Story: I Met some Weaponized Catholicism

[MorganBlack]

A couple of months ago, my beautiful New Ager / Paranormal Investigator girlfriend dragged me out of town to a paranormal convention. At one of the booths we stopped to chat with Joe Franke, a longtime protege of Ed and Lorraine Warren (of The Conjuring and Amityville Horror fame), and owner of The Warren Society for Paranormal Research.

Franke has spent decades working alongside the Warrens, learning their methods of demonology and paranormal investigation. As part of his ongoing work with the Warren Society, documenting cases and training new investigators in the Warren tradition. Franke is known for taking a deeply Catholic approach to paranormal investigation, emphasizing the spiritual warfare aspect of dealing with demonic entities.

I mentioned offhand to him that paranormal investigators have a significant uptick in probability for developing cancer over the general population. To which he agreed. Dude looks... rough for his age.

From what gather from what he said in our chat, and in his presentation, he works closely with ordained Catholic priest , whose name I do not recall, and who serves as the Society's religious consultant and performs blessings, exorcisms, and consecrations of protective items. The priest travels with Franke to various cases, providing sacramental support and spiritual protection for the investigation teams.

We chatted a bit more about paranormal events and in a pause as he attended to others attendees at the booth. I noticed on his table he was selling Roman Catholic Saint Michael crucifixes and holy water and other items. When I looked down at these rosaries and crucifixes for a moment, they all looked like radiant many-balded diamond daggers, spiky , pokey and hot. That overlay into my vision lasted or about 10 seconds, then they faded back to normal.

I was like, "Welp, cool if you need it, but I am NOT getting one of those."

In my view, they had obviously manifested Saint Michael in one of his most aggressive manifestations into their crucifixes. In Vodou San Michel is a very left-hand saint. At that moment, a woman to my right looked up with a start. He said she tried to touch one of the bottles of holy water and was given something like an electric shock.

I was like, "Cool, but nah. Too aggro for me."

 

[Robert Ramsay]

I mentioned offhand to him that paranormal investigators have a significant uptick in probability for developing cancer over the general population. To which he agreed. Dude looks... rough for his age.

The problem with cancer is that it's a scaling event; it can start from a single mutation in a single cell and multiply up to, well, you get the picture.
Luckily, we have so much stuff in our DNA (normally called 'junk DNA' but really 'we don't know what it is DNA') that it takes a lot of random mutations (on average, you get four mutations from UV/cosmic rays when you go out in the sunshine) to do anything catastrophic.

What does this have to do with magic/the paranormal?

I am of the opinion that when you are involved with a magical act, because magic is not usually precise, there will be unforeseen effects, like the ripples from throwing a stone into a pond. One of the signs that a magical act has succeeded can be a cluster of other coincidences around the successful act.

So if you are constantly getting involved with these situations (without explicit banishing) then you lay yourself open to random changes which could manifest as random mutations. Enough of those (coupled with all the other many risk factors for mutation), and you risk cancer.

 

[MorganBlack]

This issue really doesn't venn over more mental level practices like New Thought / Chaos Magic , and will probably never show up there. It really only becomes more of a concern with animist sorcery practices, and where the trad sorcery practices start to make a lot more sense; none of wich is required for NT.

For us more indigenous New World sorcerers, it's a feature, not a bug. But I also approach these things very differently than Franke and the Catholic priests.

For more pretty decent intro to the more animist paranormal side of magic , see Hansen' book here:

Book – EPUB/MOBI - George P. Hansen -The Trickster and the Paranormal (2001)

I looked around this could not be found. About the Book Paranormal and supernatural events have been reported for millennia. They have fostered history’s most important cultural transformations (e.g., via the miracles of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed). Paranormal phenomena are frequently portrayed...

wizardforums.com

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 10:47 PM

OK, why some crucifixes get stabby.

I love Chaos Magic. And honestly empty-handed in the form of New Thought is all you need for all your manifestation-magic.

But the animist level is where some real fun begins. Like making haunted packages of ramen. Demons, cryptids, bigfoot, god-forms, UFO's , angels, spirits live at this nutty , spooky, wackadoodle level , at the sublunar carnival level. I would also say there no need to take the various mythologies literally. We are shaping consciousness , or the 'whatever,' into these forms to use them. And sorcerers all have to grapple dealing with how they show up.

"Boo! Boo, I say!"


I wish I could find it again , but in a hilarious update of the classic Phillip Experiment Greg and Dana Newkirk, of the paranormal documentary 'Hellier' fame, showed people how to make haunted packages of ramen.

Same deal with stabby crucifixes.

Somewhere in here.
[Mod: removed web shop link]

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 10:52 PM

Dammit! A webshop. Arrgh! Reporting my own stuff.

Post automatically merged: Today at 12:01 AM

Replacement link. Sans shop.

The Haunted Objects Podcast​

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[Morell]

I'm little annoyed that they would use the face of their creepy doll in the center of the logo. That is excellent way to give the doll spirit yet another way to refill it's energy. In a way it is funny to see the type of a magic they weave with that doll. Creators and caretakers of their own demons...

I also thought that the Warrens and people around them are useless in occult sense so it surprises me that you actually sense the crosses the person was selling as magically active objects. Not entirely useless, I guess.

Post automatically merged: Today at 6:41 AM

I should rather use term ugly than creepy. I think the doll really is ugly.

 

[MorganBlack]

Totally agreed, Morell.

I was a bit shocked at well. I just looked down at his wares and was not thinking about it one way or the other.

I also did try to move my conversation with Joe Franke to the meta-myth level and "talk shop", but the poor dude has obviously been through the ringer. I was not going to poke his tools.

Once you are "down" in the highly emotional astral-etheric level (by one model) with the telluric forces, the operative rules change there a bit, and there is a utility to absolute emotional blind faith. I was not going to take that away from him, and I could tell just looking at him the dude has seen some shit.

It it takes alot of personal inner synthesis to be able to shift to a magician's stance, and begin to see all religions and myths as a sort of Chaos Magic Morrision Hyper-sigils you can use to force (or entreat) spirits (thought-beings) into.

But even famed G.D. visionary magic exorcist Josephine McCarthy will advise her student not tangle with "African" sorcery. She's in the UK so that will be the old sorcery she's been exposed to the most. She works at the mental level. Great stuff. But in my observation, and how I look at it, it does not penetrate here unless "brought down." (Well it does, all is The Imaginal, but some other thoughts have been brought down much much harder). She advises best she can do is remove any ensouling objects and run.