My Scottish mother had a seemingly endless supply of ghost and other stories, and I spent my entire childhood avoiding them. They frightened me terribly. Strange things happened in our house, though, and I often refused to go to bed until my sister, who I shared a room with, came upstairs.
She (our mother) used to tell me to stop wasting energy being afraid of the dead when it is the living we ought to watch out for. Today I find so much truth to that (though I did once experience the opening of a different - or simultaneous? - plane in my living room), the massive amount of lies we are told and so many trained to believe them. Some won’t need to be tortured to admit that two plus two equals five.
I once had a lucid dream in which one of the spirits (I don’t know what else to call them; on our plane they are no more) from my living room tried to tell me something of utmost importance. I understood him, but in the midst of it all I realized what I was engaged in and fear overtook me. He was upset that he had frightened me and left quite rapidly, and when I woke, I remembered it all except what he had told me.
I still am not entirely comfortable with the thought of being awake and talking to a ghost (Mother: “Ask it what it wants”; Me: “Are you mad? It might answer!”), but I have too many times tried to understand why some humans do to others what they do and my mind generally shuts down before reaching blowout phase. It’s just so inconceivable and my mind is too small. Ghosts are far less trouble.
Just as much a "story" as The Screwtape Letters! Not sure I agree with either Bridget or her Uncle Richard, but lots to chew on, which I will do and regurgitate later. Thank you as always
I read this two years ago and enjoyed reading it - I did - but also left it feeling annoyed: 'these characters and their theories!' I'm not suggesting that my reaction, or my opinion, is either meaningful or trustworthy; I'm just reporting it.
Seeing it here, I felt I had to sign in, prove I wasn't a robot by identifying motorcycles, upgrade to paid and then comment because...
Well, the other week I wrote on my substack about this feeling Bridget expresses at the end - that we deserve it. It's a common feeling, even though it doesn't usually lead to a 'conscious' intention to sacrifice one's own child. My son's upstairs inventing slimes in a notebook because his screen time is over, fyi.
Also... I have a long standing and quite embarrassing weakness for webcomics and one long-running one looks like it might conclude by hinting that modernity is the ploy of a trickster deity. I saw that same idea as the final plot twist in a popular 21st century fantasy novel by a famous author. Specific, named 'tricksters' appear in these works; I'm just not naming them here in case people care about spoilers.
Oddly, this was my own belief from when I was a young teenager until sometime in my early 20s. I thought that modernity - the spirit of it - was a sort of reincarnation of a vanished trickster. For me, it was a generic Jungian archetype trickster. That stuff seemed appealing then. I eventually abandoned the idea because I was sick of being a character with a theory and took up zen practice instead. Is it such a foolish idea, though? Prometheus is a 'trickster'.
Trickster deities aren't the same thing as demons or fairies. Sorry, I mean they aren't the same idea. I don't know if they're the same thing. I'm not trying to say they are, or to put forward another theory either. Still I think the idea must have come from somewhere if different people come up with it independently.
Bridget and uncle Richard are agreed that, whatever They are, They are smarter than us and They know what They're doing. Teenage me was too arrogant to see the truth of that but it's also logical for him. It's pretty hard to know what to do in that kind of situation; I suppose demons might be convincing Bridget that it's fairies or fairies might be convincing Richard that it's demons. Demons might be convincing me to talk about 'tricksters' because they can be viewed with academic detachment and a knowing smile; evil dismissed as mischief. A society of intelligent machines simulating the whole thing could be... whatever.
How can we sensibly proceed if they're smarter than us?
And also who is telling us we deserve to be punished?
This is a wonderful, pertinent, bold story - and, for me personally, uncanny.
I have had exactly the same flow of thoughts as to what might be the forces behind our entrancement, enslavement and madness.
At first, seeing it as some sort of dark demonic force, Moloch being the representation that most resonated. A demon that Ginsberg identified, and Fritz Lang in Metropolis... an eater of children in the way your story describes.
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Recently I have come round more to Bridget's point of view. I did a shamanic journey last year in which I thought I saw all the nature spirits gathering together for a council of war - with us. I have also recently read a book by R Ogilvie Crombie, one of the mentors at Findhorn in Scotland, about his conversations with nature spirits in which they make clear their powers to destroy us if we continue to desecrate the earth: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Encounters-with-Nature-Spirits/R-Ogilvie-Crombie/9781620558379
The time for warnings may be over; the time of open warfare may have begun. If one believes in the agency of nature spirits, their opening salvos couldn't be more obvious in the drought we face and the refusal of our rivers to flow...
Sometimes I wonder if they are behind the violence between nation states too - that they have chosen to drive us into the madness of nuclear annihilation as a way of returning balance to the earth. I wrote something about the presence of these irrational forces in an essay published just before the invasion of Ukraine - https://medium.com/@ed_80681/causes-of-the-third-world-war-eca6f1ebc791
Sometimes I wonder if it is perhaps a combination of the two viewpoints you detail in the story - that the nature spirits, our guardian oaks, rivers and holy places helped to defend us in the Otherworld from the malign forces that wish us ill. And by abandoning our alliances with them, the dark has found our ramparts undefended...
Either way, the nature spirits are at the heart of it.
I guess it all leaves me with a question: is it too late to do anything?
I can guess your answer though I would like to hear it too.
I do believe that the future lies in restoring the covenants we have broken with the nature spirits, be they of forest, river or mountain. A return to the communication of the past between the human and non-human and a relationship based on mutual respect and reciprocity. As the myths teach us.
But I fear that such a reconciliation will only be possible for the survivors after the fire, when the world has fallen quiet.
Brilliant, what an essay, the letter format makes it balanced and less heady, consistent with the themes of rationality and the spiritual being our dual nature.
I have been studying the book of Mark lately, and this is the sermon that fell on today (08/15/22). I know it's a bit long, but it's one of those unusual "coincidences," and I hope those who've read the article will find something worthwhile in it:
"If personal supernatural good could exist, why in the world could personal supernatural evil not exist? Why wouldn’t it? There’s nothing irrational or illogical about people believing in demons.
You say, “Well, it’s primitive because, you see, people used to believe in demons when we didn’t understand how the world worked. We used to believe in demons when we really didn’t understand how complex things were. It used to be people didn’t understand diseases and mental illness and epilepsy … They didn’t understand what these things were, so they just attributed it all to demons. They were simplistic and naïve about how things were.”
Maybe that’s the case of many ancient people, but not so of the Bible. As a matter of fact, the biblical understanding of demons is part of the most complex, least simplistic, least naïve, most multidimensional, most nuanced view of reality I think exists. Why so? For example, in Matthew 4:24, we read that news about Jesus spread, and people brought to him the ill, the demon-possessed, lunatics, and the paralyzed, and he healed them all. That’s really interesting.
First of all, it shows definitively that the Bible differentiates the demon-possessed from the diseased. They don’t attribute diseases to demon possession. They knew the difference between a physiological and a demonic issue. More than that, what’s interesting is it says they brought not only the diseased and the demon-possessed, but lunatics. That’s an old word, and today the word lunatic is a pejorative word. It’s really an insult, and not a good word to use in general.
But the original meaning of the Greek word literally meant, in the Greek lexicon, anyone characterized by insanity, irrational behavior, or seizures. That means the Bible understood the difference between insanity, mental illness, epilepsy, disease, and demon-possession. They understood all of that..."
I'm with Bridget. My favorite book when I was little was "The Adventures of a Brownie". And I've never seen or talked with God in a building. Only outside.
Satan's Boast by Keith Green. Did anyone else grow up in this kind of evangelical world? Now I'm going to have this song in my head all day.
I grew up in a church where demons were cast out occasionally, we were warned to avoid buying antique items because of spirits or curses they might carry, and we prayed prayers to "bind" demons and the devil.
What is all this talk of “it’s the web’s fault, it’s the demons’ fault, it’s the fairies’ fault”? Uncle Richard and Bridget don’t seem to be taking much personal responsibility here. Reminds me of Adam in the Garden of Eden: “You see, God, that woman you gave me made me do it...” blaming both his wife (he doesn’t even say her name!) and God Himself, for his own sin -- it seems to be a popular modus operandi since, well, forever. The original man couldn’t man up and take responsibility for his own actions, and billions of people have followed in his footsteps. I find it disgusting. It’s not the phone’s fault, Uncle Richard! It’s not the internet’s fault, or the TV’s, or the devils’, or the fairies’, or or or... No. Our sins and failings are our own fault. We need to quit trying to scapegoat anyone or anything else which happens to be available. We need to take personal responsibility. It’s part of growing up. Toddlers blame the chair when they bump into it. The people in this story, and so many in real life, blame phones, the internet, social media, the government, the culture, the devil, etc, for their own choices and behavior. There’s so much clutching of pearls and wringing of hands but almost no admitting that each of us has agency and responsibility. Come on, Uncle Richard and Bridget and everyone else, we can do better.
This story left me feeling angry and grossed out. Maybe that’s a good thing, but I shall still end with an ironic emoji:
Upon experiencing these dread beings on the daily, my Orthodox priest suggested reciting Psalm 90 (OSB) 10 times a day to ward them off. It worked: "You shall tread upon the asp and the basilisk, And you shall trample the lion and the dragon."
Having discovered your writing only recently, and knowing (a small glimpse of) your story, it's interesting to see you writing this at the beginning of 2020. I'm glad you didn't make any revisions; makes the content that much more compelling.
That said, I've experienced my share of the demonic; things that I am hesitant to mention in public, even around Christians who seem to have forgotten this reality. So reading this story has helped affirm the discontent I've been feeling as of late with "the Machine," as you have so aptly described it, isn't simply a battle against the "tangible," but against principalities and powers. And it's so much more prevalent than I ever could have imagined.
So many thoughts.
My Scottish mother had a seemingly endless supply of ghost and other stories, and I spent my entire childhood avoiding them. They frightened me terribly. Strange things happened in our house, though, and I often refused to go to bed until my sister, who I shared a room with, came upstairs.
She (our mother) used to tell me to stop wasting energy being afraid of the dead when it is the living we ought to watch out for. Today I find so much truth to that (though I did once experience the opening of a different - or simultaneous? - plane in my living room), the massive amount of lies we are told and so many trained to believe them. Some won’t need to be tortured to admit that two plus two equals five.
I once had a lucid dream in which one of the spirits (I don’t know what else to call them; on our plane they are no more) from my living room tried to tell me something of utmost importance. I understood him, but in the midst of it all I realized what I was engaged in and fear overtook me. He was upset that he had frightened me and left quite rapidly, and when I woke, I remembered it all except what he had told me.
I still am not entirely comfortable with the thought of being awake and talking to a ghost (Mother: “Ask it what it wants”; Me: “Are you mad? It might answer!”), but I have too many times tried to understand why some humans do to others what they do and my mind generally shuts down before reaching blowout phase. It’s just so inconceivable and my mind is too small. Ghosts are far less trouble.
Just as much a "story" as The Screwtape Letters! Not sure I agree with either Bridget or her Uncle Richard, but lots to chew on, which I will do and regurgitate later. Thank you as always
I read this two years ago and enjoyed reading it - I did - but also left it feeling annoyed: 'these characters and their theories!' I'm not suggesting that my reaction, or my opinion, is either meaningful or trustworthy; I'm just reporting it.
Seeing it here, I felt I had to sign in, prove I wasn't a robot by identifying motorcycles, upgrade to paid and then comment because...
Well, the other week I wrote on my substack about this feeling Bridget expresses at the end - that we deserve it. It's a common feeling, even though it doesn't usually lead to a 'conscious' intention to sacrifice one's own child. My son's upstairs inventing slimes in a notebook because his screen time is over, fyi.
Also... I have a long standing and quite embarrassing weakness for webcomics and one long-running one looks like it might conclude by hinting that modernity is the ploy of a trickster deity. I saw that same idea as the final plot twist in a popular 21st century fantasy novel by a famous author. Specific, named 'tricksters' appear in these works; I'm just not naming them here in case people care about spoilers.
Oddly, this was my own belief from when I was a young teenager until sometime in my early 20s. I thought that modernity - the spirit of it - was a sort of reincarnation of a vanished trickster. For me, it was a generic Jungian archetype trickster. That stuff seemed appealing then. I eventually abandoned the idea because I was sick of being a character with a theory and took up zen practice instead. Is it such a foolish idea, though? Prometheus is a 'trickster'.
Trickster deities aren't the same thing as demons or fairies. Sorry, I mean they aren't the same idea. I don't know if they're the same thing. I'm not trying to say they are, or to put forward another theory either. Still I think the idea must have come from somewhere if different people come up with it independently.
Bridget and uncle Richard are agreed that, whatever They are, They are smarter than us and They know what They're doing. Teenage me was too arrogant to see the truth of that but it's also logical for him. It's pretty hard to know what to do in that kind of situation; I suppose demons might be convincing Bridget that it's fairies or fairies might be convincing Richard that it's demons. Demons might be convincing me to talk about 'tricksters' because they can be viewed with academic detachment and a knowing smile; evil dismissed as mischief. A society of intelligent machines simulating the whole thing could be... whatever.
How can we sensibly proceed if they're smarter than us?
And also who is telling us we deserve to be punished?
My heart is feeling surrender... I struggle with all discussed.
Dear Paul,
This is a wonderful, pertinent, bold story - and, for me personally, uncanny.
I have had exactly the same flow of thoughts as to what might be the forces behind our entrancement, enslavement and madness.
At first, seeing it as some sort of dark demonic force, Moloch being the representation that most resonated. A demon that Ginsberg identified, and Fritz Lang in Metropolis... an eater of children in the way your story describes.
This article offered some useful insights into how "fantasy" has become our safe, Machine-controlled space for thinking about those powers - and how they might be glad that we have ceased to believe in them - https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/fantasy-and-the-buffered-self
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Recently I have come round more to Bridget's point of view. I did a shamanic journey last year in which I thought I saw all the nature spirits gathering together for a council of war - with us. I have also recently read a book by R Ogilvie Crombie, one of the mentors at Findhorn in Scotland, about his conversations with nature spirits in which they make clear their powers to destroy us if we continue to desecrate the earth: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Encounters-with-Nature-Spirits/R-Ogilvie-Crombie/9781620558379
The time for warnings may be over; the time of open warfare may have begun. If one believes in the agency of nature spirits, their opening salvos couldn't be more obvious in the drought we face and the refusal of our rivers to flow...
Sometimes I wonder if they are behind the violence between nation states too - that they have chosen to drive us into the madness of nuclear annihilation as a way of returning balance to the earth. I wrote something about the presence of these irrational forces in an essay published just before the invasion of Ukraine - https://medium.com/@ed_80681/causes-of-the-third-world-war-eca6f1ebc791
Sometimes I wonder if it is perhaps a combination of the two viewpoints you detail in the story - that the nature spirits, our guardian oaks, rivers and holy places helped to defend us in the Otherworld from the malign forces that wish us ill. And by abandoning our alliances with them, the dark has found our ramparts undefended...
Either way, the nature spirits are at the heart of it.
I guess it all leaves me with a question: is it too late to do anything?
I can guess your answer though I would like to hear it too.
I do believe that the future lies in restoring the covenants we have broken with the nature spirits, be they of forest, river or mountain. A return to the communication of the past between the human and non-human and a relationship based on mutual respect and reciprocity. As the myths teach us.
But I fear that such a reconciliation will only be possible for the survivors after the fire, when the world has fallen quiet.
Thank you as always for your writing.
Brilliant, what an essay, the letter format makes it balanced and less heady, consistent with the themes of rationality and the spiritual being our dual nature.
I woke up one morning, and the interweb was dead . . . (to be continued)
I have been studying the book of Mark lately, and this is the sermon that fell on today (08/15/22). I know it's a bit long, but it's one of those unusual "coincidences," and I hope those who've read the article will find something worthwhile in it:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h30jy2R8Dp4EpVxFAaFyHiHnY_t4PgbTjRxazC7s5GY/edit?usp=sharing
A quick excerpt:
"If personal supernatural good could exist, why in the world could personal supernatural evil not exist? Why wouldn’t it? There’s nothing irrational or illogical about people believing in demons.
You say, “Well, it’s primitive because, you see, people used to believe in demons when we didn’t understand how the world worked. We used to believe in demons when we really didn’t understand how complex things were. It used to be people didn’t understand diseases and mental illness and epilepsy … They didn’t understand what these things were, so they just attributed it all to demons. They were simplistic and naïve about how things were.”
Maybe that’s the case of many ancient people, but not so of the Bible. As a matter of fact, the biblical understanding of demons is part of the most complex, least simplistic, least naïve, most multidimensional, most nuanced view of reality I think exists. Why so? For example, in Matthew 4:24, we read that news about Jesus spread, and people brought to him the ill, the demon-possessed, lunatics, and the paralyzed, and he healed them all. That’s really interesting.
First of all, it shows definitively that the Bible differentiates the demon-possessed from the diseased. They don’t attribute diseases to demon possession. They knew the difference between a physiological and a demonic issue. More than that, what’s interesting is it says they brought not only the diseased and the demon-possessed, but lunatics. That’s an old word, and today the word lunatic is a pejorative word. It’s really an insult, and not a good word to use in general.
But the original meaning of the Greek word literally meant, in the Greek lexicon, anyone characterized by insanity, irrational behavior, or seizures. That means the Bible understood the difference between insanity, mental illness, epilepsy, disease, and demon-possession. They understood all of that..."
I'm with Bridget. My favorite book when I was little was "The Adventures of a Brownie". And I've never seen or talked with God in a building. Only outside.
Wow. That was fantastic. Thank you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgiqtTGIpbs
Satan's Boast by Keith Green. Did anyone else grow up in this kind of evangelical world? Now I'm going to have this song in my head all day.
I grew up in a church where demons were cast out occasionally, we were warned to avoid buying antique items because of spirits or curses they might carry, and we prayed prayers to "bind" demons and the devil.
Clara
Uncle Richard is a snob and I don’t like him.
What is all this talk of “it’s the web’s fault, it’s the demons’ fault, it’s the fairies’ fault”? Uncle Richard and Bridget don’t seem to be taking much personal responsibility here. Reminds me of Adam in the Garden of Eden: “You see, God, that woman you gave me made me do it...” blaming both his wife (he doesn’t even say her name!) and God Himself, for his own sin -- it seems to be a popular modus operandi since, well, forever. The original man couldn’t man up and take responsibility for his own actions, and billions of people have followed in his footsteps. I find it disgusting. It’s not the phone’s fault, Uncle Richard! It’s not the internet’s fault, or the TV’s, or the devils’, or the fairies’, or or or... No. Our sins and failings are our own fault. We need to quit trying to scapegoat anyone or anything else which happens to be available. We need to take personal responsibility. It’s part of growing up. Toddlers blame the chair when they bump into it. The people in this story, and so many in real life, blame phones, the internet, social media, the government, the culture, the devil, etc, for their own choices and behavior. There’s so much clutching of pearls and wringing of hands but almost no admitting that each of us has agency and responsibility. Come on, Uncle Richard and Bridget and everyone else, we can do better.
This story left me feeling angry and grossed out. Maybe that’s a good thing, but I shall still end with an ironic emoji:
☹️
Upon experiencing these dread beings on the daily, my Orthodox priest suggested reciting Psalm 90 (OSB) 10 times a day to ward them off. It worked: "You shall tread upon the asp and the basilisk, And you shall trample the lion and the dragon."
I'm sure this isn't important: https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/john-dees-spirit-mirror
Having discovered your writing only recently, and knowing (a small glimpse of) your story, it's interesting to see you writing this at the beginning of 2020. I'm glad you didn't make any revisions; makes the content that much more compelling.
That said, I've experienced my share of the demonic; things that I am hesitant to mention in public, even around Christians who seem to have forgotten this reality. So reading this story has helped affirm the discontent I've been feeling as of late with "the Machine," as you have so aptly described it, isn't simply a battle against the "tangible," but against principalities and powers. And it's so much more prevalent than I ever could have imagined.
Thank you for sharing, Paul.