ISIS, Pazuzu, and Middle East Folklore in Popular Culture (CW: Disturbing Images)

The content warning is for those who don't like to look at possibly-scary pictures. If that's you, do not scroll down the page.

On Thursday, September 11 of this year, I decided to stop by Loren Coleman's blog Twilight Language to see if Coleman had added any interesting updates lately. As you know, I'm an amateur folklorist. For my own personal satisfaction, I enjoy looking at non-traditional media and what might be called "conspiracy theories" through the lens of modern folklore and urban legends. Coleman isn't a "conspiracy" blogger per se, but his explorations into predicting patterns of human behavior often touch on weird phenomena.

I read the post titled "Tridents, Pitchforks, and Satan in the News" dated September 10th. It mentions the terrorist group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). You may recall that I mentioned ISIS, or ISIL, in my review of Religio Duplex the other day. Coleman's post talks about the persecution of the Yazidi (also spelled Yezidi) minority group by ISIS/ISIL.

According to Wikipedia, the Yazidis live primarily in northern Iraq and mainly speak the Kurdish language, although they consider themselves - and are considered by the United Nations - as an ethnic group separate from the Kurdish people. The article describes the Yazidi religion as combining elements of pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion, Christianity, Gnosticism, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism, as well as an ancient nature-worshiping religion.

Quoting the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, Coleman mentions that the Yazidi's object of worship is a figure known as Melek Tawwus. To the radical ISIS group members, this makes the Yazidi people "devil worshipers" and, thus, legitimate targets. The cultural confusion may stem from the fact that another name for Melek Tawwus is Shaytan, which is the name the Koran uses to refer to Satan/the devil. However, the Yazidi people themselves do not use the word "Shaytan" and do not associate Melek Tawwus with evil acts.

Creative Commons image by PHGCOM

Coleman identifies an image similar to this one with Melek Tawwus, but also with "the same region's Assyrian demon Pazuzu."

The name Pazuzu rang a bell in my mind. Where, I thought, had I heard that name before? Then it occurred to me: Futurama. Pazuzu is the name of the dragon-like beast in Professor Farnsworth's care. The animated creature is rather cute.

Borrowed from http://thatwritererinoriordan.tumblr.com/post/97258845380

Coleman mentions that the ancient artifact above would be "familiar from the Exorcist movies." I've only seen the movie once, several years ago, but I do seem to recall that the early scenes involve an archaeological dig in which the demonic-looking (or angelic-looking, depending on your point of view) statue is found.

Apparently, the name of the demon that possesses the 12-year-old character Regan in The Exorcist is named Pazuzu. Although the creature's name is never used in the film, it's revealed in the sequels and also in William Peter Blatty's novel on which the film is based.

So, did Futurama name the Professor's living gargoyle after the demon in The Exorcist? Probably not. According to The Infosphere, Futurama is filled with references to the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. In D+D, Pazuzu is the name of a demon prince - based, of course, upon a reference to Assyrian and Babylonian mythology. The Paris setting of the end of the episode, says the Futurama wiki, alludes to a graphic novel called The Demon of the Eiffel Tower by Jacques Tardi.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2282787.Le_d_mon_de_la_Tour_Eiffel?ac=1

Encyclopedia Mythica's Mesopotamian mythology area describes Pazuzu thus:

"A winged demon, feared by the people of ancient Mesopotamia. It is a creature with a deformed head, the wings of an eagle, the sharp claws of a lion on its hands and feet, and the tail of a scorpion. This demon is the personification of the south-east storm wind, which brings diseases. The Mesopotamians believed that Pazuzu lived in the desert."

Wikipedia elaborates that the south-east wind is associated with bringing famine in the dry season and plagues of locusts in the rainy season. However, Pazuzu's name may be invoked on amulets used to protect human beings from harm, since Pazuzu wards off the evil goddess Lamashtu. (Lamashtu, a she-demon who menaces women in childbirth and kidnaps young children, treads some of the same folkloric ground as Lilith.)

And why might William Peter Blatty have been interested in Middle Eastern people's ancient folklore? Because the New York-born American writer has two Middle Eastern parents, both from Lebanon. His mother's uncle was a well-known Christian bishop in Lebanon, and Blatty went to a Jesuit school as a youth. So, he is both an Arab and a Roman Catholic.

Most Lebanese people identify as ethnically Arab, although they are technically a lovely melange of several related West Asian ethnicities that includes the Arab people. If you don't believe me that people of Lebanese descent are quite lovely, you need only look at Amal Ramzi Alamuddin, the British human rights lawyer who's engaged to George Clooney. The lady is of most exquisite beauty.

Now 86 years old, Blatty is still writing. His latest novel was published in 2011.

By the way, if you go to Tumblr and search for pictures of Professor Farnsworth's rather cute-looking gargoyle beast, prepare to have the excrement scared out of you. A search of the tag "Pazuzu" brings up this hideous-looking thing.

Borrowed from https://www.tumblr.com/search/pazuzu

The rational part of the brain knows that's just the actress Eileen Dietz, who appeared on the soap opera General Hospital, in a bald cap, makeup, and false teeth. The irrational part of the brain says DEAR GOD PLEASE GET THAT HIDEOUS MONSTROSITY AWAY FROM ME!

Dietz served as a body double for Linda Blair, the young actress who played Regan, in The Exorcist. She did the difficult "projectile vomiting" scene, for example. Images of Dietz in demonic makeup were inserted in key points in the film to heighten the viewer's discomfort and fear on an almost-subliminal level. These shots flash by so quickly, one is not really sure what one has seen, but it has still provoked a visceral fear reaction.

This post suggests the disturbing makeup was inspired by a Japanese film called Onibaba. According to IMDB, Onibaba is about a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in feudal Japan who kill passing samurai and sell their possessions. The daughter-in-law takes an awful-looking, demonic mask off one of her victims and begins to wear it, only to find that soon it will no longer come off.

Blatty claims he based his fictional novel The Exorcist on a real-life exorcism that took place while he was a college student at Georgetown in 1949. (He says so in this opinion essay.) However, this does not mean that there was an actual documented case of demonic possession. The events that took place surrounding the 14-year-old boy who was believed to be "possessed" have been explained by psychology and possible trickery on the part of the adolescent in question. (He's referred to by the pseudonyms Roland Doe and Robbie Mannheim.)

Now, a personal note:

The Exorcist came out in 1973. My dad took my mom on a date to see it at a movie theater in downtown South Bend, Indiana. (The building is still there, but it's no longer a movie theater. It was most recently a venue for live music.) My mom, also raised as a Roman Catholic, was so terrified she hid her face in my dad's jacket for almost the entire thing. To this day, if she's flipping TV channels and happens to hear a bit of the theme music, she runs from the room.

A Walking Study in Demonology With Cara Lockwood's Silly-Fun Chick Lit Series

"Oh make me over

I'm all I wanna be

A walking study in demonology..."

(Hole, "Celebrity Skin")

Excerpt

"It took every last ounce of Sam's willpower not to look at Rachel, to pretend that he didn't hear the light beat of her heart from across the church or smell her sweet, inviting scent.

"Every part of him wanted to hold her to his chest and not let go.

"The scariest thing was that he hadn't decided to kiss Rachel, his body had, taking control in a way he'd never experienced before. Even now, as he gritted his teeth, he wasn't sure he'd be able to keep himself away from her.

"He tried to make sense of what it meant, and then decided it didn't matter. He had to stay focused on his next bounty, which at this point looked like it would be Azazel."

My Review

Can't Teach an Old Demon New Tricks by Cara Lockwood
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Just like the first book in this series (which I read over a year ago), Every Demon Has His Day, this book is silly, goofy fun that combines chick lit with paranormal romance and horror-comedy. The heroine is Rachel, a young mom whose husband's body has been taken over by a demon named Pan. Pan is the father of Rachel's one-year-old son Cassidy, and the half-demon child (while not himself evil) exhibits some very unusual mischievous behavior. After the demon-husband unceremoniously splits, he's tracked down by the novel's hero, a fallen angel named Sam. Aligned with neither good nor evil, Sam is gradually becoming a mortal man, although most human women still find him irresistible. Rachel is not one of them. She's strongly attracted to Sam, but her primary concern is keeping Cassidy safe as Pan helps to waken Azazel, a very dangerous fallen angel who's planning to take over hell itself. The novel has some ridiculous scenes, such as the giant toddlers who descend on a Walmart-like parking lot and the angel SWAT team, so just go with it.

Serious literature? No. Fun? Yes.

View all my reviews on Goodreads

The Characters

Azazel: In Lockwood's telling, Azazel is a very powerful fallen angel who's been entombed in the Grand Canyon for thousands of years. He's high on the devil's most wanted list because of his scheme to take over hell. To do so, he has in the past attempted - and plans to try again - to sire a race of giants (the Nephilim) by seducing and impregnating human women, who die giving birth to his monstrously large offspring.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, Azazel is mentioned in the Bible. In the book of Leviticus, the ritual of the Day of Atonement is described, including the priest laying hands on a goat - the scapegoat - and confessing all the people's sins over it. The scapegoat was then released into the wilderness "for Azazel." The Book of Enoch (which most Jewish and Christian denominations do not consider to be a canonical part of the Bible) associates Azazel with the fallen angels, but other commentators consider Azazel a local deity associated with isolated stretches of the desert. 'Enoch' casts Azazel as a Prometheus-like figure who teaches humankind how to make weapons and wear make-up, among other things.

Folklorically, Azazel is associated with the angels mentioned in the Biblical book of Genesis who made children with human women (Genesis 6:1-4).

Azazel is also a Marvel Comics character, a mutant. In X-Men: First Class he's played by Jason Flemyng. Flemyng's co-star in that film, Michael Fassbender, played a character named Azazael on the U.K. TV series Hex (which I used to watch back when I had cable). Azazael was a fallen angel, and he fathered a child with the heroine-witch Cassie. Their son, Malachi, grew unusually fast and had demon-like powers.

Casiphia: She seems to be a demon Lockwood invented entirely. She has a lot of lust directed at Azazel, which he seems to return, even though it does not slow down his plan to impregnate a lot of human women, including many of the young beauty queens at the Dogwood Festival. She takes the form of a beautiful woman, and she has the ability to poison both humans and angels with her claw-like fingernails.

Casiphia is briefly mentioned in the Bible (Ezra 8:17), not as a demon but as a place. The Jewish Encyclopedia says its exact location is unknown (the entry is here).

Lilith: Lockwood describes Lilith as living in the form of an enormous snake. Her home appears to be a pet store, where she is attended by a human-looking demon, but any human beings who wander into her pet store by mistake are killed. Lilith is embittered against the human race because her demon children were killed, while humans are able to multiple. Otherwise, she's the traditional folkloric Lilith: first woman created, refused to be subservient to Adam, flew from the Garden of Eden and gave birth to many demon children by seducing men in their sleep.

When I think of Lilith, I can't help but think about an opinion column I read years ago, and still have affixed to an old diary. On Thursday, June 24, 1999, Ellen Goodman (a Boston Globe columnist) published "Lilith Too Much Woman for Adam (or Jerry)." In it, Goodman discusses the National Liberty Journal's (associated with Jerry Falwell and infamous for speaking out against the Teletubbies) crusade against the Lilith Fair music festival (which concluded in 2011). The charge was that Lilith Fair "celebrates a Pagan figure" known for seducing men. Goodman mentions the first printed reference to Lilith, in the 8th-9th century Alphabet of Ben-Sira. She quotes the editor of Lilith magazine (a Jewish feminist magazine first published in 1976), Susan Weidman Schneider, as saying, "The kernel of the story is that Lilith was a woman who wasn't afraid to take risks for equality. She wanted to claim her birthright as Adam's equal."

Goodman concludes, "Needless to say (I think it's needless), the Lilith Fair is modeled after the original image of the woman who wanted to have an equal voice....At the risk of sounding absolutely demonic, I'd rather sing doo-wop for Lilith than Jerry. The world according to Falwell ain't my idea of Paradise." I have loved Lilith ever since I read that, and I'm always slightly disappointed by unflattering portrayals of her.

The article taped to my March 20-April 30, 1999 diary. Like many writers,  I'm also an amateur librarian, with a filing system known only to myself. 

In modern media, Lilith is often referred to as the first vampire/queen of the vampires/mother of all the vampires. Lilith as a character featured prominently in Season 5 of True Blood. You can read about the folkloric Lilith extensively at Encyclopedia Mythica.

Pan: In Lockwood's telling, Pan is a sloth demon. He's so lazy, he's almost too lazy to do anything evil, even though he's plainly allied with Satan. He kills Kevin Farnsworth, taking over his body, and fathers Cassidy with Kevin's wife Rachel. (The issue of Rachel mourning for the real Kevin is never really addressed in this book.) Then he takes off, only to be hunted down by Sam. He offers to lead Sam to Azazel in exchange for his freedom, even though Pan ultimately ends up sent to hell anyway.

Theoi.com calls Pan "the god of shepherds and flocks, hunting and rustic music." He's not associated with sloth at all. He's depicted as a satyr, a half-man half-goat, and is sometimes pictured as part of the retinue of Dionysus.

In short, the folkloric Pan is variation on the Wild God of the Woods, a common theme in European mythology. He's the Horned One of Beltane and possibly Loki among the Norse gods (and in Marvel Comics).

A really good literary novel that features Pan as a character is Mrs. Demming and the Mythical Beast by Faith Sullivan. (You can get used copies super cheap on Amazon - get it. You won't be disappointed.) He's also reflected in "You" by Charlotte Stein, found in the erotic fairy tale anthology Lustfully Ever After.

Tiamat: In Can't Teach an Old Demon New Tricks, Tiamat is a water demon, although it's mentioned that the ancient Babylonians considered her a goddess whose body formed the world. She's not particularly powerful; she can be contained in a Mason jar, and when that jar is emptied out she becomes a raging flood. She destroys Rachel's house.

Encyclopedia Mythica calls Tiamat a huge Babylonian dragon who personified the oceans and chaos, as well as "the mother of all that exists." Thus, she is extremely powerful and important. It says in the Babylonian creation epic the Enuma Elish, Tiamat and her consort Apsu decide to kill their many offspring, who have begun to annoy them. Their plans are foiled when one of their children, Ea, kills Apsu. Tiamat becomes enraged and builds an army of monsters, but is ultimately defeated and slain by the young god Marduk.

The entry then claims that "The Deep" spoken of in the Biblical book of Genesis "derives from Tiamat." If I remember from studying the Enuma Elish in college, Marduk separates the parts of Tiamat's dead body to separate dry land from the waters, much like the God of the Bible separates the dry land from the waters.

In Conclusion

But every writer is free to use folkloric characters as inspiration for her own unique characters - J.K. Rowling certainly does it all the time in the Harry Potter series, and the results are enjoyable. This series isn't anywhere near as good as the Harry Potter books, but it's good for a fairly quick read with some amusing characters and funny dialogue.