Demons?

[RCMerchant]

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.

[ER]

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.

[Alex]

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.

[RCMerchant]

Everyone think about me winning the lottery.

And I'll think-

http://youtu.be/Ip34k5IUnjU

[ER]

Everyone think about me winning the lottery.

And I'll think-

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....

[RCMerchant]

^ Nah! I got kids and grand kids. A dog and a cat too.

[Olivia Bauer]

f**king around with demon s**t in Persona has burned this song 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 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.

[indianasmith]

I believe in God, therefore I believe in Satan too.
I believe in angels, and therefore I also believe in demons.

[Leah]

The main demons I believe in are the cars. That and the drug crisis, but that's for another time.

[RCMerchant]

The main demons I believe in are the cars.

The band or automobiles?

[Olivia Bauer]

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.

[Leah]

The main demons I believe in are the cars.

The band or automobiles?

Automobiles of course.

[Svengoolie 3]

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.

[Paquita]

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.




   

[ER]

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?