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.
On Monday, I found out that my employer, who happens to share the same name as a particular rainforest in South America, will have another round of layoffs in April. This time, specifically targeting its cloud computing division, which is of course where I work. Considering that the tech industry is very much acting like a chicken with its head cut off at the moment, that inspires as much anxiety as humanly possible. In the middle of the night on Monday, I wake up feeling as if my left eye has decided to welcome the world's biggest pebble to stay for as long as it would like.
Tears are running down my face, and that does exactly nothing to dislodge whatever has decided to suddenly become best friends with my eyeball. I use eye drops, flush my eye, and even had my wife look at it, all to no avail. I was fortunate enough to get an ophthalmologist appointment that day. And come to find out, I have an infection and a sty. A month ago, I was the guest on my very good friend's podcast Trailer Trash Terrors, where the topic was folk magic, amongst others. I had at the time said that my family didn't practice any, but this experience revealed to me the error of my ways.
When I told my mom about my eye, she in turn told me about when she was five and had a sty as well. My grandmother's friend, Miss Goody, came to visit, and this woman told my grandmother to take my mom to a crossroads, look left, then right, and then say aloud Sty, sty, that's in my eye. Go to someone else passing by. And she did. And the next day it was gone. And I was instructed to do the same. Yes, magic involving crossroads is pervasive in the south, but I had no idea it reached into my family as well. Sorry, Vic, for being an inadvertent liar.
One last thing about this die, which I know is not the most comfortable topic to hear about. When I was typing this up in our Discord server, one of our members, Paranormal Will, recommended naming it Sylvester Stylone, which has to be the best name ever. Twenty awesome points to you. And finally, on Wednesday, I found that my left pinky finger had swollen to twice its normal size, and that I could barely flex it. Fortunately, my wife, the miracle worker that she is, wrapped it up in a medicated bandage from Japan, and it's now back to normal.
And I noticed that when the swelling went down, there's a noticeable bruise on the edge of my hand that I have no idea how I got. In short, this week I became the walking billboard for the saying, Misfortune comes in threes. Anyway, I'm not here to complain, but rather to do a podcast. And on that note, welcome to season three, episode four of the Southern Demonology Podcast. As always, I'm your host, JJ. Did you see that amazing transition? Wow, professional podcasters everywhere should be taking notes. And yes, before I get angry emails, that's nothing but sarcasm right there.
Before I get into the meat and bones of today's episode, and to counteract the negativity of everything that preceded it, I do have some good news. Both Trailer Trash Terrors and Southern Demonology has posted two complete episodes that are a little different than our normal. And we called this format The Paranormal Rundown. And oh boy, are they fun. See, one day I hit up Vic on Discord and asked if he would like to be a guest on Southern Demonology, as I didn't have any lined up. And of course, a conversation with him is always amazing. He agreed, but he came up with a counter proposal.
What if we created a random list of paranormal and supernatural topics and allowed a random number generator to decide that what we would actually talk about? I immediately fell in love with the idea, and we also pulled our mutual friend and paranormal researcher David. Remember, I interviewed him last year in a two-part series entitled I Renounce Thee to Form a Triumvirant. Of course, the name was still in flux at the time, as I called the first one the Paranormal Roundup, but the heart was still there. And boy, it felt like we had captured lightning in a bottle.
After that first episode, all of us worked together to expand the list of possible topics to well over a thousand. We even decided to feature a guest on each future episode, and so we did. Father Michael Birdsong, a long-serving exorcist whom I interviewed in another two-part series called The Kingdom of Hell, starred in episode two, and that too was amazing. It just elevated everything. So amazing that the paranormal rundown deserves to be its own thing. And my friends, so it shall.
So if you ever were ever curious to see what the possible list is, I will announce when that website is up and running. Should be shortly. You can take a look at it, and you can even make suggestions. We would love to hear it. Today, I have a bit of a hot take. Or in other words, I wanted to give a controversial opinion that I hold that deals with this entire field of demonology. It's probably going to be a little unpopular, but I do think it needs to be said.
Especially in these days where everyone and their mother is claiming to be a demonologist, or perhaps even more importantly, publishing books that say, hey, follow these guidelines, and you too can tell exactly what demon you're dealing with in a given situation. I was having a friendly chat with Vic. Yes, he is a recurring figure in this podcast. Sorry, Vic. And he asked me a pretty simple question. Are you a demonologist?
Considering that I run a podcast that talks a great deal about spiritual warfare, you would think that I would immediately say yes and therefore making the conversation a pretty short one. But that's not what happened. My answer was if I am any type of demonologist, then I am an academic ancient one. Because you see, I can only trace textual occurrences and patterns, and more recently, how those have been embedded and have influenced our modern worldview.
Now I will say that due in large part, thanks to this podcast, the research involved, and the many, many people I have gotten to know, I have more knowledge of what to look for and some of the preventative natures when it comes to demonic activity. Yet the question wasn't, hey, do you know enough to be dangerous? Or diagnose a possible demonic infestation? The next question that came up was, what would qualify someone to be a demonologist?
And after thinking about it for a while, my answer to that was an individual who has direct knowledge and experience of these entities of their football is back, and so are the predictions.
Demons don't do this, etc. Now I'm not saying that there cannot be demon knowledges. It's just that the knowledge they have is highly imperfect, and only the tiniest glimpse of what these things probably are. What's the old adage when it comes to the paranormal or in this case pertinatural investigation? In this field, there are no experts. Knowledge is hard earned through chance and experimentation and of course a great personal risk. And even that is highly incomplete beyond experimentation.
The only sources of knowledge we could possibly have on the demonic are either from God or from the subjects in question, the demons. As for the former, unless that information is handed down directly through a vision or prayer to you directly, all information garnered in this fashion is done through other humans, whether that be their voices or their words. And even if that information is faithfully and accurately communicated, we as the receiver don't know how it's been filtered and processed before reaching us.
After all, if the receiver of said words, voices, or visions has been told or shown something that is completely outside their realm of knowing, then people will seek answers to the unfamiliar through what is known. And thus interpretation will spontaneously take place. And for any information from the demonic itself, well, that simply cannot be trusted. The first rule of thumb a Catholic exorcist is usually taught is never to listen to what a demon says. We are dealing with entities that actively hate us.
Why in the world would they turn around and seek to educate us unless that was to our ruination? Now you may be reaching for or thinking of whatever book you might have in your possession that lists out the hierarchy of hell and which demons are archdukes and princes and whatever else. Now, again, this is my own hot take, but I give such books very little credence whatsoever for three primary reasons. The first is that this hierarchy is based upon an assumption that the order of heaven is mirrored by hell. Now, I'm not saying that that is necessarily a bad assumption.
If demons are the angels that fell, then it would make sense that they would follow what they know. However, and this is a very strong however, that still assumes that these things follow any type of logic that makes sense to humanity, or that these entities which seek the utter corruption and ruination of souls could abide by such a structure. My point is simply that we simply don't know for certain, but at the end of the day, it's still an assumption. The second point is to simply look at history.
From the point that ancient Judaism developed a duality, it sought out the identity of the enemy of God in a highly organic fashion, meaning there wasn't a concerted effort of, oh, we need to go find the name of the devil now. This was multiple, multiple authors and religious journeys undertaken by multiple groups that sought to come up with that name. I did one episode, The Name of the Devil, that broke a lot of that information down. And there were a lot of names thrown about, from Baal Zibub to Azazel to Beliar, Belial, and quite a few more.
And it took quite a few number of years before any kind of consensus was reached as to who the enemy of God is. I've said this before, but when I was a kid, I would love to establish absolute classifications of things based upon movies and books. For example, there was a definite power structure in spheres of domain that ninjas had. At the top were black ninjas followed by blue, red, and white. Same one for demons. You had Satan at the top, and then you had an inner circle of other name demons.
And I used to look upon anyone or other works as lacking any credibility if they happened to use the wrong name. For example, if they substituted Baelzebub as the name of the devil. Well, color me surprised later in years when I learned that this demon was one of the first candidates to be the devil. And please don't even get me started on how wrong I was about ninjas. The third point tags directly into that. For all one needs to do to start poking holes into the hierarchy of hell is to look at some of the names. Let's continue on with our favorite boy by Ozibob.
He didn't start off as a demon. He was more than likely a catonic god responsible for causing and healing illnesses. The Dictionary of Deities and Demons of the Bible, published by the ever expensive Brille, also delves into the name itself. If this was a god of the underworld, then the translation of the name Lord of the Flies would make sense as flies could be seen as sacred animals, same as Mesopotamium Nintu of the Flies. Or the other intriguing possibility is that Zibub or Flies is a corruption of the original name, which could have meant by all the prince.
And that is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many issues with just the names themselves, as they are full of historical anachronisms and dubious origin. Let's just swing over to Zoroastrianism and Hinduism for a second. Both peoples came from the same Proto Iranian group, but split, and neither has much like The other sense. In fact, the gods of one religion are the demons of the other. In that case, which are the true demonic names? Or to put that into more of a Judeo-Christian viewpoint, why are so many names of demons Greek or Latin?
And trust me, that deserves an entire episode in itself, not to mention a ficton of research. So I can't promise it soon, but it will come at some point. If names get to the heart of these entities, and exorcists, according to Father Martin, need to force the demon to name itself during the rite, then that is a very shaky foundation to build an entire discipline upon. Let me wrap up by saying that once again, I am not stating this hot take as a fact. It is my opinion, albeit an informed one, pure and simple.
No one outside of God, demons, or perhaps Solomon, if the myths hold a shred of truth, could be considered a true expert. And I suppose that's what truly bothers me. There are copious books out there that are posing as absolute sources of truth. And all I can hope is that my words have eroded that conviction, even if only a little. 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.