (or something very similar) has always been with us. Wolf+Man is still a term for sexual criminal in Chinese. “The Wolf Man” was released by Universal in 1941, Heck! Duran Duran released “Hungry like the Wolf” in 1982.
I read a biography of the notorious rapist AND decorated celebrity entertainer Jimmy Saville, where he referred to HIMSELF as a wolf. When asked by an interviewer why he lived in a shabby apartment on the edge of town “The Wolf knows what he wants” he replied.
So, there we can see at least one example of an evil force moving across the world for thousands of years, resisted by most men but taking over some others who then go on to cause terrible suffering and pain. The brave and good Woodsman in the old story killed that particular wolf but the spirit could not be stopped with an axe.
Are these Demons all just metaphors?
Sure, they are metaphors, but they aren’t JUST metaphors. They describe a base reality that we can only ever partially see. Our language is an organ, like our eyes, that we use to perceive the world. Nietzche wrote that our language is made of metaphors that we have forgotten are metaphors.
“Truths are illusions that we have forgotten are illusions, they are metaphors that have worn out and drained of sensuous force, coins that have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer coins”
So, our ancient ancestors stamped “Demon/Devil” onto some particular pieces of metal, but they have been jingling in our pockets for so long that now that stamp looks faint and ridiculous. They had their religions, we have ours. But even if we re-stamp them as something like “Psycho-sexual Neurosis” or “Pathological Maladjustment” the metal remains.
Great comment. And this was especially well put: "Sure, they are metaphors, but they aren’t JUST metaphors. They describe a base reality that we can only ever partially see."
Today we have more than myth, legend and collected folk tales. We have much more than that.
It's only a matter of reaching out into the places less traveled to find this additional information, most of which has been developed in this and the last century.
I wouldn't discourage anyone from studying folk lore. But more need to take a real look at the newer data. At least read some of it! It's not that hard to find.
All gods are ethnic gods...the god-image is created to meet the psychic needs of specific populations at a particular moment. No exceptions.
The plausibility of a specific god-image depends upon your proximity to warfare or conquest/enslavement by foreigners, environmental factors like the variability of rainfall or (all importantly) the rate of mortality. The chill, mellow, inoffensive and universalist god-image beloved in the West today is perfect for people who get their food delivered to their doors and who believe that the nice people from the Global South are gentle souls brimming with kindness.
One taste of reality and our concept of god becomes Bronze Age superfast.
Philip K. Dick had the Gnostic idea that the reality we live in is an evil fragment broken off from the godhead. When I look around me, more and more it seems possible even likely he is right. Perhaps entire cultures worship the evil fragment rather than the actual godhead?
I'm listening to Walter Kirn's "Blood Will Out" now, about 2/3rds of the way through it and a few years back had previously listened to Audible's "The Man in the Rockefeller Suit By Mark Seal
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter"
By: Mark Seal Narrated by: Erik Singer, which covered the mysterious disappearance of the two people he murdered but at the time it was written, he had only been charged with the kidnapping of his daughter. Both books are good, and the details regarding the cons are not contradictory, but Walter's book fleshes out the true evil of this con artist.
Gerhartsreiter is an amalgam of psychopathology without a scintilla of morality, a man who takes extreme pleasure and finds purpose as a poseur, for whom compassion or legality is a stumbling block to be thwarted no matter the means. Perhaps his success in taking on the persona of the rich, and being convincing is that they (the uber wealthy) demonstrate to a somewhat lesser degree the characteristics of pathological narcissism, so that these behaviors do not stand out as much as they might in people who do not occupy the elite strata.
Kirn's book is a fascinating profile of evil, while Singer's is a portrait of a consummate liar. What is most interesting to me in Kirn's book is his unstinting description of his own culpability at being so utterly bamboozled by this creature.
There is a docudrama on Prime Video titled "Who is Clark Rockefeller" released in 2010. The rental fee is 12.99 which is pretty steep, but I'm almost tempted to rent it.
I know I saw something about him. I remember the Rockefeller name. It might have been on cable many, many years ago, but it wasn't a pay per view anything. `\_(•_•)_/`
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
and
““Principalities and powers” are always with us; we have no need to create them even if we could. It is merely incumbent on us to choose the master we wish to serve, so that his service shall be our safeguard against being mastered by the “other” whom we have not chosen.
Carl Jung
Also was thinking from what I have read recently about the Rockefellers, maybe this guy really was a Rockefeller and Christian Gerhartsreiter was created to protect the Rockefellers :)
Nov 11, 2023·edited Nov 11, 2023Liked by Harrison Koehli
The really weird thing is trying to explain all of this in the broken language that was handed down to us. Some days I'll wake up from a dream and say, "Oh, fuck! We used to know how to say this!", and then spend the rest of the morning trying to reconstruct the straightforward language that was lost, or maybe purposely burnt down.
The craziest thing is this: I think we all instinctively know what a demon is. But in trying to describe it to each other in anything but the artist's tongue, we get lost and accidentally help it do its business, like Kirn himself did. But he seems to be waking up.
I think this is true. We all know. Some deny what they know, and others try to find the words and categories to capture it. Because the old categories are anachronistic for many people, the struggle is to recapture that framework, update it in ways with our other categories, and make sense of it. But instinctively, we know it when we see it, even if it may be too late or after the fact.
A friend of mine (a shaman, and not just a drug dealer with a drum) has a great line:
"The problem with ineffable experiences is... there are no fucking words!"
He also says that this is why we use poetry and song and other metaphorical tools and language to try to convey some *sense* of the experience. My own experiences with hallucinogenics makes me think he is entirely correct.
This conversation was chilling for me, as I am in the fallout from the exact realization moments as described. Despite 45 years in my own entrpreneurial businesses, world travels to dozens of countries as a lone single female, was I just lucky to have never encountered such evil? Now I am living the longterm focus of that evil wanting to show power, wanting to destroy all that makes a creative person shine, wanting to bask in proof of the worst animalistic attributes a human might display, oblivious to being caught. My losses are legion. I am older and out of the financial circles that accelerated my work because my character. Aye, it is my lesson, but the losses are not just my own; for now all the expressions of my creative force and expertise are lost to the thousands whose lives I touched and the more that could have been touched as I withdraw.
I don't know the details, but it sounds to me like you still have a lot you could share with others, Akgrrrl. Maybe just in a different way than you did before?
We appear to have many similar experiences. I've been to 60 countries by myself (40 when I was with Citigroup,) then resigned and started a very successful small business. In recent years I've had what feels like a plague (or locusts) swarm me, but one by one, displaying psychopathic characteristics that have served to derail me, and the phenomenon is beginning to frighten me a bit. I've isolated as well. And am not sharing my gifts as I should be as a result.
The elements of evil as described by the journalist in this piece posted by Harrison, are smack on. An onslaught of "locusts" which I read to mean mega "mini" events, surely classifies as an assault. Analysis as to why I have been targeted more than once is not surprising, but nontheless has produced terror induced isolation and security measures. The ultimate prison pain, no matter the type of jail, is not being able to be who you are. It is much worse for those who are creative of mind, who have so much to give.
Harrison, Thanks for this illuminating post. Like a few other commenters, as I become a bit older/wiser (🙏?), and as I become more aware of our hidden history and the more recent machinations of our power elites and their minions, I find myself using the word evil to describe much more of what’s being perpetrated. I’m not suggesting I’m about to embrace the Good Lord or run down to the nearest river to get baptised. But nonetheless as events unfold it’s difficult to think of another way of looking at the world.
There is a spiritual dimension and there's a physical dimension. There are good entities and there are evil entities. And they are at War on both the spiritual level and the physical level. And you are seeing it played out on a very large scale today.
I did not believe this for 50 years.
I have faced true evil, and it is not something I want to face again.
Both evil and good on the spiritual level can possess people and things in our physical dimension. The good choose not to because it believes in free will and taking possession of somebody takes away that person's free will.
Your choice to believe it or not does not eliminate the fact that evil is real and that this war exists. Maybe a person needs to experience facing true evil to believe it.
What I still wonder about is whether or not a possessed person is aware that he/she is possessed. My guess is that some people are aware and enjoy it and some people are not. aware.
I laid out a similar idea to a couple of super rational and very intelligent friends. This was about four years ago. Pre Covid. They said they would ignore it and pretend I didn’t posit the idea a demonic cabal exists. Fast forward a couple of years and they both came around and said what they’re seeing out there is beyond bad politics, poor science, greedy corporations. The only thing that covers it is demonic. I said ‘hey hey hey! I said this four years ago and you two acted as if I were nuts’. They apologized. A lot of people are seeing this. A lot. And people I really don’t think tend to think in terms of angels and demons usually.
I will say this, if you believe in the good, godly and angelic, then you must believe that evil and the demonic exist as well.
We have traded our spiritual intelligence, for intentional secular distraction, escape and omnipotence.
However, as Kirn experienced, from time to time, we are given a glimpse into the real and present spiritual world. Sometimes it's a brush with true evil and sometimes it's through a miracle or undeserved grace.
We recently had a true, biblical style miracle in our family. I won't go into many details, but 12 days after a traumatic brain injury, this person was sitting up, talking and eating, with little evidence of cognitive loss. Doctors were baffled, as they predicted if they survived, it would be a life of handicapping cognitive issues and resulting physical problems. This person reported speaking with their deceased parents, who said it was not time for them to pass over, to that side. There were literally tens of thousands praying for their recovery, survival and healing. The entire event was and is a witness to God's love, grace and power and that He does listen to the prayers of His children.
Good and evil are real, God is present and His will be done, in His time and purpose.
The reason people don't recognize evil is they live with and embrace it, on a daily basis in varying degrees and ways. However, every once in a while the curtain is pulled back and we are asked to see and acknowledge the truth.
I think Kirn, passed the test and will be better for it, the rest of his days.
Revolver linked to your article. Thanks for this. For me, people cling to the "blank slate" idea because they must believe in equality and a just God. The reality that some people are just born bad and there's nothing you can do to balance chemicals or "love it out of them" destroys equality, blank slate, and the idea of a just God. Some people are cursed and irredeemable.
I'm starting to think the main reason I don't believe in demons/paranormal explanations is because I don't want to, and I don't think that's a good reason.
I love this comment for many reasons!
I’m a fairly strict materialist who doesn’t believe that angels and demons are literally “real” but the older I get, the more I find myself using that language to describe things I see in the world.
Much like ancient myths, these theological concepts describe social and psychological truths more vividly and efficiently than rational, scientific language.
How many times have you heard the phrase "wrestling with his/her demons" when talking of psychological difficulties?
See the discussion of EGREGORES at Rebel Wisdom (UK) and hwfo.substack.com
It is all about evolutionary psychology and the weird way that collective intelligence goes off the rails, seeing patterns that aren’t real, but that cause moral panics.
For myself, I am appalled at the desperation with which I cling to my own blinders.
Another inspiring self-insight.
On a lighter note...my ex is a bit out there. She jumps from one thing to another never really sticking with anything. At one point she said she was becoming a metaphysician! She was taking a course to become a doctor of metaphysics. I saw her a month later and asked how it was going. She was quitting it, of course. But she showed me a picture. This was pre internet. It was a printed pic. It was her and three friends taken standing in front of a big bush. Taken by another friend. She said they had been instructed in her class to bring photos of themselves in nature. She asked me if I saw the little being in the pic. I glanced at it and said no. She said look carefully. I humoured her. Still no. She drew a circle around one area with her finger. ‘Look there’. Still no. She said ‘its a gnome’. Still no. Then she said ‘okay, here are his little leather boots. There is his hat. Can you see his face now?’ And for crying out loud, there was a little gnome sitting on a branch. He had his hands on his knees. He was smiling into the camera. He was a little gnome with leather boots and a floppy hat EXACTLY like the children’s books. The old fashioned ones from England. She said no one could see the beings until the teacher pointed them out. And in nearly every pic there was a gnome or a sprite or a fairy, just like the old illustrations. For me there were two fascinating aspects. One...THERE WAS A GNOME ON A BRANCH! But two, I couldn’t see it. It had to be pointed out to me in detail before my mind accepted it. I didn’t need special vision or some sort of celestial power. I just had to be open. This little guy was plainly visible. So....are there angels all around us? And slouchy demons walking on our streets? Could I see an ugly demon wrapped around some poor soul walking along, having his life sucked out of him? Only I don’t see this because I am not wanting to, or not accepting?
I would love to see that picture. lol And I'm serious.
That's true, it's not a good reason.
The "serious" work being done in this area is still pretty thin.
But if you want to look into an academic approach, then check out the work of Ian Stevenson, who has now been replaced by Jim B. Tucker. They have developed a body of data suggesting that human memory (and perception) is separable from the human body. That is the first step to realizing that we are essentially non-physical beings. This of course presents a huge problem for materialists and will be fought by them. But their work is reasonably conclusive.
I found out about this many years ago through another researcher, but this group has that academic conservatism that many people value.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mysticwilliam/p/satanic-ignorance?r=80dri&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
That's the fatal flaw in the liberal Humanist project: it cannot account for spiritual evil. But the biological and social explanations for this kind of psychopathy are inadequate. Some people are just evil. Of course, being open to the possibility of spiritual evil makes you open to the possibility of spiritual good. Great post! (And a horrifying case study!)
I am not sure this follows. Some people just being evil is not quite the same as spiritual evil as I understand it to be used here. That is, why can't a human just be evil without requiring a disembodied spirit to possess him? I agree that there are many explanations that seem to try and avoid "This guy is just evil" as an answer, and that those explanations seem to be wrong in many cases, but that doesn't require a spiritual evil so much as just evil people.
In other words, saying "Nothing happened to this kid, he was just always an evil shit" does not imply a need for the spiritual side of things, just that people can be evil without the normal excuses made by those who cleave to a blank slate view of humans.
"Spiritual" is one of those terms that's hard to define and conjures up bad concepts from hack religious traditions. I personally believe consciousness is more fundamental than matter -- or at the very least that consciousness is not an emergent property of material phenomena (i.e. I do not believe non-conscious matter and/or energy patterns create consciousness). When I speak of spiritual evil, it is in this sense that some malicious consciousness exists and acts upon whatever our world is, and that such maliciousness has its genesis in consciousness rather than non-conscious material causes. I don't think the "consciousness as emergent property of material phenomena" can account for true psychopathy. Greed and violence and an indifference to the suffering of others, yes. But relishing the suffering of others for its own sake? I don't see it. But this goes to first principles. I can't prove consciousness is more fundamental than non-conscious physical matter/energy, although it seems warranted to me to begin with that presumption, especially since all we can know immediately is our own consciousness and its contents, whereas we can only infer the independent existence of the material phenomena we observe.
While not empirical proof (such a thing is not possible), Chris Langan’s CTMU is a very comprehensive logical argument for the idea that consciousness is more fundamental than physics.
The opposite is we have to believe inanimate strings of proteins came together to ‘create’ individual awareness. Something we don’t have a clue what it is. It’s like saying ‘I really wanted a son, so I bought Lego. We all know Lego forms itself in such a way that a boy is created to make the Lego into shapes.’
Renunciate, Axial religion was an evolutionary adaptation that improved survival for people in complex social hierarchies in agrarian city states after the Bronze Age Collapse. It took the biologically evolved capacity of humans to INHIBIT their non-cooperative personality traits to a whole level. See Iain McGilchrist’s book on evolutionary psychology (or various podcasts where McGilchrist discusses spirituality and religion.
whole new level
This gets down to the question of what a human being actually is. There is now good evidence that any person - any living thing actually - must be animated by a "being" that is essentially non-physical to be considered alive. This being has a long history and can develop a quite unique personality in the process of living all those lives for all those centuries. With this model, one cannot assess personality without considering what many of us call "spirit."
In this context, possession is a whole other subject. Some insist that it happens. But it is not a requirement for creating an evil personality. It just becomes an additional complication.
People need to believe we are all born equal and are children of God. Thus, the outside force explanation. Also gives people hope it can be reversed with the opposite outside force. Rob Zombie should've made Michael Myers have a normal, loving childhood.
The concept of what is often called "spirit" is poorly understood by many, if not completely rejected.
Though it makes logical sense that the physical world would have a non-physical origin, there is an intellectual problem with this along the lines of: How can this be demonstrated? There is also a mental problem with this which, apparently, has been installed by some sort of propaganda process.
I now take the "reality" of Spirit as a given. I see a good argument for it in the academic work done on past life memories (reincarnation). It has also been found by querying human memory directly by various techniques. However, the forensic techniques used by the academics working with childhood past life memories will be more convincing for some people.
Thus we can assign a definite entity, or type of entity, to the concept of "spirit" or "spiritual." Evil, then, can be seen (and has been found) to be something that developed in some spiritual beings a very long time ago under conditions so extreme that they would today be considered by most people to be unimaginable. The ways a being can be tortured are varied and can be quite extreme. It can be convinced of things about itself that aren't true. Once this type of personality has been "installed," it is very difficult to alter it.
Yet, yes, spiritual good is also possible,
I have mercifully not experienced so radically evil a person. But I have, without a shadow of doubt, experienced the presence of evil entities. Going into a meeting once with others for whom I had caused organizational upset and revealed behaviours they wanted to remain covert, I was suddenly aware of a freezingness. It was not a cold day but it was as though my body warmth had been vacuumed out. The others were all smiles and bonhomie while my teeth were literally chattering. None of them was chronically evil, but I came to realise they had made space, unconsciously, for that power hungry cold, dark presence.
People who tell me they don't believe in the demonic often tell me they do believe in God. They don't really know what or how to act on that knowledge. I tell them if they believe in God then they should also believe there is a Devil. If you come to the realization that God and Satan exist in a spiritual realm that somehow parallels us. Then one should also believe in Angels and by consequence... Demons. I spent close to 20 years in Law Enforcement and I can tell you Evil is real. They say that the eyes are the windows to the soul. I have met criminals whose eyes were completely empty and devoid of a soul. In it's place in this vacuum was a malevolent force or energy that has no empathy for anyone or anything else. It was unsettling to say the least and caused me to examine my spiritual bonafides. I also found that they could be very persuasive and influential to others they encounter. People who are often unsure of themselves or uncertain about their place in life. It really was a matter of Wolves and sheep. I tell you as a warning to be cautious, put up your spiritual antenna and be on guard. There is evil among us...the Devils greatest trick is getting society to discount and doubt his existence.
I'd love to hear more about your time in law enforcement. Any chance you've written anything, or would be down for a podcast interview?
When we talk of the nature of evil we are moving in deep and dark waters. The beast is out there somewhere but it won’t show it’s true face, It’s in the shadows, in the corner of our eye and when we turn our head to look at it straight it’s gone, because the evil wasn’t in the corner of our room but in the eye itself, like a radar station searching the sky for something that’s inside the radar station.
The language of dream, myth and metaphor is maybe all we have. Modern American tribes have Star Trek but more ancient tribes had theirs too.
I was recently reading the story of “Little Red Riding-hood” to some kids and explaining it to them as much as dared. It seems incredible to me now that I’d known that story for years, four decades and more before I could see that was a detailed account of a sexual predator, a rapist of children and a murderer of the elderly.
Don’t forget that the brothers Grimm didn’t CREATE those stories, they COLLECTED them. They're folk memories from times when people really were eaten by wolves in the dark forests of northern Europe. It’s entirely plausible that those stories were told to children in Neolithic times. What once looked like a goofy silly story about a talking wolf, as real or as important as Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, looks a lot more important once you can see that a wolf with the characteristics of a man is also a man with the characteristic of a wolf.
A very clever and charming man talks to a naïve young girl in a lonely place, gets some useful information from her, tracks down and kills an old woman who is of no use to him except for her clothes which he wears to lure in and capture a child. That’s not an entertaining fantasy, that’s a lesson for the tribe’s children and a warning from the past.
The Wolf-Man (or something very similar) has always been with us. Wolf+Man is still a term for sexual criminal in Chinese. “The Wolf Man” was released by Universal in 1941, Heck! Duran Duran released “Hungry like the Wolf” in 1982.
I read a biography of the notorious rapist AND decorated celebrity entertainer Jimmy Saville, where he referred to HIMSELF as a wolf. When asked by an interviewer why he lived in a shabby apartment on the edge of town “The Wolf knows what he wants” he replied.
So, there we can see at least one example of an evil force moving across the world for thousands of years, resisted by most men but taking over some others who then go on to cause terrible suffering and pain. The brave and good Woodsman in the old story killed that particular wolf but the spirit could not be stopped with an axe.
Are these Demons all just metaphors?
Sure, they are metaphors, but they aren’t JUST metaphors. They describe a base reality that we can only ever partially see. Our language is an organ, like our eyes, that we use to perceive the world. Nietzche wrote that our language is made of metaphors that we have forgotten are metaphors.
“Truths are illusions that we have forgotten are illusions, they are metaphors that have worn out and drained of sensuous force, coins that have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer coins”
So, our ancient ancestors stamped “Demon/Devil” onto some particular pieces of metal, but they have been jingling in our pockets for so long that now that stamp looks faint and ridiculous. They had their religions, we have ours. But even if we re-stamp them as something like “Psycho-sexual Neurosis” or “Pathological Maladjustment” the metal remains.
And they’re cold hard pieces of metal indeed.
Great comment. And this was especially well put: "Sure, they are metaphors, but they aren’t JUST metaphors. They describe a base reality that we can only ever partially see."
Today we have more than myth, legend and collected folk tales. We have much more than that.
It's only a matter of reaching out into the places less traveled to find this additional information, most of which has been developed in this and the last century.
I wouldn't discourage anyone from studying folk lore. But more need to take a real look at the newer data. At least read some of it! It's not that hard to find.
Absolutely fascinating interview.
Regarding aliens: if an individual can be possessed in this fashion, what of an entire species?
Makes me think of the idea of certain gods being associated with certain nations (like Yahweh with Israel).
As I wrote in my supernatural evil article:
The same goes for “ethnic gods.” Like mob bosses and political rulers, x divvies up territory.
Paging Laurent Guyenot.
All gods are ethnic gods...the god-image is created to meet the psychic needs of specific populations at a particular moment. No exceptions.
The plausibility of a specific god-image depends upon your proximity to warfare or conquest/enslavement by foreigners, environmental factors like the variability of rainfall or (all importantly) the rate of mortality. The chill, mellow, inoffensive and universalist god-image beloved in the West today is perfect for people who get their food delivered to their doors and who believe that the nice people from the Global South are gentle souls brimming with kindness.
One taste of reality and our concept of god becomes Bronze Age superfast.
Philip K. Dick had the Gnostic idea that the reality we live in is an evil fragment broken off from the godhead. When I look around me, more and more it seems possible even likely he is right. Perhaps entire cultures worship the evil fragment rather than the actual godhead?
I'm listening to Walter Kirn's "Blood Will Out" now, about 2/3rds of the way through it and a few years back had previously listened to Audible's "The Man in the Rockefeller Suit By Mark Seal
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter"
By: Mark Seal Narrated by: Erik Singer, which covered the mysterious disappearance of the two people he murdered but at the time it was written, he had only been charged with the kidnapping of his daughter. Both books are good, and the details regarding the cons are not contradictory, but Walter's book fleshes out the true evil of this con artist.
Gerhartsreiter is an amalgam of psychopathology without a scintilla of morality, a man who takes extreme pleasure and finds purpose as a poseur, for whom compassion or legality is a stumbling block to be thwarted no matter the means. Perhaps his success in taking on the persona of the rich, and being convincing is that they (the uber wealthy) demonstrate to a somewhat lesser degree the characteristics of pathological narcissism, so that these behaviors do not stand out as much as they might in people who do not occupy the elite strata.
Kirn's book is a fascinating profile of evil, while Singer's is a portrait of a consummate liar. What is most interesting to me in Kirn's book is his unstinting description of his own culpability at being so utterly bamboozled by this creature.
Thanks for the background, HUMDEEDEE. I'm going to have to read these books now!
Didn't they make a movie about this man?
There is a docudrama on Prime Video titled "Who is Clark Rockefeller" released in 2010. The rental fee is 12.99 which is pretty steep, but I'm almost tempted to rent it.
I know I saw something about him. I remember the Rockefeller name. It might have been on cable many, many years ago, but it wasn't a pay per view anything. `\_(•_•)_/`
The last paragraph reminds me of
Ephesians 6:12
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
and
““Principalities and powers” are always with us; we have no need to create them even if we could. It is merely incumbent on us to choose the master we wish to serve, so that his service shall be our safeguard against being mastered by the “other” whom we have not chosen.
Carl Jung
Also was thinking from what I have read recently about the Rockefellers, maybe this guy really was a Rockefeller and Christian Gerhartsreiter was created to protect the Rockefellers :)
Now, that wouldn't surprise me in the least.
The really weird thing is trying to explain all of this in the broken language that was handed down to us. Some days I'll wake up from a dream and say, "Oh, fuck! We used to know how to say this!", and then spend the rest of the morning trying to reconstruct the straightforward language that was lost, or maybe purposely burnt down.
The craziest thing is this: I think we all instinctively know what a demon is. But in trying to describe it to each other in anything but the artist's tongue, we get lost and accidentally help it do its business, like Kirn himself did. But he seems to be waking up.
I think this is true. We all know. Some deny what they know, and others try to find the words and categories to capture it. Because the old categories are anachronistic for many people, the struggle is to recapture that framework, update it in ways with our other categories, and make sense of it. But instinctively, we know it when we see it, even if it may be too late or after the fact.
A friend of mine (a shaman, and not just a drug dealer with a drum) has a great line:
"The problem with ineffable experiences is... there are no fucking words!"
He also says that this is why we use poetry and song and other metaphorical tools and language to try to convey some *sense* of the experience. My own experiences with hallucinogenics makes me think he is entirely correct.
Wow.
You really don't hear this much in the modern world anymore.
My confessor tells me something similar - don't give the demons rights over you by entertaining their suggestions.
Repent and pray from the heart. Everything that is happening in the world today is because we lack repentance and don't know how to pray.
Pray without ceasing.
If nature abhors a vacuum, demons love them.
https://substack.com/profile/100124894-steven-berger/note/c-43480676
This conversation was chilling for me, as I am in the fallout from the exact realization moments as described. Despite 45 years in my own entrpreneurial businesses, world travels to dozens of countries as a lone single female, was I just lucky to have never encountered such evil? Now I am living the longterm focus of that evil wanting to show power, wanting to destroy all that makes a creative person shine, wanting to bask in proof of the worst animalistic attributes a human might display, oblivious to being caught. My losses are legion. I am older and out of the financial circles that accelerated my work because my character. Aye, it is my lesson, but the losses are not just my own; for now all the expressions of my creative force and expertise are lost to the thousands whose lives I touched and the more that could have been touched as I withdraw.
I don't know the details, but it sounds to me like you still have a lot you could share with others, Akgrrrl. Maybe just in a different way than you did before?
We appear to have many similar experiences. I've been to 60 countries by myself (40 when I was with Citigroup,) then resigned and started a very successful small business. In recent years I've had what feels like a plague (or locusts) swarm me, but one by one, displaying psychopathic characteristics that have served to derail me, and the phenomenon is beginning to frighten me a bit. I've isolated as well. And am not sharing my gifts as I should be as a result.
The elements of evil as described by the journalist in this piece posted by Harrison, are smack on. An onslaught of "locusts" which I read to mean mega "mini" events, surely classifies as an assault. Analysis as to why I have been targeted more than once is not surprising, but nontheless has produced terror induced isolation and security measures. The ultimate prison pain, no matter the type of jail, is not being able to be who you are. It is much worse for those who are creative of mind, who have so much to give.
Harrison, Thanks for this illuminating post. Like a few other commenters, as I become a bit older/wiser (🙏?), and as I become more aware of our hidden history and the more recent machinations of our power elites and their minions, I find myself using the word evil to describe much more of what’s being perpetrated. I’m not suggesting I’m about to embrace the Good Lord or run down to the nearest river to get baptised. But nonetheless as events unfold it’s difficult to think of another way of looking at the world.
There is a spiritual dimension and there's a physical dimension. There are good entities and there are evil entities. And they are at War on both the spiritual level and the physical level. And you are seeing it played out on a very large scale today.
I did not believe this for 50 years.
I have faced true evil, and it is not something I want to face again.
Both evil and good on the spiritual level can possess people and things in our physical dimension. The good choose not to because it believes in free will and taking possession of somebody takes away that person's free will.
Your choice to believe it or not does not eliminate the fact that evil is real and that this war exists. Maybe a person needs to experience facing true evil to believe it.
What I still wonder about is whether or not a possessed person is aware that he/she is possessed. My guess is that some people are aware and enjoy it and some people are not. aware.
Whatever you believe it is time to choose sides.
I laid out a similar idea to a couple of super rational and very intelligent friends. This was about four years ago. Pre Covid. They said they would ignore it and pretend I didn’t posit the idea a demonic cabal exists. Fast forward a couple of years and they both came around and said what they’re seeing out there is beyond bad politics, poor science, greedy corporations. The only thing that covers it is demonic. I said ‘hey hey hey! I said this four years ago and you two acted as if I were nuts’. They apologized. A lot of people are seeing this. A lot. And people I really don’t think tend to think in terms of angels and demons usually.
Excellent post and interview.
I will say this, if you believe in the good, godly and angelic, then you must believe that evil and the demonic exist as well.
We have traded our spiritual intelligence, for intentional secular distraction, escape and omnipotence.
However, as Kirn experienced, from time to time, we are given a glimpse into the real and present spiritual world. Sometimes it's a brush with true evil and sometimes it's through a miracle or undeserved grace.
We recently had a true, biblical style miracle in our family. I won't go into many details, but 12 days after a traumatic brain injury, this person was sitting up, talking and eating, with little evidence of cognitive loss. Doctors were baffled, as they predicted if they survived, it would be a life of handicapping cognitive issues and resulting physical problems. This person reported speaking with their deceased parents, who said it was not time for them to pass over, to that side. There were literally tens of thousands praying for their recovery, survival and healing. The entire event was and is a witness to God's love, grace and power and that He does listen to the prayers of His children.
Good and evil are real, God is present and His will be done, in His time and purpose.
The reason people don't recognize evil is they live with and embrace it, on a daily basis in varying degrees and ways. However, every once in a while the curtain is pulled back and we are asked to see and acknowledge the truth.
I think Kirn, passed the test and will be better for it, the rest of his days.
Revolver linked to your article. Thanks for this. For me, people cling to the "blank slate" idea because they must believe in equality and a just God. The reality that some people are just born bad and there's nothing you can do to balance chemicals or "love it out of them" destroys equality, blank slate, and the idea of a just God. Some people are cursed and irredeemable.
That's the way I've seen it for years, too. A classic case of fitting reality to one's model, instead of the model to reality.
And thanks for the heads up about Revolver. Very cool!
Maybe He and Satan take turns on who gets what souls. Giving the Devil his due seems just among deities. Not so just for us.
Equality and "social justice" amongst deities to explain away inequality here?
`\_(•_•)_/` Makes as much sense as having demons in the White House to torture an entire country for the majority of my life.