Ozymandias and Harriet: Homunculi, Androids, and Owls

And you, poor creatures, who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?  -- Arthur Frayn/Zardoz

Yahweh 

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

          Genesis 2:7

"Adam" literally means "son of red earth."  A man made of clay.  God shaped him, blew into his nose, and then "poof!"  Ecce Homo!

According to some traditions, Lucifer refused to bow down before God's newest creation, and for his disobedience and his pride, he was cast out of Heaven.

Adam's first wife Lilith was also created from dust, and in some traditions fashioned from the same ball of clay as Adam.  She, like Lucifer, was quarrelsome, refused to obey Adam, and was thus expelled (or left of her own accord) from the Garden of Eden.  

Adam = Incel Prime? 

Lilith's origins are found in Sumerian mythology, where she is sometimes depicted as an evil spirit, or a witch, demon, and even -- perhaps -- as a goddess.  Lilith lore is rich and varied and we regret that going into her story more closely is not within the scope of this post.  

One day....

The Akkadian word lilu is related to the Hebrew word lilith in Isaiah 34:14, which is thought to be a night bird....In Hebrew-language texts, the term lilith or lilit (translated as "night creatures", "night monster", "night hag", or "screech owl") first occurs in a list of animals in Isaiah 34. (Wikipedia)

The Burney Relief (1800-1750 BCE)
By Gennadii Saus i Segura - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126738193

The Burney Relief may or may not be a representation of Lilith.  The identification of the figure as Lilith is based on the aforementioned descriptions of her in Isaiah, as well as translations of her name.  But, as we have seen, translations of her name vary from say, "night hag" to "screech owl."  Any identification of this relief as a depiction of Lilith is thus debatable, and current scholarly consensus is that she is not Lilith but Inanna/Ishtar.  Consider the following:  

The "screech owl" translation of the King James Version is, together with the "owl" (yanšup, probably a water bird) in 34:11 and the "great owl" (qippoz, properly a snake) of 34:15, an attempt to render the passage by choosing suitable animals for difficult to translate Hebrew words. (Wikipedia)

Basically, they didn't know the meaning of some Hebrew words, so they chose "owl."  The KJV version of 34:15 uses "great owl" but the word qippoz actually means snake.  Given the adventures in the Garden of Eden, it's more appropriate.  Many depictions of Lilith have her embracing a large serpent, as in Collier's famous eponymous painting from 1887.

Anton LaVey

How fitting that creating artificial life-forms was a latter-day obsession of Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey.   Lucifer refused to bow to God's creation, so why would Lucifer's priest not want to do the same and try to equal God?  

LaVey found creating artificial "companions" important enough to make it Point 4 in his Pentagonal Revisionism: A 5-Point Program, a manifesto which 

....reflects attitudes which allow others to decide whether they wish to align themselves with Satanism or not. Each is necessary for Satanic change to take place.

Here's how he introduces it. 

4. Development and production of artificial human companions

The forbidden industry. An economic “godsend” which will allow everyone “power” over someone else. Polite, sophisticated, technologically feasible slavery. And the most profitable industry since T.V. and the computer.

Link  (CoS)

The actual text is a kind of "how to" manual, with tips and suggestions, as well as criticism of sexual dolls.  I suppose at the time, the only game in town were those ridiculous inflatable dolls, suitable more for a prank than a shag.  I wonder how he'd feel about Real Dolls?  LaVey's text is about more than a simple sex toy, but clearly, when one thinks of creating an artificial companion subject to one's authority, the "incel inside" is bound to kick in among many a frustrated male.  

Personally, the more "life-like" those Real Dolls get, the creepier they become, a la the uncanny valley.  As my ex-wife once noted, sex with such a doll is akin to necrophilia, the ultimate domination over a female "partner." A powerless female form, reduced to an unmoving body. This company has existed now for years and put its first doll on the market in 1996.  They cost thousands of dollars. 27 fnord years and counting. 

Interesting quote from founder Matt McMullen in an interview with Haaretz: "Sex robots will be a great boon to society. There are millions of people out there who cannot establish good relationships."

LaVey doesn't deny the sexual component of creating "gynoids," but he still a seems more into the power relationship, and playing God....

The taboo against androids for companions has persisted largely due to the Frankensteinian or Pygmalionistic "imitation of God" trauma. 

**** 

In today's world the creation of replacement or supplementary human beings is the most Satanic activity possible. This is not meant as a replacement for the philosophy of Satanism as outlined in The Satanic Bible. It is a contemporary vehicle for it.

**** 

I have great respect for those who pioneer their own artificial human companions, crude as they might initially be. They will have come a small step closer to playing God and creating man or woman according to their desired image. With a creative outlet as cloaked in age-old taboo as this, innovation may now run rampant -- more so than any artform man has yet known.

The bizarre twilight world of the ventriloquist, the puppet-master and the dollmaker can perhaps be understood through other than the minds of psychologists. The acceptable schizoid element in all of us -- the one that selects our mates -- has a fresh, new, open portal to pass through. Through surrogates the race will survive.

 Eldon Tyrell

In Blade Runner, Eldon Tyrell, -- director of the company which creates the "replicants" (androids) which protagonist Detective Deckard is charged with "retiring" -- demonstrates the quality of his craft by showing Deckard an artificial owl.

In Blade Runner 2029, a comic book, Tyrell buries an owl on his family property and wonders if he can “beat death.” In a Blade Runner video game, Tyrell creates a pathogen, deadly to replicants, code named ”Night Owl” (recall those translations of Lilith).  In the Blade Runner 2019 comic, Tyrell has an owl he calls “Athena.”

Robert Mercer

Real-life billionaire and early AI researcher, Robert Mercer

....dubbed his house the Owl’s Nest. Owls seem to be something like a familiar for Mercer. He’s commissioned a succession of yachts, all called Sea Owl, the latest of which stretches to 203 feet.  At the Owl’s Nest, visitors pass through pillars crowned by a pair of owl statues, their wings outstretched as if taking flight.

         Bloomberg

Could Tyrell be inspired by Mercer, or is it simply a coincidence? As a symbol of wisdom, the owl is not exactly obscure.  

One shouldn't overstate Mercer's involvement in AI. It seems to be one of many computer-related projects with which he has been involved, and he seems to have been more interested in using computers to make himself rich rather than make artificial life.

This talk of billionaire power brokers and owls cannot but evoke the Bohemian Grove.  The Grove's symbolism is rife with owls, and a giant owl is the central figure in the opening ceremony (or ritual?) at their annual encampments.

Here are two articles on the [Bohemian] Grove 

• Owl of Wisdom: Illuminati, Bohemian Club, Schlaraffia, James Gordon Bennett Jr.
• Bohemian Grove: Moloch, Moles and Rituals 

We at LoS have ourselves already spilled a lot of virtual ink over owls and the Grove....

In a brief exchange of comments on one of his articles, researcher Terry Melanson writes: 

I find it weird that Masonry doesn’t really use the owl and never has. A missed opportunity, esoterically-wise. I like the work you do at Laws of Silence on all these subjects. Surprisingly I have friendly relations with Masons, mostly because I don’t try and bullshit or fabricate.

It’s also super interesting that Mercer is obsessed with owls and that conspiracists totally overlooked it. When [a friend] told me about Mercer and owls I immediately thought of this post I did many moons ago. There a cybernetic angle to it, which Mercer is all-too familiar with.

A Strange Metallic Plaque with Cybernetic Occult Symbolism 

This provenance of the plaque discussed below is unknown, but grok, if you will, the symbols Melanson describes:

There’s quite the variety of symbols, culled together in a single theme. Amidst circuitry and technical specs, the owl of wisdom is present; an all-seeing eye within a downward-pointing triangle; a neuron seemingly attached to a circuit; a pentagram in some sort of feedback loop; the Panta Rhei [“everything is in a state of flux”] of Heraclitus is mentioned, and so is cybernetics founder Norbert Wiener’s Gott & Golem, Inc. [God and Golem, Inc.: A comment on certain points where Cybernetics impinges on Religion].

The neuron attached to a circuit, and the evocation of the golem....hmm.  To what degree is this symbol-rife plaque a totem to the creation of either bio-mechanical interface, or artificial life?  A golem....

James Gordon Bennet

What is it with rich men and owls?  The Bohemian Grove, Robert Mercer...and then there's James Gordon Bennett.  Like Mercer, Bennett was really into owls.  He even planned for a mausoleum that would have risen to 465 feet tall, in the form of an enormous owl. 

Bennett seems to have harboured an enthusiasm for owls for much of his life, an obsession that only seems to have grown over time. He began keeping live owls in his offices, he wore owl-themed cufflinks and even painted owls on the prow of his beloved yacht, the Lysistrata. He insisted an owl was printed on the masthead of the New York Herald and his newspapers carried articles and editorials arguing for the protection of the birds. When in the 1890s the Herald moved from ‘Newspaper Row’ in Lower Manhattan to a site in Midtown (now known as Herald Square), Bennett asked his friend and drinking partner, Stanford White, to design the new headquarters. Bennett unsurprisingly stipulated that plenty of owls should adorn the edifice.  (Dave Castleton's blog)

That plaque Terry wrote about is something I’ve never seen before. Maybe it’s just a unique work of art?  But the cybernetic angle, hmmm....When I wrote about the Tyrell's replicants, I thought of Anton Lavey’s later obsession with androids. In his “Den of Iniquity” he created a life-sized scene using mannequins to represent human depravity.  He spoke of that as being the model; the real goal would be to have androids instead. Converting dead into living matter.  Like Frankenstein.  Playing God.

In the Shelley's novel, the creature Dr. Frankenstein creates is compared to Adam, and the creature compares himself to Lucifer:  "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel."   That is, he who refused to bow before Adam.  That fear of artificial life is a recurring theme which doesn't require deep elucidation. From Metropolis to Hal, to Skynet, we fear what we may yet create.

The epigraph of the 1818 edition reads:

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?

I evoke Frankenstein, but isn't Pinocchio a similar idea; the puppet become living boy?  Or the Gingerbread Man?  I hadn't thought about the golem at first.  

A golem is a creature from Jewish folklore, created from clay, and brought to life by incantations and rituals.  The most famous legend is that of the Golem of Prague, made by 

the late 16th-century Rabbi Loew, who created a golem out of clay from the banks of the Vltava River and brought it to life through rituals and Hebrew incantations to defend the Prague ghetto from antisemitic  attacks and pogroms. (Wikipedia)

The golem -- named Josef -- actually had powers beyond human capabilities:  he could summon the dead and turn invisible.  Rabbi Loew usually "deactivated" Josef on Friday so as not to violate the Sabbath  One day, Loew forgot to shut Josef down, and then feared his creation would desecrate the Sabbath.  

Jesus caught flak for healing on the Sabbath.  He replied that "the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."  I.E. don't let someone die because healing on the Sabbath isn't allowed.  New Covenant stuff.  But to observant Jews, it's a big deal.  Rabbi Loew was pretty keyed up.  

Another variation has the golem falling in love, and the becoming violent upon being rejected.  Should have bought him a Real Doll.  In some accounts he went on a murderous rampage.  Hmm.  The golem may have been the world's first incel.  Obey, women, or be cast out.  Molded by Lilith myths?  In the end Rabbi Loew was able to immobilize the golem, whose body fell to pieces, pieces which were then locked away in the synagogue's attic, where they could be restored to life again....if needed....

Islam and Judaism are iconoclastic; drawing or sculpting human images is generally forbidden, as it is the province of God alone to create human likenesses.  Christianity has not been exempt from the impulse, and has experienced sporadic and often violent eruptions of iconoclastic fervor.  

Protestantism, while not entirely devoid of icons, is certainly far more sparing in the use of representations and imagery in churches than Catholicism.  Perhaps the iconoclastic impulse relates to the Great Chain of Being, which precludes the need for intermediaries in order to contact the angelic realms, intermediaries for whom images are created to honor them and facilitate their assistance.  Or perhaps it results from the same wariness about creating human images that makes tales of creating life so rife with negative consequences.

A few years ago on a family visit to the Cave of Niaux, the guide explained that in the cave paintings of this system, one finds bison, mammoth, antelopes, but never human images.  Why?  We have no answer.

Adam was initially created as a golem (גולם) when his dust was "kneaded into a shapeless husk."  Like Adam, all golems are created from mud by those close to divinity, but no anthropogenic golem is fully human. Early on, the main disability of the golem was its inability to speak. (Wikipedia)

Tales of the golem date from the Middle Ages to the 19th century; some commentators have explicitly linked the theme of hubris found within Frankenstein to that of these tales.  

A golem-like Yiddish and Slavic folk tale about the "Clay Boy" is described as a mixture of elements of the golem and the Gingerbread Man, where a lonely couple makes a child out of clay, with disastrous or comical consequences.

In one common Russian version, an older couple, whose children have left home, make a boy out of clay and dry him by their hearth. The Clay Boy comes to life; at first, the couple is delighted and treats him like a real child, but the Clay Boy does not stop growing and eats all their food, then all their livestock, and then the Clay Boy eats his parents. The Clay Boy rampages through the village until he is smashed by a quick-thinking goat. (Wikipedia)

The creation of life from clay is something found throughout the world, as evidenced by this list.  If I had to start this post over, I'd start with this list.  As it is I started with what I know.  But from Europe to the Fertile Crescent, to Africa, Asia, North and South America, Polynesia....All of humanity yields legends about humanity being shaped from clay, mud, or soil.  Perhaps a way to comprehend how out life-giving sustenance grows from the land?

In the Clay Boy and many golem stories, as in Frankenstein, the artificial life form often turns on its creators.  Even a superficial review of cinema reveals the same fears about modern golems:  2001, Alien, Metropolis, Terminator, Big Bug, Star Tek: The Motion Picture, Ex Machina, Tron, The Matrix.... 

As The Gid says "There must be a bazillion movies films where AI takes over."  Indeed.

The Gid also mentions Chucky as a malevolent golem.  I'd agree; though not AI, the theme of an evil doll come to life must also feature in a bazillion, or at least a gazillion films.  I suppose many of these dolls are possessed, but in others, the doll has somehow been brought to life.  In fact, don't the geeks in Weird Science bring to life a Barbie doll that takes them on rollicking adventures beyond the comfort zone?  If I recall, this film uses the Hollywood Frankenstein "It's alive!" type animation scene; but does their creation qualify as a golem?

Is the Current Golem AI?

If the current golem is AI, the same fears of losing control of it abound as in traditional folklore, and they have abounded since its infancy, even before it was born.  One can say the original fear of AI per se is rooted in the fear of industrialization.  The French Saboteurs and English Luddites were worried about the loss of more than their jobs, but a way of life.  Chaplin's Modern Times satirizes the mechanization of daily life resulting from industrial capitalism, the Taylorism of everyday life.  Metropolis  goes so far as to put an anthropomorphic entity at the center of the dismal industrial web; isn't its Molech basically a robot AI?

In one of my favorite films, Clash of the Titans (1980) Zeus takes clay figures and breathes onto them and they begin to move. He isn't exactly bringing the figurines to life, but he is controlling the actions of the lives they depict.  Aren't these a bit then, like Adam?  What makes this film more relevant to this post is the automaton that serves as a guide for the hero, Perseus.  That automaton?  A golden owl!  Zeus commands Athena to send her owl Bubo, but instead she commands Hephaestus to make the automaton.

In a discussion about German clubs that may have had links to the Bohemian Grove, we had an opportunity to look at the Schlaraffia; their mascot is the eagle owl, aka Bubo bubo.  Astute readers will recall that Melanson's article (link above near the Melanson quote) on Bennett and owls also discusses...Schlaraffia.  And recall that owl Tyrell shows off?  It's an Eurasian eagle owl.

So, I found it appropriate to ask Chat GPT to write me something about this topic, so I gave it some parameters. I should definitely include its response:

Certainly, I will do my best to address the complex topics you've raised and tie them together into a cohesive post.

The creation of Adam and the golem have both been seen as stories of creation and the birth of intelligent life. In the biblical story of Adam, God creates the first man from the dust of the earth and breathes life into him. Similarly, the golem of Jewish folklore is a creature formed from mud or clay and brought to life through a ritual involving the Hebrew word for truth, "emet," written on its forehead. Both stories explore the idea of bringing life to inanimate matter and the potential consequences of doing so.

In the Blade Runner franchise, the character of Tyrell is a brilliant scientist who creates Replicants, artificial beings that are nearly indistinguishable from humans. Like the golem, the Replicants are created in the image of their human creators, and they possess a measure of intelligence and self-awareness that raises ethical questions about the nature of life and the value of non-human beings.

The connection to AI researcher Robert Mercer is less clear, but it's possible to draw some parallels between his work in artificial intelligence and the creation of the golem or the Replicants. Mercer is known for his work in natural language processing and machine learning, which involves teaching machines to understand and respond to human language. This could be seen as a kind of "creation" of intelligence, similar to the creation of the golem or the Replicants. 

The use of owl imagery in the [it means Blade Runner] franchise and Mercer's love of owls is an interesting connection. Owls are often associated with wisdom and knowledge, and they have been used as symbols of intelligence and insight in various cultures throughout history. In the AI [BR] franchise, the character of Eldon Tyrell has a pet owl that serves as a kind of mascot for his company, suggesting that he values knowledge and intelligence above all else. Mercer's love of owls may reflect a similar fascination with intelligence and the pursuit of knowledge.

The connection to James Gordon Bennett's love of owls is less clear, but it's worth noting that Bennett was a wealthy newspaper publisher who was known for his eccentric behavior. His love of owls may simply have been a personal quirk, rather than a symbol of any particular philosophical or ideological viewpoint.

The use of owl imagery in the Bohemian Club and Schlaraffia is also interesting, as both organizations are known for their secretive and exclusive membership. Owls are often associated with mystery and hidden knowledge, which may be why they are used as symbols by these organizations.

The use of puppets and artificial life in stories like Pinocchio and the Gingerbread Man can also be seen as related to the themes of creation and artificial intelligence. In these stories, the characters are brought to life through magical means, but they struggle to navigate the complexities of the world and to understand their own identity. This could be seen as a metaphor for the challenges of creating artificial life and the ethical questions that arise from doing so.

In conclusion, the stories of Adam and the golem, as well as the Blade Runner franchise and the work of AI researcher Robert Mercer, all explore the themes of creation, intelligence, and the potential consequences of bringing inanimate matter to life. The use of owl imagery in these stories and organizations may reflect a fascination with knowledge and the pursuit of hidden truths. The use of puppets and artificial life in stories like Pinocchio and the Gingerbread Man may also be seen as related to these themes, as they explore the challenges of creating intelligent life and the ethical questions that arise from doing so.

 And that's not a bad summation at all.

FIN

Post Scriptum

How odd that as I was summing all this up and addressing some issues raised by The Gid, he came across the following article:

Stanford researcher examines earliest concepts of artificial intelligence, robots in ancient myths

Epimetheus and the birth of Pandora, Athenian red-figure amphora C5th B.C., Ashmolean Museum

Classics scholar Adrien Mayor speaks of what are essentially robots that appear in literature as early as 700 BCE.  What is especially germane to this post is an early tale of Pandora, which bears a long citation:

The myth of Pandora, first described in Hesiod’s Theogony, is another example of a mythical artificial being, Mayor said. Although much later versions of the story portray Pandora as an innocent woman who unknowingly opened a box of evil, Mayor said Hesiod’s original described Pandora as an artificial, evil woman built by Hephaestus and sent to Earth on the orders of Zeus to punish humans for discovering fire. [Hints of Lilith, notes of Eve?]

Maybe this is a case of interpreting the past through the accumulated bias against artificial life, or perhaps this accumulated bias comes from ancient fears, perhaps the fears that led Magdalenian humans to refrain from depicting humans on their walls?  Note that Pandora is often said to have been created, like Lilith, from the earth.  She is also the first woman. What is different is that the chaos she unleashed was intentional....

It could be argued that Pandora was a kind of AI agent,” Mayor said. “Her only mission was to infiltrate the human world and release her jar of miseries."

She adds:

“Not one of those myths has a good ending once the artificial beings are sent to Earth,” Mayor said. “It’s almost as if the myths say that it’s great to have these artificial things up in heaven used by the gods. But once they interact with humans, we get chaos and destruction."

Ouija Board, Ouija Board

BOO!

Here's another little anecdote for your reading pleasure.  When I was in High School I became very interested in the occult.  I still have a handful of paperbacks I bought at that time.  Gavin and Yvonne Frost's The Magic Power of Witchcraft, Eden Grey's Mastering the Tarot, The Satanic Bible, Necronomicon, etc.  Lightweight shit but at the time I felt it was something dangerous to even have in the house.  I still occasionally read the Tarot cards I bought during this period (Rider-Waite, natch!).  But I didn't bring another relic of that time with me when I moved to France.  Somewhere back at my mom's house, packed in with a bunch of my old junk, is a Parker Brothers Ouija board.

Perhaps the most mysterious thing about the Ouija board (except why we pronounced it "wee-gee") is that Parker Brothers still makes this thing.  People are genuinely scared of these pieces of cardboard and plastic and I'm surprised Parker Brothers risks getting boycotted over something so widely reviled and feared.  My own experiences with them has been less than overwhelming.

Except once.

Would you work for me?

A friend and I, a budding Catholic occultist, decided to try and contact something one afternoon using the accursed board.  To help facilitate the process, we lit an incense cone and then four candles, one in each corner of my room, corresponding to the corners of the board.  We sat in the center of the room, placed our hands on the planchette and began asking it questions.  Eventually, the planchette began to move.

Is there a spirit present. Yes.

Are you in the room?  Yes.

Can you prove it?  Yes.

How?  No answer.

Can you put out one of the candles?  Yes.

Which one?  The candle moved towards my right, at the bottom of the board.

We waited.  Nothing happened.

Should we concentrate on the candle to help you?  Yes.

Still nothing.  After a few minutes, we gave up.

Just as we were lifting our hands from the planchette, we both nearly jumped to the ceiling as a candle sizzled and popped, one might say violently.  Our heads jerked in unison to look at the candle, which was kind of sparking and doing a jig, a good 6 or so feet from where we sat.  It was, of course, the candle to which the board had pointed.

Hearts pounding, we looked at each other, then back at the candle, which at this point had settled down.  I got up and walked towards it.  As I approached, I reached out my hand and the flame simply died, as if it had been sucked into the wick.  It didn't flicker as if it had been blown out and when the flame was gone, it didn't smoke.

Shaken, we packed up the Ouija board and left the room.

So at this point, you might expect me to be a believer.  Alas, I am not.

How can this be so? you might ask.  Wasn't this proof?

Occam's Razor

Nope.  Later, I recalled that the night before I had lit the candle, but had extinguished it not by blowing it out, but by spraying it with a spritzer I used to water plants.

It's clear to me now that what had happened is that a drop of water had cooled some of the wax and become trapped inside it, a ball of water encased at the bottom of the waxen pool which then cooled and hardened above it.  As the candle burned away this wax, the drop of water become hot until the point it boiled and exploded, thus the pop and spark.  The water then entered the wick, which only burned a few seconds more until this damp part of the wick extinguished the flame in such an strange-seeming manner.

So, for a moment, I was a bit frightened by something unexplainable, seeming physical proof that a spirit had done what it said it would, that is to say, put out the candle it indicated.  I soon remembered what I'd done and the mystery was explained.

For me, whenever I hear a convincing tale of ghosts, UFO's and ESP, things of this sort, I always think of this Ouija experience, that behind every unexplained event lies a perfectly rational explanation.  I keep an open mind nonetheless, but I am certainly not a believer.  Just because we cannot think of or find an explanation for paranormal phenomena, it doesn't mean there isn't one.  It doesn't mean there is one, either.  But the burden of proof is on those who believe.

Controlled experiments in dowsing, Zener cards and Ouija boards invariably show that the results are always statistically consistent with random guessing.  A veterinarian friend of mine once told me that a professor told her class about a pain relief experiment on humans using aspirin (or perhaps paracetamol, I'm not sure which), a placebo and acupuncture.  What researchers found was that the success rate for all three was statistically the same.  Which means that acupuncture works just as well as an aspirin.  Which indicates, to me anyway, that a person's expectation of success is a potent factor in pain relief.  If we believed rubbing a feather on our foreheads is an effective headache cure, it would work....at least as well as an aspirin works.

Possessed in Mexico

I remembered this story while reading about three American kids who were hospitalized after playing with a Ouija board in Mexico. Minutes into the game one of them began growling and thrashing about, in a trance. The other two began hallucinating after experiencing blindness and deafness.

According to doctors

"They had involuntary movements and it was difficult to transfer them to the nearest hospital because they were so erratic.

It appeared as if they were in a trance-like state, apparently after playing with the Ouija board.

They spoke of feeling numbness, double vision, blindness, deafness, hallucinations, muscle spasm and difficulty swallowing."

He added that whether the trio were really possessed, or had simply convinced themselves that they were, was not for doctors to comment on.

So, they were either faking it or this is a case of collective hysteria. I also wonder if the trio had taken too many magic mushrooms. Their symptoms sound like sensations that can be produced during a strong psilocybin trip. Come to think of it, it also sounds a lot like what a friend told me about his experience with Datura and what other friends have told me regarding ketamine. Never having tried these latter two, I cannot say. Their symptoms could easily have been created by the drug and their minds' attempts to deal with what was happening to them, influenced by their own beliefs about the results of using a Ouija board: possession.

Dose, Set and Setting

Even experienced occultists sound dire warnings about messing with Ouija boards and the internet is rife with tales, real or invented, about weird things happening with their use.  A 2012 survey of American registered voters indicated 57% of those polled expressed a belief in demonic possession.  Even given that surveys are imperfect tools, we can still imagine a good many people believe in possession.  More educated people tend to vote more; so among the rest of the population, the non-voting part, we could expect a corresponding increase in less-educated people, and thus a probably even higher level of belief in possession.

Interestingly, even a study of the Bible reveals that "victims of demon-possession appear to be from the less well-educated and lower socio-economic ranges of Jewish and Gentile society".  This may explain why these polls show Republicans have significantly higher rate of belief in possession than Democrats, as Democratic states also tend to be more highly educated.  Which, as Business Insider points out, doesn't mean that education creates Democrats, but that liberal states tend to spend more on education and thus, have a more highly-educated citizenry.

So, the point of all this, is that these kids almost certainly weren't possessed, but their socio-economic status and their milieu helped create the conditions that led them to think they were.  Unless they were faking it, their expectations were strong determining factors in the outcome of their intoxicated experiment with the Ouija Board.  That and the fact they were tripping balls.  Timothy Leary said three things influence the result of any drug experience: set, setting and dose.  This would be a textbook-worthy case study to show how Leary's theory played out in actual subjects.

Penn and Teller do an interesting show on the Ouija Board as part of their Bullshit! series.  One thing they do is turn is 180° after participants are blindfolded.  As one would expect, the planchette continues to go where users expect "Yes" and "No" to be....

 

I told you so

OK, I feel vindicated now. Some enterprising journalist visited one of the possessed, a girl in the rural Mexican village where she, an orphan, resides with her guardians.  Apparently the area has a strong tradition of shamanism and her guardians advised her to use the shamanic drug and the board to contact her dead parents. The drug: Brugsmansia, aka Angel's Trumpet. In other words, Datura.  (Honest folks, I came to this conclusion before I read it in the article I cite in this paragraph). Hard to imagine a more ideal set of parameters that would lead a kid to believe they were being possessed. Dead parents and one would imagine a strong desire to contact them, an adult-sanctioned recommendation that drugs and Ouija boards could achieve this, community belief in shamanism and the spirit world....

One of the guardians is still worried the kid may still be possessed, for you see, despite the fact the kids had taken a drug known to produce the effects they experienced, the adults around them still believe they were in fact possessed by demons. Which is probably a greater threat to her mental health than any lingering effects of her very bad trip. Superstition and belief in the occult can be toxic and dangerous, as we have seen with the bad psychology surrounding Satanic Ritual Abuse and the whole idea of repressed and recovered memories. I indirectly addressed this in a recent article about The Satanic Temple. Seriously, these kids, orphans no less, are surrounded by people who made the bad decision to recommend using a drug even many experienced psychonauts won't mess about with and who continue to express their fear they still may be possessed; we're looking at a form of child endangerment. Just like belief in acupuncture can actually reduce pain, belief in demons can actually lead to "possession". It's no coincidence most Catholic exorcists are first trained psychologists and generally only use exorcism as a last resort, and even then probably as a form of therapeutic psychodrama than in any belief they're casting out actual demons.

In some cases, religion is just a more codified and socially acceptable expression of the basest superstition. I've personally seen people speaking in tongues and being slain in the Spirit, and it wasn't glorious, it was disturbing and a little frightening. It was if the people around me had been turned into thoughtless conduits of mass insanity. I remember once hearing about the apocalypse and the end of the world....I was camping with the Boy Scouts, quite young, looking into the fire, I can see it now and still recall how terrifying and traumatic it felt, almost certainly part of what makes me so pessimistic today. I'll say it: religion can be a form of child abuse...what is that expression? The sleep of reason produces monsters?

"....demented, corrupt, and ripe for ridicule."

When Devils Attack, or Girls Gone Wild

Here's an article from Trinidad about a weird incident in which 17 schoolgirls became ill and began acting in a way which led locals to suspect a case of demonic attack, or possession.  Environmental illness?  Mass hysteria?  Prank?  ....Demon attack?

Perhaps it's a case of  Shango revenge:  A teacher, who requested anonymity, said two weeks ago an Orisha woman came to the school and had a dispute with a member of staff. He said following the dispute, the woman threatened to deal with the school administration. 

Or maybe the old built-on-a-graveyard scenario:  Another teacher said the school was built on a burial site, but neighbours who live around the school denied that was so.

But new evidence suggests we should be looking at something other than Orishas or the angry dead.  We think authorities should bring in Squidward Tentacles for questioning.

Quiote: One girl was blabbering as if in a strange language. I could not understand what she was saying. It was sounding like ‘shebbaberbebeb shhhhee.’

What do you think, dear readers?