Heretical musings on religion and culture from a literary scholar
This is a (a)theological companion to Marvel's 2015 DareDevil TV Series. The series narrative starts like this: the main hero goes to church to ask forgiveness for what he's about to do. He draws the line at killing people, but both the good guys and the bad guys tell him if he wants to make a difference, to win, he's going to have to start. Throughout Season One, he's wrestling with questions of morality... he's afraid he may be just ...
The holidays are always a strange time. The Winter Solstice has been celebrated for thousands of years - it can be argued that astrological events led to the creation of religious practice - but different cultures celebrate in unique fashions. But modern Western culture embraces such a confusing hodgepodge it's bound to cause discord. One baptist minister for example is drawing heat for a church sign that reads "Santa is Satan." He's not the first Christian to complain ...
Within just the past decade, there has been a rapid shift in the characterization of the Other – from monstrous, to misunderstood; from frightening to friendly. Thus, vampires, werewolves and witches have changed from being evil creatures of the night, to tragically misunderstood victims of judgmental traditionalist organizations who are constantly challenging their right to exist. In 2012 we even had the movie Wreck it Ralph, in which all the classic “evil” characters from video ...
I was looking for something on Alibaba recently and saw a post I thought was funny - a giant inflatable Santa, but they had misspelled it to "Satan." No big deal, but kind of funny. But I looked around some more, and there were several dozen different products making the same mistake. You'd think if they couldn't speak or spell in English, then they would've use a translator and been careful to copy the right letters. Or ...
I went to Skepticon 5 expecting a group of heretics that would get a kick out of my inversed reading of Milton's Paradise Lost, which claims that Satan is the hero of the story (which was actually the mainstream reading before it became the "mistaken reading", and is now coming into vogue again by top Milton scholars). I was surprised to find that Satan makes atheists uncomfortable. Atheists already have a huge image/perception problem, with the ...
I'm surprised I didn't see it before. I've been working on a research book about Satan as a revolutionary hero: a tradition of liberal rebellion against totalizing and corrupt government, starting from Prometheus, going through Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, the Modernist and Romantic Movements, ending in today's Super Heroes. I've already considered contemporary revolutions as part of this same tradition: I can prove that The American Revolution, the Free Rights, Gender Equality, Racial Tolerance and all ...
Several months ago I stumbled across a book on Amazon. A mediocre cover, no reviews, but I flipped through it and it caught my interest: speeches by Satan defending himself, a topic close to my heart (and my research). This week, stalling on some other projects and feeling inexplicably lazy, I spent most of my time on my antique oriental couch absorbed in what turned out to be one of the greatest books I've read, ...
Stories have always had the magical power to give our lives meaning and perspective. Stories about how the world was created, why there is evil in the world, why we should be good even when no one is watching, and what happens after death. Around 2,000 years ago, some guys cobbled together a book of recycled pagan stories and pinned it to a Jewish cosmology of Good and Evil, resulting in the Christian Bible. Good people ...
I swear not 3 months goes by before I see the movie trailer for a new cinematographic take on the "Demonic Possession" genre. The newest in this long, long chain of movies (all of which are eaten up by the faithful as pop culture affirmations of religious experiences, based on TRUE STORIES of demonic possession and exorcism), is "The Possession: Darkness Lives Inside." The tagline: "Fear the Demon that Doesn't Fear God." Proof that Demonic Possession is ...
***Oops - the movie adaptation of Paradise Lost starring Bradley Cooper has been canned as of February, 2012! It's a crying shame...Hope they revive it down the road.*** For the past decade, traditionally marginalized or "evil" characters have gained the limelight - witches, vampires and werewolves have changed from creatures of the night to tragically misunderstood victims of humanity's bitter prejudice. At the same time, Western humanist values caused us to champion rebel heroes - heroes ...
Here's an interesting mental exercise for you: 1. Let's define Satan as the worst thought you can think. So anything bad, evil, disagreeable, wrong... all that stuff is "Satan" or "Satanic". He's the absolute most vile, ugly, scary creature you can imagine, with fangs, horns, and lots of eyeballs. 2. Ok, are you picturing it? Can you conceive of this idea? Now in your mind, take this concept a bit further by imagining that it exists in reality. This ...
Prepare to be amazed. Today I've been looking for pictures of Satan, and pictures of Garuda, for two separate art projects. What I'd never before realized, however, is that medieval depictions of The Devil are basically direct copies of much earlier (I presume) pictures of Garuda - the hindu flying Deity (half man, half eagle) that the God Vishnu flies around on. I'm guessing Garuda is first because A) Hinduism is older and B) they ...
If you're interested in religious mythology, astrological symbolism, or supernatural folklore, grab my book Gods of Myth and Man. You can go buy it on Amazon.
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