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Hello everyone. Welcome back to Southern Demonology, and as always, I'm your host, JJ. So the month of October seems to be cursed for me. Ever since starting this podcast, I've always wanted to capitalize on the month of October for some specials because A, duh is Halloween, and B, it's one of my favorite times of the year. I don't know about you, but I am a cold weather freak. Winter is my favorite time of year, and to have a taste of that cold for the first time after the summer heat paired with the spookiest time of the year makes this month magical.
However, October hasn't been kind to me in the past few years, unfortunately. Year before last I had a sudden hospitalization due to some kidney issues that took me out for quite a while. At first the doctor thought I had cancer, but turns out, after researching myself nonetheless, that the coffee tumbler I had been using had bacterial growth in the hard to reach areas that the company never advertises that you should clean, so that just did a number on my body. Last year was more mundane in that I was simply swamped with work, but this year took the cake.
I had a family emergency that took me back to Tennessee. Thank God everything is fine now on that front. But if you're looking for a modern day horror story, look no further than air travel in these days of a pandemic raging uncontrolled by the most inept government we've ever seen as American citizenry. Even though there were signs posted everywhere about social distancing, there was little to none in effect. People were still plastered on top of each other, whether it be in lines or on the plane itself.
Moreover, there's no requirements for travel, no temperature checks, no doctor's note, nothing. As long as you signed an affidavit that said, yeah, I have no problems whatsoever, then hey, you're free to fly. Congratulations And there's no stagger seating on the flights. Everyone was still packed in like sardines in a can. Now, I'm not an anxious guy by any stretch of the imagination. But to be surrounded by so many people during a plague after being self-isolated for months, it was a little bit too absorbed. It it took me quite a bit to kind of wrap my head around it.
But then a few days after returning back home, I developed a sore throat, a fever, and a cough. Thank God I had been quarantining myself in my basement ever since returning. But to have that in the back of your head that you might just become another statistic Yeah, I I just could not focus enough, honestly, on anything besides just immediate needs. But you know, luckily I did have a crap ton of work to catch up on, and that did provide, you know, a good bit of distraction. Um yet, fortunately, thank God, last weekend the fever abated and I am back to my normal feisty self.
Anyway, all of this is to say that though I had some great plans for October with everything else that was going on, I wasn't able to enact any of them. And for that I apologize. However, this isn't your run of the mill podcast. You know, we don't need an excuse to talk about scary stuff since that's the entire purpose of our existing. So while I may have missed a few weeks, look forward to everything that I had slated, and knock on wood, let's hope that next October is a lot friendlier to me. And actually thinking about it to all of us.
But uh, since the day I'm recording and hopefully releasing this episode on is Halloween, and I've already mentioned a curse, then let's go ahead and roll with it. Let's talk about curses, and I want to look at it from two different perspectives that of the ancient Israelites and of Japan. A little uncommon, but bear with me, okay? Um, the most common root word for curse in Hebrew is a la or aleph lameth he, in which its verbal form means to swear or to curse. Uh this word is usually directly compared to Akkadian Mamitu, which is oath, sworn agreement, or curse.
Though these different meanings may seem a little strange to us, they make a great deal of sense when place um sits in Leban to the psychology of the ancient world. According to Peterson, man in his total essence is a soul. What that means is that there is no separation between the word of a thing and the thing itself. And that is very different from how we think in the West. Thanks to the foundations of epistemology or the study of knowing and postmodernism, we know that there is no connection between the word we call something and the that thing in and of itself.
So for example, when I say the word tree, I am not capturing the essence of what a tree is. There is no metaphysical construct that dictates that that particular object needs to be called tree. Rather, that word is merely a mental construct that a given society or culture has given as a shorthand to reference the thingness of that idea.
If taken in that way, then Wittgenstein's assessment that philosophy is a fight against expression takes even deeper meaning, as it's not just common phrases that philosophy is attempting to redefine and escape from, but rather even these mental constructs that comp uh compromise all underpinnings of thought. Regardless, that concept is entirely ancient uh to uh Middle Eastern to ancient Middle Eastern thought. Uh going back to uh uh Peterson and that's PE D E R S E N human persons are by nature oriented toward accomplishment of what they conceive and thought.
Moreover, this ancient psychology assigned a magical quality to language. Words effect what they symbolize. In this context, curses have true power. Now some have attempted to prove that curses are in and of themselves demonic entities. Think how you know uh the destruction that walks it uh at uh noonday, that kind of thing. It can become a an entity in and of itself. But in this particular case, I think that's the wrong way to think about them. Rather, curses are just the polar opposite of blessings. You know, a blessing is the strength of life.
Quote, the act of blessing transfers soul to another, unquote, as written by in the dictionary of deities and demons of the Bible. A curse does the inverse, it diminishes the soul, and both are external to the soul in question. In other words, quote, the power of the curse lies not in the wish or the words, but in the mysterious power of souls to react upon each other, unquote. And this idea brings the concept of community to the forefront.
Though a curse could be individually based, there are typic they are typically geared toward a group of people, as the curse resides in the abandonment of an oath, and that's why the concepts of oath and curse are the same exact word. The first meaning is a promise to do something, and the second is the promise for failing to do that. So while curses can um come from people or a community, their true power is linked to a deity. And you can see that in Deuteronomy 29, verses 9 through 20.
Quote, you are assembled today, all of you before the Lord your God to enter into the covenant of the Lord your God and into its curse, unquote. First, these passages use the tetragrammaton, the four-letter word for God, and I did not say that word. Um I instead just replaced it with the general word for Lord, as this is the ultimate holy word for God, and I don't want to utter it lightly. Um, you know, and for those that know, tetragrammaton is usually like Y-H-W-H. Um, we don't really quite know exactly how it's pronounced.
Um, we have a really good idea, but still that's that interpretation is very much up in the air. Regardless, um, getting back on point here. Uh here a covenant is both a blessing and a curse, all wrapped up into warrant. You know, the former, the cur the blessing for those who follow it, and divine punishment, the curse, for those who do not.
And of course, the most famous example uh that we've mentioned before on this program is that of the watchers in the Book of Enoch, where Samhaza, the leader of the angel, sent to watch over the generations of man, you know, they all found the daughters of man extremely calmly and decided to uh make take wives uh for themselves amongst them. And Samhaza says, Well, before we do that, you know, I need to make sure that there's not going to be any turncoats, or someone comes up and says, Hey, you know, they all agree to it, and I wasn't really on board.
So in order to prevent that, they bound themselves together and some places do translate it as oath. But I think in this context, a much more accurate translation is a curse. Because although, yes, they are binding themselves together, they're binding themselves not for God's will, but to the antithesis of God's will. So it is the most literal meaning of curse that I could possibly think of. Um so anyway, let's switch focus a little and let's move on to um Japanese just for a little bit. And I bring up this topic as a it's highly interesting.
B, I recently learned uh something about this last week, and I've been excited to share it. And C, it's an interesting contrast. I am not trying to draw a universal truth like you know, some horrible concept from Joseph Campbell. Um, and in fact, if you like Joseph Campbell, then you know we we need to have a conversation about that.
You can find it on Amazon Prime if you're curious to watch it. It is a found footage horror movie, but don't let that turn you off from it. You know, the thing is absolutely fantastic. Ending isn't the absolute best, but it does make sense in context, so it still highly recommend it. Regardless, get back on topic here. Um that was until last week, and I was watching an anime that's out this season called um uh Higurashi no Naku Koroni, uh Higarashi When They Cry. And it's actually a reboot from a previously released uh version, and the old version was awesome.
I loved it, absolutely loved it, and was really excited to see the second um incarnation of it, uh, which they've they've done a fantastic job with, at least up to like what episode six or seven they're on now. I forget which. Um, but anyway, uh there's a scene in which the main character is talking with a police detective in his car, and they're talking about a curse, but they never mentioned the word noroi. And I started listening a little bit closely, and instead they were talking about an idea of tatari, and I had never heard this word before.
Um, so I started looking it up, and apparently the difference between these two is in their origin. Noroi is explicitly coming from a person or mortal. Tatari, however, is always from a divinity, and this term is actually a Shinto concept, and how it's used is that in the at least in this anime, is that a local deity over this village that they live in uh has enacted such a curse upon those who wanted to see a the a local dam being built which would have flooded this entire village and and erased it, you know, from memory.
And again, you see that same exact type of parallel here, where you know Noroi is explicitly from a person, whether it's from you know uh a cur like a a wish for vengeance or retribution, but then Tatari is the divine version of that, where if you've you know supposed to be faithful to a god and then you do something to betray that trust, this is going to be your ultimate punishment. So, uh it it's nice to see these kinds of ideas um, you know, found in very unexpected um, you know, places. That's what made it so fascinating to me.
Um, because uh, you know, I've I've studied uh I've actually been you know doing a lot of research in the book of Enoch recently because um that has been a really favored topic of those in our uh Discord community, which by the way, anyone can join. We would love to have you there if you were so inclined.
Um but so you know I've been focusing on this curse, and there's actually been a couple of questions that have come up about it, but then to see this idea picked up in an anime of all places, and you know, then to do some research and figure out that this idea of divine retribution is also present within Shintoism is uh yeah, it it tickled my heart to death. And it you know, I was excited to be able to come back and share at least some of those thoughts with everyone here.
I wanted to wrap up this episode with something that is more in line with the spooky nature of Halloween, and because it is loosely related to not only the this time of year, but also I I curse. I uh I had a conversation with one of our Discord members um over the phone actually, who wanted to share, you know, some of his own personal experiences, which, yes, were, you know, every bit as terrifying as I feared that they would be. Um God bless a soul. But it you know, a lot of the conversation had to deal with dreams.
And I was reminded to, you know, some of the dreams I had much earlier on in my life, which I've shared some about, you know, I would have these ty I don't know if you'd call them visions or just you know, random neurons firing, in which my brain then misinterpreted in some weird fashion or other, in which, you know, I would have these black and white dreams of events that soon came to pass. I haven't had that. In a very long time. But you know, when I grew up, I was raised in a house that was 200 years old. It was a log cabin that had rough siding attached to it. House is still there.
Um, in fact, I was just there the other week with my mom. And this house, you know, was supposedly haunted. It was built almost directly upon an Indian burial mound. A lot of weird stuff happened there. But when I was a kid, um well, this house, it had one big living room, and that's where the wood stove was that provided all the heat, and then a bedroom, a kitchen, and then a back room. And that was all it was.
And there were three beds, two that was in the living room, uh, of which I slept in the one that was right by the wall leading into where my grandmother slept, and then the kitchen next door to that. And above this bed, we had a huge old-timey picture of my great-grandfather. And this picture always freaked me out. Uh I always had a bad feeling about it.
And uh one of the main reasons why, and I don't know how old I was, eight, ten, somewhere around that ballpark, but one night I had a dream in which that picture came to life and was looking down at me, and some booming voice off in the distance said, You will die on November 2nd. And I could look into the eyes of my great-grandfather, and they were shining and blazing all at the same time, and just and hit they embodied the concept of madness. That's the only way I can put it. And the background it I mean for the picture itself, it's normally like it's kind of like this cloudy grey.
At least that's how I picture it in my head. But in this it was almost this shining, surreal type of fire that was just ever flowing. And then the the words November 2nd appeared beneath. Now I know that some people have claimed that you cannot read in a dream. I don't buy that, or at least I have read in a dream. I read November 2nd very clearly underneath my great-grandfather's picture.
And when I was in college and was studying for uh my various ancient language exams, I have clearly read Hebrew and Ethiopic text in my dreams and more than one occasion, so I don't really buy that, or at least how my brain operates. Maybe I'm just completely bizarre, and I would have no doubt about that whatsoever. Um, but anyway, I have always feared that date, and it's coming up. Um, but you know, it reminded me of another dream, and I really couldn't imagine why, because I haven't thought about this in quite a while.
But when I was in college, um I had a a trio of dreams, and they were complete fiction. I mean, I'm I'm not saying that they were prophecy or anything like that, they were just pure nightmares, but they were at that up to that time some of the worst nightmares I have ever had. And I'm not going to go through all of them because hearing someone else's dreams can be the most boring things imaginable because they have no impact upon you, but they mean everything to that person, and that's simply because that person was in it.
But anyway, in one of these trio of evil dreams that I had, I was trapped by a giant anthropomorphic crow that had a huge pair of scissors that were elongated and lengthened to the size of swords. But it was this thing's eyes. They blazed insanity. And now that I think about it, it was the exact same eyes that I saw on my great grandfather. Now hopefully these were just pure dreams. Not claiming that they're anything different, but that has always stuck with me. So you know hopefully November 2nd means nothing more than a random date that my brain just kind of conjured.
But um, if you are happened to, you know, think of me, think of me now, because it can always be useful. Uh and uh last topic, I swear to god this time. Um speaking of early November for America, voting is November 3rd. Please go out, be an agent of change, vote, enact your civic duty, and let's get some change going here. So, again, thank you all for listening. I thoroughly appreciate it. I hope you've all had a very safe and happy Halloween. I know it could have been much more fun.
It we could have actually had trick-or-treaters out in the streets and you know going to parties and bobbing for apples and doing all those kind of things rather than self-isolating during this pandemic. And hopefully next year it's gonna be a lot more different. But um, I hope everyone's doing well and uh that the spooks and spirits have not, you know, been able to latch their hands on you. If you would like to join our Discord, I would please welcome you to do so. Uh, you can find the information on our website at southerndemonology.com. You can uh find our Facebook at facebook.
com slash southern demonology. And if you are so inclined, I do have a Patreon up, uh, which is also patreon.com slash southern demonology. All of these links can be found on our website. So thanks again. Have a good one, and we have a new episode already. I've already got it more than three-quarters of the way written, so it will be out for next week. Uh, so hope you look forward to it. Stay safe.