Hello my friends. This is JJ and I welcome you back for a very long awaited episode of Southern Demonology. Long awaited because I have simply been away for quite a while. A lot of stuff went on in my life. Nothing horrific, thank goodness. But stuff that left me in a not so great mental place. It took me a while to find my footings again. But I'm here. And actually very happy. So during this time I've had this podcast on my mind. Because A, I've had a lot of inquiries and for everyone that's written me, thank you, thank you.
I really cannot express my gratitude to your words and encouragement, and it's just great to know that someone out there actually kind of likes the strange stuff that I talk about. So that's wonderful. Um but also because I I don't want to give up on this. I've if you've listened to any of the other episodes, then you're gonna know that I dislike talking about myself. I dislike hearing my own voice. It's just is what it is.
Um I don't hate it, I've just have gotten used to it, but yet I also still don't actively go out and start recording myself to listen to my voice, you know, spun out over the air or anything. But I really love this subject material and I love interacting with everyone out there, and so I I really want to keep this going. In fact, I kind of want to double down on it. If this thing ever kind of takes off, then you know, or if y'all actually want some increased interactivity, like right now I mainly communicate with people either on the Facebook page or over email.
Uh however, I have started a few new avenues. Um so first I have actually uh created a Southern Demonology YouTube page, a channel, and I've started uploading all the previous episodes on there. Right now I have kind of the channel introduction, which is just the intro that plays to every one of these videos, and I have up to episode four currently uploaded, and I'm going to keep going and have all nine episodes.
Uh, there was an interview that I had done, uh, and I'm not going to put that up just because even though the creator allowed me rights to be able to republish it as a podcast, I'm not going to try to extend that out. Um, so it's still going to be up on the SoundCloud page on Facebook, but I'm not going to include that one on YouTube. I I just don't want to push my luck, and um, I want him to have you know final credits and all the you know um all that good stuff because he put so much work into it.
Um but still um yeah so all of the previous uh episodes are going to be there and uh this one is going to go up as well. In fact, whenever I publish the SoundCloud, uh which should hopefully go out to all of the um podcasting universe out there, uh then um YouTube will also be added into that rotation. Um for those who ever went to the website, I am completely redoing it. Um I have transitioned it oh okay, so for those geeks out there, and uh I'm I'm sorry uh if you're not at all interested in this, but uh I used to have a site hosted uh through Docker uh on an EC2 image.
However, that's pretty cost ineffective, and I wanted to kind of flex my tech muscle and explore something that was relatively new and found a new platform out there called Netlify, um and redoing the entire backend to be able to be hosted as a serverless HTTP module. So uh we're gonna go that route. It's not quite finished yet. Um hoping within the next week that will be wrapped up, and then the website will be back up, and we're going to also offer some more kind of interactivity there.
It had already allowed for like uh discuss, but uh unless you're already signed up, it's not really the best uh thing for comments out there. So I really want to hear what y'all think. Um, if you want some more um avenues for interactivity, not just between you and I, but also with the you know other people, then we can think about setting up a Discord server. Uh, if you've never used it, Discord is primarily used for game chatting, however, it's been used for almost everything out there.
Uh, we could also go for a free Slack channel, but that offers some limitations in terms of searching and posts going away unless you're a paid member. So let me know what you think. If you would like to go that route, I'm happy to set that up, and then I'll start publicizing it on all of the existing pages, uh, and on the website, and whenever we broadcast here. So if you are all wanting to go down that, just let me know. Uh, if not, then I'm I'm not gonna worry about it.
But anyway, I just I want it to increase the community aspect of this more because I mean I'm the recipient of most of those messages, so you know, I've been the one who's really kind of you know really enjoyed getting to have these one-off conversations, and we can continue to do that. I highly encourage you to do that because I love it so much, but I'd also you know want to be able to open the floodgate so that everyone can experience that uh to some lesser or smaller degree.
So anyway, just throwing some couple of ideas out there because um it's great getting to uh speak with y'all, even if it's more of a one-sided type of thing at the moment, but um I would really love to increase that. So for today, what we are going to be talking about is reimagining. You know, with the advent of Hollywood and special effects and increasingly powerful, you know, graphics cards and rendering server farms, etc. The capability of producing what a person might think about and actually having it to be seen by others visually is nothing short of all inspiring.
And one of the areas that is rife for this type of material is the area of mystery and religion at writ large. And I'm not just talking about reproducing, you know, um you know, religious texts into a visual format, but rather taking some concept, some idea, and making it available in a new avenue, a new reimagining. And this has been going on for thousands and thousands of years.
I mean, for example, you have an entire period of writings uh between the uh Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament called the Pseudopigrapha, which from Latin means false epitaphs, where you would have these writers act actively pr pretending or writing as if they were a famous figure from uh a biblical text, and then expounding upon all of these questions that would arise from the text themselves. Uh that's how we got Jubilees, how we got Enoch, how we got the twelve uh tales of the twelve patriarchs, etcetera.
Um and I mean in fact we you know a lot of the original kind of base text that we find um you know biblical books being written on um are actually just kind of shared mythos that is um prevalent within that time period. Uh you know, Job is a common Sumerian tale that was then kind of a uh adopted and adapted into the the Hebrew worldview. In fact, later on we even got a quote unquote Hollywood ending to that entire book.
So I mean this is really nothing new, but you know, the the field of religion of the mysteries that surrounding life that really only religion can provide is rife for imagination. That's well it should be. Um and I I wanted to discuss you know a really great example of that, a really horrible example of it, and something and the reason why I even begin thinking about this in the first place. A really good example of one of these reimaginings is the prophecy. I it's a a movie that came out in the nineties.
Um I think most people, if they happen to remember it, uh is because Christopher Walken played Gabriel the Angel, uh, and referred to humans as talking monkeys. You know, I I'm not saying that the movie itself is absolutely phenomenal, but it does one thing and it does it so so well. And it's that the the people that had to have consulted for this movie or maybe it was the the screenwriter who did this, regardless, they researched and they researched really, really well. You know, if you're going to be no I'll take that back.
I'm I'm gonna put this more in a personal uh frame because that's really what it is. I have a firm belief, and this is just me and my insecurities talking, that if you're going to be speaking to people about a particular topic, then you need to know more about that topic than they do. Or else you need to bring a more interesting viewpoint to it. You have to be able to contribute to the conversation, I guess is what I'm really trying to boil things down to. And I realize I am babbling, uh, and I apologize. I am really, really out of practice.
So if you will just stick with me for a little bit, I swear I will get better. Um, I'm just trying to get my sea legs back underneath me again, so to say. And I was actually watching a podcast by Christopher Titus uh on YouTube, and whether you like the comedian or not, I happen to find his uh his really dark, self-deprecating humor just amazing. Um but he had a um uh a guest on his channel, and the guest was really bloody arrogant, and I pray to God I don't come off like that.
Um, but he kind of espoused the exact same philosophy of you know, if I'm gonna be talking about a topic, I better know more than others. And I let this permeate into the rest of my life. You know, I am a manager, I am a developer, I am an architect, and whenever I'm going to be presenting an idea, uh mentoring other people, I make sure that I know the fundamentals first and foremost. That way I'm not wasting my time, I'm not wasting their time, and I can bring something conducive to the conversation. And going back to the prophecy, that is what they did.
There is a scene when the main characters are in a cave and they encounter this script on a wall. And I have probably talked about this in a previous episode, and if I have, please forgive me. But that script was fascinating because you can tell that it was composed of some astrological sigils, these symbols based upon astrology, but I couldn't place anything else about it. And it didn't stay up for long. And of course, you know, when I watched this originally, this was in the era of Laserdisc, um, well before anything else. So I didn't and I don't even think I saw it on that.
Um but anyway, there wasn't you know great pausing technology at that point. Um, so you know, you can only kind of see glimpses of it, and you just pray to goodness you don't see a scan line or something else. But I tried to track down that script, and I went to my language professor uh for ancient languages, um, I went to a professor I was studying classical Armenian under uh went to a couple of others, and no one knew what this was.
I even happened to ask about it in my first year of grad school and still couldn't get anyone to really identify it until I was doing some research and remembered, oh hey, maybe I should look this thing up, and found out that it is a type of angelic script. And there are many types of angelic script.
Uh, normally they were done by very colorful figures such as like Ezekiel the Bewormed or something along those lines, um, but this actually came from a seventeenth century magical grimoire written by Alfred the Magus, and it is really astrological sigals that are composed into a kind of fake language, and mainly you have like angelic names that are written in it, those are the primary examples that were delivered in that book, and actually come to find out, just kind of an interesting way to circle back, I got uh so I I did see a reproduction of that book in my grad school, and I got to read a lot of it, but then I found out that there is an original manuscript of this book held at no other place than my college.
And I got to go back and hold this book in my hands. Of course they were begloved and make sure that I didn't kind of ruin it and the head librarian was watching me like a Hulk while I held this thing, but it was amazing. But the whole point I'm trying to say is that, you know, even though the plot of that movie wasn't spectacular, and it kind of used some old tropes which were a little tired even at that time, but yet they were able to take something that was extremely obscure, fit it back into an overall narrative, and present it out.
And it caused a caused me to have a mystery that took me several years to identify. Now I I'm I'm kind of a weird person. Mysteries really do um they really do grab me and shake me by the collar and cause me to be truly uh intrigued and I have to track them down. I'm gonna tell you one small little uh diversion and then we will keep going, I promise.
When I was I had to have been three years old, my mom had taken me to the neighboring town of Clarksville, Tennessee, and we were at a bowling alley, and I looked up on the menu and I saw a photo of these cylindrical fried things, and I wanted to know what those were. I didn't ask anybody. Well, really, at that point in time I couldn't talk, but yes, that's pretty late for being three years old, it was a medical condition. Regardless, I wanted to know what these things were, and it never occurred to me to ask somebody.
So I had just kept that in the back of my head, and of course, it could go three months, six months before I would ever think of it again, but something would remind me of those cylindrical, delicious looking things, and it would remind me of, oh yeah, I've got to figure out what in the world those things are. And of course, what two years later or something like that, I happened to find out that they were called tater tots. And yes, they are delicious, and yes, they were worth wasting time on to try to figure out what in the world they are.
But I've always been prone to you know finding something interesting and then trying to find out what in the world it is or what it means, etc. Um, and that movie really did that, and so for that reason I will always cherish that movie because someone took the time or knew about it, something about it, to present it in such a fascinating way. Now let's go to an example that is not nearly so fascinating, and that would be the Denzel Washington movie called Fallen. Oh god, what a horrible, horrible movie.
So someone did take a little bit of time to research what an angel's name and well a demon's name happened to be. And in this movie's case it was Azazel. However, they couldn't even be bothered to figure out what the correct pronunciation of this deity's name was. Washington in the movie keeps calling it Azazel, Azazel this, Azazel that. And every time I heard that, it was like nails on a chalkboard. I'm like, no, it is not that, it is Az Azazel, not Azazel. It was a movie that was not researched, didn't bother to even take Azazel is one of the most fascinating figures in First Enoch.
And there could have been so much to be done with him, but instead all they did was take his name, divorce it from anything else, force it into a pretty contrived plot, and they couldn't even get the pronunciation correct. That is the exact time type of reimagining that provides no benefit besides shock value, and not even that. But anyway, what got me interested in talking about reimaginings to begin with?
Last season and continuing into this season of a Japanese anime, believe it or not, there is a show called Mighty Mashta Ida Makun, which translated well the the translation that a lot of sites used for it is um you know let's go to demon school ear uh edema and it's a really simplistic show it in fact the first episode kind of reminded me that it was like just an anime meant for kids and it has kind of that innocence level to it but besides just being actually a a little bit of a deeper show than that and really kind of interesting they have essentially plucked the main character sent them to the demon world and this kid is now going to a demon school where no one can find out if that he's human because demons love to eat humans but all the text they use is Hebrew and it's a highly stylized printing of Hebrew and I love the different scripts that the Hebrew uh fidel can take that the writing systems are employed.
Like you know you have your normal print well you have your printed Hebrew that you find that's a kind of a standard font um that the um Stuttgart biblior uh hit um Hebraica uses and then you have the modern script that most modern Israeli uses which is much more um me if you could compare the the biblical text font to a serif then the modern Israeli font is more of um the opposite side which it's kind of interesting but then you can actually date writings on the um the the the printed typography that they have um so when it comes to the Dead Sea scrolls we can identify kind of what time frame it's written in because of the way that it was written and the str the way that they would write it is just beautiful.
So I've always been really interested in that aspect but to see a truly beautiful script emerge out of a Japanese anime just really kind of blew me back and it fascinated me and you can actually go through and translate a lot of uh what they're writing of course it's going from Hebrew into Japanese um but I actually used to do this myself a lot and it's it's kind of silly and I I hate to admit it but when I was in college uh I often find myself doodling and it's not because I'm not listening to the professor but it's because my my brain starts taking weird tangents and I need like three things to do to keep myself occupied even on one thing.
And so what I would do to try to keep myself challenged and simply just writing notes and not just trying to multitask in the middle of a class is I would begin writing all of my notes in transliterized Hebrew.
And it worked and I could still read my notes which was awesome and it became got me you know intimately familiar with the the fidel the alphabet of uh Hebrew so that I could read and write and do everything else I needed to do and it seems like someone had the exact same idea but in Japanese but they didn't just take notes or just write mundane things uh into Hebrew they went a heck of a lot further they imagined an entire world and put this kind of translation system into play and there was a point in which I was kind of not quite so happy with the results they imagined all of these demons as these you know older anime figures and some of them were just utterly ridiculous but yet the innocence level and the sense of play was so evident that I couldn't get upset or even mildly miffed.
It's just okay they have put it into this entire world they've done a pretty good job of world building and it's just kind of a natural conclusion to how they've spun things and you know if this gets someone interested in this uh track of study then I am all for it. I mean heck even if the fallen movie had gotten someone interested that would make me respect that movie more than what I do now.
Um of course I'm limited to my own little you know slice of worldview which is often wholly incorrect but it is what it is so I hope that you've enjoyed listening to me ramble about some reimaginings and there's a whole much more I could do on this but I want to leave it here for now just so that you know in the future if you want to contact me about some of your reimaginings or some of your you know even dreams about this kind of stuff we can take this conversation in a whole different direction but I wanted to provide some things which really kind of stood out for me um just to see if we can get the conversation started.
So no matter where you find yourself in your life I hope that you find yourself in a good position or at least one that is tolerable and that you're able to work yourself into a better position. I know what it's like to feel lost, to feel abandoned but I also know that by hanging on and sticking with it things will get better.
I actually had my son mention to me a uh a tough situation where he found himself in a less desirable position because uh a teacher and one of his subjects he had a good teacher and then they were transitioned out and he got a not so great teacher and that's why he guessed he wasn't so good in that subject. And I had to sit him down and explain. You know, there were times in your life when you were lucky where everything comes naturally where everything is just handed to you on a plate.
But the times that really define us are those where you're not giving those opportunities where things are yanked away from you violently and you have to struggle. It's those moments that you come to know yourself and it's those moments that will teach you that things weren't taken away from you. You just had to fight for them all that much harder. Thank you all for listening and I will see you neck uh next time for our upcoming episode. Have a great night