kisma Johnson's blog: "Entities"

We think of possession as some evil, supernatural influence. This is why, in the modern world, it is ridiculed as non-existent, or simply the raving of the mad. But can a rational answer be given which can teach us a lot about ourselves? I think it can. A good starting point is multiple personality. Here, the mind seems to fragment into a number of personalities, each taking it in turn to occupy the person. There are hundreds of documented cases. They can be fascinating. angelMany people seem to live their life quite naturally with such personality invasions, and each can seem a separate entity. But I’ve noticed, in many cases, a specific element within each personality. They seem to reflect a specific emotion, or aspect, of the host. They can be specifically angry, sad, joyful, sexual, and many other traits. Indeed, it is as if it is not the mind that has split, but the specific emotions of the host. This could have importance beyond the unexplained. Consider, for instance, the serial killer. In many cases they seem to have separate personalities themselves. If married, a ‘normal’ personality can live a normal life, the wife even unaware of the truth. The actual killer can be seen as anger in the raw. Once the murder has occurred, we often find a deep seated conscience which makes the killer carry out stupid errors, which eventually lead to capture, as if he wanted to be caught. Could the serial killer be possessed? Yet, not possessed by some supernatural influence, but a series of specific emotional fragments of his inner mind. It could be that there is a real ‘devil’ within. Similarly, some people can appear absolute angels. Think of the monk, dedicating his life to service in God, totally subsuming all desires and emotions. Maybe it is not as difficult as it appears. The ‘monk’ personality simply sheds emotional baggage. alpha-kid-angel It can be seen in the evangelical movement. In this case, they are filled with absolute joy, and nothing can touch them emotionally. Have they been touched by the ‘angelic’? Or have they simply discarded all other emotions? We think of the mind as a coordinated whole. But the above suggests this need not be the case. Rather, the mind is a cauldron of conflicting emotions and traits, a particular fragment often rising within the ‘normal’ person. Consider, for instance, sudden anger, where all other emotions disappear as you descend into a rage. Think, also, of the moments of pure, ecstatic joy, where nothing negative can touch you. Are these moments of mild possession, when an emotional fragment escapes the confines of normality? If so, then the full blown possession is simply a matter of degrees. We all have the capacity to become devil or saint.

A grimoire can be best described as an occult book of instruction. Describing systems for invoking demons, mastering divination and detailing magical spells, they are instruction manuals for gaining magical powers. Becoming popular in the Middle Ages, the name comes from the Greek, ‘grammatikos’, meaning ‘relating to letters’. Associated, initially, with Jewish mysticism, such books are thought to go way back into antiquity. Some grimoires have become classics. These include ‘The Book of Sacred Magic’, thought to be written by Abramelin the Jew around 1450, and ‘The Greater Key of Solomon’, written in the 16th century. It is through the grimoire that we know of the often ridiculous incantations and instructions that often accompany any magical ceremony or invocation. Indeed, they seem so ridiculous that they encourage scorn concerning the whole subject. Is this ridicule valid? I don’t think it is. Perhaps we should look beyond the words and instructions, and see what is really going on in such instruction. And the first point to be raised is the ‘leap of faith’. This is an absolute knowing that a belief system is true. It ignores reason, and takes the believer to a oneness with whatever system is being believed in. And often, to ignore the rationality that says it is wrong requires you to accept what to others would be gibberish. Hence, the ridiculousness of it all has rationality. And this attitude continues into the spells themselves. For in order to carry out such irrational instructions, your beliefs have to be strengthened with every utterance or action. Hence, the very ‘stupidity’ of it all enhances your confidence that a result can be achieved. Spells are also related to normal life. Most people, when they get up in a morning, carry out a specific number of tasks in a specific way, and in a specific order. We’re talking here about ablutions, breakfasting, etc. Most of the subsequent day may be very different, but we do seem to have a ‘routine’ first thing in the morning. Now, what happens if, for some reason, this routine is disturbed? You usually find that the rest of the day seems to be a catalogue of disaster, with nothing quite fitting where it should. In effect, we’ve had ‘one of those days’. Now, is this the world going wrong, or is it more likely that your mind has been knocked out of equilibrium with the world? If so, then we can argue that your morning ‘routine’ is required to attune yourself with the day, thus allowing the day to go smoothly. If we compare such a ‘system’ to the grimoire, then we can argue that the ridiculous magical spells actually impose a form of routine, in order to attune the adepts mind to the task in hand. Some people will, of course, decide I’m being too skeptical, comparing ‘magic’ to ‘routine’, but I don’t think I am. It’s simply a matter of interpretation. For instance, soldiers often carry out the most miraculous tasks. Interestingly, military training also contains ridiculous instruction concerning drill, beasting, and much more. It seems to me that a form of psychological ‘magic’ occurs through such ‘routines’, ordering the world around the person, and literally allowing them to ‘fly’. So perhaps the instructions in the grimoire are simply the more extreme version of the magical spells we all access in order to succeed in life.

An entity is something that has separate existence, but not necessarily in a material sense. As such, it can be a concept. But in regard to the paranormal, the term is traditionally used to identify a ghost, demon, etc. Entities, of various forms, have appeared throughout human history. I’m not interested, here, in how they appear, but why? Do they have a specific purpose, or are they simply silly distractions of the fantasy-prone? Entities are not cast in stone. Rather, they change over time. Indeed, I’ve used the term ‘psychic waves’ to explain this mode of change over the centuries. And several theorists are fundamental to putting together the pieces of a possible reason why. Take mythologist Joseph Campbell. He identified universal similarities in myths. I’ve used the term ‘universal psychology’ to identify this form of identical thinking that lies behind the phenomenon. Carl Jung also offered the collective unconscious, where ‘archetypes’ appear in myth and dream, also suggesting universality. This suggests a standard pattern in our mind-set. So could this suggest a standard pattern to entities, which are seen through the mind, are they not? Other researchers, such as Jacques Vallee, offer a possible reason for all this. They speak of a ‘psychic menagerie’ lying below our conscious thought, acting as if a ‘control mechanism’ upon our culture, aspirations, etc. So is it possible that such a mechanism exists? And if so, why? Maybe a short natural history of the entity would be useful. The first possibly known entities were animal spirits. Fundamental to the first nature religions, the shaman would communicate with them in order to form a contract between man and nature. This was important because nature was the central arena of man’s endeavour. As man began to move out of nature, he expressed ‘ego’, and entities changed into the ‘chimera’ – half animal, half man. The agricultural revolution then led to the city, and our new entities were the gods and superheroes of Classical myth. Monotheism brought a change in entities. Banishing the previous paganism, entities expressed ‘evil’, and were thus seem as demons, or more subtle fairies. Man was pure, so when he did evil himself, it couldn’t be him. Hence, much evil action came to be seen in terms of the werewolf. As the Medieval world began to collapse and man gained predominance, entities became man-based, in the vampire. As we moved away from a spiritual world due to the Enlightenment, entities began to remind us of the spiritual in the ghost and, as the Englightenment crashed into 19th and 20th century conflicts, the spirit guide and communication with the dead. Next, we began to look at the possibility of space travel, and the entity became the UFO and alien. And today, as spirituality becomes personal in the New Age, the entity has become the guardian angel. Of course, various entities have always been seen, but there is a distinct pattern to predominant entities throughout history. And in every case they come in line with specific changes in man’s attitudes. It is as if they are born from our changing mind-set and the cultural expressions that arise – a kind of psychic media-form. Of course, we must then face the possibility that, as with main media, an idea arises and is then symbolically represented in media, thus defining it and changing society in kind. And if we place this function upon entities, then the paranormal becomes the actual engine of historical change. In effect, it expresses a concept - which is, of course, the intellectual meaning of the word, entity.