I mentioned at the end of Father Time Part 1 that the analysis of the clocks in the Exorcist led to only one conclusion. That took me the St. Joseph Medal. At no point along the way is Karras directly connected to a St. Joseph medal. In the dream, yes, and at the very end. Perhaps. When he is trying to kill Regan after he re-enters the room and finds Merrin dead, or, possibly dead, Regan reaches up…

Swinging like a pendulum…

It swung to the left, now to the right:

Regan gets a hold of it, and…

tears it off. It then gets thrown across the room. And we know that Karras will commit suicide rather than kill Regan. Out the window he goes, just as the cop enters the room. And here is something amusing. As the detective looks out of Regan’s Diabolical Window…

See it?

Fight pigs!  Take that, detective. Although, it looks like the graffiti was painted over an earlier slogan, the word…oppression…being clearly visible. Still. Sharon found the St. Joseph medal, and gives it to Chris…

I wonder why Sharon found it, rather than Chris or the maid. But we get a good long look at it.

Chris offers the medal to Dyer. Then Dyer forces her to take it.

Time to double back to Father Merrin’s vision. We first meet the St. Joseph’s medal…

And I would point out here that this shot is dramatically similar to the shot in which, Sharon having given the medal to Chris, is holding it in her hand:

Next Father Merrin shot…

He turns the medal counter-clockwise, presumably so that we get a better look…

Now, the back…

The view of the back could have been highly important if the name of the owner of the medal were engraved on it. But there is no name, leaving us uncertain of the owner.

Fast forward to Karras’s dream. And the medal there is very different from Merrin’s medal, although there is a possible hint within the same scene.

In the dream, a very prominent view of the medal is provided. We see that it is on a chain, which is not the case with Merrin’s medal. But even more important is that in the dream, the medal falls slowly to the ground. And as it does, and the camera follows it, a distinctive pattern appears behind it. I have put it together based on different edits.

Sorry about the graphics, but I’ve been too busy with Clockology and Vomitology to study Graphic Design. This pattern appears to be on a wall, or perhaps, a rug that has been hung on a wall. The design is very distinctive. And I believe that it can be identified. We have been given two important hints…Nineveh, and Pazuzu. What does that bring to mind? Well, ancient Assyrian religion. And of the key, most important elements of Assyrian religion was…

The Tree of Life. The two strange beings on either side are called apkallu. Here’s a close-up…

Notice that each holds a pale in one hand, and what looks like a pine cone in the other hand. What are they doing? They’re pollinating the flowers on the Tree of Life. The apkallu are ancient figures going all the way back to ancient Sumaria, which is ancient history even for the ancient Assyrians. The apkallu were also the Seven Great Sages created by the god EA…

EA, also called Enki (Lord Earth), is the god of wisdom and fresh water, and the ancient god of Eridu. Apkallu also appeared as…

Fish guys! There two in the middle, with their pales. EA is on the far left, causing the fresh water to flow.

EA flanked by apkallu similar to those shown above, and this time, rather than the Tree of Life, they are connected to the Wise, Fresh Water God. Back to ancient Assyria…

This is an apkallu that is very different than the Bird Men, and very different than the Fish Guys. He is basically a human being with wings.  In fact, he may be a form of…

The god Marduk, who is on the right. This is a scene from the Enuma Elish, the Story of Creation. The being on the left is Tiamat, Chaos Herself, the Dragon from the Abyss. Marduk will slay her, and use her body to make the universe.

Now…

The fullest development. The Tree of Life, apkallu (or Marduk), and the Assyrian king, all below the winged solar disk representing the god Asshur.

A Lamashtu plaque. Lower, center is Lamashtu, with Pazuzu in pursuit. In the middle panel, there is a human being lying on a bed, with two Fish Guy apkallu performing some kind of ritual. The person on the bed is either a baby, or a woman giving birth...

Full view, showing Pazuzu looking over the top…

A front and reverse view of a Lamashtu plaque…

In a certain sense, Pazuzu reminds me of one of the most common type of graffiti…

And this is the screen shot I published in a previous essay showing the Lamashtu plaque present in Merrin’s vision in the Exorcist…

This being the Horrid Lady Lamashtu…the old woman in the carriage who almost kills Merrin…

I feel very sure, sort of, that Merrin contextualized Regan’s situation as Lamashtu vs. Pazuzu. Father Karras attempted to tell Merrin that he believed Regan had three personalities in her. Merrin insisted there was only one. So the finding of the Pazuzu head, and his distorted vision of the Pazuzu statue, were very welcome omens.

No one can doubt the beauty of Persian rugs, and many are quite valuable. And there are numerous symbolic elements that are used in making such rugs, with the person making the rug being free to choose the elements to include.  One such element is a highly stylized Tree of Life pattern…

There are, of course, many different variations. This shows a highly stylized Persian Tree of Life rug. And part of Iraq was formerly part of Persia. My conclusion? Merrin, not Karras, had worked in Iraq, and while the “dream scene” is the only part of the movie that shows the Tree of Life design on the wall, I believe that it is a clue to the viewer that the scene with the design must involve an image that only Merrin could see. I would make a similar suggestion about this element…

As we know, Merrin’s vision features a scene with three dogs. Two are fighting rather viciously, and one is watching…staying out of the fight. I interpreted this as…three dogs…Merrin, Karras, and Regan. That’s possible. Or, it means Lamashtu and Pazuzu, locked in a vicious fight, and Merrin…who is watching. If then there are several images associated with Merrin in the dream, so too this dog may belong to Merrin’s vision as well. The dog is disjointed in the dream, Karras and his mother, both prominent characters in the dream, don’t appear to see this dog, even though it is running toward something at a pretty good clip. I’m tempted to see the dog as either Lamashtu, or Pazuzu, and depending upon which it is…it rushes to attack, or it rushes to protect.

But what about the medal? It is an interesting variation of the St. Joseph medal.

In fact, it is rather rare. I searched for a long time to find this medal. I found that the St. Joseph medal is fairly consistent in its presentation:

I couldn’t find the medal in the Exorcist, until I searched using the words on the medal…

Sancte Joseph Ora Pro Nobis- Saint Joseph, pray for us

I found…

This is a wall plaque. And this medal…

Looking at the wall plaque, you will see the initials PY on the left side, at the bottom. This is the mark of a French engraver named Denis Fernand PY (1887-1949). But that is not to say that the medal wasn’t popular with priests at the time of the Exorcist. Karras, Dyer, and Merrin appear to be Jesuits. Since the background in the scene featuring the medal, and the fact that it simply falls to the ground, rather than being thrown, could be understood to indicate that the medal in question belongs to Father Merrin. It is the same medal that he “found” during the excavation. How could a St. Joseph medal be found in the same stratum as that in which Pazuzu was found? Originally, I answered that question with…it couldn’t be. And that’s a viable answer. But not the only one. If an archaeologist, who had worked at the dig-site at ancient Nineveh dropped his medal, then it could be found during a later excavation. But I would give it a bit of a twist. If what we see at the beginning of the movie is a vision, then various elements of it derive from different aspects. The vision of the medal falling, and that metal is nice and shiny, is simply this element…Merrin dropped, and lost, his medal at the dig in Iraq. He did NOT then dig it up. He simply incorporated his dropping of the medal into his vision of the dig-site…which is fictional, and within his own mind. The medal torn from the neck of Karras would then have to be a second medal…i.e., there are two different medals in the movie. It is interesting that during the sequence of shots where Regan, fighting off Karras’s murderous assault, we do not see the front of the medal. We don’t know it’s a St. Joseph medal. What we do know is that the medal produced by Sharon, and given to Chris, is a St. Joseph medal. The assumption is that the medal torn from Karras’s neck and the necklace given to Chris by Sharon ARE THE SAME MEDAL. Of course, one must be careful of Sharon. She was involved in setting up Burke to be killed by the Strong, Sick Priest. And she told Attic Man about the trap-door leading from the attic, where the Ouija board was found in the box with an orange bird logo on it…Captain Howdy, into Regan’s closet. Chris learns of Captain Howdy when the Ouija board enters the story:

And this is preceded by…

This is a larger picture of the relevant attic scene, where the markings on the box have been enhanced…

The orange bird wearing a hat is clearly visible at the bottom left (facing) the box. The orange bird statue made by Regan is Captain Howdy, and he is associated with the Ouija board. Regan made Captain Howdy on the basis of the orange bird logo on the box in the attic. Chris told the psychologist about Captain Howdy. Regan never claims that she is being afflicted by Captain Howdy. During the hypnosis session, one that I have noted elsewhere is conducted inappropriately, the psychologist asks if there is someone inside her, and Regan says…sometimes. When asked if it’s Captain Howdy, Regan says…I don’t know. Chris was creating the possession gimmick, and she began with the orange bird in the basement, never knowing that Captain Howdy started in the attic:

Perhaps. And the crucifix that Chris found in Regan’s bed, which was then taken downstairs, only to suddenly be brought back up to Regan’s room just in time…right after the detective leaves, and we hear the sounds made by Attic Man…for the show to begin. The Strong, Sick Priest must have left his crucifix in Regan’s room. And where is there to go with that? I don’t know. But the priest left his crucifix behind. Perhaps he left more behind, and the medal torn from Karras’s neck wasn’t a St. Joseph medal at all. One may be tempted to interpret the final battle between Karras and Regan symbolically, or as a Substitution Reenactment. Then the medal found by Sharon was a medal torn from the neck of the Strong, Sick Priest when, following the murder of Burke, he attempted to kill Regan. I have suggested elsewhere that the decision to kill Regan was triggered by Regan’s threat at the party that her tormenter would…die up there. Of course, it could simply have been Karras’s medal, but Karras was NOT the Strong, Sick Priest. It is Dyer in whom the detective takes great interest at the very end of the movie. For what that’s worth. Still, it seems to me that Karras’s Dream is actually the amalgamation of imagery associated with two different characters…Merrin and Karras. So the clock, and the medal, indeed are not really a problem at all.