From deep within a dark cave on the opposite side of Galilee in the country of the Gadarenes the most hideous cry emanated. The cry was an audible sign for all travelers to keep clear of the haunted tombs. Those who knew better feared the shadowy figure that lurked there hidden within the rocks. There were stories being circulated that told the tale of an unconstrained madman who could not be held captive. With herculean strength he had repeatedly broken every restraint that his captors had executed. He not only easily freed himself from their tightly held bounds of shackles and chains, but had become an unpredictable lunatic on the loose. It was demons that had driven him into the barren wilderness. He had been a long time possessed by evil spirits. He had often made the most blood curdling sounds from deep within his assigned abyss. His cries reverberate across the land. The unclean spirits frequently seized hold of him with maddening force tortured him. He was like a puppet on their strings, being constantly preyed upon by unseen entities. They took great pleasure in making him to cut deep wounds within his flesh with jagged rocks and sharp edged stones. One day something unusual happened to the possessed man of Gardara. He left his dark tombs and entered the sunlight. He had the most dreadful visage. In a bizarre way he had decided to run nakedly towards the boat that had just landed upon the shore. What did he hope to accomplish by his naked appearance? A closer look revealed a twisted and contorted face with a body that contained many bloody contusions and deep embedded scars. He not only looked hideous, but he even also had a foul smell. He reeked with the stench of death. The demoniac was on a run, singling out a man w... ... middle of paper ... ...nless they find a man or woman to inhabit. We also learn that an exorcised man might even become worse than when he was first possessed. The story goes on to reveal that seven other spirits more wicked than the first, came along with the first demon and gone back to once exorcised man’s body and made a new home. The last state of the exorcised man became worse than the first state. It is a fact that we must remember that demons apart from the human body are not at ease but walk about through dry places, seeking rest but finding none. How thirsty they must feel outside someone’s body. Somehow demons attach themselves to a host and remain within them. To find a desirable host, the demons have a criterion to establish residence. It must be empty, swept, and garnished. To them a body meeting these conditions is the most enticing and alluring dwelling place to enter.
The subject of this novel is the senior demon instructing the junior demon, a tempter in training, on how to capture the man’s soul by using routine temptations of daily life. The first task Wormwood tries to perform is to keep his “patient” from attending church by using reason and logical arguments. He fails to keep him from becoming a Christian, but is told he can twist trains of thought to his favor, and giving him the idea of “real life”, or only worrying what effects him, and the physical and tangible aspects of life. He is also told the patient still has mental and bodily habits which could be used to his advantage. Another idea his uncle gives him is to make his patient to think of this fellow Christians as corrupt and hypocritical, and that religion itself is ridiculous. His next lesson is how to keep conflict between others, namely the patient’s mother, and how to influence him to pray based on conflicts and personal desires to render his prayers innocuous. His intention is also to keep him from the serious intention of praying altogether, or at least lead him to the prayer of a specific object, like the crucifix, the corner of his room, or inside his head, instead directly to God. He is told it is easi...
In the Christian tradition, Satan is commonly accepted as a hideous and monstrous being in direct contrast to God’s graceful mercy, often a shadowy figure with little depth. Yet there exists another very gothic view of this figure, as demonstrated by Milton in Paradise Lost, of a long suffering villain who appears more tragic artist than ultimate deceiver. The Monk, by Matthew Lewis, makes use of more tragic and mythical elements to make something altogether different, a Dionysian figure. Lewis uses such descriptive speech, symbols, and themes all connected to Greek myth to present a chaos creating character who transgresses not only God, but societal boundaries. While transgressions have been profusely researched in Gothic literature, the Dionysian myth connected to the Daemon spirit have been overlooked. I will reveal how much the scene of Ambrosio’s first meeting with Satan draws upon myths, symbols, and perceptions of the Greek God, and furthermore why these connections exist and reinforce the gothic genre.
‘Are you sure?’ asked the Savage. ‘Are you quite sure that the Edmund in that pneumatic chair hasn’t been just as heavily punished as the Edmund who’s wounded and bleeding to death? The gods are just. Haven’t they used his pleasant vices as an instrument to degrade him?’
I didn’t know where exactly I was going. But I didn’t care. I walked aimlessly in search of shelter, a place where I could seek refuge. Hours went by, and I was losing hope. When out of the corner of my eye, through the distant, dense foliage. I noticed what could have been salvation. I was fatigued and in a feeble state, was I hallucinating? Or was this real? I stumbled through the valley, my eyes fixated on the dwelling ahead. Much to my delight it was very real. I arrived at the cabin and surveyed the surroundings. The shack itself was isolated, old and tattered, as if unattended to for an eternity. I knocked on the door, and suddenly became overwhelmed by a supernatural feeling. I could hear frantic rumbling and murmuring inside, evidently the occupant wasn’t expecting a visitor. I waited a while longer, and finally the door creaked open and I was greeted by three of the utmost repulsive looking creatures I had ever had the displeasure of laying my eyes on. As disgusted as I was, I was in no position to turn away, I needed their help. They welcomed me into their abode and provided me with nourishment and directions on how to return
Soon after the death of a loved one come many visitors to the bereaved. Some arrive early, bearing gifts of food and speaking words of consolation and comfort. Others appear late in the day, unable to say anything, but still comforting in their very presence. But when the comforters have gone away and we sit through the lonely watches of the night, pondering our loss, the last visitor arrives. He comes invited, though not to bring consolation; his words are empty of that. No, his purpose is to smother any desire we may still have for life, to snuff out the smallest spark of hope that may yet gleam within our soul. He is the black-winged demon of despair, sent to bring us swiftly to the realm of everlasting pain and to bring the pain of Hell to us while we yet live.
Sigmund Freud suggested that “like the iceberg, the human mind is structured so that its great weight and density lie beneath the surface” (Guerin et al. 127). Similarly, the “great weight and density” of Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” also lies beneath the surface. While a literal interpretation reduces the work to a simple yet disturbing ghost story, trenchant analysis reveals the inward pilgrimage of the protagonist, Kathleen Drover. Although it is unclear whether or not Mrs. Drover’s return to her house in London is a physical journey, it is, with certitude, a psychological one. Mrs. Drover’s journey is one into her battle-scarred psyche, damaged by her failure to achieve a balance between two opposing forces—the Id and Superego.
Then I stopped to look at the Count. There was a mocking smile on the bloated face which seemed to drive me mad. This was the being I was helping transfer to London, where, perhaps, for centuries to come he might, amongst its teeming millions, satiate his lust for blood, and create a new and ever widening circle of semi-demons to batten on the helpless (52).
An enduring monument to his inadequacy to which he would employ a slumbering retreat. He would wrestle with his body for a brief respite from the perpetual torture that was his insomnia, tossing and turning over every inch of his bed west of the fissure that was once full of love, but never would he attempt to traverse it’s curves and corners for fear of falling into it’s deep, depressive vicinity. He lay there, awake again. His mind a highway of thoughts, only this highway had no lights, no exits, and no colour. He was stood resolute, immovable in the vast sea of movement. Surveying the surroundings that lay before him, he saw only mountainous regions of terrain, casting even more monstrous shadows over him. Each one taller than the last and twice as dark. Some would have the carved faces of past friends, frozen in a state of lament, both in time, and stone. The only solace in the midnight world was a single patch of firm, fresh grass, with a tasteful tartan picnic basket - ribbons and all. Entirely devoid of food, yet still somehow quenching his desires. A single ray of light in an otherwise nefarious expanse, shrouded in atrocities unfit even for the infernal realms of hell. The lighthouse in treacherous waters, guiding him to the reliable shores that are his most vivid and treasured
A person’s demon could be their fear of the dark, or their constant dislike of even the idea of a tall place. For others, it could be their inability to function in large crowds or the chest tightening anxiety they get when meeting new people, or having to go to an important event. It could be the depression they were told they had after an unexpected death in the family which happened when they were only four years old.
“The Demon Lover” exhibits much support of the one critic’s claim that “The Demon Lover” is “a masterful dramatization of acute psychological delusion”. Elizabeth Bowen does this through her uses of literary elements, specifically characterization and occasion. But although she has many details that support a story of a woman with psychological delusion, her main intention may have been to create a ghost story to disguise the woman’s psychological issues. Ultimately, it was a story of a woman with a mental
This tribe brings nothing but death and destruction to the island. Moreover, the newly formed group of warriors even develop a dance that they perform over the carcass of the dead pig. They become so involved in this dance that that warriors kill one of their own kind. By chance, Simon runs from the forest towards the group that is already shouting “‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!’” (152).
Some people are forced to go to a mental hospital because they are doing too much harm to themselves by trying to kill themselves or by even hurting the people they most love. Many patients have said that they have been treated like animals and that they were abused by both physical verbal. They were also given strong medications so they could be quiet and fall asleep so that it could make the job easier so the they wouldn’t give the staff problems. Usually when the patient was given too much medication by the nurses they had more problems because they weren’t able to sleep due to too much medication, the patients also got sick frequently because again they were given too much medication. Sometimes because there was too much medication in a person’s body it made the person more wild and to not allow the person’s mind to think right, so they would kill themselves because they hallucinated things and would usually jump off the building, sometimes there were even assassinations where they would kill someone because they had hallucinated something. Now a lot of mental asylums have closed because of suicides and assassinations. It is believed that most old, closed mental asylums are haunted by the spirits who were killed or who killed themselves because of the bad treatment they received from the the doctors and the
The Demon Lover, a third-person story, achieves its effects by means of a great author. What appears at first to be a tale of the supernatural becomes in fact an account of a nervous breakdown of somebody, by the name of kathleen. The imaginative ghost tale and the case history is achieved primarily through concentration on the details of setting and location. The house, the lock, the dead air of the hallway, the mysterious letter for whose presence no easy explanation can be made, the mysterious lover from the past, the chiming bells emphasizing the passage of clock time as opposed to emotional time. The woman who seems to have no will of her own, and the never ending rain all combine to create a compelling atmosphere. Even the claw marks
Demonology is a doctrine which states that a person's abnormal behavior is caused by the influence of an evil spirit or demon powers or studies on Satan / Devil and its properties. Christians when talking about Demonology, the name "Lucifer" became a major role. Because western Christians generally follow interpretations in Isaiah 14:12 that there is a rebellious archangel, he is "Lucifer" is a Latin word used by St. Jerome in the 4th century AD to translate the Hebrew word "HEILEL / HEILEI". The community believes that the strength of spirit or demon can penetrate into the body and control the mind and body of the person.
And there spirit fell into and unclean state from the way God created them, they became evil and God does not dwell with uncleanliness. The first demon to fall in this state was “Satan” he was thrown out of heaven. God cast him and several other fallen angels, Satan is known as the ruler of the world until Jesus returns. Demons are believers of Jesus and they know that he is God, but there mission is to try and capture as many lost souls as possible before Jesus returns. This (1 Peter 5:8, KJV) “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world”. (words