The Chief Exorcist of Rome

Fascinating article from Smithsonian -

Before his death in 2016, Father Gabriele Amorth claimed to have performed over 100,000 exorcisms. Working as the official exorcist of the Vatican, he performed a service that many have never seen outside of horror films. Now, his story is the basis of such a film: The Pope’s Exorcist, starring Russell Crowe, which came out last week.

Born in Modena, Italy, in 1925, Amorth joined the Italian resistance during World War II. He earned a law degree and worked as a journalist before becoming a priest in 1951.

In 1986, Amorth was appointed as an assistant to Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the chief exorcist of the diocese of Rome, whom he later succeeded. He remained in the position until his death. In 1990, he wrote the book An Exorcist Tells His Story, which was translated into 30 different languages and became a bestseller. Around the same time, Amorth founded the International Association of Exorcists. The association, which still exists today, is not impressed with the new film. 

“This way of narrating Don Amorth’s experience as an exorcist, in addition to being contrary to historical reality, distorts and falsifies what is truly lived and experienced during the exorcism of truly possessed people,” says the association in a statement, per the Catholic News Agency’s Kevin J. Jones. 

Exorcism has a long history in Christianity. The practice appears in the New Testament, which depicts Jesus casting out evil spirits in the Gospel of Mark. “Jesus’ exorcisms were evidence of his authority over the devil,” Rob Haskell, a theologian specializing in the New Testament, told History.com’s Elizabeth Yuko last year. “They showed that he had spiritual power.” 

While Protestants performed exorcisms, the practice fell out of vogue around the 1600s. Today, exorcism is associated primarily with Catholicism. As recently as 2017, Pope Francis told a group of priests that they “should not hesitate” to call in exorcists when necessary. 

Exorcisms have long been a subject of fascination for Hollywood and horror fans. The Pope’s Exorcist is the latest in a long line of films pitting priests against demonic forces, the most famous of which being The Exorcist (1973). Amorth was a fan of the film: When he met with its director, William Friedkin, decades later, he explained that he was not afraid of the devil, and that, in fact, the devil feared him.

“Do you know why the Devil is afraid of me? Because I’m uglier than he is,” Amorth told Friedkin in a 2016 Vanity Fair interview. While he was known to have a surprising sense of humor, considering his line of work, Amorth believed that the work he was doing was essential. Throughout his life, he claimed to have performed tens of thousands of exorcism rituals. According to Deepa Bharath of the Associated Press (AP), Amorth has said that 98 percent of those who seek him out need a psychiatrist, not an exorcist. His focus, however, is on the 2 percent.

While some in the Catholic community are critical of The Pope’s Exorcist, one of the film’s executive producers, Edward Siebert, who is also a Jesuit priest, has maintained that his goal is to cast men like Amorth in a positive light. “It’s good to see a priest talking about prayer, forgiveness, God’s love and, on top of all that, vanquishing demons,” Siebert tells the AP. “It feels good to finally see a priest as a hero.”

 

Carolyn Hagler | READ MORE

Elijah Bond's Ouija Board Grave

In Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland, rests Elijah Bond, the man who first patented the Ouija board. He rests in peace beneath a headstone that playfully reflects that achievement. 

 

Atlas Obscura reports:

The concept of a Ouija board is fairly simple: ask questions into particularly haunted air, then wait to see which letters on a board your involuntary motions end up pointing to for the answer. The creepy notion of not being fully aware of where your own hands are going to point, nor why, has fascinated paranormal enthusiasts and psychologists alike for years, and it’s all thanks to one man: Elijah Bond.

Bond patented one of the world’s first commercially sold talking boards, which was trademarked as Ouija, and immediately captured people’s imaginations with his claims that it could help one speak to people from beyond the grave. One can only imagine how well the one on his own gravestone works, since it’s obviously already very close to the deceased.

However, such was not always the case. In one of the last century’s most intriguing (and perhaps intentional) ironies, the man responsible for bridging the communication gap between the living and the dead was buried in an unmarked grave, making him nearly impossible to find years later.

But in 2007, Robert Murch, a paranormal enthusiast and Ouija board collector, located the grave and Elijah Bond finally got the acclaim for his invention. Murch claims it took him 15 years to locate the precise grave in Baltimore’s Green Mount Cemetery, several of those spent working closely with the cemetery owners.

Volunteers and donation funds were pulled together to create Bond’s truly memorable headstone, which bears the traditional name, birth and death dates on one side, and a replication of a Ouija board carved into the other. The grave is now a popular destination for nostalgia fans and people interested in the supernatural. After years of resting in obscurity, Elijah Bond himself is finally being communicated with, one way or another.

Know Before You Go

Green Mount Cemetery is open from 9 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. every day except for Sunday. Once in the cemetery, make your way toward the large building in the middle. On the north side is section P, and its located right across the street from the section P marker. The gravestone itself almost seems out of place, so its fairly easy to find once you're in the right area.

Well+Being

The Washington Post just launched a new section called Well+Being. Articles cover Food, Fitness, Mind and Body. Here is how you can learn more:

Welcome to Well+Being

The Washington Post’s new personal health desk has assembled a team of physicians, mental health professionals and experienced journalists to answer your questions and share the latest research on living a healthy and fulfilled life.

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Centre for Psychological Astrology Summer 2022 Courses

This from the Centre for Psychological Astrology in London. These are virtual so anyone can join:

The Summer 2022 webinars start on 8th May - take a look at the full details and book now at https://www.cpalondon.com/seminars.html

Webinars are real-time, online seminars in psychological astrology. You are able to interact with the tutor and other students as the session happens via a chat box. Experience a MISPA seminar live from anywhere in the world through your computer browser or app. If you can't make it live you can still book and receive four weeks access to the recording of the event afterwards.

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Lynn Bell
Lost and Found: Working with the 12th house in the birth chart
Sunday 8th May 2022 - 15.30-18.00 BST

Planets in the 12th house are often ‘cut off’ early in life,  they may feel invisible to us, neglected or unrecognized. They can also be misinterpreted by others, leading to a sense of separateness or exclusion. At the same time, they give access to other realms, and ways of being, even to memories out of time. As these  energies become consciously integrated they  have much to offer in terms of vision, compassion and insight. Unintegrated planets here can be the source of our “undoing”. How do we “find’ these energies and begin to live them well?

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John Green
Rage Hard: Reclaiming Mars Energy
Sunday 15th May 2022 - 15.30-18.00 BST

Will, drive, aggression, masculinity. These words often have negative connotations in our modern world. Mars is in crisis right now as we struggle with criminality, patriarchy and high rates of suicide. The warrior has been demoted to a safe fictional character or demonised in war, gang violence or as the sexual predator. Have we forgotten how to honour him?

In this re-evaluation of Mars, our driving force in life, we will look at why Mars is so important to every one of us and what terrible problems he can cause in life if we try and ignore him. How can we restore him to a noble figure?

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Shawn Nygaard
Angels & Daimons, Signs & Wonders
Sunday 29th May 2022 - 15.30-18.00 BST

“I sit and wait… does an Angel contemplate my Fate?” sings Robbie Williams in his song, “Angels.”

In our modern culture of billions and trillions of email messages, text messages, and instant messages transmitting back and forth across the world from smartphones, tablets, and personal computers, it’s easy to forget the original instant messengers: the angels (from the Greek word “angelos,” meaning: “messenger, one that announces”), known in ancient Greece as daimons. In our modern culture saturated with technology, social media, ultra-high definition, and everything we need seemingly within grasp or easily delivered, are angels and daimons even relevant? And what do they have to do with astrology?

Influenced by James Hillman’s “The Soul’s Code,” among other sources, this webinar explores angels, daimons, the Roman genius, and the North African genie – all variations on the same theme of the spirit that is born with us, within us, the spirit that remembers our soul’s reasons for being here on earth. How can we approach the natal chart with the daimon in mind? How might we experience transits if we imagine a daimon behind the scenes? We will look at chart examples for glimpses of the daimon within, and we’ll see how angels and daimons and genius and genies show up archetypally via the imagination of popular culture in movies, literature, and songs, and how they can enhance our astrological imagination, keeping us in close contact with soul.

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Darby Costello
The Sun and the Moon in the astrological chart
Sunday 19th June 2022 - 15.30-18.00 BST

The Sun and the Moon are the two great luminaries in our sky. The Sun keeps its shape and brightness and lights up our days, and the Moon waxes and wanes through the night sky in relation to the Sun. They are intimately related to each other in the heavens above us, and also in the astrological chart. Here we shall look at the relationship between them so to remember how fundamental they are to our natures and how we might honour them as we develop through our lives.

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Clare Martin
The Astrology of Grief
Sunday 26th June 2022 - 15.30-18.00 BST

This webinar will focus on the universal, and yet intensely personal, experience of grief. "Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love." (Rabbi Earl Grollman). We will explore the multi-layered astrological landscape of loss and grief and use the medium of enduring myths and stories to help us recognise and release the old griefs, personal, familial, ancestral and collective, which are stored in our bodies and souls.

[Freya’s Tears - Anne-Marie Zilberman in the style of Gustav Klimt]

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Jason Holley
Along the Edge of Self and Chaos: Venus, Mars, and the Birth of Eros
Sunday 3rd July 2022 - 15.30-18.00 BST

The Greeks said variously that Eros was the child of Nyx (Night) and Chaos who then created the entire world; and also the child of Venus and Mars whose arrows could inflame any heart with love. Audre Lorde wrote that “The erotic is the measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” Something about Love creates and recreates the entire world. Yet Love also often unnerves and overwhelms us, taking our entire world apart.

In the astrological sky, Venus and Mars – planets belonging to the Night sect – tell part of the story of our relation to the erotic. Often repressed yet also objectified and used by a Day-centered world, when these planets come forward in us they frequently do so with intense need and a sense of urgency and possibility. In this webinar we will explore myths of these two archetypes drawn from the Greco-Roman tradition but also the earlier Egyptian and Mesopotamian stories, to understand each planet on its own terms, and how they subject us (Mars) and seduce us (Venus) away from the order of our Daytime selves into the rich, polymorphous, chaotic space of Night.

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See all the full details and book at: https://www.cpalondon.com/seminars.html

Previous webinars are available to view on demand here: https://www.mercuryinternetschool.com/video.html

The Danse Macabre

There is probably nothing more fascinating or scary than the Dance Macabre which, in a time where death was all around. Wikipedia define it as  consisting of the dead or a personification of death summoning representatives from all walks of life to dance along to the grave, typically with a pope, emperor, king, child, and laborer. It was produced as memento mori, to remind people of the fragility of their lives and how vain were the glories of earthly life. Its origins are postulated from illustrated sermon texts; the earliest recorded visual scheme was a now-lost mural at Holy Innocents' Cemetery in Paris dating from 1424 to 1425. 

In this Atlas Obscura podcast, Caitlin Doughty, from “Ask a Mortician,” gives us a dance lesson in the two-step we were all born to do.