Tag: #Religion
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Judas Iscariot Didn’t Betray Jesus. He Obeyed Him.
The Lost Gospel That Turns History’s Worst Villain Into Its Most Loyal Disciple Almost everyone has betrayed someone else at some point, whether they’d call it that or not. Sometimes it’s telling a friend a truth they didn’t want to hear. Sometimes it’s ending a relationship someone else wasn’t ready to let go of. Sometimes…
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Did a Pope Just Hate Cats?
What One Papal Bull Reveals About Where Our Superstitions Actually Come From You knock on wood without thinking about it. You toss salt over your shoulder if you spill it, or you know someone who does. You’ve watched a friend refuse to walk under a ladder, not because they believe in curses exactly, but because,…
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Okay, It Was Only a Movie, But God Said What?
Skeptics and Believers Are Lying to Themselves the Same Way There’s a scene late in the movie Disclosure Day where a former novitiate named Jane corners her old mentor, a nun named Sister Maura, with a question dressed up as a statement. Genesis, she says, tells us humanity is God’s supreme creation. Sister Maura doesn’t…
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They Kept the Story. They Lost the Point
Folklore didn’t survive because it was true. It survived because it was useful It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are in life. You already know what it feels like to have a story told about you that was never true. Maybe it followed you anyway. Maybe people believed it because it was…
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Driven Into the Ground
Iron, Fallen Angels, and the Oldest Ward We Know There are iron stakes driven into the ground at the four corners of my house. I put them there myself and I have a PhD. Celts hung iron above their doors. Bedouins buried it at thresholds. Hindu tradition warns against leaving it out after dark. These…
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In 1966, the Beatles Made Headlines. The List Didn’t.
Everyone Was Watching the Beatles. Nobody Was Watching the Vatican. In 1966, the Beatles released Revolver. Medicare enrolled its first patients. The United States was at a boiling point over Vietnam, civil rights, and what kind of country it actually wanted to be. The world was loud and cracking open. And somewhere in that same…
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The Church Didn’t Destroy Witches’ Night. It Stole It.
How April 30th went from a pagan sabbath to a Christian feast day, and what that tells us about how the Church actually built its power. Picture the Brocken on the night of April 30th. It is the highest peak in Germany’s Harz Mountains, wreathed in fog, lit by bonfires. In the folk imagination of…
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We Don’t Build Systems Around Things That Don’t Exist, Right?
If demons aren’t real, why do so many ancient texts describe rituals meant to keep them away… and others designed to call them in? Sit with that for a second or two. Not as an idea. As a pattern. Because this isn’t one culture, one belief system, or one period of time trying to explain…
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What Do You Call an Experience You Can’t Explain?
Understanding the word that sits at the edge of science, religion, and human experience. Most people think they know what the word paranormal means. Say it out loud and the images appear immediately. Haunted houses. Ghosts in hallways. Something moving through the dark in an old building. Movies, television, and social media have trained us…
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Exorcism: What Hollywood Gets Wrong
The movies thrive on terror. The reality is built on empathy, ritual, and the need to feel safe again. Most people think they know what an exorcism looks like because Hollywood has shown them the same scene for fifty years: a dark room, a screaming voice, a priest locked in combat with a demon. It…