Supernatural

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As someone who has encountered supernatural entities, including an invisible creature that was 7ft tall and breathed heavily above me, I can provide a direct mundane answer: what religion am I meant to adhere to in those circumstances?

Just because you see a supernatural event doesn’t answer your religious questions, to think so is a non sequitur—well, not unless it’s an unambiguous vision of the Virgin Mary (which often, it’s not). So to see a supernatural event can pose more questions than it answers—should you become a Muslim, or what? The event doesn’t answer that—it just says “the supernatural is real”, so, at most, it demonstrates that atheism isn’t true. But Islam could still be false just the same.

So there’s a certain sense to the response in films (I assume he really means film here—like when a group of people find a vampire in a movie). Anyway, it’s why I used to hail the various entities I encounter in the name of “Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammad”, just to go in very broadly—because I didn’t know what they were.

In the end, I gave up—because supernatural entities don’t communicate verbally; they do it through dreams or chants (for example, at the Rollright Stones I fell asleep and saw visions, visions of goats, and then I said in my dream “please don’t go” and I woke up to find the entities had faded out—so that’s real communication with “the other side”, it happens in dreams).

After all, since the UFOs are supernatural entities, people see these things all the time—and what happens is not sudden conversion to a religion but speculation as to what they are. Now, I take the view these are supernatural entities because what I’ve seen conforms with what religious people have said about them, with how magicians have summoned them, and because my encounters with them happen at holy places.

But can I say they’re not, for certain, some kind of inter-dimensional probe shot back by an AI from the future that I interpret as supernatural entities? Well, I can’t say for sure. To me, it seems unlikely: it doesn’t feel correct on the intuitive level, it doesn’t chime with the way they act, and somehow the idea that “it’s a computer” that creates all existence, in a great ouroboric loop, just feels incorrect—it doesn‘t fit with what I know about the way computers are and how computers have developed, even as they have become more powerful in my lifetime.

But, then again, that’s not a refutation—it’s my hunch. So, as you can see, just to see, for example, a vampire in a Hollywood film doesn’t mean you would fall to your knees and pray to Christ. After all, it could be some natural phenomenon you just haven’t explained yet—some new species or infection (an idea that has been played with since the mid-90s onwards, vampirism as viral disease).

It’s just the same as with the UFOs—now, for me, it’s obvious these are fairies, sprites, and gods (although it took me a while to accept that, because it’s so anti-modern—though scientists who have looked into UFOs, like Jacques Vallée, have reached the same conclusion); but, for other people, it’s still a mystery to be probed scientifically.

Some people just don’t put any interpretation on it; for example, there’s a man in America, called Mike Clelland, who has had multiple encounters in the American wilderness with glowing orbs (just as I have in Britain) and these experiences are associated with owls (just as owls called to me in unison at the Rollright Stones).

But Clelland doesn’t force any particular interpretation on the events, events which he associates with synchronicity. He does talk about aliens in connection with the orbs, but he’s open-minded about it—he doesn’t force any particular interpretation on the events; he doesn’t say “it’s aliens”, “they’re from another planet”, “they’re from another dimension”—nor does he say “they’re Red Indian spirits, that’s why I see them in the desert”.

So these things basically don’t answer religious questions in a direct way. I mean, I could see a white orb of light levitate in front of me—does that mean I should become a Buddhist or a Catholic? It’s not so straightforward. Last time I was at Hartsfell, I thought “maybe you’re just here to show us you’re here” and, at that, there was a flare in the sky in response—just as happened when I thought at the Rollright Stones “people are too selfish today, that’s why they can’t see these things”. So that’s as far as an answer goes—I don’t know that if you enquired with a theological question about the Trinity that you’d get a response (perhaps that kind of speculation is an all too human thing, after all).

As an aside about Clelland, his job is to be an outward-bounds instructor—he teaches people how to trek, survival skills, leads treks. If you watch him, he’s this rather innocent, gentle, and naïve man (who looks like an owl)—and who happens to be connected to the natural world and not the artificial world of man. Hence the entities appear to him, I surmise—and since they prefer what is natural to what is artificial, that’s another blow against the “AI hypothesis”.

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There’s a mundane explanation as well, though. I assume the original post is about films. Well, a film is a commercial product—if you decide a character is going to be religious that poses other questions, such as “which denomination?”. You might think, “Well, it’s obvious they’ll be a Christian,” but Hollywood films are sold everywhere—if you put a Christian in, that puts off non-Christians.

Further, even if you put a Christian character in, with your target audience being America, you could create huge issues—a certain type of Protestant might turn off other Protestants, or if you depict a Catholic character who is later cowardly and betrays everyone you will face censure from the Catholics.

It’s better to keep your characters secular, because to make a character fall to his knees and invoke the Virgin Mary when he realises vampires are real opens up a huge can of worms—some people, for example, often Christians, really, really hate Catholicism, see it as Satanic (“the Whore of Babylon”). Well, that’s their dollar lost.

Alternatively, Catholics might watch it and object to the way the Catholic is portrayed as cowardly and superstitious. So it’s far safer to keep supernatural films firmly in the secular realm—else you might end up with pickets outside your cinema screens, or worse (the proverbial bomb threats).

Film is false religion but it’s religion nonetheless—it creates icons (the false stars of Hollywood). So if you mix it with actual religion you have a potent combination. Consider a film like The Exorcist (1973)—a film that mixed supernatural and religious themes in a sincere way. It caused hysteria on its release—even though it features a story where good triumphs over evil in unambiguous terms. There were fainting fits in cinemas—and some people were affected by the film for decades afterwards (look at the life of the film critic Mark Kermode, who is a practicing Christian, and whose favourite film, his obsession, is The Exorcist—and his Christianity is tied up with that).

What films like The Exorcist demonstrate is the truth in Conrad’s observation that civilisation is like this thin black crust that forms on lava—beneath the crust is incandescent matter that could melt through all obstacles. That is man’s psyche—that which is concealed behind civilisation, which is only a thin veneer. That’s why people are reticent to make films with overt religious characters, because you never know what forces you might unleash—the crust is very thin...

I think there were unconscious forces at work in this case, but if you consider Salman Rushdie and his The Satanic Verses (1988) there was no overt intention to offend anyone—Rushdie and his publishers didn’t think they were “doing a Charlie Hebdo”; they just thought they were doing another la-di-da literary novel for intellectuals, effectively about a charming Oriental religion “nobody really believes anymore”. Yet the repercussions from that novel echo down to last year, when Rushdie was stabbed for it.

Hence men who just want to make a semi-honest buck from entertainment are really leery about any religious themes in their films, because you never know what “screen magic” will conjure up. You thought you made an appreciative and sensitive film about a Sunni holy man, but it turns out, to his followers, you committed blasphemy that deserves execution (“the blood of the Imam be upon you!”)—and they will never, ever stop (because it’s an eternal feud now—so watch your back).

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However, one final aspect to consider is that Hollywood is run by the Jews. The Jews don’t like Christians, because the Christians have persecuted them in recent centuries—so lots of films take a subtle pop at Christianity (especially in recent decades, as Christianity has grown weaker). So, for example, in Jurassic Park (1993) there’s a cowardly lawyer who shuts himself in the loo with his rosary while says his hail Marys—and he’s eaten by T Rex, with his trousers down (Catholics are cowardly and superstitious—persecuted the Jews—hence a death that involves humiliation).

As Christianity and European power have weakened together, you see more and more films from Hollywood that are overly anti-white and anti-Christians—that’s because the Jews know the Europeans are weak now and so they’re emboldened. Since films are sigils, or magic spells, these are actually huge magic spells to induce other races, so imported into the West, to kill Europeans—or to make Europeans kill themselves. Hollywood is an anti-religion, really—because it makes us worship the false stars, not the immortal stars. *

Nevertheless, by and large, commercial concerns predominate—so storytellers tend to take a wide arc around religious topics (or at least just make it a deniable sideswipe). It’s just like you don’t see Coca-Cola taking a religious position—their purpose is to sell soft drinks, not get into theological disputations (Coke, like a film, is a form of entertainment—or distraction).

There is a parallel to the way Communism was portrayed in Cold War films—you notice that in Cold War films “the baddies” are rarely Communists, despite anti-Communist sentiment running high. That was both because Hollywood liberals (and/or the Jews) tend to be sympathetic towards Communism, but it was also because the Soviet intelligence services watched what films the West produced—and an uptick in overt anti-Communist films could be seen as preparation to mobilise the population for war against the USSR (just as anti-Nazi films prepped the US public, solidly against intervention, to enter WWII).

So James Bond often fights these international super-villains who might be Soviet, or might be neo-Nazis (or might be Commie-Nazis). But it’s rarely overt—and sometimes he’ll team up with a pretty KGB girl agent to fight against “Spectre” or “neo-Nazis”. So that’s safe, it’s not belligerent.

That’s because, as noted, film is religion—film creates icons, film creates sigils. Film is powerful, film has a supernatural element itself—it involves glamour, which is from the Scotch word “gramarye” (a spell or enchantment). It was popularised by Walter Scott at the start of the 19th century—you notice it’s similar to “grammar” (gramarye), and that, in turn, it is related to “grimoire” (a book of magic spells). The grimoire is a grammar that has glamour—if you see what I mean. Hollywood is glamour, false enchantment. *