I used to believe in demons.
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I’m not proud of it, but I’m not really ashamed of it, either. I can’t change what I used to believe, even if I wanted to. And I’m not certain that I would change it, even if I could. (More on that later.)
But I want to be clear: when I say that I used to believe in demons, I’m not talking about a simple, intellectual assent to religious teaching. It was deeper than that.
I remember two specific times when I felt a demonic presence.
The first was during my high school years, in the late ’70s, when the “rock is of the devil” movement was in full swing. Even my church, which was pretty level-headed on the whole, invited an itinerant preacher to give a presentation about the dangers of the devil’s music. This guy’s life was devoted to mapping the intersection of rock ‘n’ roll, Satanism, and sex. And, armed with his carousel of slides flashing sexy album covers and pictures of Anton Lavey onto his portable screen, he warned the parents against allowing their poor, vulnerable teens to listen to rock. Would you invite Satan into your home? he asked. That’s what your kids are doing with this rock ‘n’ roll music….
Like all these guys—I saw several sermons like his, and read a few books along these lines—his “reading” of rock lyrics was embarrassingly weak, especially for a member of a religion that prides itself on sophisticated Biblical exegesis. “I was thinking to myself, this could be heaven or this could be hell,” he said, reciting an Eagles’ lyric. “Well, we know it’s not heaven, so it must be…” And in perfect unison, the entire congregation said, “Hell,” in perfect unison. Even I—a timid teenager, and more susceptible to his message than I care to admit—thought that was a bit Stepford.
In the midst of all that, I found a Santana album. I don’t remember where I found it—in a vacant lot, or on the side of the road, or something like that—but the album cover was grimy and faded from long exposure to the sun, almost to the point of being black and white. So I took it home, cleaned up the record, and dropped it on my turntable.
And very quickly freaked out.
The album was Caravanserai. Wikipedia tells me that this album marked a major turning point in Santana’s career, a move away from his quite popular salsa-rock toward more jazz-oriented work. But I didn’t know any of that. I only saw that the first song was called “Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation”—reincarnation!—and I heard (incorrectly, it turns out) “Eastern” influenced music. I felt a demonic presence, a palpable oppression. Those preachers were right! So I got that record right out of my house.
I’ve held a pretty clear memory of this for years: the thrill of transgression as I lowered the needle on this found, forbidden work; the faded album cover with its caravan of camels and nomads beneath a pale gray sun; the droning sitars and nasal chants floating out from the speakers; the sense of fear and regret that I felt. I have no trouble recalling all this.
But a lot of that memory is just flat-out wrong. That first song (which is all I listened to—and not even the whole thing) opens with the sound of crickets and a saxophone. No sitar! No chanting, either—it’s an instrumental. And it’s just…jazz, not the “Eastern” music that I so clearly remember.
It’s amazing how expectations shape experience.
The second time I felt a demonic presence was much later—in my early thirties, I think—at my local library. Each visit—and I visited fairly often—I would walk down a random aisle and grab a book without looking. It’s easy to get in a rut, choosing comfortable books from the same authors or in the same genres. I wanted to expand my reading beyond my well-established reading habits.
One day, without looking, I pulled T.M. Luhrmann’s Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary England off the shelf. I opened the book and started to read the introduction… and felt like a mass of demons was crowding around me, reading over my shoulder. I closed the book, set it back on the shelf, and walked away. I was genuinely afraid.
Persuasions is an ethnography of London witches, exploring the nature of belief—how it is that modern Londoners (even originally skeptical ones) come to be persuaded that the witchcraft they practice is real. It’s anthropology. It’s not a how-to book on spells. It’s not an invitation to worship Satan (that’s not what witchcraft is, anyway, but I believed it was). It’s not a recruitment tool. The author doesn’t even believe in witchcraft—at least, not beyond the power of human belief to make things “real.” But I didn’t know that. All I knew was that the demons had gathered ’round when I opened the book.
A few years back, I hunted down Persuasions, curious what my experience would be. I am happy to report that I felt no demonic presence—though my younger self might argue that this is only to be expected: now that I’ve walked away from my faith, there’s no need for Satan and his minions to oppress me, right?
Of course, I believed in angels, too, but it wasn’t the same. I don’t remember ever feeling an angel’s presence. Indeed, despite my intellectual assent about angels, I was pretty cynical. When a friend of mine said that she had felt a presence protecting her as her car spun out of control on the freeway, slamming into other cars and the center barrier, all I could think was, if the angel could intervene like that, why not just prevent the accident? I mean, yeah, my friend wasn’t seriously hurt, but she was hurt—and she wasn’t the only one in the accident. A lot of pain and trauma could have been avoided if the angel had just stepped in a little earlier.
I’m thinking about this kind of thing because I’m ready to start writing seriously again. And the project I’m considering (again—I’ve been considering this for years, alas!) is an urban, or contemporary, fantasy that involves angels and demons—or, at least, beings that we mortals interpret as such. I’m excited to tackle it again because it engages a number of concepts that I have an interest in: espionage, and thrillers, and angels, and information theory (yes, that’s weird, and no, I’m not an expert), and the holographic universe (ditto)—and, above all, making meaning through the stories we tell.
I figure that, if this confluence of interests is unique to me, I might have a chance at creating something original—something that only I could bring into the world. And that would be cool.
Now I just have to write.