“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the battle of the flesh and spirit, of the divine and the profane, the sacred and the sacrilegious.  My cousin, the Big D, told me before he doesn’t care much for those horror movies about demon possession, such as The Exorcist, or for the likes of the Hellraiser movies.  For me, they are the scariest of all, and the most intriguing.  Is there a more ultimate battle than a battle for your very soul?

It could be it all goes back to my childhood.  No, I’m not laying blame on anyone, or anything- I enjoyed my childhood, it was pleasant; it was definitely a lot better than the childhoods of some people I know.  Actually, my interests in the occult and the supernatural probably, most definitely, stem from my childhood.  My father passed away when I was four years old, followed two years later by my grandfather, and two years from that by my great-grandmother.  I was exposed to the deaths of people very close to me at a very young age.  Of course I was curious about the afterlife, and I had a somewhat morbid curiosity about it all.  I can remember asking my mother sometime after my grandfather died what my dad would look like if we dug him up and opened the coffin.  Thinking back, I can see why my mother rather frowned upon that question.

My family is a church-going family, and that’s suitable seeing as we are seated practically in the buckle of the Bible Belt.  In the South, it seems we have a church on every street corner; I would guess they nearly outnumber the convience stores and gas stations.  My father was a deacon in a Baptist church, and my mother taught Sunday school for several years.  I grew up in church.  I was taught about Heaven and Hell, the wages of sin is death, and that Jesus Christ died on the cross to save us from eternal damnation, we only need to believe in Him and be washed in His blood.  Confess your sins, be saved, baptised, live a Christian life.

Easier said than done.

Even as a child, I wanted to know more about the bad guys, so to speak.  Satan and his minions.  I can remember watching a Geraldo Rivera special on devil worshippers and demonology when I was kid, and it completely fascinated me (it was also my first introduction to Ozzy Osbourne, he was a guest on the show).  My mother didn’t approve of me watching it, which is why I didn’t let her know until after I had already seen it.  She said if she had known, she would have stopped me.  Luckily, her mind was changed somewhat when our pastor at the time said it was good for me to have seen it, it would help arm me against the Devil.  We could all use a little bit more ammo, couldn’t we?

How many of you have heard the excuse, “The Devil made him do it?”  Or, “The Devil got in him?”  “He was possessed of an evil spirit.”   We’ve all heard it.  We’ve read accounts of possession, it’s even in the Bible- “My name is Legion, for we are many.”  Stories from the Bible fascinated and scared me when I was little; the fall of Lucifer, Noah and the Flood, the Crucifixion, the story of Lazarus.  Even the Resurrection of Jesus.  The miniseries Jesus of Nazareth freaked me out when I was a kid.  I’ve begun to question that my love of Horror didn’t start with John Carpenter’s The Fog, but that it had its beginnings with church.  The pictures of Jesus being scurged, the crown of thorns, crucifixes with Him writhing in pain.

It seems so easy to stray from the path of the Righteous, and I’ve heard it preached many times that it is easy, it’s easy to go straight to Hell.  It’s hard to live a Christian life, there is so much sin in the world, so many temptations.  Is an impure thought a sign of demon possession?  If you’re hot for teacher, will you burn in a lake of fire forever?  Are you nauseated from the flu or is that a sign of Pazuzu in your system?  Is everything the flesh likes bad for the soul?  Are we ever just human?  When asked what God was doing before he made the world, Saint Augustine answered, “Making Hell for those who question.”  So, you know, I was taught it was wrong to ask some things.

Maybe I’m messed up.  Maybe I was an impressionable youth.  Maybe I’m a little lamb led astray.  Maybe I find the macabre where it shouldn’t be, such as Communion.  I’m not making light of religion or Christianity, I still respect them.  I do my best to respect all religions (some of the crazy ones not so much).  There is right and wrong in the world, we all struggle with good and evil.  Every day is a battle for our souls.  Some days you get the bear, and some days, you know, the bear gets you.

the_novacula