Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, tales, and influence upon history and on the present day? If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more. Hello all. Welcome back to another episode of Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. I have been very excited for this episode to release. For now we come to the heart of the matter.
In the last episode, J Bird covered how he began along his path of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, his experiences in retreats, and how even now he is integrating what he learned into his more civilian life. And I'm not sure if it came across as with much force as is needed. But our guest is not just someone who studied Buddhism a little. He was well along the path to becoming clergy. So I can't begin to imagine how much of a struggle that integration process back into a normal Western lifestyle must have been and continues to be.
In this episode, Jaber delves deep into his experience of falling into the role of performing cleansings of people's homes. He relates three of these, the last of which was so chilling that he even began exploring Christian demonology to attempt to explain what he might have encountered. Before we resume that, I do want to welcome our two new Patreon subscribers, Justin and David. They joined the ranks of others who have graciously helped out the podcast. And I am indebted to all of them.
If you'd like to join them for as little as $3 a month, the link is in the show notes and on the website, SouthernDemonology.com. Lastly, if you have any questions or comments, the link to our discussion tool is in the show notes. Without further ado, here's the last part of our conversation with J Bird on Buddhism and the paranormal. So now that we have done the preamble, uh let's get back into some of your experiences, if you don't mind.
Yeah, sure. So one of the things that's interesting is when I was learning all of these practices and stuff, there were elements in the teachings I was getting about how to relate with the spirit world, but it wasn't really focused on. It was just part of the tradition. And you would very often in the morning, during your morning prayers, there was a section of that where you would offer water to what were considered to be kind of local spirits. And then also in the evening, well, actually it was twice in the morning.
There was one you would do personally, and then there was one you would do through a large like suffumigation, what we call like fire puja, where you create a lot of smoke that was done outside. And then in the evening, you would do the same thing again. So in the total set of the day, you know, we're talking about 12 or 14 hours of meditation practice. These were essentially rituals, which all combined may have only taken like 20 or 30 minutes sprinkled throughout the day. And initially it was interesting, we weren't even really told why we were doing it. They would just say, do it.
And then slowly, after time, you know, you'd ask questions and the teacher would start explaining what was going on or why you were doing this or what the role of the smoke was and so on and so forth. But during that experience, I really started to get an understanding that there is an interplay between the realm of form and the formless realm that is it's very real, and it's something that has to be attended to in your life. When you're doing longer retreats, you put more focus on it.
And that is because in the tradition, it is believed that when you start doing real rigorous spiritual practice, some of these critters will come after you for it. And those are analogies that you see in a lot of traditions. So that's why in these longer retreats, there was kind of a methodical approach to pacifying and making sure that everything in the land around you and spiritually was kind of pacified and getting what they might need and not um taking offense to what was going on.
I had some interesting experiences in the retreat as well, which I won't get into too much, but I will tell you that when you invest yourself in a level of spiritual effort that's significant, a lot of materialistic barriers that we put up start to break down. And it becomes very clear that there is some interplay that exists between the formless and the form realm, and it's real. And if you're not careful, things can get can get out of whack. So then moving on, you know, fast-forwarding, I went through this whole transition I talked about.
And you know, for many, for many years, to be honest, as I became a lay person and was just living my life, a lot of this stuff, frankly, I forgot about. I would do my practice, a little bit of meditation in the morning and in the evening. I would do some of these offering practices maybe once a week. But then something occurred well into my lay life where one of our neighborhood friends asked for some assistance with some stuff going on in their house. And she was agnostic at the time.
And it was just kind of a word-of-mouth thing where you know, one person talked to another person, and my wife found out, and she had invited over a couple of uh mediums and other folks, and you know, the short of the long is my wife said, you know, you should try to help her out. And I was kind of thinking, you know, my first response was like, I don't know, you know, what am I gonna do with that? And she's like, Well, you know, you did all this stuff in your previous life, like, why don't you just see if you can go help?
Like, you must have some tools, and so that that was kind of the the beginning of the experience, you know. So I went over, and um, this woman was having what would more or less be considered poltergeist activity, which was not new to me, again, uh, from my previous experience. And so I went in, and I don't I'm not gonna say that I have any form of like mediumship or anything like that. I do feel like I have some sensitivity just from my training and being exposed and in a an environment that was so pointedly focused on spiritual matters.
And the the interesting with that one was that there was a there was a young girl there that was this woman's daughter, and she was about 13 years old, and they were telling me that the the poltergeist activity tended to spike whenever there was like a tremendous amount of discord in the house. So this would be like the typical trials and tribulations of somebody trying to parent a teenage daughter or something like this.
And so I I did a few of the what I'll just call suffumigation practices, uh, which is where you basically bring a you you build a fire essentially, and you do some you do some prayers, and the prayers are basically to any local spirits that might be in the area, and you're asking them to take the smoke that you produce through the fire as a peace offering. So you build the fire and then you put juniper over it. You take juniper and you drench it in water, and then you you smother the fire with it, and by doing it it produces this very rich smoke.
And the smoke offering through the practice and the meditation is presented as an offering to the local spirits of the area, whether they're inside or outside of the house, doesn't matter too much, to basically offer to them as a peace offering, more or less. Now, the interesting thing is that didn't work long term. They called me a few weeks later, and there were still issues being presented. And so this is where it gets kind of interesting is the daughter had a lot of problems with anxiety, and she would get incredibly upset at her mother, and at times would even get kind of violent.
And I noticed that this is when also all of these things seemed to occur in the house. There would be like doors flying open, or it wasn't anything that I would say was dangerous, but it was almost like a catalyst of energy that would be created. And mind you, I I never saw any of this myself personally. I was always they they called me after they they'd had another incident. So the way that I tried to manage that was I actually taught the young girl meditation because I I just figured, well, like obviously the fire offering didn't work, and whatever is going on is still here.
And my approach was basically to just say, well, maybe there's something I can do to help the relationship between this mother and her daughter. Maybe that's the best way that I could I could try to help some of this because it's somehow the activity seemed to be correlated to the fights, right? Um, and so I I taught the mother and the daughter like really basic meditation, and I asked them to try practicing it for like 15 minutes a day.
It was very basic, it just involves counting your breath and being aware of your breath and being able to take that awareness and use it as a way of being aware of when you're starting to get really emotional. So I so I taught them this and I didn't hear anything back from them. My wife checked in maybe a month later, and she said that they've both been meditating together and it was helping them very much, and that there haven't been nearly as many fights, and that the activity had substantially reduced. So the interesting thing is that was kind of the end of it for me.
And to be honest, I don't know exactly what was going on, but this was my first experience when I started learning about this stuff, and later I started reading that there is some there is some theory and even a study that was done about the correlation between poltergeist activity and young kids, specifically pre-pubescent kids that are starting to go through random hormonal changes.
And I'm not gonna say I knew that that that was exactly what was going on, but it would have explained what was happening and that there wasn't actually a resident spirit in the house, but that the poltergeist effects were literally being it was like some outward manifestation of this young woman's visceral energy.
True. And honestly, just hearing about that after the you mentioned poltergeist, where my head went when things kept persisting, was that really kind of sounds like a possible case of the demonic, not a possession, but definitely either an oppression or obsession. Because, you know, anywhere where there's chaos, uh, and that chaos is being exacerbated, then that's normally like a really good candidate for that.
Yeah, absolutely. And this was the first time I did this, and to be honest, I I was pretty clumsy about it. Like, I didn't take any notes, I didn't ask a lot of questions, I didn't ask enough questions, I will say.
Everyone starts off somewhere.
Well, and again, it wasn't um I don't really have any interest in like diving into the paranormal field as a profession. I was just figuring, yeah, like maybe I could maybe I could go help this person, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And that set off as a catalyst of experiences that have then made me through a lot of research and so forth look back and say, oh, you know, I I should have considered this or I should have considered that. And and I want to be clear, the I'm not suggesting that by meditating you can resolve real like a rear real spiritual nuisance in your house at all.
I think it can actually be quite dangerous if you do act have an actual entity there because you're opening yourself up. I was simply offering it as a mechanism to try to help the relationship between the daughter and their mother. That was the that was the reason why I did it.
No, that makes total sense to me. I mean, honestly, the fact that it seemed to assist them, I mean, definitely. That was your first experience doing this. Have you had others?
So then this is how this kind of started this whole process of referrals. So we live in a neighborhood and it's it's a pretty close-knit community. And um the funny thing is they always seem to come in through my wife, because my wife's kind of like the she's like the mayor of our neighborhood, if you will. She knows what's going on with everybody and who everybody is. And so then the second one, it's kind of hard to explain, but there's a plant nursery in our neighborhood that is uh, you know, it's a fully functioning business, and it's it's a pretty predominant one in our community.
And in that one, that was the first one where they asked me to come help, and that was there was an actual spirit there. It was in hindsight, trying to understand where it might have come from. I have some theories, but I'm not I don't know for sure.
But if you imagine this this business is a is a plant nursery, so it's it's basically a lot of acreage or plots of land that are in kind of this urban environment, and they have an outdoor kiosk at the entrance, and then back in the back corner of the property, there's a house, and the house is used to sell like trinkets, so there's no plants in there really, there's just like what I'll just say are kind of like trinkets for the garden, so to speak.
And in that case, there was an entity that was there that seemed to have come from nowhere, whereas they they had been in this nursery for many years, and there was a period of time where this either this entity had been there and didn't nobody realized it, or it had just shown up, and so it was kind of wreaking havoc. You know, at the end of the day, I don't think it was demonic by any means. And again, from my worldview, I I believe there's there's lots of different kinds of spirits. Right.
Um even in the tradition that I came from, there's a belief that there are spirits connected to the land and to trees. Maybe they'd be more called like elementals.
Actually, you found that same thing in ancient Judaism as well.
Oh, really?
Yep. Yeah, so everything has this kind of internal life force that is provided by God that is kind of immutable. And yeah, you'll you'll find, you know, references to the spirits of the trees, spirits of the earth, etc. And it it all kind of harkens back to that kind of fundamental concept.
Yeah, that's right. That's that's very similar to a lot of the Buddhist cosmology as far as spirits are concerned.
I'm not suggesting that there's a linkage by any means of the word. I just I thought that was interesting.
Yeah. So in this case, I went and because it was a business and there were a number of people that were affected, I talked to people. I was getting a little better at taking the whole thing more seriously, but I I didn't, I'm not gonna say I interviewed them, but I talked to everyone that had an experience. And these were pretty, pretty classical spooky type experiences, like somebody being out in the nursery and it's 110 degrees outside, and all of a sudden there's a huge cold spot that comes by them.
Or, you know, a lot of people were saying that when they would go into the trinket house, the hair on the back of their neck would stand up, or they felt like they were being watched. In this case, it's interesting, the the woman that owns the nursery is actually Irish Catholic. But when she went up through the diocese to see if she could get help, like she didn't really get a response. And you know, I think because of her background and a lot of her family's Irish, there are some aspects of Irish culture that are more open to the supernatural and folklore.
Um so she was willing to give it a shot, even though she knew I was Buddhist. She felt like, well, let's see, let's see if this person can help. She was very nice. So I went in and interviewed people and basically ended up doing the same type of thing where I did a smoke offering, middle of the nursery, and then I went into the house. There are a number of offerings that you do. So so Buddhists, when they deal with these things, the approach is probably a little bit different than what you would see with a Christian.
One of the primary tenets of Buddhist theology is that everyone is suffering, and all beings are basically the same. They are just looking for happiness and they want to avoid suffering. And so the way that you deal with these things, it's not by it's interesting because I tried to explain this to someone else, and they said, Oh my gosh, you know, is that like a pact? It's not it's not a pact by any means at all. It's simply providing offerings to these entities so that they're able to achieve some peace and either move on or stop bothering people.
And and so these practices involve saying prayers, smoke offerings. Sometimes you have physical offerings like there can be food, but it's it's basically a gesture of generosity where you basically communicate to them that whatever's going on in their existence, they have to realize that they're starting to affect people, and that these people don't wish them any ill will at all, but they either need to stop or they need to move on, right?
If I can interrupt just for one second. So for humans, and uh I and it could be for others, I don't know, that suffering stems from the illusion of self. Is that correct?
Yeah, I mean at a at a very ultimate level, that's right. It's it's this illusion of self and this idea that we think all compound phenomena are permanent when they're in fact impermanent. In essence, that we as regular people, we have a view of reality that is slightly out of sync with actual reality. Right. And because of that, we create a lot of suffering for ourselves and others, right?
So is that true also for these for these spirits as well?
Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. I mean, they they may their manifestation of that confusion will probably come out differently than it does for humans. But fundamentally, you know, like as a Buddhist, we believe that these beings are acting in such a way where they're simply trying to keep themselves happy and avoid suffering on whatever plane of existence they're on. And so we do these prayers to help them recognize it. And some some of the prayers are actually pretty interesting.
Some of them involve actually letting them know, like, if there's a human involved, if it's the ghost of somebody who has died, that is now a like what we would call a hungry ghost, kind of a lost soul. There is a process you go through where you're actually letting them know that they died, and that they're they're not on this physical human plane of existence anymore, and that it would be in their best interest to move on.
Now, like I said, there's different levels of that depending on whether somebody just died or whether it's It's it's been going on for a long time, but fundamentally Buddhists do believe there are ghosts. There's a whole ghost realm, as you've heardly heard me mention a number of times.
For a definition for those that aren't may not be familiar, I'm not entirely familiar. What are hungry ghosts and why call them hungry?
Sure. So hungry ghosts are the main definition of hungry ghosts, the main karmic affliction that would cause somebody to be reborn in a hungry ghost realm is I'm not gonna say it's desire. You know, the best way I can describe it, like from a Western framework, is that people that suffer from a lot of gluttony end up being reborn as hungry ghosts. Okay. So that realm is defined by constant seeking and satiation of basic needs that are never met, and how that gets interpreted through culture is different depending on where you look at it. But you know, they have really wild stories.
Like some of them say that hungry ghosts are these spirits that walk around and they have huge bellies, but the bellies are empty, and their mouth is so small that they can only put like one pebble of food in it, so they're constantly basically they feel like they're dying of starvation continually, and they don't have the means to feed themselves appropriately. There's other examples where they say you walk around and you're incredibly thirsty, and anytime you find water you go to drink it and it dries up.
But fundamentally, these are people or spirits that have some kind of unmet gluttonous need in life that just totally overran their life, and then they their next incarnation is basically uh full of endless unsatiated needs. Gotcha.
Okay, thank you for that. So you performed the the smoke ceremony. What happened after that?
Yeah, so I I performed the smoke ceremony, and when I was in the house, I did these offerings like I talk about. We we put offerings out, I said prayers, and you know, to the best of my knowledge, you know, it's kind of interesting because you do these things, and despite what you might see in the movies or on TV, I mean, I have yet to have an experience where like there's some definite conclusion that presents itself immediately after the ceremony's over. Right.
Some people, in this case, some people, you know, we went and walked around the property afterwards, and the owner said she felt like things felt better or they weren't quite as intense. And she hasn't called me back. And the last time my wife checked in with them, she said everything seemed to be fine. You know, would I say it's resolved? I would say that one could have been resolved. But again, from a Buddhist perspective, Buddhist, this is an interesting thing that I was thinking about last night preparing for this.
Buddhist cosmology is circular, and Christian cosmology seems to be vertical, right? From the Christian standpoint, things show up, they're bad, they're banished, they go away. Sometimes they might come back, but from a Buddhist perspective, this is all like some big cycle of interwoven relationships and karma, and things can come back, or they can become nuisances, and you can you can ask them to leave, and they'll leave for a while, and then they'll show back up. Or if the um owner of their property, for example, opens themselves up, it can start all over again.
So I I believe it was resolved. They say that things in the house seem more peaceful. It seemed to have worked. So that that was the first one where I'll say, I definitely feel like I did something and it helped.
That was That's a really interesting observation. I would agree that you know Christian cosmology is definitely a one and done kind of thing. I would say that Jewish cosmology is kind of more of a deferment. Because uh you know, in Second Temple Judaism period, you had this idea that water was chaos, and when God created the firmament, he didn't banish the water, it was simply pushed back, which meant that the water was always there, and you still find that concept even today.
Let's just say a priest goes in and they perform an exorcism, you're never eliminating the demon, you're simply pushing it away, and but there's always a chance that the bloody thing could come back. Yeah, absolutely.
It's definitely the same thing in from a Buddhist perspective, and it there's a lot of variables that go into how these things are created, what happens and how they're resolved. So that that kind of leaves me to the third so the third one I had, which is the most recent one, and and this is what compelled me along to end up finding your show eventually, was that there was another referral, and again, it it was a woman. I was an older woman, somebody that was a friend, asked me to come help this older woman. It's a pretty sad story, to be honest with you.
You know, the short of the long is there was uh an elderly woman who was taking care of her grandson, uh, because the parents had had uh for whatever reason decided not to be a parent, and she was taking care of the grandson, and it was kind of a tumultuous relationship, and she was older, and the grandson was pretty wild and um unruly, and and the short of the long is the grandson ended up uh committing suicide in the house, in her room, not her room, his room, in her house.
And you know, to be honest, this was this was the first one I had shown up to where there was just an overwhelmingly dark energy in the house. And it's something that still, even now, when I think about it, just it just totally creeps me out. Uh yeah. It was not uh it was not an easy thing to deal with for the short time that I had dealt with it, and fundamentally I realized pretty quickly that I was in over my head, and that there were things going on there that were so energetically powerful and malicious that I wasn't going to be the right person to deal with it.
I want to talk about it a minute too, because I think it's really important. You know, I know from my experiences, both in my retreat and all the stuff I've gone through and talked to you about, you know, this stuff can be dangerous. Even in the tradition, there are stories of very well well-respected practitioners that literally go off a cliff psychologically trying to help people. And there are, even in my tradition, there are practices that are more advanced to deal with those things, none of which I've really talked about. I probably won't get into it too much.
But you have to you have to be living a certain way, you have to have a certain amount of spiritual and religious purity to deal with certain things. And and I will tell you, the the presence that I felt in that house was something that floored me so bad that I it's what started me on this whole expedition of Christian demonology, so to speak. Wow. Because I I had just never felt anything like that before, and and from a Buddhist concept, we do believe that there are evil beings, but we don't necessarily believe that their purpose is evil.
You know, from a Buddhist concept, everybody has the potential to become awakened. And in some view, everybody is a Buddha that's just simply been unborn. And so, even from a from a Buddhist standpoint, when you encounter anything that's malicious or malevolent, you know, that malevolence is not something that that is part of their their true self. It is just a dysfunctional manifestation of their confusion. But the the presence that I felt in this house, you know, the only way I can describe it is it was it was pure evil.
And I couldn't I couldn't imagine this poor old woman had been in that house for months and months and months with this this presence around her, and there there wasn't there wasn't anything about it that was supernatural per se from like a theatrical standpoint. But but when you walked in the house, it was like going into some other dimension of which all of your anxieties and your fears and your doubts, it wasn't just like they were coming up, it was like it almost felt like something was literally feeding on it and fueling it.
So what did you do in that in that case?
So I I realized I was in over my head pretty quickly, and and I guess that's where I was going, and I kind of forgot, I forgot to say it explicitly. There would have been a time in my life, like when I was in longer retreats, where I I feel like I may have been able to affect the situation through some of these practices, but at this point in my life, I was not in that position. You know, I I recognized very clearly that I I did not have the kind of spiritual integrity and fortitude or clarity to be able to deal with that situation.
And so ultimately, uh we ended up calling a couple of priests, which was very interesting. And this is how I got into the, like I said, more Christian demonology, is because through the exploration of trying to find this woman help, the only church that took the situation seriously was the Catholic Church. And through a friend and the woman in the nursery, we were able to get her some help. And to be honest with you, I didn't I didn't stay around for the actual events. We just helped coordinate to make sure she could get some help. And and I don't know exactly where it ended up.
I know that they did a house blessing at some point, but I do know that the the woman is still alive, but she's still having problems, psychological problems. I think it's it's all being viewed through the lens of psychology and psych and psychiatry, which I worry about a little bit. I don't know if it's if that case has been resolved yet, if you want to call it a case. Wow. Yeah, it was it was pretty it was pretty unnerving.
And it for me to be a practicing Buddhist for so many years and come across something like that, it definitely made me question whether or not the whole dualist dichotomy of good and evil maybe it maybe it is real. Maybe there is some paradigm out there and the struggle is actually real.
And I don't know if that experience is a result of any kind of permanent reality that we see in the world, or if it's a confluence of the woman's belief system and the events that happened in the house, but I do know that being there for a relatively short amount of time radically changed my perception about the spirit world.
I mean, for something to have that profound an effect, I shudder to even think about what that could have been like to experience.
Yeah, it was it was pretty unsettling, and again, there was nothing um there was there was no physical manifestation of anything, but it was just like skin crawlingly evil from the second you walked in. And you know, for a while we took we took the woman out of the house. Oh really? She stayed with a family member, and she seemed to do better when she was out of the house, but for various reasons she wanted to go back. You know, she was older and elderly, and uh sometimes older people they get you know any kind of change is met with heavy resistance. Absolutely.
That was not a permanent solution. But it was interesting because um, you know, initially we went through the Episcopalian church and they didn't believe it at all, you know. They basically, you know, the local church, the feedback was, oh, it's it's unhelpful for her at her age to be thinking of things in terms of superstition and so forth, which was an interesting experience. I mean, I guess my knowledge of Christianity has really only blossomed in the last couple years, and most of it stems from this experience that I had.
It surprised me to realize that there's so many different variations of what Christianity is.
Oh, even within the same denomination, you'll find individual responses. I would say that, and this is my own bias, so if anyone wants to point out how I am incorrect, then please feel free to do so. I'm always willing to learn. But even within a denomination, even though there are guiding principles that are supposed to be in place, individual churches are still led by a pastor or group of pastors, and they have ultimate authority. And if they don't believe in something, then it's just not going to pass. And you even you find that even within the Catholic Church.
Uh, you'll have dioceses that are very open to the concept of spiritual warfare, and then you have other dioceses that completely dismiss it.
Yeah, that learning about the reality of that situation was very perplexing to me at first. And, you know, especially from my perspective, I mean, I I definitely guess I identify as a Buddhist. I will tell you that since that experience, uh, I'm not so sure I can say with confidence that I understand what's going on anymore. And my my primary interest was just getting the woman help. Right.
And I recognized pretty quickly that I wasn't going to be the person to get it done, at least at that stage in my life. And so we, you know, she did have at one point a Christian background and believed in God, and you could say she was lapsed, or whatever lack of a better term. But in that situation, I felt like there was a high priority on making sure that she had a certain level of buy-in about the method that we were going to use to resolve this situation because of the fact that the presence was so strong and it was so um unnerving.
You know, that's a really good point, and I think it's one that is often overlooked.
Even in our Discord server, there was recently a conversation about why can only priests perform an exorcism, and there's a lot of like back and forth on that conversation, but I I think at the end of the day, and it's one that I didn't bring up because it really didn't occur to me all that much, was uh not only is it just the education and the training and hopefully some of the experience, but you also have to have a just like you said, a a spiritual centeredness, which unless you are dedicating yourself almost entirely to God or to that particular religion, it's rare to come across.
And everyone involved needs to have some level of belief, because even if there's if there's no belief whatsoever or or buy-in, as you said, then it's unlikely that things will ever, ever change.
Yeah, that's right. And and that's why I'm really interested in the discussion about spirituality, belief, and culture, is because I I do think to some extent these things are objective, but they're also shaped by our beliefs. And it kind of goes back to the whole discussion about quantum mechanics and supersposition, and you can have two things in opposite states at the same time. I think that there's some correlation between all that that we don't quite understand at this point.
And you know, so I will also note that one of the things that just gives me the the willies, seeing kind of the modern paranormal movement and the corporate media's interest in in fanning the flames, is that you know, the way I was taught is to deal with these things, you have to have your own house in order, like big time, before you decide to go help somebody else's house, so to speak. Absolutely.
And at one point in my life, that was like being celibate and not taking any intoxicants, and uh, you know, essentially having a vow of poverty, and you know, not telling lies and uh being compassionate and all of this stuff.
And I I do think that one of the values that is present in the way the Catholic Church deals with the exorcisms is that you are more or less bringing somebody in that is a spiritualist, you know, their life is devoted to the service of God or and or whatever you want to call it, and they're they're celibate and they take an avow of poverty and they have a certain amount of discipline. And of course, I understand there's variations, and not all priests are created alike, and you have to be careful.
But even for myself, for these other two house calls I did, I prepared based on the way I was taught. It wasn't something where I just like nonchalantly got up one day and walked over there, but my meditation practice picked up. Uh, I did a few purification practices, I tried to make myself, relatively speaking, as kind of pure and sanctified as possible as I could before I went over there, so that whatever I was gonna do would would deliver some level of results. And I think that that gets overlooked a lot these days.
It does. Even you know, mages, uh, whenever in the Middle Ages, whenever they would attempt to cast things or summon entities, they would have to go through a very rigorous 24 to 48-hour fast and prayer regimen, uh dressing all in white. I mean, there were so many stipulations, but I think at the end of the day, it was geared toward whether you believe in that stuff or not. And I'm definitely kind of in the not category, at least in terms of the validity of a lot of these grimoires.
But I will say that I mean, just that concept of your own spiritual house and order is highly, highly important, and I'm really glad that you brought that up.
Yeah, it definitely seems to be something that's missing from the conversation, you know.
We are almost out of time, but I do want to hit one last point, uh, and that is you've mentioned the different types of you know rights that you perform in order for self-purification for others that might be in need of protection, and I've asked this to a lot of different guests that have you know kind of uh authority or experience in the field. What mechanisms of protection do you recommend to others?
You mean so this is just kind of like like daily upkeep, so to speak?
It could be daily upkeep, it could be your person is facing a paranormal or worse type of situation, and you know, they need some immediate help. Uh I'm I'm just kind of curious what you might recommend or what you might do yourself.
Yeah, sure. I mean, there's there's all kinds of things in my mind that create these circumstances and invite them in. You know, I think one thing for sure is it all starts with with yourself and your family. You know, having having a good, peaceful household really starts, I think, primarily between the relationship that you have with your family and whether or not everyone's getting along. It's like that first case I talked about.
I'm not sure what was going on there exactly, but I think the you know, my gut tells me that the root cause of it was basically a somewhat dysfunctional relationship between the mother and daughter. You know, I'm just trying to think. There are there are other things that I learned, you know, early on, but I think they're they're quite cultural in in approach, and I don't think they're really appropriate because frankly, I don't I don't follow them either in many ways.
There are many things about the where your bedroom is and which side of your bed is uh which way that your your headboard is facing some of that. I think that's all a little bit too cultural.
I I will say Oh no, I was just agreeing with you. Because I mean, yeah, I mean there's a big emphasis in certain cultures upon you know feng shui, and it's not a design trend, it is something that will definitely affect your life.
I definitely think that there is a preponderance of interest in the occult and the new age these days, and it it does worry me a little bit. I mean, I've since I've started this whole process of trying to understand more Western spirituality and angels and demons, I've I've come across a lot of these grimoires that you've mentioned and a lot of these other things. I would say that a lot of that stuff you you do have to be very careful with, and I'm not trying to be an alarmist, but when you do things in the spiritual world, you have to know why you're doing them.
And you have to have a firm understanding and context of the purpose of what some of those rituals are. And I think there are a lot of issues that are coming about these days because people are they are invoking things into their world without realizing what they're doing. And this for me personally, this is kind of part of my whole exploration and growth just as a human being, is I don't know how to how to reconcile some of those realities within my Buddhist upbringing and tradition, but I I definitely think they are real.
And even from a Buddhist perspective, people need to understand that there are entities out there that are not part of this human world. In some ways, there's a whole cosmology of them, and I think the postmodern movement is doing a disservice to our society by assuming that all of this stuff is supernatural, hocus pocus, or cultural, uh you know, antiquated cultural worldviews, and that we need to be mindful of it because it is out there and it's real, and there's an entire plane of existence. I think one time JJ used the word middle plane, it's real.
The middle plane is real, and so just knowing that, I think, will give you a certain amount of protection. You have the worldview that you understand that there is there is a plane of existence, whether or not you want to call it energy or spirit or whatever, it it's real and it can affect your life, and you have to be aware of that. Now, as far as like what to do on a on a day-to-day basis, this is where I guess my more ecumenical side comes in. And I would just say that I do think having a regular spiritual practice is important.
I do think it affects your ability to get along with your family, your relatives, your kids, but it also helps protect you uh somewhat spiritually from you know unwanted influence. And so, whatever that looks like for you, I'm not gonna get into any specifics. They have practices for for Buddhists to conduct purifications or do these offerings like I talk about. I mean, even at my house, I'll just mention the smoke offerings I talk about. I do those maybe once a month, just for my house and my area.
I would say I I wouldn't recommend leaving offerings for for spirits unless you know exactly how to do it and what's going on, because you can you can end up in a in a weird place very quickly. So I think I'm gonna stick more to just you know prayer, awareness, trying to keep a harmonious household. I think all those things are real important. A lot of what I've read about the paranormal from a Western framework indicates that the paranormal can get a foothold in your life most of the time through turmoil, through what I'll just say is like domestic discord, so to speak.
I believe that's true. I think there are also rarer cases where things show up regardless of whether you want them to or not. Uh but I do think there's a class of spirits that are that are probably attracted to turmoil and discord. Completely agree.
Well, my friend, we that I think that concludes our talk. Is there anything else that you wanted to bring up before we close out?
No, I'm good, man. I'm just realizing we went a long time, so that's great.
Oh, it was. I know this is your first time speaking publicly about this. I I cannot tell you how honored I am that you chose to do so with me here and the fact that you shared it with uh whoever listens, because honestly, the uh the more information that we get out there around what's possible, the different ideas, the different worldviews, uh I think it can only serve to not only just be another point of information, but just spreading awareness is always a good thing. So thank you again, my friend.
Yeah, terrific. Happy to do it, and thanks for all you do with the the podcast and the Discord. It's great.
Well, if y'all would like to become a member of our Discord, uh you're more than welcome to do so. In addition to movie nights and phenomenal conversations and just being an excellent place to congregate and talk about on topic materials, off-topic materials. We kind of do everything all at once. Uh, you can find the link in the show notes or always on the website southerndemonology.com. JBird, it has been a pleasure. Thanks. Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com where you can find all of our social and podcasting links.
Also, if you have a moment, please feel free to rate this podcast and leave any encouraging feedbacks that you may have. As always, I am JJ, and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.