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.

Beware the Ides of March

Why do we say "Beware the Ides of March" when March 15th is approaching? The short answer is, "Shakespeare." The long answer has to do with the ancient Roman calendar. Let's take a look at this expression and where it came from.

The Romans called the Ides of March Idus Martii or Idus Martiae, says the Wikipedia entry. Before the Julian calendar, March - the month dedicated to the war-god Mars - was the first on the Roman calendar. The ancient Romans practiced a number of religious rites, many of them related to New Year celebrations, around the Ides of March.

"Ides" indicates the 13th day of most months, but the 15th day of March, May, June, and October. This observation was based on the lunar calendar, and in ancient times, the Ides of March would have been the night of the first full moon of the new year.

Since the month belonged to Mars, a military parade would have been part of the celebration, according to a Christian Science Monitor article. The ides of any month was usually used to celebrate the god or goddess of that month. February belonged to Juno Februata, so the goddess of marriage would have been celebrated on the 13th, and this probably contributed to our modern holiday of Valentine's Day on February 14th.

Ancient Roman rituals associated with the Ides of March included the sacrifice of a sheep to the chief Roman god Jupiter, the feast of the new year goddess Anna Perenna, and, in later times, a festival known as Mamuralia in which an old man dressed in animal skins, representing the old year, was symbolically driven out. Also in later antiquity, the period between the Ides of March and the Vernal Equinox was sacred to the goddess Cybele and her lover Attis (a version of the Mother Goddess and the Annually Dying God myth). In his Metamorphoses, the poet Ovid identified Anna Parenna as the sister of Dido, the queen of Carthage who appears in The Aeneid of Virgil.

Historically, the Ides of March became associated with ill omen when Julius Caesar was assassinated on that date in the year 44 C.E. The assassination was written about in ancient times by Plutarch and Suetonius, who both report Caesar had been warned by a soothsayer that he would be harmed no later than the Ides of March. Suetonius identifies the soothsayer as Spurinna, which is an Etruscan name, and the Etruscans were known for using the entrails of sheep for divination.

The historical accounts of the time inspired William Shakespeare as he wrote his play The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. Shakespeare put the words "Beware the Ides of March" in the unnamed soothsayer's mouth.

According to this article, Czar Nicholas II of Russia had a very bad day on March 15, 1917, when he abdicated his throne after his army's defeat by Germany in the First World War. It's interesting to note that the Russian word "czar" is directly related to the Latin word "Caesar." Nicholas II was eventually executed, but not until July 1918.

On his blog Twilight Language (having nothing to do with the Stephenie Meyer book series, alas), learned Fortean researcher Loren Coleman mentions the site on which the soothsayer is said to have made the dire prediction to Caesar is marked by an obelisk. Obelisks, Coleman goes on to say, are linked to ancient Egypt (of course), Free Masonic symbolism, and also "sexual magick." (When "magick" is spelled with a "k" like that, it usually directly or indirectly has something to do with the early 20th century philosophies of Aleister Crowley.)

Unfortunately, the exact connections are not explained in any detail. Maybe the sex magick rituals have to do with the ancient celebrations of Cybele and Attis? Encyclopedia Mythica says, "Along with her consort, the vegetation god Attis, Cybele was worshiped in wild, emotional, bloody, orgiastic, cathartic ceremonies."

This article says initiates into Cybele's cult stood under a wooden grate. A bull was sacrificed on top of the grate, showering the initiate with the blood. (Ew.) Attis was said to have been driven to castrate and kill himself by Cybele's jealousy. Where his blood drops hit the earth, the first violets grew. Cybele's priests, the Gallai, would castrate themselves and afterward assume the social identities of women. Cybele's rituals were actually led by priestesses, though, who had the much less gruesome task of leading ecstatic drumming and dancing.

Turning to my old standby reference book, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara G. Walker, I learn:

"Egyptians knew the obelisk was intended to represent a giant phallus. It was called the benben-stone, or begetter-stone, similar to the Petra, "the rock that begat thee," as the Bible says. Usually the obelisk was regarded as the erection of the earth god Geb in his perpetual eagerness to mate with the Goddess of Heaven."

The "Goddess of Heaven" whose body literally forms the sky is Nut. She looks like this:

http://the-broom-cupboard.blogspot.com/2011/07/facebook-page-for-goddess-nut.html

Consciously or unconsciously, Beyonce seems to be imitating the Egyptian goddess in one of her many outfits for her Mrs. Carter tour. But I digress.

http://drivennetwork.com/blog/driven-network/driven-highlights/beyonces-mrs-carter-sparkles-at-the-stage/

According to Walker, Egyptian pharaohs, who thought of themselves as gods, sometimes claimed descent from Nut. As Ancient History Encyclopedia will tell you, Julius Caesar himself was said to be descended from a Roman goddess, namely Venus. Venus seduced Prince Anchises of Dardania, an ally of the Trojans. They produced Aeneas, the hero of Virgil's Aeneid. Aeneas's descendants founded Rome and the family line Julia, Caesar's family line.

So here again we have god-goddess pairings: Caesar is a descendant of Venus, killed on a day sacred to Venus's lover Mars. The day is also sacred to Anna Parenna, the goddess who is the sister of Dido of Carthage, the lover of Caesar's ancestor Aeneas.

In her entry on Venus, Walker writes, "Venery used to mean hunting; for, like her Eastern counterpart Artemis, Venus was once a Lady of the Animals, and her Horned God - Adonis, both the hunter and the sacrificial stag - became venison, which meant 'Venus's son.'"

I don't think the suggestion was that the Romans ate Julius Caesar literally (ew), but religious Romans may have thought of his murder as a symbolic sacrifice. "Venery" is now used to mean "sexual indulgence," by the way - which I suppose is a different form of "hunting."

Walker's entry on Adonis makes the following associations:

- Adonis was the same god as Anchises, who was castrated after his mating with Venus.

- Adonis was castrated by a priest of Venus in the guise of a wild boar.

- Where Adonis's blood drops hit the earth, red anemones grew.

- The castration myth is symbolic of the reaping of grain at harvest time.

About Attis, Walker writes that:

- The cult of Attis and Cybele was brought over to Rome from Phrygia (modern Turkey) in 204 BCE.

- Cybele's temple was located at what is now Vatican Hill. She was worshiped by Augustus Caesar, of whom Julius Caesar was a great-uncle on his mother's side.

- The "passion" of Attis was celebrated on March 25, exactly nine months before his December 25 birth.

- March 25 was also the day the great goddess Juno was said to have given birth to Mars.

- Attis rises from the dead three days after his sacrificial death, celebrated by the Carnival-like (which is to say, Mardi Gras-like) Hilaria festival.

- Ultimately, the Indo-European cultural roots of the springtime Hilaria festival may be the same as the Hindu festival of Holi.

Ancient Euro-Africo-Asian mythologies: what a tangled web. Fascinating, though.

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