In Norse mythology, Jörmungandr, is a sea serpent, the middle child of the giantessAngrboða and the god Loki. According to the Prose Edda, Odin took Loki’s three children by Angrboða, the wolf Fenrir, Hel and Jörmungandr, and tossed Jörmungandr into the great ocean that encircles Midgard. The serpent grew so large that he was able to surround the earth and grasp his own tail. As a result, he received the name of the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent. When he lets go, the world will end. Jörmungandr’s arch-enemy is the god Thor.
The lake of fire appears, in both ancient Egyptian and Christian religion, as a place of after-death punishment of the wicked. The phrase is used in four verses of the Book of Revelation.
An image in the Papyrus of Ani (ca. 1250 BC), a version of the Book of the Dead, has been described as follows:
The scene shows four cynocephalous baboons sitting at the corners of a rectangular pool. On each side of this pool is a flaming brazier. The pool’s red colour indicates that it is filled with a fiery liquid, reminding one of the “Lake of Fire” frequently mentioned in the Book of the Dead.
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology.
He is also the Liberator, whose wine, music and ecstatic dance frees his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subverts the oppressive restraints of the powerful. Those who partake in his mysteries are possessed and empowered by the god himself.His cult is also a “cult of the souls”; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.
Lilith is a character in Jewish mythology, found earliest in the Babylonian Talmud (completed between 500 and 700 AD/CE), who is generally thought to be related to a class of female demons in Mesopotamian texts.
In Jewish folklore, from the 8th–10th Century Alphabet of Ben Sira onwards Lilith becomes Adam’s first wife, who was created at the same time and from the same earth as Adam. This contrasts with Eve, who was created from one of Adam’s ribs. Lilith left Adam after she refused to become subservient to him and then would not return to the Garden of Eden after she mated with archangel Samael.
In 1968, at the age of 16, Anneliese Michel began suffering from convulsions. By 1973, Anneliese had developed such a strong psychosis that she would hallucinate while praying, see demon faces throughout the day and hear voices declaring that she was damned. She would also make what were described as “demon faces,” rip her clothes off, eat coal, and lick up her own urine. In addition, she became completely intolerant of religious symbols and could not partake of holy water. For a majority of the time Anneliese was experiencing these psychoses, she was committed to a psychiatric hospital which prescribed her a variety of drugs, none of which seemed to help.
By 1975, Anneliese and her family, tired of the lack of progress made with conventional medicine, decided to turn to the Catholic church which determined that Anneliese Michel was suffering from a demonic possession. Over a ten month period, Anneliese underwent seventy-six exorcisms, and eventually died from starvation when she refused to eat.
Demonic possession or severe psychosis? Whatever the truth, watch the attached clilp and hear Anneliese during an exorcism starting at 00:20.
Lord Narasimha or Nrusimha, whose name literally translates from Sanskrit as “Man-lion”, is an avatar of Lord Vishnu described in the Puranas, Upanishads and other ancient religious texts of Hinduism. He is known primarily as the ‘Great Protector’ who specifically defends and protects his devotees in times of need.
In the olden days, primitive people laughably believed that mental illnesses and epileptic fits were caused by evil demons possessing the bodies of humans. They ridiculously treated these maladies with exorcism, a one-time process in which the demons were expelled, allowing the person to return to normal life.
Exorcism is one of the most widespread practices in human history. Almost every known religion has some context in which possession is considered possible, although the interpretation of such possession can vary widely.
The Catholic exorcism ritual has been largely unchanged since the 17th century, with most of the revisions pertaining to raising the standard for determining when exorcism is a preferable treatment to Thorazine, but the Church rather stridently insists that exorcism remain a viable option, in light of the canonical absolute insistence on the existence of Satan. In fact, the Vatican’s chief exorcist is on the record saying it is heretical to deny the reality of possession and exorcism, so disbelievers are just begging to have a Crusade land on their heads.
Taoism, as a belief system, has undergone dramatic mutations over the course of millennia, but its main tenet has remained remarkably unchanged — that humans can achieve enlightenment only by “non-striving” and “non-doing,” using quiet contemplation to eventually abandon earthly concern and become one with the universe.
Taoism was founded somewhere between 1000 B.C. and 300 B.C. It officially began when a philosopher named Lao Tzu wrote a book called the Tao-te-Ching, or “The Book of the Way and Virtue.”
Taoism began as a philosophy. The basic premise was that the universe is constructed of two polar forces. Yin and yang represent a wide range of opposites — female and male, receptive and projective, responding and initiating, passive and forceful, stillness and motion.
Taoism has been practiced continually in China since its founding, although it had to compete with other religions, including Buddhism, which lifted many of its tenets. The Communist revolution drove Taoism underground in the 1950s, but failed to completely eradicate it.
In Hinduism Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge, music and the arts. She is considered to be the “mother of the Vedas”. The name Saraswati came from “saras” (meaning “flow”) and “wati” (meaning “a woman”). So, Saraswati is symbol of knowledge; its flow (or growth) is like a river and knowledge is supremely alluring, like a beautiful woman.
In the Rigveda, Saraswati is a river as well as its personification as a goddess. In the post-Vedic age, she began to lose her status as a river goddess and became increasingly associated with literature, arts, music, etc. In Hinduism, Saraswati represents intelligence, consciousness, cosmic knowledge, creativity, education, enlightenment, music, the arts, eloquence and power. Hindus worship her not only for “secular knowledge”, but for “divine knowledge” essential to achieve moksha.
She is generally shown to have four arms, which represent the four aspects of human personality in learning: mind, intellect, alertness, and ego. Alternatively, these four arms also represent the 4 Vedas, the primary sacred books for Hindus. The Vedas, in turn, represent the 3 forms of literature:
Poetry — the Rigveda contains hymns, representing poetry
Prose — Yajurveda contains prose
Music — Samaveda represents music.
The four hands also depict this thus — prose is represented by the book in one hand, poetry by the garland of crystal, music by the veena. The pot of sacred water represents purity in all of these three, or their power to purify human thought.
She is shown to hold the following in her hands:
A book, which is the sacred Vedas, representing the universal, divine, eternal, and true knowledge as well as her perfection of the sciences and the scriptures.
A mālā (rosary) of crystals, representing the power of meditation and spirituality.
A pot of sacred water, representing creative and purification powers.
The vina, a musical instrument that represents her perfection of all arts and sciences. Saraswati is also associated with anurāga, the love for and rhythm of music which represents all emotions and feelings expressed in speech or music.
During 1983–85 American archaeologist Dr Johan Reinhard directed three surveys of archaeological sites on the summit and slopes of the mountain of Llullaillaco at the border of Argentina and Chile.
In 1999 on Llullaillaco’s summit, an Argentine-Peruvian expedition found the perfectly preserved bodies of three Inca children, sacrificed approximately 500 years earlier.
According to contemporary writings by Spanish priests, these children were participants in capacocha, a sacrificial rite that occurred in celebration of key events in the life of the Inca emperor.
The mummies are those of a 15-year-old girl, nicknamed “La doncella” (The maiden), a seven-year-old boy, and a six-year-old girl, nicknamed “La niña del rayo” (The lightning girl). The latter’s nickname reflects the fact that sometime in the 500 year period the mummy spent on the summit, it was struck by lightning, partially burning the preserved body and some of the ceremonial artifacts left with the mummies.
La Doncella, pictured above, was found wearing a magnificent headdress, which meant she was probably an aclla or Sun Virgin. That is, she was chosen and sanctified as a toddler to live with other girls and women who would become royal wives, priestesses, and sacrifices. She also wore a brown dress, and was buried with several statues. Her hair was braided elaborately and she had a few white hairs, perhaps indicating emotional stress. She and the others are believed to have been drugged with chicha, a maize beer, along with coca leaves, before being abandoned on the mountain.
Some of the boy’s clothes contained vomit mixed with blood, suggesting that he may have suffered from a pulmonary edema. It is believed that he died from suffocation. He was the only one of the mummies to be tied up, and a piece of cloth had been pulled around him tightly enough to crack his ribs and dislocate his pelvis.
Lightning Girl’s body was hit by lightning sometime after her death. She wore a headdress with a metal plate over her brow. She was buried with jars which were made around Lake Titicaca and Cuzco, showing how far she may have traveled. She is the only one of the three whose face is turned upward.
