Ever know anybody that just seemed....unreachable? And you look at that person, into that person's eyes, and your instincts say....yeah....that person just is not right? You feel it inside you, there's something just not normal there?
In this decade I've reluctantly become open to the possibility of something the younger me would not have entertained for one instant, that being how some people, angry, bitter people, the constantly negative, are more vulnerable than most for attack, influence, even guidance from unseen darkness, a thing the developed world seems to discount as risible, and yet across much of the planet today and nearly all of the world across time such things were not dismissed.
I feel bad for people who don't understand why happiness eludes them and their anger seems directed at others, and while mental illness is obviously real, I can't help but wonder if many aren't under attack by what Shinto calls gri-kami: demons, in our terms.
Why is the idea implausible? Most people believe in God (about 9/10ths of the western world) and in various scriptures and oral traditions unrelated to one another speak of angels and demons to the point of it being universal.
People like the idea of angels being out there, but what about the opposite of angels? In scientific terms action and reaction/sunshine and shadow/positive and negative, how can one exist without the other, and why is it thought mental illness can explain everything, or that the mentally ill aren't made so by preternatural darkness, or exploited while ill?
What if these malign influences were not rare but the norm, ongoing and continuous and ubiquitous?
Personally I know a psychologist, as everyday a sort as you could meet, obviously well-educated, works for the United States Air Force, if you want to know the truth, who told me when interning she went into a mental hospital in an urban area in the South, and there was a woman there who was simply among the worst in the place, unreachable, cruel, constantly negative, she'd spit and curse and do disturbing stuff when someone tried to interact with her, and when the group this present-day psychologist was part of approached her she looked up "and her eyes gave me a chill, so wrong and cruel" is how the doctor who told me this put it, and said to one of the group, "You have a sister named Nancy who doesn't know it yet but she's got cancer and she's going to die next August and the baby inside her will die too."
Yes, this intern did have a sister named Nancy and Nancy did die the next August of cancer she wasn't aware she had and she lost the baby she was carrying.
Could the psychologist be lying? Sure, but why when she said to me she is an agnostic who grew up going to Easter rand Christmas services at best at a fairly mainstream Protestant denomination? She says she is not comfortable fitting God into her daily life, yet she also shared that story with me recently when we were having a conversation.
I've also known people I trust, one in particular I'm thinking of who I don't think has ever lied to me, and his stories of what he experienced in recovery after years of addiction when he hurt many people I personally count as compelling testimony. You don't know him, no reason to base your outlook on what he told me, but I believe him and if his accounts are honest and accurate, it means we dwell in a more frightening world than most of us are ready to accept. He is convinced he was influenced by evil while addicted and had some experiences to back up that belief, and he says in his years in AA and other programs for addicts he's had many others share stories with him that matched his own.
So I don't know, maybe I'm just rambling as usual here right now but I admit I have been thinking about people who may not entirely be making rational choices in their conduct because their misery and pain is exploited. My cousin who went from a sad childhood to a young adulthood where she seemed hellbent on destroying herself leaps to mind when I ponder this, how she would seem so taken over by something other than who she normally was, something that wanted to hurt her and hurt all of us, literally hurt us.
I think of endlessly angry people. These mass shooters. People who seem to descend below the mandates of biological behavior. What if? Just what if we are getting the causes wrong?
It's a topic that might get laughed at but it does compel me to put thought into it and I don't think it's necessarily a stupid thing to think about.
Sometimes.
Demons? Supernatural beings that possess folks?
No- I don't believe in 'Demons.'
I dunno, man, look at poor Amy Winehouse on a bad hair day sometime and tell me there's no demons. :wink:
You started to sound a bit like Dr. Loomis from HALLOWEEN for a while. Awesome!
Personally, I don't think there are demons, just bad people. I've met some who simply don't have empathy, they are very good at pretending they do, but their actions, and sometimes their words, speak otherwise.
I don't believe in demons, but I do believe in good and evil. And some people are simply evil.
I don't believe in Demons, hell, or any of that crap. However, I find them pretty interesting on a fictional level.
Ever since I started playing the Persona series of games I've been very interested in demons.
My sister showed me that Netflix Sabrina show (It's okay, not great). I found it funny how I had to explain all the demon references to her.
A character has a pet crow called "Stolas" and my dorky ass immediately blurted out "Oh, that's one of the seventy-two demons of the Ars Goetia".
To be honest I don't know what to think. That's what my outlook on a lot of subjects works out to be. I don't know.
f**king around with demon s**t in Persona has burned this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_Fc3PxsXzE) into my brain.
Quote from: A.J. Bauer on October 09, 2019, 09:37:04 AM
f**king around with demon s**t in Persona has burned this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_Fc3PxsXzE) into my brain.
I like that a lot. Good song. Wonder if it'll burn into my brain now? Maybe it's actually a demon in song form like Stairway To Heaven and Barney's theme? Just my luck.
Quote from: ER on October 09, 2019, 08:22:55 AM
Ever know anybody that just seemed....unreachable?
...
Yes. My older sister and brother. I just assume they're crazier than me; their reality is alien. My relationship with both is fine; I minimize contact. I love them; I don't like them.
Quote from: Gabriel Knight on October 09, 2019, 09:32:07 AM
You started to sound a bit like Dr. Loomis from HALLOWEEN for a while. Awesome!
Personally, I don't think there are demons, just bad people. I've met some who simply don't have empathy, they are very good at pretending they do, but their actions, and sometimes their words, speak otherwise.
I don't believe in demons, but I do believe in good and evil. And some people are simply evil.
Righteous. :thumbup:
Quote from: ER on October 09, 2019, 09:49:01 AM
Quote from: A.J. Bauer on October 09, 2019, 09:37:04 AM
f**king around with demon s**t in Persona has burned this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_Fc3PxsXzE) into my brain.
I like that a lot. Good song. Wonder if it'll burn into my brain now? Maybe it's actually a demon in song form like Stairway To Heaven and Barney's theme? Just my luck.
I shut it off.
Demons in the sense of heaven and hell, not really although I am open to the possibility. I've met some evil bastards in my time who warrant the title inhuman. Then again, maybe they are normal people and I am aberrant.
One theory that's been gaining traction in scientific circles over the past few years is that there are multiple universes referred to as branes. Who knows, maybe what we think are ghosts, aliens or whatever phenomena are merely one of these alternate universes trying to reach out to our one. Of course, it would be a hell of a lot of reaching out for one spot in one universe to touch this specific area, unless each universe is a copy of each other. If we assume that this is true then it could be that this contact causes psychosis in ourselves, or that the contact is intentionally malevolent. Perhaps we are their version of a video game. After all, we have many games played by normal people that would be considered quite cruel.
I am not suggesting that this is the answer or what I believe, but just a random rumination on one of many possible answers.
https://societyofmodernastronomy.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/the-brane-multiverse/ for anyone interested in reading about branes. As opposed to being a zombie and eating them.
I also ponder whether if beings of darkness exist maybe they have absolutely nothing to do with anything religious, they are just what they are, as much a part of nature as we are, just a segment of nature we don't comprehend; possibly energy beings instead of corporeal. Sort of like what Alex was saying.
Demons. Like horror movie demons or personal demons of the mind? Some folks get it confused.
And coming down from a 3 day drunk will make you believe in demons. Doing 3 hits of acid might make you believe in demons. Try it! But I haven't done that in almost 30 years. But I remember it!
But it wasn't demons.
I don't think I'd do well on psychedelics but I was very tempted by that chance to try ayahuasca three or so years ago when my friend Mitch got ahold of the means to brew it up.
I think my mind is a place where a lot of horrors lurk in the shadows of the dim sunlight and everyday reality is thin around me anyway.
My father tried LSD once in the '70s with a girl in New York and told me he had no bad experiences at all with it, only felt he was part of the universe, and the universe was part of him, as he described it.
Way for him to scare his kid off drugs, huh?
Quote from: ER on October 09, 2019, 12:02:30 PM
I also ponder whether if beings of darkness exist maybe they have absolutely nothing to do with anything religious, they are just what they are, as much a part of nature as we are, just a segment of nature we don't comprehend; possibly energy beings instead of corporeal. Sort of like what Alex was saying.
What you describe has been named an "Elemental", sentient beings that are perhaps existing because of energies, like "water flowing underground..."
Quote from: ER on October 09, 2019, 12:26:48 PM
My father tried LSD once in the '70s with a girl in New York and told me he had no bad experiences at all with it, only felt he was part of the universe, and the universe was part of him, as he described it.
I never did it in NY in the 70's. I just drank beer and smoked pot. I did do a lot of acid in the mid 80's. I sold it to bikers at Melville's Bar. But that was in Marcellus, Michigan.
That definitely works, John. I think that's a good way of looking at it all, or a side of it.
I think we've all had the experience of going somewhere that felt great, wonderful energy, and places that felt bad.
The Japanese are big into that and that's one reason they have built lovely gardens, to draw good energy there.
Another thing I think about is the energy of the mind supposedly being able to create. Or collective mind energy, like Gaiman saying that's how gods begin. He even has stories of writers encountering their own creations, somehow brought into being with all the energy behind people thinking about them.
Let's do an experiment. Everyone think about me winning the lottery.
I did have one night where I don't particularly want to discuss what I was thinking of that night, but afterward, I did wonder if some dark spirit or something had been struggling with me for my soul. I didn't do the thing I'd been thinking of and I have no idea how I got into the mood where I was thinking about this (I'd had a really good night out, came home and BAM!).
Maybe it was just a temporary chemical imbalance in the brain, maybe it was something else.
Quote from: ER on October 09, 2019, 12:37:51 PM
Everyone think about me winning the lottery.
And I'll think-
http://youtu.be/Ip34k5IUnjU (http://youtu.be/Ip34k5IUnjU)
Quote from: RCMerchant on October 09, 2019, 12:46:49 PM
Quote from: ER on October 09, 2019, 12:37:51 PM
Everyone think about me winning the lottery.
And I'll think-
http://youtu.be/Ip34k5IUnjU (http://youtu.be/Ip34k5IUnjU)
If I win the lottery because of your thoughts, I'll have Bela cloned and let you adopt him. Just throwing that out there as a bonus....
^ Nah! I got kids and grand kids. A dog and a cat too.
Quote from: ER on October 09, 2019, 09:49:01 AM
Quote from: A.J. Bauer on October 09, 2019, 09:37:04 AM
f**king around with demon s**t in Persona has burned this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_Fc3PxsXzE) into my brain.
I like that a lot. Good song. Wonder if it'll burn into my brain now? Maybe it's actually a demon in song form like Stairway To Heaven and Barney's theme? Just my luck.
It's burned into my mind because that's the theme that plays when you "fuse Personas" (Sacrificing demons to summon more powerful demons). It's a very long and meticulous process if you micromanage the s**t out of everything in an RPG (Which I always do).
They introduced the song in the third game, and reused it in every sequel after it.
When you get new Personas, they get added to the "Compendium". From there you can read all about each and every one of them and their place in mythology. That's what got me interested in demons and such (There are also angels, gods, spirits, etc.).
The Ars Goetia (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goetia) is a pretty prominent source of demons in fiction. The book lists seventy two demons in total, so it's pretty easy to use any of them in your own work of fiction.
I believe in God, therefore I believe in Satan too.
I believe in angels, and therefore I also believe in demons.
The main demons I believe in are the cars. That and the drug crisis, but that's for another time.
Quote from: El Misfit on October 09, 2019, 07:27:28 PM
The main demons I believe in are the cars.
The band or automobiles?
Speaking of demons, I'm working on an RPG for my midterm where you have to escape hell.
You fight seven demons along the way. The professor only ever wants the code, so I'll post
the game here when I'm finished if anyone is interested in playing it.
I think demons get a bad rep.
Look at them bible, when something terriblemis done it's usually an angel doing it. A female slave runs away from a cruel and abusive master, an angel goes and orders her to return to her cruel master. So mom and gommorah we're destroyed by angels obeying you know who. Likewise the first born children of Egypt, including babies, were murdered by "the angel of death".
Seems like angels were always murdering people and causing grief. I donct care if they were only following orders.
What did demons do in the bible? I don't recall them murdering people, forcing women back into slavery under a cruel master, etc.
Seems to me angels do a lot more harm than demons. If either existed.
I don't not believe in anything :).
That story about the sister Nancy is super creepy. I hope she was just messing with you when she said that. Like, what's the end purpose of telling someone that? To scare them and make them feel hopeless? I guess that's pretty evil.
There was a kid that was friends with my nephew a few years ago. He was a pretty "good" kid on the outside, but something about him made me very wary of him. Anytime they were misbehaving and I called them out, he always challenged me, which isn't why I think he was the spawn of hell, but the way he carried himself I thought was very off for an 8 year old. Especially the way he knew how to "play" adults, he was super charismatic, I never fell for it though. I know most kids are uncaring, self-absorbed, inexperienced little tyrants until they're like.. 50... or something, but he was different. One Halloween he dressed like Elvis - bedazzled white suit, bell bottoms, little red scarf - he looked awesome and he knew it! None of the other boys were that dressed up if they dressed up at all. What 8 year old in 2013 was dressing like Elvis? Evil ones! Thankfully, he moved away.
The weird thing is now, I cannot remember his name and I know it wasn't super unusual and I'm pretty good with names. I asked my friend if she remembered and she can't either! It's like that part in Witches of Eastwick where everyone was trying to think of Jack Nicholson's character's name and then they remembered it all at once and I think some lady had a fit!
On another note, I do sometimes wonder if drugs can alter perceptions so that you're not actually hallucinating but experiencing things outside of a normal wavelength. For many years, my brother-in-law's brother took outrageous amounts of mind altering substances, even created some of his own (he was a chemist) and he tells us to this day he still hears and sees things that he knows are not there, but he's certain he knows the difference. He has conversations with people that he knows only he can see. He doesn't believe in anything as far as I know from a religious or paranormal standpoint. He just accepts it very plainly as a side effect of what he did so many years ago. I have heard that it's medically possible to hallucinate for years after taking even a small amount of acid and stuff like that and it makes me wonder if people who have vivid "experiences" are just having some kind of late-term drug induced hallucination.
Weird stuff! I don't think I'm ready to get into branes.
Paq, it disturbs me when credible people I trust tell me things like that psychologist did. She was an Air Force officer with a doctorate, she always seemed serious when "on the clock" and she seemed to have nothing to gain by telling me that and a lot to lose by lying, so at the time I wrestled with that account and it was a long while before I was at peace with it and just shelved it away. What I finally told myself was if demons and the like are real then presumably they've always been real throughout time and life has gone on, so...shrug.
I think either they're real and past our current scientific understanding, or some need within the human mind has universally existed to make us create stories about them because accounts of what can be called demons exist in every culture in the world and have been part of every time period we know of.
My own experience with demons has to be the fact that every time I am training hard for something, cheesecake tempts me night and day. Demonic influences, right?
Or it's all bulls**t that our minds subsitute for more logical reasons.
You go off in the Twilight Zone with that. Be real. Life ain't a Ray Bradbury fairy tale.
Who knows, man, who knows. If demons are real people still go to work and pay water bills and have affairs and buy suits off the rack and go on diets and eat cookies and write thank you cards to sympathetic friends who comfort them when their cat dies. Life is what it is whether we haunt ourselves or malign entities dog our steps. I guess we can't really know, only make a guess based on how we feel.
And that has what t do with 'demons'? :question:
I thought we were talking about evil and demons?
I ain't arguing , ER. I find this talk interesting.
A man like Ted Bundy murders girls. Lots of them. Is it because of demons? Or is it just because he's a crazy scumbag? I think it's because he's a crazy scumbag. NOBODY has EVER seen a demon in the flesh. Or proved Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or the Mothman. Or God and angels or demons. It's all bulls**t that we need to believe when s**t happens we don't understand.
It'd be letting Ted Bundy off too lightly to suggest anything was responsible for his crimes except his own self-motivation but you know I did once see a video in which an Arab claimed Bundy was inhabited by a cruel djinn. lol
Demons are ignorant people's way of explaining the "monsters from the id", the deepest part of the human brain, the "reptile brain".
"Deep inside the skull of every one of us there is something like a brain of a crocodile. Surrounding the R-complex is the limbic system or mammalian brain, which evolved tens of millions of years ago in ancestors who were mammal but not yet primates. It is a major source of our moods and emotions, of our concern and care for the young. And finally, on the outside, living in uneasy truce with the more primitive brains beneath, is the cerebral cortex; civilization is a product of the cerebral cortex."
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos p.276–277
The reptile brain is geared towards reproduction and survival, nothing more. The urge to dominate, destroy competitors, kill any possible challenge to your own personal survival is all part of the reptile brain.
It's the part of the brain most remote and in many ways opposite of thelart that makes us human, the cerebral cortex.
It's where most of our demons come from. Other demons come from various forms of mental disorder in the higher brain.
Quote from: Svengoolie 3 on October 10, 2019, 11:08:50 PM
Demons are ignorant people's way of explaining the "monsters from the id", the deepest part of the human brain, the "reptile brain".
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos p.276–277
I wouldn't call people who believe in that "ignorant". Many cultures and beliefs have needed, and still do, explain things beyond they're control because that is a basis for a society not controlled by laws and cops. And if it works for them, more power to them.
Of course, there's also the very real possibility that I am totally wrong about all this s**t and will burn in hell! I am not so smug in belief that I think what my little ass knows what is 'real' in my brain is truth.
Quote from: RCMerchant on October 10, 2019, 09:30:39 PM
And that has what t do with 'demons'? :question:
I thought we were talking about evil and demons?
I ain't arguing , ER. I find this talk interesting.
I guess I was saying if demons exist, so what? Either they've always been part of everyday life or they haven't, and the mundane and extraordinary still continues to happen.
Knowudimeen?
Funny how in every era we think we know the explanations behind everything and yet future generations look back at laugh at the beliefs of those who came before. I wonder what in 500 years people will think of our scientific achievements and culture.
Millennia ago people needed super beings to explain everything, why the sun rose and set, why the wind blew. Somethjng happens? A god did it if it was good, a demon did it if it was bad.
Now we know we live on a sphere that circles another sphere that emits light and heat, and the sphere we live on revolvers. That's why we have sunrises and sunsets and seasons. Wind blows because kght t om the sun hears different parts of the earth differently due to angles on indicende and suave conditions, warmer air expands, cooler air contracts, wind blows.
Tides come because if lunar gravity. Not Poseidon waving his tail.
Voices in your head are mental issues.
Diseases are microbes, even leprosy, not divine curses.
We don't need invisible magic giants and little boogeymen to explain things now.
Case in point. We used to believe the earth was a sphere, now we know it isn't. It's more egg-shaped. We used to believe we knew all the forces in the universe, now we suspect another exists that is more powerful than gravity over long distance but is weaker at short ones. Who knows what in the future we will find out what we think is right, actually isn't. It was always drummed into me when I was studying science that only closed-minded fools believe that what we think we know can't be proven wrong in the future. Hell, we even teach things we know to be wrong (ask the average person on the street to draw an atom and you'll get something looking like a solar system, an electrical current does not just flow from positive to negative and yet these commonly believed things are wrong).
Quote from: ER on October 11, 2019, 11:48:24 AM
Quote from: RCMerchant on October 10, 2019, 09:30:39 PM
And that has what t do with 'demons'? :question:
I thought we were talking about evil and demons?
I ain't arguing , ER. I find this talk interesting.
I guess I was saying if demons exist, so what? Either they've always been part of everyday life or they haven't, and the mundane and extraordinary still continues to happen.
Knowudimeen?
Yeah. If you read what I just posted you would see I agree.
I don't think anything is impossible. Because I'm a weirdo and my brain goes into all sortsa directions at times. I think of all sortsa crazy s**t.
Here's that game (https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tQfqDw3JB8PtpFvjWvWz3ckiTf-9zx1N).
I made it for my midterm. It's not amazing but I figured I should share it.
It probably won't work on Mac.