Tis the witching hour again and time for some more scary science ...
Laying in bed on a pitch dark night, softly growling mares in the dim light,
Can't move, But I hear the sound, as the tiny feet penetrate the silence all around
Eyes glued tight, demon's alight, clawed hands plucking chords of deep inner fright,
Now one crawls on my chest in the pitch dark night ...
The concept of a Daemon, daimon, djiin, sometimes dæmon, is as old as the written word, and the term "demon" seems to have equally ancient origins: The Proto-Indo-European word deivos was originally a reference to "celestial".
But whatever the origin in the mists of prehistory, Demons have a long and illustrious place in every culture on earth. There have been plenty of blood sacrifices to them on every continent, ceremonies and rites so hideous they shame us with their barbaric cruelty. Yet the idea persist even in our modern world in so many forms, both subtle and conspicuous.
Two commonly reported archetypical night demons: The vague hairy monster shrouded in darkness from childhood; the visit from an inquisitive alien. Fear of monsters in the dark likely evolved early on in hominid children to keep them from wandering off at night and encountering very real nocturnal monsters waiting at the periphery of camp for a soft tasty, snack
Among the early Greek philosophers, demons were seen as neither good nor evil. But with the dawn of the Christian Era, demons in the West became decidedly less impartial, markedly more iniquitous. These are Hell's Demons, Satan's minions, the type you and I are familiar with through pop culture and deep sociological reinforcement. And perhaps the most famous demons among westernized civilization over the last one-thousand years, were those who corrupted men and women at night, and enlisted them on behalf of the Dark Forces. Here there be witches and warlocks ...
The original Judaic faith had quite a collection of demons for an allegedly monotheistic religion. And the derivative Christian faith carried that over into their own beliefs. At first Christians were on the persecution end of various forms of torture and execution. They preached loudly against such practices. But the embers of Rome were barely cool when Christians took over the relics of that empire and changed their tune. For the next one thousand years Christians engaged in the same kind of activity, mostly against rival beliefs, with Islam joining in the fun and games before the advent of the first millennium.
But as the Crusades drew to a close, the Catholic Church began to focus more on their own fiefdoms in medieval Europe and the first Inquisition was born followed unexpectedly by a second in Spain: No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! One subsequent outgrowth of that deplorable period was the Great Witch Hunts.
To assist accused witches in confessing their sins and revealing members of the coven, to help flip them against others of their dark kind, the Inquisitors used a number of beastly methods: Usually with the single restriction that they couldn't break the skin. Stabbing, cutting, impaling, not allowed. It was considered too cruel. But burns, crushing, and inserting all manner of instruments into existing body cavities was fair play according to the Merciful Holy Church. A few faves were:
The Judas Chair above: The Accused were suspended above a pointy slender pyramid or cone by a rope and pulley system in a most vulnerable position, with the point inserted into their anus, mouth, or vagina, then slowly, oh so slowly, lowered onto it.
The Iron boot. A sort of container for the feet and lower leg that locked the feet in where boiling water or molten metal could be added in slow increments or the entire device heated. Additional large screws and vices allow the shin bone or foot to be slowly crushed.
The Head Vice: Pretty simple. Place witch's head into a custom fitted vice, and tighten it until teeth splinter, bones crack, and eyes and ears start oozing out of their cavities. A smaller version could be used on the fingers and toes.
The Pear: A small tough bladder is rammed up the vagina, penis, or anus. The device is then slowly expanded; with red hot air from a bellows. Some bladder models had little ceramic or metal points that popped out during the process. A modern version of this trick some say is used by the US or surrogates is to plug-up the urethra with a catheter and run IV fluid into the victim until they're writhing in agony with the need to urinate. By letting urine out now and then, the torture can be extended indefinitely and relief granted or denied as the interrogation progresses without ever producing real or visible damage.
Then of course there's the oldie but goodie: Just club the evil witch's arms and legs with padded steel bats until the bones are reduced to shards.
The interrogation was usually carried out by men approved by the Church. The medieval equivalent of cronies or young bucks looking to make their bones granted a witch-hunting license so to speak. These were often young, celibate, sexually repressed priests ... who tended for some 'unknown' reason to focus on the carnal aspect of the witch phenomena. Pubic hair was shaved away so that these holy warriors could carefully scrutinize the genitalia for Devil's marks; a mole, a birth mark, it might take a lot of looking ... and maybe a little fondling. If no marks were found it was often declared the devil's marks were there, but rendered invisible through some black magic. This was evidence that the accused was not just a witch, but a powerful and able witch in direct service of Satan. There are endless examples of similar 'reasoning' among the interrogators as ridiculous as the classic Monty Python line "She turned me into a Newt! ... I got better ..."
"So ... if she weighs less than a duck ... then ... she's a WITCH!"
It's really not surprising that under these conditions the accused fessed up to about anything the torturers wanted. And those accused included children, old men, and mousy housewives, of all economic socio-classes. Accusing an enemy of witchcraft became a great way to address an old grudge or eliminate competition for prized posts, for the affections of a desired maiden, or in reducing rivals in commerce. It was so popular and all sealed with the approval of the Church that an entire profitable industry sprung up around identifying and prosecuting witches. The accused would forfeit their possessions, title to land, and financial assets, to the officials in charge. The loot was split fifty-fifty between Church and State. It was quite a scam. At the height of the great European Witch-hunts around 1600, entire middle class communities were systematically wiped out, whole families from matriarch and patriarch down to infants were burned alive after being tortured. Estimates of the total killed range between forty-thousand and five-million.
The phenomena of demons and nightime visits by curious creatures, often interested in sexual matters, seems to be deeply rooted in the human psyche, including western society today. Satanic Ritual Abuse scares, the alien abductee culture, and the war on drugs, being just a few modern day examples with eerie parallels to the witch hunts. The real potential for hysteria and danger however only occurs when there is an associated threat which is hyped to the point of absurdity, whether real or perceived, and the possibility of profit or power is in the balance. Then the threat is portrayed as so immediate, so all encompassing, and so immorally depraved, it merits waiving all preexisting standards of decency, law, skepticism, and humanity, to combat. And that's the real peril to any society.
The McMartin Preschool in Manhatten, Ca. A routine investigation into child abuse ballooned into a fantastical tale of vast underground labyrinths and monstrous group child pornography sessions, all implied to be a part of an international cult organized around Satanic sacrifices. By the time investigators began to suspect they'd been caught up in the witch-hunt hysteria phenomena, millions of dollars had been spent, hundreds of children were scarred with false memory syndrome, and several teachers were ruined for life
The one that most distresses me the most at present, and the reason I'm even writing this, concerns the 'War on Terra'. Politicians have longed used fear to switch off our critical thinking skills and push through their own agendas in the ensuing darkness of hysteria. The war in Iraq being a textbook example which was pulled off rather brilliantly in the light of day in a fully modern nation with armies of functioning independent journalists allegedly skeptical enough to fend this very sort of shit off.
Let's get a little clearer perspective on this: In the US, the greatest threat to your life is cardiovascular disease (750,000 deaths/year), followed by cancer (580,000/year), stroke (165,000/year), chronic pulmonary disease (125,000/year), diabetes (74,000/year). All of these conditions can be mitigated by something as simple as moderate exercise, basic check-ups, and a half-way sane diet. An estimated 40,000 people will die in motor vehicle accidents this year and every year and almost 20,000 will be murdered, the majority of those by a family member or longtime acquaintance (All figures are approximate). The odds of being killed in a terrorist attack, even averaging in 9-11, over the last ten years is on about the same order as being stung to death by some kind of bugs; bees, spiders, and so forth. You have a greater chance of being killed by a run of the mill flu or winning a lottery, on average. Hardly a threat so overwhelming we have to bring back the Inquisition to survive it.
And yet BushCo mandates that as part of that war on terra and with the danger so pressing, we absolutely must suspend our most cherished, humane values and allow the highest authorities in the land, who incidentally set themselves up routinely as the paragon of divinely inspired morality, beat, torture, and murder anyone they deem suspect. Or send those they want subjected to especially brutal interrogation overseas to some of the worst regimes on earth. The accused are not charged, there is no trial, and no due process. We're supposed to trust Bush and company as they, and they alone, deem fit to hand down sentence Inquisition style in whatever quantity striking their fancy or serving their agenda: Fuck that and fuck them.
This is a self fulfilling process. For just like those unfortunate victims of the Holy Church five-hundred years ago, our suspected terrorist detainees will say anything to anyone to get the pain to stop. They'll turn on their enemies, their friends, and sooner or later, their own flesh and blood. They'll sign any confession and agree to any terms, if the torture is great enough. The whole thing then feeds on itself, tying up finite resources and scaring the shit out of everyone, providing the age old cover politicians and dictators alike find so useful. And it will keep doing so to the grisly, inevitable end. As it has so many times before in our bloody history as a species. If that isn't a modern day witch-hunt, I don't know what is.
This is not my policy, these victims are not my enemies, they never attacked my homeland and they posed no threat to us whatsoever. The people ordering this sick shit are not my countrymen or my leaders: They're not even decent human beings.
We cannot directly intervene in the wholesale torture and summary execution that occurs everyday in the world. Torture, witch hunts, and demon scares are being perpetrated on a credulous public from Asia to Africa to Latin America right this second. But we sure as hell don't have to join them. I for one will not vote for any political candidate in 2006 0r 2008 who doesn't come out strongly for reversing the barbaric policy of George Bush and his sick twisted cabal of torturing sadistic freaks. I think I'd rather take my chances with terrorists, aliens, or demons hiding in my closet, than my leaders hiding their greed for money and power behind fear disguised as patriotism and Christianity while stomping on my Constitutional Rights: I say again, fuck them and fuck that.
In the meantime, I hope I don't have late visitors of my own here in DarkSyde Manor. I'm one of the millions of people that suffer from what is likely the real quirk behind the mares and demons which people have been reporting for millennia. I sometimes experience sleep paralysis, a disconcerting sensation between sleep and wakefulness where the muscles are frozen, the mind alert, thinking distorted, and dreamlike beings are near; they mostly come at night, mostly. Had I come under the bungled care of a pseudoscientific therapist loon at the right point in my life, I'd probably have been convinced by now that I was the victim of a vast Satanic Conspiracy or an Interstellar Alien Campaign, where either denizen was strangely drawn to my genitals.
Sleep paralysis and an evolutionary heritage full of predators lurking in the shadows helps explain why these nocturnal disturbances are so widely reported through out human history, in every culture and creed. The details vary, but the basic anecdotes are suspiciously alike. And it's plausible that a partially sleeping left brain, subconsciously struggling to explain the irrational spectres, would draw upon the prevailing cultural idiom and refine that interpretation over time. Thus in ancient Greece they were messengers from the Gods, in Christian Europe they're Satanic Demons, in Victorian England they're fairies, here in the US they're aliens.
Sleep paralysis alone is unpleasant enough that I've trained myself over the years to yell out 'wake me up' so that my wife knows to rouse me and end it. Vague looming danger is also sometimes present. Lucky for me I guess that it's not aliens or demons that haunt these waking dreams in the dark. It's usually something much more mundane like a stranger hovering over me, trouble breathing, or someone or something scratching at the window or door to get in. But I worry a bit that it could be unusually terrifying if I'm so disturbed later this evening: A body was found nearby, just a couple of blocks over, in my otherwise quiet neighborhood, this afternoon. We may have a murderer at large.
Anyway, turn out the light, sleep tight. And, if you happen to be visited by supernatural creatures of the night, with hideous eyes and probing clawed fingers, sitting on your chest sucking the very breath of life from your straining lungs, just remember that it is all probably just a passing relic of our evolutionary history, combined with a quirk of human neuro-physiology ... probably.