I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning in the Ratings

Most of you know that before I was a critical demonologist I was a clinical psychologist. 

Along the way, and to this day, I've maintained a flourishing pslackology practice, albeit with an exclusive clientele of one. While the patient still has occasional relapses of undudeness, I'm proud to say that these are few and far between, and that 90% of the time he abides. 

No joke: I've always been openminded about things, but the queer nature of the times we're living in demands a supra- or infra-natural explanation. 

Don't get me wrong -- by no means do I believe that demons explain everything, but then again, nor do I see how we can truly understand What's Going On without recourse to demonic influences. Denying their influence would be naive in the extreme, which is just how Satan likes it. It would be as childish as, say, the conspiracy theory that FJB legitimately won the 2020 election.

The operative word is indeed influence: for demons do not and cannot cause human actions, only influence them; which is another way of saying that man is condemned to freedom and that there's not a damn thing he can do about it, no matter how many times he votes Democrat. 

I myself reached peak naivete in perhaps 1988, when I nabbed a PhD while no one was looking. Like any other properly indoctorated product of the tenure machine, I knew that belief in angels, demons, and immaterial beings more generally was pure superstition, and that what folks used to call "devils" were now understood to be unconscious projections, i.e., projections of what are called unconscious objects.

But in the long run, everybody's at least a little stitious, because these two -- demon and unconscious object -- prove to be equivalent categories with identical content. Except that psychotherapy is much more expensive -- and lucrative -- than exorcism and more practical than freelance ghostbusting.

Indeed, what is psychotherapy but a modern form of exorcism, the only difference being that it is less effective?

The following passage by Grotstein from his Who is the Dreamer Who Dreams the Dream is one I would have endorsed as recently as 1995 or so, when I began having my doubt about doubt:

In the dazzling light of the Enlightenment, preternatural spirits, presences, angels, and demons, along with their cosmologies, were bleached into oblivion. These designations waned, and their remains were reminted in the alchemy of a newer "scientific" lexicon. 

Nevertheless the spirits that occupied their successors (i.e., "internal objects") continued to haunt our minds. 

So, people -- obviously -- continue to be as haunted and taunted as ever. However, nowadays we're far more sophisticated, so we know that the real causes of mental illness are are scientifically provable things such as Trump's mean tweets, White Privilege, the Patriarchy, and the Climate Crisis.

Let's refrain from calling them demons or objects, and instead just focus on the continuity of the phenomenology. According to the esteemed shroomhead Terence McKenna,

Whatever their status in the world, their persistence in human experience and folklore is striking. In all times and in all places, with the possible exception of Western Europe for the past two hundred years, a social commerce between human beings and various discarnate entities, or non-human intelligences, was taken for granted.

After all, it isn't difficult to believe in the Ultimate Intelligence -- indeed, it takes real effort and limitless chutzpah to not believe in a principle higher than oneself -- so how hard can it be to posit the existence of intermediate intelligences between man and O?  

Moreover, as with God, once you permit yourself to believe in them, it quickly becomes necessary to do so. Like the Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz, they start peeping out from behind the shrubbery, giggling and looking up your dress. 

Besides, it's fun. I say, if two ontologies are otherwise equal, why not pick the one that provides more kicks 'n giggles? 

It's also more dangerous, but that's part of what makes it fun: there's much more on the line, for as one demon put it, you stand to win everything. So, call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair.

Here's a relevant passage from the Book of the Same Name:

Indeed, if truth were a democracy, each person from the dawn of history getting one vote, the belief in such spiritual beings populating the landscape "would unquestionably be the most firmly established truth in man's whole armamentarium." 

But truth isn't a democracy, because five tech lords with a blacklist make a majority. 

So anyway, I'm always curious about what's going on in Demonville, which is only a micron or two away, like a parallel universe only in the same universe, since there's only One Cosmos. 

With that in mind, yesterday I read a book called Angels and Demons: A Catholic Introduction, instead of monitoring diabolical activity in the usual way, which is to say, by checking out CNN or MSNBC.

To be continued...