The Goat-man. Who was he? That’s right…a strange being who lived on the other side of Judy Johnson’s property. Judy Johnson…or…Domino Number 1. There are, of course, a lot of so-called “enigmatic” numbers to be found on this website, the most important being the Number 3. And numbers are important indeed! And we know that you must not lose your number; especially if it’s the only one you own. After all, you might use it when you feel better, when you get home. Those are all the lyrics I know from the song. I’ve been trying to listen to it backwards, and as I pull the record backwards across the turn-table, I just get gibberish. Maybe I’m doing it wrong.

Here is a number that many would say is an enigmatic number, but is, in fact, not enigmatic at all. In fact, the writer responsible for this strange number intended it to serve a very utilitarian purpose.

I know that number!

That shot is of the same building. Of course, if the Devil lived in this building…and actually the number is not that of the Devil in the Book of Revelation…it’s the Number of the Beast. They are, of course, two different guys. But! The Beast serves the Dragon, and so if we were on their side…which we are emphatically NOT…we could still play Devil’s Advocate, although I’d have a devil of a time doing so…we could fool the world by applying the Pentagrams on a Child’s Toy Tea-plate technique:

The world will be none the wiser now that I turned this massive building in New York upside down! No! You are mistaken…the Beast lives at 666 Park Avenue…I live at 999 Park Avenue. My aren’t we clever. But who owns 666 Park Avenue?

That’s right…Jared Kushner. And isn’t that quite a thing! He is, of course, the baby-faced son-in-law of the most powerful world leader, who was given a very large, and powerful, portfolio. Now someone has rightly said to me…it’s just an address…and he didn’t pick it! That’s true…but quite possibly irrelevant. Why? Because in the Book of Revelation, the Beast doesn’t pick the number 666. In fact, in the story, the Beast knows nothing about the number 666. It is the author, or as I believe, a subsequent redactor of older material, who comes up with the number 666. Why? Because it’s a childish little hint allowing the reader to know who the Beast is. So you see, the significance of the number is lost on the Beast…it is merely an editorial clue. But does that mean that anyone in the Circus Clown Administration is the fulfillment of this ancient prophecy? Would we find the Beast among their ever-changing group of dopes? My answer…no. It is merely a coincidence. So who was the Beast? Well the little clue tells the reader to count the number of the Beast’s name. And that means converting the name of the Beast into a number. And that means transliterating the name into Hebrew characters, which are both letters and numbers at the same time, and then adding them up. And if we take “Nero Caesar” and covert that into Hebrew characters, we get 666. That’s not strange, since Nero was the first emperor to launch a serious persecution of Christians. And in the Book of Revelation, the Beast and his boss…the Dragon…make war on God and his people. So Nero is the Archetypal Beast. If someone were to make the mistake of giving any significance to the address on Jared Kushner’s building, which it really hasn’t, then who would the Beast serve? Who would be the Dragon? Wow! But the character of the Dragon in the Vision of John of Patmos is a real bad-ass guy! Not some laughable Buffoonish One. Still…check this out!
 

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

"You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

We all know this story; it is the story of the Fall. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the only fruit in Eden they weren’t allowed to eat. Far be it from me to upbraid God, but what would happen if you tell your kid that he or she can enter every room in the house except for one? That’s right! It won’t take long before he finds himself in that room. Still..Adam blames Eve (typical man), and Eve blames…a snake. A talking snake. And clearly…the Snakeish Trouble Maker! Did he look like this:

Whoa! This guy is Quetzlcoatl..the feathered snake deity who had a key role in the Meso-American (Aztec) creation story. And although Eve’s snake wasn’t a Creator, he was around a few days after it took place. How about this:

Now that may be a bit closer to the reptile that Eve blamed for her act of destroying paradise. If I were Eve, I would have blamed…Adam! But who was Eve’s Reptile? Check out John of Patmos 20:2:

"He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.”

There is no doubt that the writer believes that the Eveian Reptile was the Devil, or more specifically, Satan. Actually, there are two writers. There is the older material, and then comments in the text made by a later redactor…someone who worked over older material. The cycle about the Dragon generally does not provide his name…he is just a Dragon. Likewise, the two other evil characters…the Beast, and the False Prophet, are not named. But suddenly, two passages tell the reader just who the Dragon is:

(Revelation 12:9) The great dragon was hurled down--that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

(Revelation 20:2) He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.

The identification of the Dragon with the Devil, or, using his name…Satan, is the work of a redactor, who has made insertions into older material to make sure that the reader knows who this symbolic character is. In the same way, the little clue about how to know who the Beast is by counting his name and coming up with 666, is meant to do the same thing. Then the Dragon is replaced with the name Satan, or the Devil, wholly in three more passages:

(Revelation 20:7) When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison (Revelation 20:10) And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

(Revelation 20:10) And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

(Revelation 12:12) Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short."

Yes…apparently the Devil had a dispute with the…sea. Was the redactor correct about the Beast being Nero? No…that makes the whole story a history, not eschatological story-telling about the future. Was he correct about the identity of the Dragon? No..as far as the modern Christian notion of Satan is concerned. How can one be sure? Perhaps one can’t. But this image of Satan is completely inconsistent with the character found in only two Old Testament narratives, and one apocryphal narrative. Satan is first met in the narrative prologue to the book of Job. Except there is one problem…the correct translation from the Hebrew is “The Satan.” That’s right, Satan is not a name in the book of Job. It is a title. “Satan” comes from a Hebrew verb meaning “to contest; to be an adversary to”; and has a legal connotation to it- “to prosecute, to try, to test.” So Satan isn’t a name at all. He is, in fact, present at a meeting of, and evangelical/fundamentalist Unthinkers won’t like this, the sons of the gods. In the Old Testament, the main deity bears the name Yahweh, but is frequently called Elohim. When you see “The Lord” in your English Bible, the actual reading is Yahweh. Typically, when you see “God” in your English Bible, the actual reading is usually Elohim. But! Elohim is a plural noun…gods. It has been suggested that Elohim was a replacement for an actual name…El..the Canaanite god who was the head of the pantheon, and I believe that his name is the most ancient name for God in human history. Redactors replacing the names of heathen gods, although I bet El wouldn’t like to hear that he was a heathen god, did take place. That pesky god called Baal is a case in point; “Baal” is a title meaning “Great One” or “Lord.” It may be the replacement for the name of the storm god Hadad. Several Syrian kings, generally enemies of the Israelites, are called Ben-Hadad in the Bible. It would seem that this is a throne name, and that when the new king was enthroned, he became the “Son of Hadad”; the “Son of the Great Storm God.” Certainly, the name Baal-Zebub is a derisive replacement for the name of an actual deity. Baal-Zebub means Lord of Flies. It may be a replacement for the name Dagan…a Philistine deity worshipped on the Phoenician coast. But it seems highly unlikely that Elohim is a replacement for El intended to side-step heathen connotations. Why? It does more harm than good. If you replace El with Elohim…you do get El out of the text, but you end up with the plural…gods…which couldn’t be more heathen if you tried to make so. As a result, we’re left with the sons of the gods. Sons? Yes, that is the word used in the phrase. Pseudo-Christianity has attempted to avoid the idea that Yahweh was the father of many sons, although they will not object to Jesus being the Son of God, they nonetheless will not let him have any divine brothers. So some translations render “sons of the gods” as “angels.” In the end, you haven’t really accomplished anything by doing so. Angels just become Yahweh’s sons, or vice versa, if you care less about religious propaganda than the actual text you profess to care so much about; if you change it to say what you want it to say, that is. Abraham had an encounter with beings described as “men” in Genesis 18, but when two of these “men” head toward Sodom, they become “messengers” from the noun malak. These beings are clearly not humans, but nor are they called “sons of God,” suggesting that these are two different classes of beings.

Now in the case of Job, the sons of God are having a meeting, and another character was present. He is often, in English bibles, called Satan. However, the character in the Hebrew text is “The Satan.” As noted earlier the noun is derived from a Hebrew verb having many meanings, including “to be adversary to”; “to oppose” and with perhaps a legal sense- “to prosecute”; to “test.” So the character in question is “The Adversary” or “The Prosecutor”; “The One who Tests.” God engages him in a conversation. He does not indicate that The Satan wasn’t supposed to be there with the sons of God. He behaves as though The Satan belonged at this Divine Conference just like any of the sons of God. If The Satan is, in the words of the redactor of the Visions of John of Patmos, an evil being making war against God and His people…it seems strange that he would be present at this Divine Get-Away…and strange that God wouldn’t have objected to his presence. The story is all the more interesting, indeed, if we leave the sufferings of Job aside. Why? It is God who begins the conversation, not The Satan, and it is God who brings up Job, not The Satan. In fact, God asks The Satan what he had been doing lately. Walking around on the earth! Oh, then you must have seen my man Job! He is a man who loves good and hates evil. So was The Satan out to get Job? No! He wasn’t the one who brought him up. Maybe The Satan was just getting a cup of coffee, and minding his own business, when God decided to strike up this bizarre conversation. It comes as no surprise that The Adversary pointed out that it’s easy to love God when He is pouring out nothing but blessings on oneself. But turn up the heat…a little affliction…that will test the man for sure! I must state that I agree with The Satan, and I think that, having dropped the name “Satan” in favor of this being’s title, many would agree that he makes a very good point. And God apparently sees the logic, and so He gives The One who Tests the authority to test Job. So blame Elohim! The Satan will test Job’s love for God…by taking those blessings away. Why do such terrible things befall Job? The Satan? Yes..but it is clear from the narrative that The Satan couldn’t do anything to Job until Elohim gave him permission. Now I ask…read about the Dragon…does he ask for permission? The Dragon makes war against God…to be sure. But is that what is happening in Job? It is absolutely clear that it is not. So we agree with the being who would later be given the silly B-horror movie title “The Prince of Darkness”? We are doomed for sure!

The verb lying at the heart of The Satan’s Great Title…whatever his real name might be…and being present at the Sons of God Annual Conference, he may have been wearing a name tag on his lapel that said…Hi! My Name is…? Just call me The Satan. Oh, you’re that guy! Hey, the Boss is looking for you…wants to talk about some guy named Job. Where was I? Oh, yes..that verb appears often enough, and is used in the sense of “adversary” several times…human adversaries. And it is clear that The Adversary…The Satan…isn’t intended. But he appears again in Zechariah. And in a role we’ll recognize. So I wonder what he was doing with all that time on his hands between the Job Scene and the Joshua the High Priest Scene? Making war against God? Doing his Great Dragonish Act? Only to then be found in what is clearly a judicial setting? Hey…Elohim! Let’s call a truce in the Great War long enough to settle this Joshua the High Priest thing?

I think not. In Zechariah, Joshua the High Priest stands in front of God. But two others are present. One is a being that appears in different places in the Old Testament, and is called The Angel of the Lord; and here we have malak again…making him one of the type of beings Abraham encountered before the whole Sodom Thing blew-up. Also present was The Satan. Suddenly, God rebukes Satan, and Joshua’s dirty clothes are replaced with new ones. What has happened? I think it is clear that we are witnessing a Divine Court Scene; Elohim is the judge; the Malak of Yahweh is the Defense Attorney; The Satan is the Prosecutor. How cool it would be to have heard the two attorneys presenting their cases! Alas, we don’t. But God’s sudden rebuke of The Satan clearly indicates that the Divine Judge has heard enough…the Prosecution has lost it’s case! Joshua is innocent! The Malak of Yahweh has conducted a successful defense of his client. It’s too bad…
 

“Your Honor! I object!”
The Court: “Mrs. Vanfossan-Baniszewski-Guthrie-Baniszewski-Wright! You are a defendant…you can’t object.”
The Defendant: “I want to object anyway.”
The Court: “To what?”
The Defendant: “My defense attorney. He’s no good!”
The Court: “What do you propose?”
The Defendant: “I would like to hire the Malak of Yahweh…look what he did for Joshua!”

The Court: “That’s true. I must say that I’m surprised at your knowledge of the Bible. The Cleric said that you aren’t a big church-goer.”

The Defendant: “Well, yes…that’s true. But Paula is…she told me about the Angel of the Lord!”

The Court: “I see. Well, I’ll have to see if there is any objection to a change in defense attorneys…do you object, The Satan? Sorry, I mean The Adversary? Sorry again…The One who Tests?

The Prosecution: “Thanks for not calling me The Dragon…I hate that guy…and he’s not me, no matter what the redactor of the Visions of John of Patmos said!”

The Court: “Good. So you don’t object to the change in defense attorneys!”
The Prosecution: “Of course I do…he did a pretty good job of getting Joshua the High Priest cleared of the charges against him.”
The Court: “That’s right! You lost that one.”
The Prosecution: “But I’m not losing this one, so I object!”
The Court: “Over-ruled!”
The Bailiff: “The Court calls the Malak of Yahweh!”
The Court: “This will be even better than the Goat-man!”

So The Satan serves in essentially the same capacity in Zechariah as he did in Job. Is what he is doing evil? No…he’s serving a very important purpose. Joshua and Job are declared innocent…and that wouldn’t have happened without The Prosecutor. So he lost both times, but maybe winning wasn’t the important thing.

We meet The Satan again in the gospels. But now, his title has become his name…he is Satan. Does this matter? It surely does. As simply his name, he has been divorced from the role he played in the earlier narratives. As such, it is far easier to portray him as a malevolent figure…one who is just out to get people…a Big Bully…and yes, a Bigger Bully than Anna “the Ninja” Siscoe, although that might be a fight that the being who is now being transformed into The Devil would have chosen to avoid. He appears in the Testing of Jesus in the Wilderness. And this story is a rather strange one. Jesus has been baptized at the Jordan, and God has declared to the world, a booming voice from Heaven to boot, that Jesus was his son. So he was the Son of God…not one of the sons of God? Following this, Jesus disappears into the wilderness. Why? Well Matthew and Luke describe, in highly polished narratives, that Jesus went into the wilderness to be tested by Satan…the guy who got demoted and lost his title, maybe because he wasn’t such a good Prosecutor after all, and so ended up with a name that no one would want…and I put the name Lucifer on the back-burner for now. However, there is a world of difference between Matthew and Luke on the one hand, and Mark on the other hand, and Mark was the oldest of the gospels. Mark makes one, paltry reference to the Satan-in-the-Wilderness Story:

“Then a voice came from Heaven: ‘You are My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’”

“And immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness.”

"And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.”

And that’s it. How disappointing when compared to Matthew and Luke! And notice too, that in Mark, we aren’t told the outcome. In fact, in the passages from Mark, no significance to the event is given at all. It is an afterthought…oh, and by the way…he was in the wilderness and tempted by Satan…which seems to have as much importance as the fact that Jesus was around wild animals. The accounts found in Matthew and Luke are narratives meant to expand the paltry reference made in Mark. Mark begins Jesus’ life with his appearance at the Jordan; there is nothing about his birth or life before that event. Matthew fills this out, and in the course of this, creates the virgin birth. Luke, as usual, takes Matthew’s ball and runs with it all the way for a touchdown. If the Jesus vs. Satan story, in which all three gospels make the mistake of replacing “The Satan” with Satan, actually happened, the writer of Mark doesn’t seem to think it was all that important. I would go a step further. The writer of Mark did not write the third passage cited above, and if that is true, he never referenced Satan. First, the passage includes the theme of Forty Days in the Wilderness, which is clearly drawing on the Forty Years in the Wilderness found in Exodus. The latter is a punishment for sin, the former obviously isn’t. So in constructing the wilderness scene, the redactor has drawn on a previous scenario…he has borrowed. And another observation can be made…why be driven into the wilderness to be tempted by The Guy Who Lost His Title? An obvious answer would be…to be tested by him…to find out if Jesus would be faithful to God, i.e. was he God’s son? Of course, that sounds familiar. The act of testing is what he did with Job, and so if Jesus did encounter The Satan, who put him to the test, then The Satan didn’t do anything wrong. He’s simply serving the same purpose that he did before. But I have trouble accepting this answer. If Jesus were truly be tested, then, to avoid a simply meaningless act of narrative, the possibility that he could succumb to that testing, must have existed. But we’re too late for that. God officially declared to the world that Jesus was His Son before Jesus disappeared into the wilderness.  So if it were possible that Jesus could fail, and did fail, then God would have pronounced the verdict before the trial was over! In other words, if Jesus could have been truly tested by The Satan in the wilderness, then he could have failed, and God would have been stuck eating his words and having to “walk back” his premature declaration, and look for a different son. I think that a later redactor, but one who pre-dated the production of Matthew, which I view as an expanded version of Mark, knew from the original text that following his baptism at the Jordan, Jesus, for some unknown reason, disappeared into the wilderness for a period of time. An apocryphal story, part of the earliest attempts to expand the story of the Life of Jesus, about an encounter involving Jesus and The Satan in the wilderness, had appeared. It wasn’t well developed, and so the redactor of Mark dropped it in it’s current place to fill in the chronological gap…it answers…why did Jesus go into the wilderness? Clearly, no one was satisfied with…we don’t know…or even…to hang out with wild animals. So if one follows the minimalist position, then there never was an encounter between Jesus and The Satan. If one prefers the maximalist position, then Jesus undergoes a Jobish Testing at the hands of the strange being whose job was to do just that.

It is certain that the concept of evil underwent what I call “Satanization.” Eventually, Christianity would develop a Strange Dualism in the universe…Good and Evil exist side-by-side…like Yin and Yang, and this is marked by a violent war between the two, with each Army led by a high-profile leader…God on the one hand, and Satan, on the other hand. This reaches it’s clear manifestation by the time the redactor gave us Metaphorical Footnotes in the work of John of Patmos (Revelation). In the original material, three unnamed characters carry out this war on behalf of Evil: the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet. By his time, this dualism was near complete, and a growing trend of using the new character of Satan, who replaced The Satan, as responsible for everything that was Evil, had come into being. In effect, the character of Satan was, like a larger celestial body being orbited by smaller ones, attracting all manner of things to itself. The Gospel of Mark provides an excellent example of this, and has the added charm of bringing in the very obscure Baal-Zebub from his recess in ancient history, and bringing him back for a curtain-call. Jesus is casting out a demon from an afflicted person. Adversaries…perhaps I should avoid that word given the context, so I’ll say…guys that didn’t like him, showed up to give Jesus a hard time. They denied that Jesus was doing what he was doing by the power of God. No! He was doing it by the power of Baal-Zebub. The only other occurrence of the guy whose name is strangely similar to that of a famous novel…the Lord of the Flies, is in the Old Testament. An ancient king, who apparently wasn’t the sharpest tool in what was now becoming the Muddled Theological Toolshed, was walking around on the roof of his palace, and ended up falling through a roof-top garden lattice, crashing down into the chamber below. I bet the gardener wasn’t pleased! The king was badly hurt and sent messengers to ask Baal-Zebub if he would recover. The messengers were confronted by the prophet Elijah, who upbraided the king for not turning to the God of Israel for healing, and declared that the king would die. And now Baal-Zebub makes his come back! A very short one, but he would get another 5 minutes of fame. Jesus responds to his opponents with the question as to how Satan can be divided against himself, and still hope to prevail. Wait a minute! If I were one of the guys opposed to Jesus, which I am not, but I will play the role of Baal-Zebub’s Advocate…sorry…I mean Devil’s Advocate, I might say…Hold on, Jesus! Who said anything about Satan? Why did you bring him up? We said The Lord of Flies. So technically, this wouldn’t be fair. They never said anything about Satan. So is Satan the same as Baal-Zebub? We’ve already seen the role that The Satan, not Satan, played in the Old Testament. The Satan was not a heathen god…Baal-Zebub, possibly Dagan, certainly was. If Jesus knew his scripture, and I absolutely believe that he was a Master of Scripture, then he knew full well that there is no connection whatsoever between the Lord of Flies and The Satan. This leads to a possible explanation. In the original version of Mark, the name “Satan” was not used by Jesus in this narrative. No! He used the name Baal-Zebub, just as his opponents did. Later, Baal-Zebub was transformed into a malevolent, demon-like being, which the real Baal-Zebub certainly wasn’t. The Satanization of evil was well underway by the time changes were made in Mark…Baal-Zebub was replaced with the Satan character because the Satan character was assuming his role as Leader of Evil in the developing Evil vs. Good Dualism. And just as we will be told that the Dragon, who was the Leader of Evil in the Great Dualism, was also Satan. So The Satan was eventually hogging the spot-light! Get off the stage, Baal-Zebub, and take that Dragon with you…and even Eve’s Snake…I’m the star of this show! Of course, it’s a totally different show than it was before. No more joining the sons of Elohim at Divine Conferences and calmly discussing things with the Boss..oh no, not anymore.

Modern Christian thought makes many blatant mistakes when it comes to Satan and his army of minions. It has taken up the Great Dualism to be sure, but it then adds elements from Hollywood to create a ludicrous scenario. The Exorcist was the result of a process of development…a movie based on a novel based on a…and you need this to sell your novel…a true story! In the movie, like in the novel, there is an Archaeologist Priest…Yes! He too dug around in the dirt looking for trinkets. But! Unlike the Archaeologist who didn’t have time to look into the Inner Sanctum under the Strange Preschool, our Archaeologist Priest, much like Officer Harmon, managed to find the time. And he found stuff that was better than old bottles, and even better than a two-foot iron eye-hook that Shirley Baniszewski stuck in Ricky -Don’t Lose That Number’s hand. He found an artifact associated with Pazuzu, an entity that would become the focal point of the Exorcist.

How lame does this guy look? And I apologize about the lower half of the statute..it wasn't my intention to make this R Rated. But here we see the movie and novel essentially copying the ‘Baal-Zebub is Satan’ type of development. Like Baal-Zebub, Pazuzu was real…he was a malevolent deity from ancient Assyrian mythology. So in trying to think up a demon, the writer pulls a play from the redactor of Mark’s play-book, and promptly calls it. Pazuzu isn’t just an non-existent ancient, heathen deity, though we just found a cool trinket associated with him. No! He’s real! He’s a demon! If Satan wouldn’t fight against himself…and even Baal-Zebub wouldn’t…I bet Pazuzu wouldn’t make that mistake either. Pazuzu is a minor character at best. If it were me, I would choose the Assyrian god Asshur! He was a blood-thirsty maniacal war god in whose service the Assyrian king and his army murdered millions of people in antiquity because it pleased this Virtual Devil. But Pazuzu? Maybe it was the name. So whereas some would say…Baalzebub was real in the sense that he represented a demon…then Pazuzu was real because he represented a demon! So every ancient heathen deity…probably millions of them…each represents a real demon waiting for an Archaeologist to dig up something with his name on it? You can’t believe that.

How does Pazuzu come into contact with 12 year old Regan MacNeil, played by Linda Blair? By dabbling in witchery…she plays with a Ouija board, and comes into contact with Captain Howdy. What self-respecting demon would call himself Captain Howdy? Oh…mortal! I am a deadly demon! You must fear me! My name? Satan! Ah, no. Baal-zebub? No…that one was already taken by another guy. I’m the dreaded Captain Howdy! Stop laughing! Actually, it would appear that Captain Howdy was Pazuzu’s Americanized name. Still, Pazuzu is a pretty cool name; I would have stuck with that. But we all know that people who would read the novel and watch the movie wouldn’t know anything about minor deities from ancient Assyria, so Captain Howdy takes center-stage. Now most people have seen the movie. And how does this demon possession, this co-habitation of Captain Pazuzu Howdy and a little girl via a Ouija Board, play out? The demon slowly turns the little girl into a horrid monster whose head spins around on her shoulders, who pees on the floor…in short…one might ask…if demons are followers of Satan, and as such are soldiers in the Prince of Darkness’s army, the one battling the forces of Good, then how does doing this to a 12 year old girl forward Satan’s cause? How does any of this increase the chances that Pazuzu’s Boss might have a chance at winning the Great War? It doesn’t. It’s pointless. But! At least he could put on a show…

It almost looks like a Diabolical Rock Concert! Linda Blair…I mean Regan…is doing the concluding song when the stupid statue of a lame minor deity appears on stage! How about this:

Wow! So Regan and Pazuzu put on a better show than Alice Cooper and the one-eyed monster who stalked him around the stage.

Well, there’s no reason you can’t share a beer together; I bet Pazuzu’s more of a Schlitz guy. Wait…snake?

It looks like Alice passed up the fruit in favor of a flower. Who doesn’t like a good salad? And introducing….Pazuzu!

Ooops I did it again. That’s not Pazuzu. That’s Eddie, the large…something…that stalks Iron Maiden around the stage. Eddie?

Eddie? Pazuzu? Alice Cooper’s Monster? Wait…

When did Rudolph’s Abominable Snowman join Iron Maiden? Sorry; I hope Eddie doesn’t come after me. And I certainly hope that a giant statue of Pazuzu doesn’t appear next to my bed when my priest and I are recording me singing backwards so that we can put Pazuzu messages on my new album!

One might think that having failed in something that would seem fairly easy for a demon, i.e. tormenting a child, he might have simply found a different job. But apparently not. A malevolent figure named Captain Howdy appeared on an album by the heavy metal band…your favorite and mine…Twisted Sister. So the Captain did attempt a comeback! I wonder if Pazuzu looked like this:

If he does…he could use make-up advice. Or this:

No! Pazuzu isn’t fat…he’s just big-boned. Ok…my comedienne days are officially over, and I pass the baton to Saucy Sylvia. But my, how the mighty have fallen! Apparently, Pazuzu found himself relegated to:

So he ended up a cartoon character in a comic book…now that’s fitting.

Now there was something in the movie, which I think is a terrible movie, that is cool. And we’ll recognize this! Captain Howdy-Pazuzu, in the course of wasting his time doing disgusting things, has the little girl speaking some bizarre language. Perhaps it is ancient Assyrian? Perhaps it is Pazuzuian? You are wrong. The priest records it, and then…plays it backwards! And it turns out that Pazuzu knows more than Assyrian! He also speaks English! But since he is already messing everything up, he messes that up too…and speaks it backwards. Why? What’s the point? I’m surprised that Satan didn’t show up and say…would you quit messing around and get busy with some real work? We’re fighting a war…remember? And by the way, you’re speaking the language backwards…you idiot! Perhaps Satan should have stuck with Baal-Zebub. Yes! Backwards! And oh how Religious Fanatics grabbed unto that one! Satanic rock bands record inane Satanic messages backwards onto records…and we know this is true, because Captain Pazuzu speaks English backwards! And I will say, but put off further discussion until later, that the sudden appearance of the Great Fear of a Satanic World Conspiracy that we saw devastate lives at McMartin, was the result of the coming together of several cultural elements; one of which was the Exorcist. Why? It’s just a movie. Yes! But it’s based on a novel that’s based on a…true story! So the Exorcist is real! And one other interesting thing can be noted. Like Sylvia Likens, actually, like Pseudo-Gertie Wright, so too with little Regan…words are suddenly cut onto her stomach. Isn’t that odd? But nearly as odd as people conceiving of demon possession amounting to a travelling fair…sorry…freak show that features the utterly pointless physical destruction of a child, which, thankfully, can be ended by pouring water on her and performing magic. Hey! If I were Pazuzu…though am I not…his time would have been better spent, not messing with the twelve year old, but messing with a really popular rock band instead. Why? He could teach them how to sing backwards and fight Satan’s Great Dualistic Toolshed War by enabling rock bands to seduce countless young people to worshipping the Prince of Darkness! But he didn’t…he was too busy doing his Captain Howdy Nonsense. And I challenge anyone to find a Led Zeppelin fan who worships Satan. You won’t. Well, maybe one or two…the world is full of weird people, after all. So perhaps the demons that supposedly devised the Diabolical Stairway from Heaven weren’t any better at their job than Howdy-doody Pazuzu was, though they were at least better than a Satanic cult that drew stars on a child’s plastic toy plate. Hey, Satan! You have a Circus Clown Administration too! You should make a Diabolical Apprentice TV Show! That way, you could look at the collection of morons in your employ and say…You’re fired!

Perhaps I’m being too hard on these guys. Maybe they’re really no better than their Boss. In an earlier installment, I identified the paperback book titled “Michelle Remembers” as forming part of the noxious pool, or perhaps…obnoxious pool, of nonsense that culminated in the Ritual Satanic Abuse Nonsense. I put a copy of the cover of the paperback in that essay, seeing how ridiculous the imagery is. I post it again:

Ok…it’s still as hokey now as it was then. But notice something. Like the Exorcist movie, the victim is a little girl. However, Regan’s Adversary was a second-rate Clownish Pazuzu. Here we have the heights of stupidity….well, yes, but I was thinking…the heights of vanity! Notice that the cover of the book doesn’t claim demon possession. Michelle’s far too important…she was possessed by…Satan himself! Now if there is some great war raging between Satan and God, then they are clearly the two most important, not to mention, powerful, combatants. Each commands an enormous army. And in the middle of this Dragonish Cosmic Brawl, Satan is so bored that he amuses himself by picking on Michelle, as if he was a school-yard bully, then I would think that the war is over, and just like with Job, Joshua, and perhaps Jesus, Satan lost again. To claim that the Devil is after you, well…you really think that your so important than you are the pivotal figure in the plans of the Devil? Why waste your time with light-weights like Adolph Hitler, when you can harass Michelle.

Now we all know that a Clownish Administration needs a son. And so it is with Satan’s Troupe of Morons. But it must have been much to Satan’s disappointment when he found out that his own son went the way of Pazuzu. What in the world does that mean?

My what good abs you get from being the son of the Devil! I must be making this up?

Apparently not! I would think that the Devil’s son could do better than ending up as a comic book character. Hey parents! Check your kids comic books! You make up false, malicious accusations against rock bands? Comic books are where its at! Pazuzu, and even that chip off the old block…the…he’s just like his old man…yes…Satan Jr. So I take away Led Zeppelin, but look what I give you in exchange! By the way…what terrible female demon is Little Satan’s mother? Well, her name was…Victoria Wingate. Oh..and there was a daughter…Satana. No, not Santana, another cool rock band. Satana..get it? That’s clever…make a feminine form of the name Satan! If you played Santana songs backwards, would you hear the lilting voice of…Satana? Perhaps a descent into the Diabolical Toolshed of Satan’s Baby Girl? And hey!

She’s not bad-looking. That reminds me of a song from the sixties: “Mr. Satan, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.” No..I have that wrong. No offence, Herman’s Hermits. “Witch-world?” Why is it that we can’t get away from witches? Huh, men?

So now we know why we have the Circus Clown Administration! It would seem that the head of the Administration is a Circus Clown too! Wait…I just saw history repeating itself, metaphorically of course. I wonder if The Adversary has an office building in New York? No…he called to say that he sold that building…he just can’t remember the name of the buyer. I’m sure it’ll come to him eventually.