SB BARNES - LESSER KEY OF SOLOMON RAMBLE

Oh my god LOOK at these cute little farts. I've been very excited to talk about these guys for a while. This collection specifically comes from the illustrated 1863 edition of the Dictionnaire Infernal, but it seems that many of these depictions also get used in the 1904 edition of The Lesser Key of Solomon. Both of these texts were very, very likely inspired by the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum of the 16th century (according to wikipedia) (of course) (there's probably way more nuance than that) (lets ignore it for now).

A lot of these particular visuals get used in tons of pop culture referencing the Goetic demons -- I think of Paimon as seen in the film Hereditary, Beelzebub on some covers of the book Lord of the Flies, Buer in the videogame Pony Island (shoutout to des), etc. Its super neat to see their faces pop up every so often!

I also found myself a nice free copy of The Lesser Key of Solomon online (click this helpful link if you want to check it out yourself!) I'm a little obsessed with it. Its reads as a demon summoning guide, but every entry is essentially "this is [demon] and he is a great and terrible prince of hell and he commands 200 legions of spirits... if you are nice he will teach you philosophy and astrology." It is so so charming to me. Also, very reminiscent of what we discussed with the Book of the Watchers and how the Sons of God (as early 'fallen angel' adjacent figures) introduced sins to man by teaching people forbidden magics and truths... Like astrology! That class actually helped contextualize why so many demons in this book are concerned with teaching.. like.. liberal arts and sciences. I hope one day I too can summon demons to teach me philosophy and rhetoric.

This edition of the text is also edited by Aleister Crowley who is his own character and maybe I'll have to post in here about him some other time.

Infodump over! Peace✌

(336 words)

Draugr - The Undead in Old Norse/Viking Lore-Caroline

Draugr are animated corpses that have come alive again, but with new, deadly powers. They are mentioned within both Norwegian and Icelandic saga material. They are characterized as black or blue, swollen, extremely strong, and often possessing magical powers (shape-shifting and seeing future for example). Draugr dwell within burial mounds/barrows - where corpses remain. The Norwegian term for draugr is haugbui, which literally translates to mound dweller. 

Draugr were known to venture out at night and cause harm. To prevent draugr from wreaking havoc, special precautions were taken when dealing with corpses. For example, the eyes of the dead body would be firmly closed so that the corpse would not be able to determine the path it was brought on to prevent it coming back and causing harm. Draugr could crush people to death with their unnatural strength or decimate livestock. It was a jealousy of the living that was thought to motivate their actions and unnatural hunger. 

Certain characteristics of the draugr have led some to draw parallels between draugr and the monster Grendel in Beowulf. Grendel has similar inhuman strength and shape-shifting powers. Draugr also, like Grendel, are protected by a mother spirit. Even Grendel's motivation in the story, jealousy of being excluded from Hrothgar's lively hall, is similar to the draugr's envy of the living. The character Grendel therefore can be understood to be a product of both Scandinavian supernatural beliefs and the social anxieties of continental Europe during the first millennium CE. 

Ellie Scholl- Roanoke Colony

 The disappearance of the Roanoke colony has been a talked-about subject since the late 1600s, inviting theories and possible explanations of the event to be circulated around the supernatural. The story starts when a group of settlers under John White, moved to the island of Roanoke ( now known as Dare County North Carolina) in 1587. When John white returned to the colony after a trip to england to gather more supplies, he arrived to find no trace of the colonists. What he did find however, was a single word carved in a post saying “Croatoan”. This clue is the reason so many people believed the colony packed up and left Roanoke island to resettle on Croatoan island, but for many, not enough information adds up making this theory to iffy. Some theories suggest that the colony may have disturbed sacred indigenous lands while others imagine curses, spirits, or ghosts tied into it, all trying to take revenge on the colony for stepping foot on untouchable land. Those theories usually end in a mysterious illness sweeping though the colony or mass murder/suicide situations where one person is possesed by an angry spirit. The eerie science known to be left behind along side the dismantled but not destroyed homes adds to the mystery as if the colony simply vanished into thin air. While historians often favor the logistical explanations such as relocation, the lack of concrete evidence leaves space for supernatural speculation. 

Who Transcribed the Texts of the Bible? -Dr. Huber

Missing Pieces, Missing Meanings - Reading the Enuma Elish (Kaia Brown)

 While reading the Enuma Elish, I noticed how many lines were marked as missing or illegible. This really stood out to me. It made me think about how much of history is literally broken, faded, or lost. When parts of a text are gone, we are only seeing fragments of the original story. Because of that, we might misunderstand what the author intended. For example, if key lines about Tiamat or Marduk are missing, we may misinterpret their motivations, personalities, or the meaning of certain events. The gaps force scholars to reconstruct meaning, which involves some level of guesswork. 

 This also raises questions about how reliable translations are. Translators are working from damaged tablets written in ancient languages like Akkadian. Words may have multiple meanings, and cultural context can be hard to fully recover. Even with expert knowledge, translations are interpretations, not perfect copies. This doesn’t mean they are inaccurate, but it does mean we should read them critically. Missing fragments remind us that history is incomplete, and our understanding is always shaped by what survived time.

Jackson-Daredevil

     Throughout the extended Marvel Universe (by which I mean comics, movies, video games, etc.), there is one character who frequently stands out to me, especially because of his incredible Netflix and Disney+ shows (which I highly recommend), and that character is Matt Murdock, better known as Daredevil. Daredevil is a superhero who lost his sight at an early age, but as a result, gained enhancements to his other four senses, so much so that he can “see” by hearing the way sounds reflect off objects, like sonar. Using those abilities, Murdock fights crime as a vigilante at night (during the day, he works as a lawyer) and protects his home borough of Hell’s Kitchen, New York, from both petty and organized crime, often putting him into conflict with several mob-associated characters like the Kingpin and Maggia crime families. 

While Matt’s superpowers are very cool, that is not the aspect I wanted to focus on in this blog post. Instead, I want to focus on the fact that he chose the moniker and imagery of the Devil himself (his costume is often depicted as bright red with devil horns on the mask), despite the fact that Matt is a devout Catholic. Throughout the show and comics, Matt frequently prays to God for forgiveness, preaches to other vigilantes about not killing people, and is depicted as having a close, almost father-son dynamic with a priest, while at the same time beating the crap out of people as “The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.” I find this contrast incredibly interesting, as the Devil is often depicted as the antithesis of everything Matt believes in; however, he seems to have fully embraced this identity, something that most Catholics would be greatly opposed to. 

Overall, I really enjoy this character and his two seemingly opposing identities, especially because the two frequently come into conflict.

The Haunting of Hill House and why you should watch the show-Karma

 The Haunting of Hill House is a classical literature novel by Shirley Jackson, and one of my favorite ghost stories. In the book there are four characters that enter a study to stay at a haunted house for the summer in order to determine if it really is haunted and if ghosts exist. The book later introduces two additional characters but the main four are the focus and the book is narrated through Eleanor Vance, one of the four beginning characters. Something I like is that through out the book ghosts are said too deeply saturate hill house but they are not visualized and do not take form. They are shown through the sense of unease the four characters feel while staying at the house, the things they feel, the things they only see in the corner of their eye. The book really crescendos but I won't say how it ends in case anyone wants to read it. The book was good but the show was amazing and I rewatch it pretty often. The show is based on the book but they switch quite a few things around. For one, the show follows a family of seven that move into hill house while the parents fix it up to sell it. Over the short time they stay the evil in the house grows  around them like mold. You can see the ghosts in the show but they aren't just there for jump scares, the way they look and when they appear means something. After my second watch through I noticed that there were so many ghosts hiding in the background that I didn't notice the first time. This was a really interesting way to make it clear the house infects all that enter and die there, keeping them captive. I won't go any further to avoid spoilers but the show is a master piece in storytelling. It's more of a psychological horror but it's still great.

Olivia Hayes- The Winchester Mansion

     The Winchester Mansion, now known as the Winchester Mystery House, a popular California tourist attraction, has a chilling, ghostly history. The Winchester Mansion was the home of Sarah Winchester, the wife of William Winchester of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. After the loss of their first and only child, who passed soon after birth, William also passed away. This quick and shocking death left Sarah distraught and caused her to move from New Haven Conneticut to California and into the mansion. This mansion, however, is nothing like the classic ghothic victorian that you may be imagining. Sarah inherited nearly 20 million dollars, which allowed her to make any alterations to the home that she wanted. This alluring factor, mixed with grief and fear of being alone, caused Sarah to begin making strange claims.

    Sarah believed that she was being haunted. It is because of this that she was told by a medium to move out west and continue building a house to keep the spirits at bay. This could include stairs that lead to nowhere to confuse the spirits, random mirrors, or doors that open to nothing. The house contains over 160 rooms and is four stories tall. So, who did Sarah believe she was being haunted by? Well, none other than every person who was killed with a Winchester Rifle.

    While we don't know much else about Sarah or her reasoning behind the house, as there was no master plan for the renovations, we can acknowledge her grief and strength to continue alone as a widowed woman in the late 1800's and early 1900's. As to if she was truly being haunted by the supernatural, we will never know.

Queer Comfort in Horror-Aedan

Cohen's theses on monsters include descriptions of how monsters can be examples of both fear and desire, as well as visible demonstrations of the other, or taboo things. People who have been labeled as other or wrong often find comfort and familiarity with monsters who are judged on the same principle. Many monster stories can be viewed as allegories for marginalized identities. The YouTube video DanAndPhilCRAFTS - Slime uses demon summoning and human sacrifice (although the entity is only referred to as "he" and "him", the physical characteristics match Baphomet, who has been considered a demonic or magic-related figure) as a metaphor for accepting being queer.

The couple in the video constantly make reference to being stopped or forbidden from what they're doing. Government documents at the beginning of the video indicate that the footage is something taboo or wrong in their society. The things that they are forbidden from doing? While they include things like blood-letting and eventual assisted suicide as a form of ritualistic sacrifice, they also include references to queer relationships. The YouTubers who star in the video were harassed for years, as people speculated that they were romantically involved, they faced discrimination for being "different", and homophobia when they came out as gay. The sacrifice at the end of the video results in the summoning of a winged goat-headed humanoid figure that revives him, and they stand in a reference to two Tarot cards, another thing often associated with the demonic, the Lovers and the Devil.

The Devil card, depicted as a winged goat-headed humanoid figure holding two humans in chains, in Tarot is associated with addiction and harmful patterns, indicating that something needs to stop. The video talks about how this will be their "final ritual" and that they will not and cannot be stopped anymore. The use of the Devil card in the video likely represents the permanent rejection of a society that has hurt them for being different. The Lovers card shows two people holding hands and facing the viewer with an angel behind them. By intentionally summoning the demonic figure and placing it in the angel's position on the card, the lovers are showing that their salvation and acceptance for their relationship is found in the taboo and by others that are also seen as wrong, represented by the demonic.

Mason (Post 1) - "Satanization" and the Imposition of Christianity on American Natives

Of course, we're familiar with colonialism, right? I truly hope you are. Sometimes I wonder about how Christianity, and specifically concepts like Satan and the ideals of avoiding Hell, were imposed on Native Americans during the colonization of the modern United States. Ultimately, that's the topic of my first post. During the colonization of the Americas, the idea of a "Satanic people" (i.e., those against or without Christianity) came as both English and Spanish colonizers conquered the continent. An article I read to further my understanding of the concept, "Satanizing the American Indian" by David Lovejoy, argues that "[a]ssigning the Indians to Satan began almost with the first encounter, and it made no difference whether the assigners were Spanish Catholics or British Protestants" (p. 606). Lovejoy also remarks that "[i]n much the same way that European settlers imposed their God and Christ upon the Indians, they thrust on them, too, the Christian Devil, for the traditional scheme was incomplete without him" (p. 612). Ultimately, this haunting obligation for Catholics and Protestants to thrust their religious traditions on Native Americans would be the "Godly European's" justification for unfettered conquest of the Americans, and would continually be the functional "poison" to both Native American sovereignty and their own cultures, religious experiences, and languages. We continue to see, even in the big 2026, the imposition of Christianity on Native Americans (60%+ are Christian-affiliated), especially as a large chunk of the enrolled population of tribes/bands have been relegated to so-called "reservations" in Oklahoma and other states, like Arizona.

What do you guys think? Has Christianity demonized the Native American (broadly speaking) into submission?

Satan and the Supernatural 2026: Welcome!

Hi, my name is Emma Webb (She/her). I am from Arlington, Virginia. I decided to take this course because of my background in the Catholic faith. I want to learn more about Satan and the supernatural outside of a catholic translation.