Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 133 - The History of Demonic Summoning
Abby and Alan dive into the history of demonic summoning, and its impact on horror. Embark with us on a shadowy expedition into the origins and evolutions of demonic summoning, where ancient gods were recast into sinister spirits under the unforgiving light of monotheism. From the Lesser Key of Solomon to the Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, we discuss the history of cultures and peoples who have attempted to summon demons.
The notorious Warrens, Pazuzu from "The Exorcist," and even Black Phillip of "The Witch" fame make appearances, showcasing how horror films have shaped our understanding of the infernal. We also chat through the threads of historical rituals from modern horror, examining the authenticity filmmakers strive for when portraying ancient summoning rites.
lunaticsproject.com
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
Sources
- Book by Ed Simon called PANDEMONIUM: An Illustrated History of Demonology
- PBS article by David Crary of the Associated Press: Ancient but small in number, Zoroastrians confront depletion of their faith
- Archeology.org article by Eric A. Powell, called: The World of Egyptian Demons
- The Rationality of Renaissance Magic by Gregory W. Dawes
- Aliester Crowley’s autobiography: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley
- Book by Owen Davies: Grimoires: A History of Magic
- Vice article The Men Who Love to Worship The Devil and Summon Demons by Grace Wilson
- Book by Ronald Hutton: The Wild Hunt and The Witches Sabbath
- Wikipedia + IMDB
What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Abby and Alan dive into the history of demonic summoning, and its impact on horror. Embark with us on a shadowy expedition into the origins and evolutions of demonic summoning, where ancient gods were recast into sinister spirits under the unforgiving light of monotheism. From the Lesser Key of Solomon to the Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, we discuss the history of cultures and peoples who have attempted to summon demons.
The notorious Warrens, Pazuzu from "The Exorcist," and even Black Phillip of "The Witch" fame make appearances, showcasing how horror films have shaped our understanding of the infernal. We also chat through the threads of historical rituals from modern horror, examining the authenticity filmmakers strive for when portraying ancient summoning rites.
lunaticsproject.com
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
Sources
- Book by Ed Simon called PANDEMONIUM: An Illustrated History of Demonology
- PBS article by David Crary of the Associated Press: Ancient but small in number, Zoroastrians confront depletion of their faith
- Archeology.org article by Eric A. Powell, called: The World of Egyptian Demons
- The Rationality of Renaissance Magic by Gregory W. Dawes
- Aliester Crowley’s autobiography: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley
- Book by Owen Davies: Grimoires: A History of Magic
- Vice article The Men Who Love to Worship The Devil and Summon Demons by Grace Wilson
- Book by Ronald Hutton: The Wild Hunt and The Witches Sabbath
- Wikipedia + IMDB
What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour podcast. I'm Abby Branker sitting here with Alan Kudan. Hello, Today we are talking about the history of demonic summoning. This is a big topic. It's a big topic, but let me narrow it down for you a little bit because obviously, the belief in demons could fill pages of many volumes and has Pages of many volumes.
Speaker 1:The belief in the devil, the belief in summoning the devil, the belief with deals and packs of the devil black masses all these things are sort of like Satanism, things that are offshoots of it, but we are going to very specifically try to focus ourselves for the most part on the summoning of demons, not the devil demons.
Speaker 2:So lesser demons.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:No, archdemons.
Speaker 1:We'll see. We'll see where this episode takes us.
Speaker 2:Is it arch or arc Arc Arc angel Arc angel.
Speaker 1:And, as always, I found out a lot of very interesting things about the world.
Speaker 2:I would say oh yeah, while researching this, the thing that you discovered in this whole process.
Speaker 1:My favorite thing that I discovered is that the belief in demons really, and what demons are, largely historically before monotheism they were the pagan gods. They were gods of different cultures and when monotheism came about they all were sort of reskinned into demons.
Speaker 2:That Because anything that wasn't God, wasn't God you know? My question for you, yeah, is say, you summon a demon and you like, hold on to the demon, and then you do it again. You know what?
Speaker 1:do you mean you hold on to the demon?
Speaker 2:Like you don't just like banish them. Like can you collect demons?
Speaker 1:You can conjure multiple demons in a ritual.
Speaker 2:Because it's you know, I don't know. It feels almost like Pokemon at that point.
Speaker 1:Okay, we'll talk about that, but.
Speaker 2:Because you know you're collecting them, You're not making them fight.
Speaker 1:You're not making them fight. That's the point I don't know what.
Speaker 2:what is the point? Why are you bringing them there?
Speaker 1:The point, for the most part, is that you want them to do your bidding, yeah. Fighting, no, okay. Well, I guess that's your what you're asking, yeah.
Speaker 2:We are slowly recreating Pokemon Okay.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about our sources today before we get into it and there was also a bunch of historic documents that I read that I will cite as we go, you know, when it's sort of relevant but modern sources A book by Ed Simon called Pandemonium an illustrated history of demonology.
Speaker 2:I will have you know that that book has been sitting in my shopping cart for many years.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Because I was going to get it for you as a gift, but the opportunity really never you know, it's, it's just like those things, like you know what's the perfect time to gift someone a copy of Pandemonium?
Speaker 1:Valentine's Day.
Speaker 2:That's the but, that's the problem. We have other demonic things to give you on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1:A PBS article by David Crary of the Associated Press. Ancient but small in number Zoroastrians confront depletion of their faith. An archaeologyorg article by Eric A Powell called the World of Egyptian Demons. The Rationality of Renaissance Magic by George W Dawes, alistair Crowley's Autobiography the Confessions of Alistair Crowley. A book by Owen Davies, grimoire's A History of Magic, a Vice Article, the Men who Love to Worship the Devil and Summon Demons, by Grace Wilson, a book by Ronald Hutton, the Wild Hunt and the Witch's Sabbath.
Speaker 1:Wikipedia, imdb, a bunch of movies and also a bunch of old texts and ancient grimoires that we will talk through as we as they come up. Dating back to the Paleolithic age, people have believed in demons and the underworld, similar to early pagan beliefs. It's thought to have first been a way to explain the harsh aspects of life in the world around us. But I do want to say, in a lot of cases again, kind of circling back to what I said at the beginning in a lot of cases demons were not demons, they were spirits, they were gods. They are not necessarily evil or dark, and then it's all going to come together. Just stick with me.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, because nothing was anyone's fault. If your crops are failing, it's not because you're a bad farmer, it's because you got demons on your land, or it's the moon blood it's cursed.
Speaker 1:Demons also have ties to several major religions, of course. So, again after the introduction of monotheism, demons start to have ties to major religions. It's thought that much of this mythology originated with Zoroastrianism. What's that? Which is an Iranian religion, one of the oldest organized religions in the world, which influenced early Judaism in the Persian era and went on to inform Christianity and Islam.
Speaker 2:Is this still around?
Speaker 1:Yes, and actually there's only about 125,000 practitioners left.
Speaker 2:I've never heard of it before now.
Speaker 1:I hadn't either. It dates back more than 3,000 years.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:And, of course, it's important to our subject today because it predates Christianity and Islam and thus laid the foundation, in some ways, for the belief of demon in those religions.
Speaker 2:Doesn't predate Judaism.
Speaker 1:No, I'm going to quote from the PBS article by David Crary. Quote at its core, zoroastrianism emphasizes a never-ending battle between good and evil. I told you they're a fighting, a contest between the religion's god and the evil spirit. Believers have the freedom to make good or bad choices. They were exhorted by Zoroaster to think good thoughts, say good words and do good deeds. Scholars say these tenets and other aspects of Zoroastrianism had significant influence on other religions, notably Christianity, islam, judaism and Buddhism. But one thing I really want to drill into the consciousness of everybody listening is that different cultures have different versions of demons. That's an understatement. So I'm just going to do a really high level talk through about what demons and the belief of demons means to different religions and different cultures across the globe. Sure, what we're going to end up talking about today is a very specific thing, but I think it's good to lay the global groundwork, if you will.
Speaker 2:I understand.
Speaker 1:So, for example, some religions believe that demons are minions of the devil, like some sects of Christianity. Others believe that they are neutral. For instance, the word daemon D-A-I-M-O-N in ancient Greek did not equal malicious intent. Simply, you're referred to a being of divine power. In Plato's Symposium, a priestess teaches Socrates that love is in fact a daemon, that daemons sit between the mortal and the spiritual world, and of course this word went on to become daemon in the modern sense. So the source of the actual word daemon is from this Greek belief in just like, almost like, someone who goes between the world of the spirit and the world of the mortal. It was not meant to be like a minion of the devil.
Speaker 2:Right, because there was no devil yet, not until the 80s.
Speaker 1:What happened in the 80s.
Speaker 2:I don't want to jump ahead in your outline.
Speaker 1:In some religions, demons protect the underworld. In Islamic cultures, jinn and demons can be invoked for various reasons.
Speaker 2:Wait, are you lumping jinn and demons in the same box?
Speaker 1:No, I'm just again. I'm just giving a very high level, sort of broad strokes what demons mean in different parts of the world. Okay, In ancient Egypt, there was a belief that demons could come to your aid. Demons have actually, though, caused some issues and confusion for scholars in ancient Egyptian study, because there's no word in the language for demon and the lines between deities and demons are very thin and sometimes blurred. Again, very similar to all of this stuff that even old world gods had good and bad sides, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man.
Speaker 1:Like, if you think about any mythology, gods are imperfect except for Christian mythology and Judaism. Wait, what If you think about the gods of ancient Rome or Greece or Egypt? They're imperfect gods, they have flaws.
Speaker 2:Right because they're humanized.
Speaker 1:Right, which is how many cultures believe in these things.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, we're not here to dissect organize religion.
Speaker 1:No, I mean we do by default, but yeah, it's believed that ancient Egyptians acknowledged the existence of malicious deities by highlighting their names with red ink, because there was no word for it. So when you find these old papyrus texts, if things are underlined or highlighted with red ink, that's how they would denote that. Oh, this one wasn't so good.
Speaker 2:I'm getting flashbacks to middle school with my 10,000 highlighters. This is important. This is more important, so it gets a different color.
Speaker 1:In ancient Egypt, there are two categories guardians, who are tied to protecting a certain place, and wanderers, who are believed to have the power of illness, death plagues and mental illness. Hodu can also involve conjuring, though it's often again meant to be that you're possessed by a spirit or the Holy Ghost, not a demon. In Bali, similar to Voodoo, there's a belief in voluntary possession by a spirit. Wiccans believe in voluntary possession of a goddess.
Speaker 2:Wait, wait, wait. There's a difference between Hodu and Voodoo.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And do they have anything to do with each other? No, wow. What is the difference?
Speaker 1:One of the big differences is that Voodoo is closer to I would say, quote unquote an organized religion. Voodoo is, voodoo is oh, there's differences between the New Orleans version of Voodoo and Voodoo of Haiti, whereas Hodu is more of an individual practice. There's a lot of differences and I'm not going to claim to be an expert on either, but that's kind of my main understanding is that, you know, among many other differences, organizationally they're quite different.
Speaker 2:In the article. Hodu vs Voodoo what's the difference?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Real brief overview here. Hodu followers believe on an omnipotent and unknowable Supreme Creator named Bondi. His name comes from the French term Bondi, literally meaning good God. Generally, a Haitian Voodoo service will be conducted in Creole, a Haitian French dialect. Keep in the rest, because there's a lot more. But then we go to Hudu, which is a form of hybrid African folk magic that often emphasizes the practical use of magic for purposes such as healing, protection and divination. Hudu sounds cool.
Speaker 1:Who wrote that article?
Speaker 2:This article is from the Universal Life Church.
Speaker 1:Great, so we can give credit where credit is due. Yeah, I mean, that's certainly I would love to explore. I have actually a great book on the history of Hudu that I got in New Orleans but it's like 500 pages long so I've never been able to like really get into it. But Too busy looking all your pictures in pandemonium Exactly.
Speaker 1:So circling back. Wiccans believe in a voluntary possession of a goddess. In Hinduism, demons are in a lot of cases a reflection of your own sins. You have to face kind of the decisions and the things that you've done in your life. A cult interpretation of a div from Middle Eastern lore involved burning hair to summon them and piercing their skin with a needle to bind them, which I think is so fascinating.
Speaker 2:Okay, you burn hair and then they show up, and then you stick them with needles and they're stuck.
Speaker 1:Again, this is a very simplistic, high-level overview of it. I mean, I don't know, there's a way it tusks. Div are thought to be huge versions of humans, except with horns and tusks which is something I want you guys to remember when we have our demonic stories episode Tusks Tusks. Also, I think you know in Native American culture a Wendigo is considered a demon in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:Makes sense.
Speaker 1:Iranian demons certainly are perceived as evil and relevant to our discussion today. Certain cultures believe that demons can be summoned and controlled, notably also Christianity and Judaism.
Speaker 2:We're really jumping around here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That was a lot of fast facts.
Speaker 1:Because, again, we're going to kind of hyper focus in one specific area. So I wanted to give just to say, to set the scope, that there's a lot of different meaning out there to a lot of different people and we're going to talk about a subset of all of that.
Speaker 2:I understand.
Speaker 1:This episode is not going to be a deep dive into the history of the belief in demons again, which is impossibly large, but rather a focus on cultures and individuals who believed that they could summon demons and how. Also, we have a whole episode on black masses which is more in line with Satanism, and a lot of false accusations and a lot of cases. But the time period kind of overlaps a little bit, so I just wanted to point that out that we do have a lot of other relevant episodes. I'll link them in the description too.
Speaker 2:Are black masses always summoning rituals? No, it's just like praising demons and shit.
Speaker 1:Right, mostly more in line with the devil, and that's kind of a very thin line that I had to navigate when I was researching this, because there's so much out there about people who are trying to summon and make deals with a devil or people who have been accused of that, and there's a lot less about demons. You know, that's that's more of like a very specific group of people. Sure, mostly like people who believe that they're wizards or sorcerers or witches, wizards. Yeah, they layer, they believe that they're magicians and that they can do this magical ritual to call forth the demon.
Speaker 2:You know, I was just thinking yesterday how like women can just walk around and dress like a wizard and everyone's like wow, you're fashion forward. If a man dresses like a wizard, it's like what's going on? What?
Speaker 1:do you mean?
Speaker 2:Like they can wear the big flowy things with the big sleeves, a big gown and just like, wow, someone is dressing, dressing up, but something happened, happened to you no? I was watching movies. You could dress up as a wizard, I know, but then I'm going to get. People are going to be like what's going on? Why are you dressed like that? No one's going to go up to them like why are you dressed like that?
Speaker 1:I think they would, depending on what you're trying to describe. I was wearing a big flowy cloak. Yeah, If you were.
Speaker 2:I think I know you.
Speaker 1:I think people would be like what's up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but if just like a woman at your office, yeah, had a big flowy robe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, People would. I think she would be. It depends. It depends on if it's like fashion forward or not. Yeah, it's fancy.
Speaker 2:Okay, If it's got nice trim. No one's saying shit.
Speaker 1:If the point of this is that you would like to explore this, then I think that you should. I don't think you should be afraid of the judgment of society.
Speaker 2:No, the point is that I feel shackled.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, that's what I'm saying. I think you need to just break free.
Speaker 2:I don't really want to dress like a wizard, I just feel it's unfair that I can't.
Speaker 1:You want the option to yeah you know equal opportunity. I think you do. You just have to be brave enough to take it. You're not going to get arrested for it, so there's nothing stopping you.
Speaker 2:I guess the trade-off is that I could also wear the same thing every day, and no one says shit.
Speaker 1:Alan's uniform of.
Speaker 2:Black pants, black shirt, yeah.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit about Christianity and Judaism. With the introduction of monotheism, it caused all of the old gods to become demons. Demons like Beelzebub appear across Christianity, Judaism and the Testament of Solomon. Since the founding of Christianity there has been a belief that demons can possess humans. It is believed that an exorcism is needed to cast out this possession, While generally it is thought that possession is accidental and not the fault of the person afflicted, there are some Bible passages that have been interpreted by some to mean that possession by a demon can be voluntary.
Speaker 1:And the reason I'm sort of like splitting at this hair is because what we're talking about again is not like can or can't somebody be possessed by a demon, it is are they summoning a demon, Right? That's the lens that we're looking at this through. So I think it's interesting because when you see in a lot of horror films and things somebody goes through an exorcism, it's not usually after that they've done a summoning ritual right, They've just become possessed. But it's interesting to say that there's some passages in the Bible that people think are kind of hinting at voluntary possession, which is more in line with summoning a demon versus like an innocent person or child like Reagan, being possessed against her will.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I mean, I don't know. Half of these like deep Bible interpretations. Like when you read the actual text you're like, really, this is what they've extrapolated from this. All I'm saying is I'm going to be real skeptical.
Speaker 1:That you don't think that that's in the Bible.
Speaker 2:Anytime that there's mention of some people have interpreted this message, this passage in the Bible, to mean this it's like I don't know, sure why not.
Speaker 1:Well, the reason why I phrased it that way is because I think a lot of people care a lot more about the Bible than I do and I think a lot of people can make. We've seen this is the basis of religion that people can make whatever they want out of a passage in the Bible and it can become law and it can become other things, and so it's a sticky thing. So when I look at it I say okay, I can understand why people can think that this is somebody voluntarily summoning a demon, but I know that there's to every one abbey there's a thousand people that have a different interpretation of it. Sure, I am going to quote from Owen Davies book Grimoire's A History of Magic, quote the ancient Jewish people were often viewed as being knowledgeable in magic, which, according to legend, they had learned from Moses, who had learned it in Egypt.
Speaker 1:Among many ancient writers, moses was seen as an Egyptian rather than a Jew. Two manuscripts, likely dating to the fourth century, both of which purport to be the legendary eighth book of Moses, the first five being the initial books in the biblical Old Testament, present him as a polytheist who explained how to conjure gods and subdue demons. End quote. Don't you remember from the story of Passover.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:How Moses went up to Pharaoh to be like, hey, check out my God's power. And he threw his stick down and turned into snakes. Then Pharaoh is like, check it, my wizards can do that. No, he had sorcerers, not wizards. And his sorcerers come out and they all throw their sticks and they turn to snakes and like what else you got? And then he had to like you know, pivot.
Speaker 1:I should read some of this. It's very interesting.
Speaker 2:You can. There's a great documentary on it that's on every year on Passover. It's called the Ten Commandments. There you go, Charlton Heston.
Speaker 1:What is the different sound between a wizard and a sorcerer?
Speaker 2:I'm sure that there is a historical answer to this, but at least in D&D the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer is this Wizards get all their magic through applied learning, it's acquired knowledge, and they're basically like just gifted in the arts from birth. So the meme that pops up is the three spellcasters in D&D are wizards, sorcerers and warlocks. The wizard is like the kid that has to always. Why not Druids and fairies?
Speaker 1:I always cast spells. Yes, it's different.
Speaker 2:The wizard is the kid that has to. He's like top of his class but because he always has to study. The sorcerer is the kid that just gets straight A's without even trying, because he's just a prodigy. And then the warlock is just the kid that's sleeping with the teacher.
Speaker 1:Right. So like one in one case it's learned and another case it's inherited.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and in the third case it's traded.
Speaker 1:Right. So again, I mentioned this, but the Exorcist is sort of, I would say, the pinnacle horror film when it comes to Christian demons. Right, because you have the priest and it's very. You know, it's a very Christian-centric film in its belief.
Speaker 2:Sure, I think the movie's okay. It's kind of overrated, it's not that scary. I think the application of demons is pretty neat, though, so I would like to know more about Pizzuzu.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think that's explored in sequels, but I don't know because I haven't seen the sequels. I would just imagine, because that's like how most of these go like perfect example is Hellraiser that has so many demons in it. But are they demons, I don't know? Kind of they're pretty demonic, but also they're just supernatural beings that are in between realms, right, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's good. Are they demons Like the ancient three? That's what I'm saying here. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But then in the sequels like that's what they all about you go into like the deep dive and the history behind the Xenobytes and Hellraiser. So I just imagine that one of the Exorcist sequels is like a Pizzuzu the early years.
Speaker 1:Well, the demon in the Exorcist Pizzuzu is thought to be based on a book called the History of the Devil from the year 1900 by Paul Karris. So maybe, if you're interested, you could read that book.
Speaker 2:It's from 1900? Yeah, it's going to be lame. I mean, that's always the problem with this. Like so, much of this material is so rock and roll.
Speaker 1:But I will say I've read a lot of. I will say I've read a lot of ancient text on all this stuff in the past few weeks and it's very readable because it's all translated and so even if the language is a little bit heavy like, it's way more accessible than you think it is.
Speaker 2:That's a really good point.
Speaker 1:It's also a short burst of like literally textbooks like how you conjure a fucking demon, so it's not like heavy passages.
Speaker 2:I took a demonology class in college. Yeah, I remember that is like the foreign texts were so much easier to read. It was the old English ones are just like sorry, the English ones that are very, very old, not necessarily old English. Yeah, that were so hard to get through just because they're written in a with addiction that people don't use that makes sense. And I hated it and it's like I just want to hear about these. Like you know, the inspiration behind the demons of Diablo Sure, you know, because all the demons from Diablo are pulled from something.
Speaker 2:This class was just so fricking dry and I'm like how, how could this material be so dry? But it's just because I feel like people just had too much time back on their hands back then because they could have just written it down in like a cool way. But instead they're just like no, no, we're just going to really make this the most methodical, dry piece of literature ever written.
Speaker 1:They didn't have TikTok to take up all of their free time.
Speaker 2:They didn't even have Snapchat.
Speaker 1:That's right. So two other films I want to talk about when it comes to Christianity and demons. One is Rosemary's Baby, which you all know how I feel about. Roman Plansky, however great guy, shitty movie. Shitty movie. No, shitty guy. Good movie, you know what? Shitty guy? Okay movie.
Speaker 2:It's a boring movie.
Speaker 1:But I know people fucking love it despite the fact that he's a terrible guy. But I do want to say, like you know, it is important to the history of cinema in this lens and it has, you know, the big kind of tie into the dabbling with black magic and the dark arts and the summoning of the devil. The other film I want to mention is the Conjuring and the interesting kind of tie into this is that there is a paranormal. They're passed at this point but there was a paranormal investigation slash demonologist couple based in Connecticut called the Warrens that gave us a lot of. They're very controversial but they gave us a lot of the horror films that kind of have this. Because they believe so much in demons and their work, they kind of became these celebrities.
Speaker 1:A lot of the horror films that we have kind of tell their story. So you have Amityville Horror, which is something that they investigated and claimed was demonic. You have the Conjuring house in Connecticut. You have, you know, all of these kind of things that are based on their investigations because they were very fast and loose by saying, oh, demons, it's demons, it's demons. So they're kind of in the paranormal community, thought to be a little bit fraudulent, but anyway, the point is that because of their work, whether fraudulent or not, or exaggerated I would say maybe it's a better word or not the Annabelle stuff, right, all that comes from them, and so those that's like a whole host of films that you could categorize under demonic possession, demonic summoning in some ways, that we should attribute to kind of the again, the potentially fraudulent or exaggerated work of the Warrens, abby.
Speaker 2:The Warrens. They come up all the time. They don't make great movies.
Speaker 1:Well, they don't make movies at all.
Speaker 2:I know, but I'm not a huge fan of all their Conjuring stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, I think the the, that whole franchise, which is massive, after the first few films really becomes trash, like the nun films are so bad. We watched the La Urina film, which was also bad, which was a shame because that legend is worthy of a very cool horror film. But I agree, I think sort of in their practice in life and in the kind of films that they have inspired, it's not great. Also, you know, the Amityville stuff, I think is we don't have like a really good Amityville horror movie and again, that whole case is totally based on nothing, that's it's like a whole hoax.
Speaker 2:But I mean I don't know, there's like 30 something Amityville horror movies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's like what 30 something Conjuring movies yeah.
Speaker 2:And this is this is a talking point. I don't think we ever got the official answer. Is this the is the Conjuring universe the biggest horror film franchise.
Speaker 1:Let's find out right now. The Conjuring universe is the biggest horror franchise, also the highest grossing horror film franchise.
Speaker 2:Yes, but it's. We did talk about that point, and it's not because any of the movies individually are massive, massive earners. They all just there's so many of them, yeah, but they all do well and there's so many.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think it's the biggest. I think it's the highest grossing. I think there's only like 10 films or so in it, according to Wikipedia that I'm looking at right now.
Speaker 2:But I don't know because there's, like so many in Amityville alone, so many in the Conjuring and they're all linked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's all saying the seven movies in the Conjuring universe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no way. We did a deep dive in this a long time ago.
Speaker 1:Regardless, it's a very big film franchise, it's pervasive in the horror community and that Again, like the Amityville stuff, the nun stuff, there's all these sort of offshoots which feed into it.
Speaker 2:I just think it's sort of cheap horror in a way, Just because I was Googling the same thing. Guess what the longest running film franchise of all time is.
Speaker 1:Halloween, oh, film franchise of all time, yep, is it horror.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've talked about it. Yeah, I'll say it's horror. People screamed during the original, not so much than the recent ones. It's King Kong, oh, with a run time of 88 years. Yeah, that makes sense. Number two is Invisible man 86 and a half. Also on this list I have no idea if this is the number one Under longest running, with a whopping 123 films is the Wong Fei Hong series. I don't know what that is. It's a lot of films, though it's a dense series to get into. Wong Fei Hong is a Chinese martial arts master and folk hero, and these are just a slew of 123 Cantonese films.
Speaker 1:Got it Like I wonder how many James Bond films there are all in. I guess that feels a little bit similar, these names?
Speaker 2:are amazing how Wong Fei Hong conquered the two dragons with the five snakes, how Wong Fei Hong and his wife conquered the three rascals. I'm sure something is lost in the translation, but this is great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they sound fun. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about conjuring a demon, which again, can be described, in the systems that we're gonna talk about, as sorcery. The term Goetia is going to come up a lot now, which describes a specific type of sorcery that uses grimoires or spell books and rituals. So my fricking favorite type of magic ritual magic we're getting into it.
Speaker 2:What is the difference between a spell book and a grimoire?
Speaker 1:They're the same. I just said that.
Speaker 2:I know, but no one is gonna be like well, actually.
Speaker 1:No, okay, that's what they are. The term Maleficium refers to sorcery or witchcraft that is being practiced with the intention of causing harm. The term sprang up in medieval Europe, which kind of gives you the sense that dark magic sprang up in medieval Europe, aka black magic. This was one of the charges put forth against the Knights Templar and during witch trials.
Speaker 2:Wait, the Knights Templar got arrested.
Speaker 1:I actually have a whole article on our website that I wrote about that a while ago because it's kind of tied to the why Friday the 13th is a spooky date but there's some, I think, false accusations that were happening there. But that's similar with witch trials. Right Later in the Middle Ages we get words like Hex in Germany, bruja in Spanish and Wicca in English. So because these words are sort of popping out around the Middle Ages, it's just sort of a marker that these interests and these beliefs and the fear of this stuff is kind of also emerging at the same time. Right Grimoires state back to ancient Mesopotamia in the form of clay tablets with inscriptions.
Speaker 1:Quoting from Wikipedia's page on Goetia quote throughout history, various cultures have contributed to magical practices. Early Christianity saw the use of grimoires by certain Gnostic sects, with texts like the book of Enoch containing astrological and angelic information. King Solomon of Israel was linked with magic and sorcery, attributed to a book with incantations for summoning demons. The pseudopigraphic Testament of Solomon, one of the oldest magical texts, narrates Solomon's use of a magical ring to command demons. With the Ascent of Christianity, books on magic were frowned upon and the spread of magical practices was often associated with paganism. This sentiment led to book burnings and the association of magical practitioners with heresy and witchcraft end quote. So again, this is kind of circling back to our thesis statement here, which is, like demons weren't always demons, christianity made belief in any other being's, demons, and the belief in sorcery and magic and all of these things became bad because they weren't the belief in God and Jesus and all of these things.
Speaker 1:Sure, enochian magic is a system of magic created by John D and Edward Kelly during this time again in the Middle Ages. So those are very modern names. Yeah, well, in the Middle Ages, but still, yeah, they are, and they are to thank for the roots of esoteric tradition. Their work was centered around invoking entities and commanding them, though their main focus was invoking spirits and angels. The Enochian system is incredibly intricate and advanced, in full of precise details, which we will see over and over again. With magic systems, it requires precise locations, tools and a deep understanding for the ritual. For anyone familiar with the work of HP Lovecraft, the history of the Necaronomicon had John D as the translator of one of the versions of his mythical book of Forbidden Lore Forbidden.
Speaker 2:Lore.
Speaker 1:So that was just sort of like the essentially that HP Lovecraft named a character after this esoteric magician from the Middle Ages. Sure, the greater and lesser keys of Solomon are texts that were wrongly attributed to King Solomon. The Testament of Solomon is one of the oldest magical texts in existence. It's a Greek manuscript that likely originated in Egypt or Babylonia in the fifth century and 1,000 years after the death of King Solomon. Essentially, the keys of Solomon are compiled from other grimoires and texts.
Speaker 1:One very important thing to note is that the demons from the lesser key are essentially re-skinned spirits from other religions or mythologies, again similar to how pagan holidays have been re-skinned as Christian holidays, which we've talked about a lot on many other episodes, actually, like our SOWIN and YULE episode. I also have a video on Valentine's Day and history of Valentine's Day and all of these three kind of talk about how at one point in time, you had pagan festivals and rituals and those things are now Christmas and Halloween and Valentine's Day. Right, it said that Archangel Michael gave Solomon a magic ring that allowed him to bind demons from hurting anybody, but he used the magic to constrain the demons in jars and put them to work 72 demons, in fact.
Speaker 2:He captured demons, put them into little vessels that he kept and then would sometimes put them to work. How is this not Pokemon?
Speaker 1:Okay, maybe you have a good point. Eventually, he was tempted into worshiping false gods, aka the demons, and lost his favorable standing with God and Michael again, all according to mythology, though alternative stories also say that he captured the demons in a brass vessel and threw it into the sea. When the Babylonians discovered it, they accidentally opened it, not knowing what it was, and unleashed the demons onto the world. The greater key is a grimoire that dates back to the 14th or 15th centuries. It is believed to be a product of renaissance magic. In the 15th and 16th centuries, italy saw a boom of magical belief similar to what we would call in modern day occultism. I'm gonna quote from Gregory W Dawes in the rationality of renaissance magic. Quote both bourgeoisie and nobility in the 15th and 16th centuries showed great fascination with the seven arts magikai, which exerted an exotic charm by their ascription to Arabic, jewish, romani and Egyptian sources. There was great uncertainty in distinguishing practices of vain superstition, blasphemous occultism and perfectly sound scholarly knowledge, or pious ritual. Intellectual and spiritual tensions erupted in the early modern witch craze, further reinforced by the turmoil of the Protestant Reformation, especially in Germany, england and Scotland. The people during this time found that the existence of magic was something that could answer the questions that they could not explain through science. To them, it was suggesting that, while science may explain reason, magic could explain unreason. End quote. That's neat. Yeah, this era also brings us Nostradamus, famous for his ability to predict the future.
Speaker 1:Dr Faustus, aka Faust, a German alchemist and magician who was eventually denounced from the church for being in league with the devil Busted. And again, that's Faust. Right, we all know that story. I don't know it, don't worry, there'll be lots to explore there. But generally during this time there was a lot of discussion, debate and philosophy about religion, witchcraft, magic some for and some against the persecution of these practices Around. This time is also when Tarot went from a playing card game in Italy to a divination tool, so it's a rich time period that birthed many different thinkers and practices that not only still exist to this day, but are incredibly prominent in horror, pop culture and in spiritualism. In a lot of ways, it was kind of like a very dense big bang, if you will, when it comes to magic.
Speaker 2:Speaking of Tarot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's a hierophant? According to the Oxford English Dictionary they know what's up A priest in ancient Greece who interprets sacred mysteries or esoteric principles.
Speaker 2:Cool.
Speaker 1:Seems topical, and it yeah, it is. The lesser key is a grimoire on demonology compiled in the mid 17th century. The text lists out 72 demons of hell in the Ars, goetia, which is the beginning of the grimoire, and a system for invoking 72 demons and allowing the invoker to control the demons. If done properly, it outlines an incredibly specific and intense ritual, including diets and prep time. The demons in the lesser key are not the evil type of demons that we encounter in Christianity or in other religions. In this case, they have their own bespoke attributes which set them apart from each other, and you're supposed to call upon the relevant spirit to make the relevant ask. So it's kind of similar to how some may pray to St Anthony if they lost something right, like he's the patron saint of lost items or whatever.
Speaker 2:Gotcha.
Speaker 1:Like if you call upon a certain demon, you're specifically calling upon that demon for his set of skills.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, everyone likes to hire a specialist, that's right. I mean, yeah, you don't call a task, grab it when you need brain surgery.
Speaker 1:Couldn't have said it better myself, alon and similar to Celtic mythology, the demons in the Ars Goetia have a very specific hierarchy Some are Dukes, some are presidents, et cetera. Some demons appear as humans, others as monsters once they're summoned, and also each demon has its own sigil, which is like a symbol that's assigned to it. I know what a sigil is.
Speaker 1:And, as you might imagine, these symbols are used in the invocation rituals and allow the participant to control the demon. But these demons, also called the Goetic demons, are believed to be bound by God. The ritual that the Ars Goetia outlines involves the participant binding himself first to God in an effort to use God's authority, and then to the demon. So essentially, they use the circle I wish I had this was a visual podcast but the summoning circle that you see in any horror movie. They create a circle. That circle is what they use to commune and be protected by God. Then they create this triangle outside and the sigil of the demon, and that's how they call the demon.
Speaker 1:But essentially, how this works is in this very specific system. Again, there's multiple, but in this system the Lesser Key of Solomon. They are first calling upon God or God-like spirit, god's energy, and saying, ok, I am one with this, I have this authority given to me. So, because all of these demons are still technically bound by God, in this belief, I now can call the demon. So the first part is calling God. Essentially, the second part is calling the demon and then using your authority, granted by God by proxy, to be able to control the demon. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you also need to put some runes.
Speaker 1:So you draw. It's not runes, it's the sigil I mean depends.
Speaker 2:You can use runes. Runes are different, I know they're different, but you can use them sometimes.
Speaker 1:OK, but they're different symbols. Also I thought this was interesting that Hebrew is thought to be connected energetically to a higher language of the angels or of the divine. So just the fact that some of the invocations are in Hebrew sort of unlocks this divine energy, if you will, in this space.
Speaker 2:It was always weird, because when you see a lot of occult imagery, especially affiliated with Satanism or something, there's always Hebrew looking specifically at the Church of Satan I think that's the actual Satanist. One has the pentagram and with the head of Bathime in the middle. On each of the five points of the pentagram is a Hebrew letter and I always thought that was weird, but now it's actually making a lot of sense because all this ties back to the 72 demons of Solomon, who was clearly associated with the Hebrew language.
Speaker 1:It's also just interesting to think about the time when all these things and this has happened over thousands of years but when all these religions and beliefs are melding in a different way than they are now. Right now they seem very clear and different, but they've kind of inspired each other over the years.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, not to mention so many of the little things that have just died out over the years.
Speaker 1:One element from the Lesser Key of Solomon that is incredibly influential to horror is that, again, this protective circle that you cast while summoning, and I'm not going to say it originates there, but it's certainly quite a big part of it. So there's a few horror films that I want to talk about with the Lesser Key of Solomon, and one thing I want to say is that these rituals again, these medieval rituals are so intense and pain-saking that when you see it translated to a lot of modern horror, it's not super interesting. There's one film that we'll talk about that really is kind of like as true to the ritual that we've seen, but in general, of course, for cinema, they have to be adapted in a way that's fresh and new and is interesting to watch. So one film to talk about, which I posted a bit about during the holiday season, is a film called the Sacrifice Game Great game, great game which came out in 2023.
Speaker 1:It was written by Sean Redlitz and Jen Wexler our friends and directed by Jen. It's great. We both love the film a lot, but the thing that's really cool is that you can see how they are inspired by the Lesser Key of Solomon, and I'm not going to talk about this too much because actually spoiler. We have an awesome interview with them that we're going to release as part of this series that we're doing on demonic summoning. But this is kind of like you have some time now before that episode comes out to go watch it, because you'll see how they sort of take that and they translate it in this really cool, modern, totally unique to them way of having like a ritual. That requires a lot but it's interesting to watch and visually it's kind of graphic and violin and it's you know, it's pretty rock and roll.
Speaker 2:Also without getting too into it, because we talked about this extensively on the interview with Sean and Jen. One thing that I didn't really realize until now was I think I liked the world building of the sacrifice game so much because it was grounded in historical texts. It just adds the little sense of I don't know authenticity when you start seeing. You know real demon names, you know quote unquote real, but at least things that originated from a historical text. It's a cool detail.
Speaker 1:It is. Yeah, this next thing I was really excited to learn about. I didn't know this. I always thought that hereditary was just sort of like a pagan, you know, wiccan kind of take on horror, the whole ritual and again spoilers, but the ritual and the God. But in fact Pyman, who is the demon in hereditary, is from the Lesser Key of Solomon. He's a king. And again, the demons in the Lesser Key of Solomon are some are kings, some are dukes. There's a hierarchy to them and he's a king. And in the film he's a king. But like it's all inspired by the Lesser Key of Solomon.
Speaker 2:That's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had no idea. So the film A Dark Song is also one that we have to talk about. It's probably the most true to what some of these rituals looked like. It's not totally true. I've listened to some discourse of people who are really into this or practice these rituals themselves and they said it's certainly not one to one but it's the most accurate film that they've ever seen kind of depict one of these rituals.
Speaker 2:Yes, I feel like they did a very great job of going step by step without actually showing you exactly what to do. Right, Because that's dangerous. I always think about Breaking Bad how you see step by step on how to cook meth but you don't actually know. You don't actually learn how to cook meth from watching the show. Right? The fact that you see seemingly every step. There's just a lot of the in-between that you have no clue. Right, Because, yeah, you don't want to teach these things.
Speaker 1:So the film A Dark Song is actually referencing another system from another book which is very easy to find online called the Sacred Magic of Obermellen and the Mage that's a fun name, yeah. It rounds out the system of the Goetia and adds this element of magic squares, which I'm a little vague on, but it pops up a little bit later. We'll talk about it with occultism, but this is kind of the text that adds that in. So a lot of the modern day occultists use this book, the System of Obermellen, as kind of their guide.
Speaker 2:Is now a good time to talk about summoning circles, Please. I don't have much to say. I'm so intrigued. However, while we were watching A Dark Song, you kept pointing out like oh, this thing is actually from this text and this little detail is from this book. To your point, everything was pulled from historical text and everything has a reason. I kept thinking back to Full Metal Alchemist. It's an anime and manga, but it's all about transmutation, and there is a big climax because the shapes of these transmutation circles have to be so, so precise where the slightest deviation from it can completely ruin it to detrimental effects.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And the big climax is that, over the course of many years, someone built a city where all the streets lined up perfectly to make the giant circle, with all the shapes and all the sigils and everything, in a way to basically sacrifice the entire population of the city to do one big magic act. Holy shit, it's pretty cool, that's super cool, yeah. But yeah, that's all about transmutation and equivalent exchange where, like every talk about having to follow the rules Because if you break any of them you pay very, very heavily.
Speaker 1:Right. The one other system I want to very briefly mention is something called Demon All a Tree, in which everything is exactly the sort of the same as the systems we've talked about and how you summon these demons, with the exception that you don't sort of summon a demon with the intention of putting them to task or using kind of your authority to control them. You're looking for your guardian spirit, if you will, and you create an altar to that spirit, but you're summoning them in a more respectful, peer to peer way. It's just a little bit different and for anyone out there who's a practicing magician, I wanted to mention that.
Speaker 2:So it's like when you summon Respect your demons. It's like when you summon a Pokemon and it's too high level, you don't have the right badge. Right, it's out of control. That's right. Is that what we're talking about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. Generally, the practice of conjuring demons is thought of as a way to put demons to work. Some demons are thought to have trickster energy and can easily sidestep the tasks at hand or manipulate and cause chaos. In other legends they can interact with humans as a proxy for the devil. So it's very similar We've seen from all of the different stories and mythology. When you summon the devil because you're going to ask him for a favor, he might do it, but do it in a way that totally fucks you over. That's the devil's energy and there's some belief that some of the demons kind of have that too. Just because you're asking a demon for X, they might give you X, with a caveat of Y. It's always a little bit sometimes meant to confuse and be clever and like, okay, I'll do this, but you didn't realize the outcome is going to be this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I always kind of disliked it, the whole evil genie approach to it. If you summon a demon with some BTE or big trickster energy and then all of a sudden to fuck you over, I want a sandwich. It's like you've got a sandwich at a thousand miles to your head and it's a bad example.
Speaker 1:We should get some big trickster energy merch. I like that.
Speaker 2:Thanks. Or it's like you want a new car and so it's like, great, you do get a car. But it's like straight up monkey spa where it's because your family dies and you get a settlement and they give you a car.
Speaker 1:Right, right, exactly. That's a great example.
Speaker 2:And then there's the other ones where it's like here's your dark pact that you're going to have to make, here are the rules, you know the price and you have to like build up to like paying that price. But you know it ahead of time. I always just think that's cool, I think it's just mean to just trick them, right, yeah, it's unnecessary.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, you would be a more thoughtful demon. Thank, you.
Speaker 1:So one example I want to talk about quickly is the legend of Faust, because the demon Mephistopheles acts as the devil's agent in some ways. In the late 16th century the name Mephistopheles was introduced to the Faust legends by the Faust chap books. The books are made up of stories about the very real Johann Faust written by an anonymous German author. These books became the main source for the subsequent plays written about Faust. Quoting from Wikipedia, quote although Mephistopheles appears to Faustus as a demon, a worker for Lucifer, critics claim that he does not search for men to corrupt, but comes to serve and ultimately collect the souls of those who are already damned.
Speaker 1:Farnum explains, quote nor does Mephistopheles first appear to Faust as a devil who walks up and down on earth to tempt and corrupt any man encountered. He appears because he senses Faust's magical summons, that Faustus is already corrupt, that indeed he is already in danger to be damned. End quote. So I think that's important because it kind of circles back to our discussion earlier about voluntary possession, where it's like okay, it's not just like that. Demons are hunting out for people to possess or to corrupt or to make deals with. They only come when they sense that you're already corrupt or they sense that you are about to perform some kind of summoning, or you do summon them, right. That that sort of was this belief at the time that they don't just randomly appear, they appear for a reason, right, and you've done something to invoke them in some way.
Speaker 2:I mean sure. Why would they waste their time? You got to go to where your market is right. There's plenty of bad people out there and I'm sure they could just like just scoop, scoop them up instead of like trying to convert the good ones.
Speaker 1:It's like a shift right Between like oh, the devil is praying on the innocent, to like no demons are showing up when there's work to be done, kind of a thing. In the late medieval period in Europe, real belief in witchcraft was on the rise. We all know about the witch hunts and trials both in Europe and the US, but it's important to unpack this briefly through the lens of demonic summoning. Despite a complete lack of proof, while the belief in sorcery and witchcraft was growing, so did a fear of its impact.
Speaker 1:Quoting from Ronald Hutton's book the Wild Hunt and the Witch's Sabbath quote the concepts represent a combination of three older mythological components, all of which are active at night. One a possession of female spirits, often joined by privileged human beings and often led by a supernatural woman. Quote a lone spectral huntsman regarded as demonic, accursed or otherworldly. Three a possession of the human dead, normally thought to be wandering to expiate their sins, often noisy and tumultuous and usually consisting of those who had died prematurely and violently. The first of these has pre-Christian origins and probably contributed directly to the formulation of the concept of the witch's Sabbath. The other two seem to be medieval in their inception, with the third to be directly related to growing speculation about the fate of the dead in the 11th and 12th centuries.
Speaker 2:End quote Okay, this is what I'm talking about Ronald Hutton total snoozefest of an author Like this is some really cool material and, just like you know what, we're going to make it as dry and boring as possible, to just seem like an academic instead of just like seeming cool.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, we're trying not to insult our sources, but I will say so many tales of witch's Sabbaths allude to witches colluding with the devils, specifically versus a demon. But I thought it was important because, from this time period, it's something that comes out of it, and there's a little film, a little film by Robert Eggers called the Witch, which took the country by storm in the 2015. And, of course, that's set in Puritan, you know, colonial US. It's not set in Europe. However, you have kind of this, this sense, right, of this fear of witchcraft and ritual and the summoning of something evil, right, and how that all plays out.
Speaker 2:I don't know when that movie came out and everyone was talking about it and then you and I watched it on like your little 20 inch TV with like bad sound. Yeah, and I didn't. I was not impressed.
Speaker 1:I know we've talked about this many times and then since then I've rewatched it multiple times and I think it's excellent. I do think it deserves a rewatch from you, if nothing else, to look at the fact that they only use practical like fucking candlelight and skylight and moonlight to light the film.
Speaker 2:I will go back one more time. Okay, give it a go. Okay, say hi to Black Phillip Great. I mean, he's great. It's a shame that they didn't do a Black Phillip solo film.
Speaker 1:Maybe they will.
Speaker 2:I hope they do.
Speaker 1:Maybe you just need to keep watching it so they have enough budget.
Speaker 2:I just really want Samuel L Jackson to show up at the end and be like Black. Phillip, I want you to join the Avengers.
Speaker 1:Okay, is that what he does in the Avengers, what I've never seen it.
Speaker 2:You've never seen a Marvel movie.
Speaker 1:He does that in every Marvel movie.
Speaker 2:For all of phase one and lots of phase two.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't really pay super close attention. It's after the credits scene. Oh then, I'm sure every single time.
Speaker 2:Nick Fury shows up and goes to Tony Stark and be like hey, I'm putting together a team, I need Iron.
Speaker 1:Man and you think that Black Phillip is going to be on the Avengers, I think what's his skill set?
Speaker 2:He can look menacing, he can headbutt Okay.
Speaker 1:I mean, he's got powers, doesn't he? Yeah, but what does he do? Not for good? He's evil.
Speaker 2:Okay, so there's the Legion of Doom. Yeah, I know that from Harley Quinn, yeah, okay. So now that's I'm trying to think does Marvel have? I'm sure Marvel has like a bad Avengers, but I don't know. There's like the Legion of Doom is the DC version and it's just like, yeah, the coalition of supervillains, so like I think, black Phillip, I mean. I don't know. He's kind of like a solo act, sure, but I don't know. Seeing him team up with Clayface would be entertaining. Yeah, that's true. What can Black Phillip?
Speaker 1:do? He kills people. How? All right, I'm looking at villains wiki. Okay, his full name is Lucifer. His alias is our Black Phillip. State in the devil goat and king of all. His occupation is listed as ruler of hell. His powers and skill demonic magic, witchcraft, embeamment of powers, possession, manipulation, shape shifting. His hobbies, tormenting humans, corrupting young minds, enabling death. His goals create witches under his influence. His crimes murder, kidnapping, incrimination, brainwashing, madness and madness inducement, use of dark magic, grand theft and and say grand theft, auto grand theft and a marum enslavement, spiritual corruption. Type of villain satanic soul collector. This is the villainsfandomcom entry on Black Phillip.
Speaker 2:I mean I love the idea of this whole profile came after like Black Phillip's onboarding interview.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And they just wrote down in his little, his little file. And now he's getting, you know, arrested because he stole someone's car.
Speaker 1:Grand theft auto and he's bad at driving. He doesn't have any thumbs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's bad. I mean, I know he can. He can change into thumbs. Sure, right, yeah, I don't know if he's a completely changer, if he can just grow arms.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, aka modern occultism. So the hermetic order was a secret society of occultists Alistair Crowley, who was famously part of the order, as well as AE Weight and Pamela Coleman Smith, who created the Rider Weight Tarot Deck, which is the most purchased, which is the most produced deck in the world. Do you have it? I do. It's the first deck I was ever given. Is it good? It's very classic.
Speaker 2:Is it lame?
Speaker 1:It's not lame, it has crazy symbology in it. Symbology, yeah, like all the occultism things they added to it is wild and also sort of hilarious to me that it's become such a widely used deck because of what it kind of represents that people don't realize. Anyway, aldronan Blackwood, sir Arthur Conan Doyle and WB Yeats were also confirmed members. The group adapted the Inokian traditions and sprouted out Crowley.
Speaker 1:Films like Herditary obviously are inspired by occultism and summoning right. So we talked about Herditary, but it's kind of set in a more modern view of all this. That's why it's a good movie. So that group of folks in predatory again spoilers who are performing all of these rituals you know, would be seen, I think, as modern day occultists. Sure, we talked about Renaissance magic, but let's now talk about Alistair Crowley and more modern occultism and its intersection with the summoning of demons. So Crowley was a practitioner of ritual magic and practiced many summonings in his day. In some cases he would try to conjure up his guardian angel. Other times he tried to conjure occultists who had passed, so kind of like summoning the dead, and sometimes, yes, he tried to summon demons.
Speaker 2:How did he?
Speaker 1:do well. Well, let's talk about it. Crowley also used drugs as an aid quote unquote to his magic. What drugs, all drugs, we'll talk about it. But like whatever sort of, he does a lot of traveling. So when he's in different regions he tends to like. When he was traveling through Asia he smoked a lot of opium. He kind of like whatever the local flavor is. So we also have to acknowledge that he was under the influence in a lot of his rituals and he has these very bold claims about what happened. But he was fucked up.
Speaker 2:There I was communing with a devil tripping hard on baby aspirin.
Speaker 1:That would be my memoir. Crowley used the book that we talked about earlier, the book of Auburn Melon's System, and believed it earned him union with Godhead status.
Speaker 2:Whoa yeah a real sane person. That's great.
Speaker 1:He also used sex magic and sacrifices. In 1909, he performed an invocation of the demon Corinzon, which involved blood sacrifice. Corinzon first appeared in the writings of occultist Edward Kelly and John Dee, so again, the Anokian magic folks dating back to the 16th century. After this, the demon also became part of Crowley's religion, Thelema, and I do want to share some of the accounts of this invocation because it's exactly sort of what we talked about today, kind of like a modern take on somebody who actually tried this system. But I will say that the accounts between Crowley and Newberg, who summoned with him, differ greatly. So that's something to keep in mind.
Speaker 1:So, according to witnesses, the event took place in Algeria. The men created a triangle to act as a safety barrier, which is a little bit different than the Lesser Key kind of directions. But some say that Crowley himself was possessed with the demon and others say that the demon manifested outside of Crowley. The triangle is a reference to the instructions in the Lesser Key of Solomon. Once the demon showed up, it said he threw sand over it in order to break the power of the triangle, Like that was pretty easy, yeah, bucket solve.
Speaker 1:Sand, but the pages from Crowley's notebook that talk about this incident are missing and many accuse his account of the events as being unreliable. Despite that, I'm going to quote from Crowley in the book Crowley's Confessions. So this is from his autobiography.
Speaker 2:Are you going to write a book called Abby's Confessions?
Speaker 1:These are my confessions. Quote. The name of the dweller in the abyss is Corazon, but he is not really an individual. The abyss is empty of being. It is filled with all possible forms, each equally inane, each therefore evil in the only true sense of the word. That is meaningless but malignant, and so far as it craves to become real, these forms swirl senselessly into haphazard heaps, like dust devils. In each such chance, aggregation asserts itself to be an individual and shrieks. I am I, though, aware all the time that its elements have no true bond, so that the slightest disturbance dissipates the delusion, just as a horseman meeting a dust devil brings it in showers of sand to the earth. End quote.
Speaker 2:I was just trying to think why Corazon sounds so familiar, and it's because he's a character in Sandman.
Speaker 1:He is. He's also a character in the Shin Megami Ten Sai games. Have you heard of those?
Speaker 2:In passing, but no, I'm not very familiar. It sounds neat.
Speaker 1:He also appears in a 1980 episode of Hammer Horror House called Guardian of the Abyss. But one interesting thing about Crowley is that so again Crowley's from kind of like the, say, the early 1900s as reference. Here he's taking these Inokian and medieval rituals of summoning demons and he's experimenting with them and he's in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and they're creating tarot. So there's a lot of similarities between this time period and this magical Renaissance time period in the Middle Ages to sort of what's happening with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Those kind of become in the timeline of history for us, like these two big points to developing these systems.
Speaker 1:And just in general, when I do a lot of the research that I do into the history of tarot or other things, you end up in both of these time periods. You end up with both of these groups right, renaissance magic groups and then occultism during this Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn period. So they're very rich in kind of like the pervasiveness of the things that they tried. And it's kind of interesting because what Crowley and a lot of these folks are doing is taking most notably. Crowley was just really like this crazy figurehead who had the personality of a cold leader, if you will. And so that's why he became kind of synonymous with all this, because he had the personality to be famous, isn't that always?
Speaker 2:the case.
Speaker 1:And he certainly isn't innocent, and we should not. He has quite a complicated story.
Speaker 2:And a complicated relationship with baby aspirin.
Speaker 1:That's right. But the whole point of this is that they're taking these medieval texts right Lester, kiew, soloman, abramallan's texts, anokian systems and they're experimenting with this in different ways in like the late 1800s, early 1900s, and they're making new versions of them and they're kind of creating shortcuts to them and these other things. And so if you really are interested, you can certainly read a lot more about all of the things that Crowley sort of experimented with, like, again, sex magic, chaos magic. It's quite dense and quite specific, so definitely something that could be many, many, many more episodes if we got into it. But I think it's kind of just this rich time period.
Speaker 1:And so if you're interested, again, as somebody who's like a modern practitioner of ritual magic or you're curious about it, crowley is certainly an interesting place to start. And I will say, if anybody out there is listening, we are not advocating for anybody to try any of these at home. I certainly wouldn't, and I think it can be. Listen, I don't necessarily believe in demons, but I also still think I wouldn't go out into the world creating a ritual that I think might invoke something or disturb something that's far beyond my ability to comprehend. That's kind of how I think about it.
Speaker 2:What is cool to think about?
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:And makes for great movies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can find a lot of people online in different kind of groups on Discord or Reddit or wherever, who do this kind of stuff all the time, and so they have their own versions of some of these rituals that are a little more possible than kind of the intensity of some of the original ones. But they've had experiences and, believe them or not, some of the experiences that they share are quite similar in some ways and they're also quite fascinating to hear about. The stories are like oh, this huge manifestation of a demon appeared in front of me. They're a little bit more vague, like each demon that I summoned from the Lester Key came in a very different way. Like some of you feel the fire breath on your neck but you don't see anything. Some of you see a glimmer of an image of where that god or demon might have lived. So it's very, very different and bespoke and fascinating to kind of dive into all of that.
Speaker 2:I mean, I've always felt a connection to summoning. Every time I'm playing a game that lets you build a class, I usually go for the summoner build. It's just pretty fun. You get to call in these things and they do the old tasks for you and you can have all these friends.
Speaker 1:It's great Invocation is very sexy in a video game or in a movie for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just when you have to pay the price of like. Oh yeah, so you're going to have to, like you, summon three demons. Ok, that's going to be three limbs, please.
Speaker 1:Right. I think that's a good point, because even if also the thing to say is like, even if some of these people say, ok, I summoned a demon successfully, this happened, I asked for this and it worked, but then in three years, this other thing happened, right, and it's like, it's the sense of like, it's not linear, like you could be punished as a kid because you summoned a demon as an adult.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting In your lifetime.
Speaker 1:It was predetermined. You know, it's that kind of stuff that can be really interesting.
Speaker 2:So this comes from spawn mythology, but something that I always found very cool is that the demons in wherever because there's a few different places in spawn, but specifically the ones in hell. They don't have like long term memory. So what that means is that every day they wake up and they go and torture and do all the boiling pits, ripping people apart. They're never going to get sick of it, because it's for them it's the very first time, every single time, and because they just don't experience time in the way that humans do.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:I thought that was neat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is neat. So I think I guess the big takeaways from this episode One demons and Pokemon not so different. Two, demons and spirits not so different that all you know the belief in a lot of these divine powers is complicated and flawed outside of quote unquote God right, you know from Christianity and Judaism, and if you're going to do it, practice safely.
Speaker 2:Last takeaway is there's a very big missed opportunity that we've never got to see the Avengers fight Black Philem.
Speaker 1:Right, that's an important point as well, that'd be great.
Speaker 1:That'd be great. In my research I came across a book by Ed Simon called Pandemonium. In the book Simon talks about how pointless it is to argue about the actual existence of demons. It misses the point in a lot of ways, which is the impact that that belief has had on people and the metaphor of demons. So Ed Simon outlines seven principles of what he calls demon poetics, which I'm going to read now.
Speaker 1:One whether demons exist or not, people's experience of them absolutely exists. Two the demonic is a network of metaphors, symbols and images that define the diabolical. They shift and interact with each other in different ways across centuries. Three as symbols, demons can mean variable and often contradictory things. Four there is no clear distinction between categories of the ascetic and the occult, and the demonic. Poetics is an interpretive frame that understands the literary and the magical as fundamentally the same thing. Five some demons are always more symbolically ascendant in a given epoch. Six demons exist at the crux of the transcendent, the numinous, the sublime. They are by definition evil, but they are also, by definition, an aspect of the sacred. There is something in the core of being that encompasses both the divine and the diabolical, but our language is to describe it as always, contingent Seven. A history of demonology is, by necessity, a history of the world. I thought this was a nice sort of way to round out the episode today.
Speaker 2:Yes, also, I do want to point out that at least the copy of pandemonium that I was looking at is full illustration. So each one is like you're flipping through looking at all the different demons and everything. It's like an encyclopedia of these, but there's cool pictures. All these demons look real cool.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, they really do. But kind of the point of Simon here that I interpreted as is that regardless of whether or not we individually believe in demons, we can all agree that what they represent is incredibly powerful and important. I'm going to quote one more time from Ed Simon's book. Quote demons are powerful metaphors. In Lucifer we have the symbol of unbridled pride, in Azazel the intermixing of good and evil, in Mollach the horrors of rapacious consumption. And of course, from a literal perspective, one need not believe that there is a bat-winged entity in the bowels of the earth or that go and bullheaded deities stalk our nighttime. End. Quote Again next episode we're so thrilled to bring Sean Redlitz and Jen Wexler on to talk about their film so the sacrifice game.
Speaker 1:Jen also directed a film called the Ranger, which I think some of you might be aware of. So watch both of those films in anticipation of the next episode if you haven't seen them, because they are great, they're fun. She is such a fun filmmaker and I'm really particularly excited about this next interview because we talk so much about the history of horror and then we interpret OK, these horror tropes came from this thing all the way thousands of years ago and that's interesting, but it's kind of like when we talk to Jen and Sean, we hear a bit about the other side of that, how the filmmakers that are creating horror are inspired by these tropes, and so it's kind of telling the other side. So I really like it for a lot of reasons, but I think they're fascinating to talk to and we're really excited to share that with you guys.
Speaker 2:You said it great.
Speaker 1:As always. Thank you guys so much for being here and we will talk to you very, very soon. I hope you learned something new and I hope, if you take anything into practice, that you do it safely or don't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't do it at all, don't do it.
Speaker 1:Stay away from demons or do it.
Speaker 2:And put it on YouTube.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but don't tag us. You can tag us, that's fine, bye.
Speaker 2:Bye Fourier.