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 Seven Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more.
But because you are a fan of Southern Demonology, then you will get the entire two-hour episode for free. So anyway, uh if you get a chance, check that out. I think we covered a lot of different topics and it was a lot of fun to doing that. So thank you very much for the opportunity. Just because it's already after midnight here on the East Coast, and uh I have worked bright and early in the morning. So we'll see how far I can go. However, I didn't want to delay in pumping out a new episode.
I typically try to do them on Sundays just because it's a free day, but uh we'll see how far we can get. Uh I didn't want to delay this week, especially because uh while it's fresh in my mind, I went and saw um the nun last night in theaters, and I wanted to provide both a kind of um spoiler-free and maybe include a few spoilers um uh afterwards for those who have seen it or have no interest in seeing it, um, and then use that as a launching point of trying to talk about some more uh modern demonology and get that into the mix. So, should you go see the nun?
The answer is categorically no, you absolutely should not. Uh, even if you are a huge fan of the Conjuring series, I recommend you stay far, far away or wait till it gets out of theaters, and then you're not wasting quite so much money uh when you do happen to uh rent it digitally or however you prefer to do so. I had uh some hopes for this movie. I I really did enjoy The Conjuring 2, of course the character design of Balak, the demon, um, that was introduced there and continued on into the new movie uh is phenomenal. Um very frightening, very well done in its simplicity.
So I thought that, you know, especially if they're going to get more into the um to the Catholic side of the house, perhaps they could do something really interesting with it. And they didn't. Um this movie was essentially, oh, we have a really great character design. How can we get more money out of that? The movie was completely incoherent on so many different levels. It was boring. Um there were no scares whatsoever besides one jump scare near the beginning. Uh everything else was dull.
And I was sitting in a Dolby cinema theater uh with you know sound effects that could shake the entire uh comforter that you're sitting on and I wasn't moved at all. And it was an extremely short movie. Uh normally I like to stay in the moment, and if a movie jars me out of that, then it lessens my enjoyment a good bit. And I didn't even have time to wonder if when this movie is going to end, because it was done before I ever expected it to. So on pretty much every single level, it was a huge disappointment. W which is a shame.
I mean it it could have been something really, really interesting, and instead it just fell flat. Alright, now I want to get into some more of the particulars of the movie. Um, I would still try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible. I won't be revealing the ending or anything like that, uh, but I will be discussing a few of the uh particulars of the plot. So if you want to be uh completely ignorant of this until you get a chance to see the movie for yourselves, then uh skip to after the uh twenty-five second music uh interlude that I'll be putting in a little bit later.
Uh but otherwise, um, you know, stick around. I hope you enjoy this. So the movie is really centered around you know, two main characters. Um a sister uh who is who hasn't really taken her uh her vows yet, and then a uh a father who is a um uh a miracle hunter as he puts it in the movie. And they are sent to a Romanian abbey to see if the uh church there is uh still holy or not, um, because they are sent to investigate why and how a nun committed suicide, which is, you know, one of the gravest of all mortal sins that one could commit.
Now, anyone who has ever seen one of the previews to this movie will know that this abbey is cursed uh by Valak, a demonic presence. But the reasoning for all of the movie is just it violates, I think, one of the central tenets to the Conjuring series. One of the well, A, I mean, the Conjuring series is supposed to be based upon the real life quote unquote experiences of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Um I'm not gonna go into now whether I, you know, think they're legit or not. I honestly don't have I haven't done enough research to even begin to form a uh hypothesis about that.
But anyway, you know, the first and second conjuring movies are really based upon some of the experiences that the couple had purportedly gone through. And those movies are effective because they keep things within the realm of the plausible. You know, whether you believe in demons or not, the way everything is presented it seems kind of reasonable. Everything flows together, they don't make any gigantic bold metaphysical claims that would, you know, instantly knock it out of contention as something that would fall within the realms of reality or not. This is not true for this movie at all.
Um come to find out that this abbey was really originally a portal to hell that was opened up by the magical wrongdoings of a nobleman, and then the church came in and was able to seal up this portal by using a relic that contained the blood of Jesus Christ. Already we have gone so far out of the plausible that it's not even remotely funny. Um and then uh you know, everything was fine until um bombs uh hit the abbey, and this just happened to break free the one portal to hell that was there, and Valak is free to roam the halls and commit all of the evilness that um he absolutely wants to.
So that in an in and of by itself is just horrible storytelling. I mean, they they could have come up with a thousand and one other ways to explain all of this stuff. I mean, Valak as a character is really interesting. Um, and they at least do have it right that he is supposed to have dominion over snakes. Um that's what's reported in all of the uh the Gertic um d uh demonology grimoirs that you'll find uh written between say 1200 and 1700. Um but as so much for the defiling part, I think that's kind of thrown in there for uh not too many good reasons.
But regardless, um so that was kind of the f the first cardinal sin that this movie created. Uh there's quite a few other nitpicks, but I think the biggest one, and this is a spoiler, so turn away for the next 30 seconds if you absolutely don't want to hear it. Is uh one of the characters is forcefully possessed by a val.
And that was the part that was just completely idiotic. Demonic Possession. And this is where we're going to turn away from the movie itself and move more into using it as a jumping off point to talk about um how demonic possession may work. Demonic possession is not something that can be forced upon an individual. A person has free will. And free will is is something that cannot be denied. It cannot be overwritten. Free will is absolute at least within the eyes of Christianity and a lot of other religions.
So to assume that a person's free will can just be overwritten instantly uh by having something jammed down a character's throat is complete hogwash. Um the way, at least within a lot of documented cases that I have read, demonic possession is always about a slow seduction. It's something that happens very gradually, very insidiously. A demonic entity approaches an individual in some way, shape, or fashion slowly begins to embed itself within that person's life. And there's always a moment a moment where an offer is made and it is then accepted by that person, the possessed.
Until then, that entity is only exerting influence upon a person's life, but it's not controlling. However, once that offer has been made and it's then accepted, that is when possession becomes paramount. That's when it is a de facto standard in that person's life. Their free will has now been subjugated because they allowed it to be subjugated. That is how demons work. They are pertinatural entities that seep into a soul and then take it over. But they do so by that person's own acknowledgement. They give permission for that to happen.
And it's only by outside influences can that possession be taken away. That's what's so deadly about these things. You know, uh there's no gross manifestations of power. Even those that are in the room. I mean, you could always explain things away. Like, for example, someone is possessed.
One of the categorical roles that is usually placed uh fourth uh for um for exorcists is you want to make sure that the that the possessed is restrained, that they are kept in a bare room, and that you have assistants, if possible, that can aid the priest in case the possessed becomes free or they need extra restraining. And the reason why is that it's not unknown for during an exorcism for things to go flying about a room. It's not unknown for a room to grow deafly chill. And it's not unknown that a person may exhibit really strange behaviors.
They may be able to speak languages that hasn't that that individual never knew, or they might be able to pry forth specific details of people in the room and try to dirty that individual with knowledge being shared publicly that would shame that individual. But yet all of these things still fit within the realm of the plausible. Someone who is a skeptic could come forth and say, Oh, well, that happened because of this or that, or you know, there's nothing that's so grossly manifested that the only possible explanation is oh, there really must be a demon in here. And that that is the key.
Um I mean uh we all know the phrase that you know the greatest trick that the devil um ever accomplished uh or pulled was uh having people believe that he doesn't exist. And that's still true for all demonic entities. You know, it's it is it's a matter I still think that you know, no matter how much proof you try to get in the world, um everything is still a matter of faith. And that is what makes everything so insidious about demonic possession, because you know, people could explain it away. There's nothing there that is just absolutely going to bash people over the head.
The other thing I wanted to go over was there's often a common misconception about exorcisms, and you see this in movies all the time, where a priest or a couple of priests would go in and then an hour or two later everything's done. It's all wrapped up nice and pretty. And exorcisms in real life do not work like that. Um exorcisms are an extremely lengthy affair, uh, sometimes spanning multiple weeks or months.
It's um in fact the the case of the exorcist, the real story in which it's based upon, uh that took several months, and the the really interesting part of that is that it wasn't actually an exorcist that succeeded in that case at all. Most exorcisms um the demons involved in them are not quote unquote the devil. Um, in fact, it's usually another demon, and that's one of the main uh goals of the beginning part of the exorc of the exorcism is to get a name for the demon.
It may not be its true name, but it's something that can be it can be identified by, and then that can be used to hold some modicum of power over it. But in the case of the original exorcist story, um the thing the entity that was possessing the boy was supposedly the devil. And the boy was only cured of the possession after a vision of Saint Michael appeared in the abbey. The chapel there. And that was the only thing that allowed this tenacious entity uh to be released.
And that makes total sense because if you're dealing with the ultimate evil, then only something that is equally as powerful, which in this case is Michael, uh, whose Hebrew name is Mikhail, who is like God, um, would actually be able to to free a person from that influence. So yeah, um That is pretty much it for this episode. I really just wanted to give a uh a warning about this movie so that if you go happen to go see it, then uh you know, you do so knowing that you're probably gonna walk away um disappointed. Now I went with my wife. Um she actually enjoyed it.
She wasn't scared at all, but uh she she she didn't think too much about it, um, but she said that she did like it. So if you're a lay person and you just like scary stuff, then maybe you will enjoy it. Uh I'm not saying you should listen to my, you know, crackpot very specific things, but um there was so much wrong with the movie that it at no point was I lost in the story. At no point did I actually enjoy what I was watching. Um a few of the visuals were very interesting, especially in the very beginning.
But beyond that, there's really nothing that I could you know that I could recommend it for, and that's a shame, because I love the subject matter. Um I actually like the series of the movies. Um I will say that it was neat how they tied it into the rest of the conjuring series. That was the only kind of point of interest that I can check off. Uh, but everything else was uh was a wash pretty much. So So forgive the uh the short episode. We're only gonna be about 22 minutes here, but um, I hope you enjoyed it.
If uh there's again, if there's any kind of topics or items that you want covered, uh if you like this, if you didn't like this, um if you would leave a nice comment on Facebook or on our website, southerndemonology.com, uh I would greatly appreciate it. If you just want to reach out and say hi, more than welcome to do that too. I love I love getting letters from uh from listeners and just having you know random conversations, whether they are you know uh very specific questions or just items in general. So anyway, I hope everyone has a great week.
Uh we will have a new episode that will come out uh next weekend, and uh yeah, stay safe out there. Thank you very much. This has been Southern Demonology. Please feel free to contact us at Southern Demonology at gmail.com. We hope that you join us again for our next episode.
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