Sunday, November 23, 2008
Name Change
We are now the Gnutty Gnostic's Sanctuary of Believehowyalike, which is an offshoot of the Rev. Humpty Hump's Church of Doowutchyalike. See the above video of a service at Rev. Hump's church.
I like the new name. It's friendly and welcoming!
Some of the rejected name choices include:
The Church of Do What I Say or Fuck Off (suggested by Fundie Crisschun)
The Church of Do What I Say or Get Blown To Little Bitty Bits (Suggested by Raddy Cal Muzzlin)
The Church of Do Me How I Like (Suggested by the Rev. Smutty)
The Church of Wholesome Cannibalism (Suggested by the Right Rev. Alferd Packer and High Priestess Brittney Hamster)
I like the new name. It's friendly and welcoming!
Some of the rejected name choices include:
The Church of Do What I Say or Fuck Off (suggested by Fundie Crisschun)
The Church of Do What I Say or Get Blown To Little Bitty Bits (Suggested by Raddy Cal Muzzlin)
The Church of Do Me How I Like (Suggested by the Rev. Smutty)
The Church of Wholesome Cannibalism (Suggested by the Right Rev. Alferd Packer and High Priestess Brittney Hamster)
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Haunting the Halls of my High School
I'm honestly not sure if this is a psychic or purely psychological phenomenon, but I have often semi-jokingly said to people that my teenage self still haunts the halls of my old high school. I experienced hella drama when I was at that place. I'm now 43 years old, and 25 years after graduation it seems there is a part of me that has never moved on. I sometimes feel like I may have left behind one of those psychic imprints where an astral "tape loop" plays over and over, leaving behind a ghost image that people can see, but there is no real presence.
The old campus where I went to school was torn down and the new buildings were built several hundred yards southeast of where the old buildings stood. I wonder how this sort of thing effects those splinters of the self one leaves behind. For instance, when the mortuary/chapel/apartment building where my paternal relatives lived and worked for so many years was torn down to make a parking lot (ugh!) I could feel the displaced presences, not of the actual spirits of my great-grandfather, great-grandmother, great-uncle and great-aunts, but of those psychic impressions they left behind from their years there being displaced. I even sensed my father as a little boy. It was disconcerting to say the least. I think it was a terrible tragedy that this old building full of history was razed in this fashion. It still had use left in it.
I talked to one other person who had a similar experience. She said sometimes she felt like there was a part of herself haunting a house in her town.
The old campus where I went to school was torn down and the new buildings were built several hundred yards southeast of where the old buildings stood. I wonder how this sort of thing effects those splinters of the self one leaves behind. For instance, when the mortuary/chapel/apartment building where my paternal relatives lived and worked for so many years was torn down to make a parking lot (ugh!) I could feel the displaced presences, not of the actual spirits of my great-grandfather, great-grandmother, great-uncle and great-aunts, but of those psychic impressions they left behind from their years there being displaced. I even sensed my father as a little boy. It was disconcerting to say the least. I think it was a terrible tragedy that this old building full of history was razed in this fashion. It still had use left in it.
I talked to one other person who had a similar experience. She said sometimes she felt like there was a part of herself haunting a house in her town.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
King Tut
I'm watching a show about King Tut. They're trying to figure out how he died. Also, was there really a curse? I reckon if there was, the people who opened his tomb in the 1920's and accidentally desecrated the delicate mummy would have been perfect candidates. I honestly don't believe that Tut (who has probably had several lifetimes since his death) cares particularly about cursing people, but I think that he would be glad for today's forensic experts who are trying to tell the truth about what happened to him. I'm going to plead the fifth on this one. He seems to have not been the healthiest fellow and it's starting to look like he died of natural causes. It was an important life for that soul, but I think he's ready for it to be laid to rest once and for all. Wouldn't it be interesting if he were one of the team working on it today? Of that I can't say one way of the other. But it's really fascinating to speculate.
Perhaps King Tut is now Steve Martin. Check it out and decide for yourself!
Perhaps King Tut is now Steve Martin. Check it out and decide for yourself!
To Thine Own Self Be True
I wrote this in response to a friend who has Dissociative Identity Disorder and has been the victim of a lot of spiritual abuse in conjunction with the other injustices that she's suffered in her life.
My motto is that spirituality is too personal a thing to have someone else's dogma shoved down your throat. As long as a person's beliefs don't involve hurting others, who is anyone to say that it's right or wrong? We are all just mere humans and none of us knows the exact workings of the Universe. You must do what feels right for you. Thankfully you no longer have some zealot pounding their fundamentaist Christianity down your throat. I can't hang with that either. Who are they to try and tell everyone else what is right and wrong? We're all just human and I think as long as we try to act with kindness towards others we'll come out ok. I don't believe in a deity that would be so mean-spirited as to punish its creations just because they weren't sure what it's name was, weren't sure it existed, or flat out couldn't bring themselves to believe it existed. That would be akin to flushing a fish down the toilet to punish it for not praising you on high every time you fed it--it's mean spirited, stupid, and more than a little egotistical! I would never suffer myself to worship a deity that was such an egomaniac, and no-one else should either. At any rate, I don't think that's how the Creator rolls. I think it's great that you're finding your own path. To thine own self be true. :-)
Thursday, November 13, 2008
The Satanic Panics and the Development of My Spirituality
This is a response to my friend Mago's comments on my last post.
These accusations of Satanism against anyone who isn't a Christian certainly are anti-enlightenment. I used to attend the Unitarian church in my 20's because it didn't have any of the "Bible-thumpin'" that comes with most Judeo-Christian churches, but I stopped going there because of the scoffing attitude about anything spiritual in their case. I personally believe that there isn't only the life and death of the body, but that certain forces survive physical death and there are certain forces that modern science cannot yet measure. However, I did learn some good lessons in my time there. One minister talked about how as a child growing up in a Southern Baptist church, he was actually told that too much knowledge was a bad thing. God did not want humans having too much knowledge. Many narrow-minded people still subscribe to this unenlightened point of view and are greatly afraid of anyone who doesn't want to.
I was in high school when the "Satanic Panics" in the 1980's were in full swing. It is evident to me now that this was an American epidemic. Anyone who listened to "the devil's music," aka hard rock, was of course killing babies, puppies and kittens on the side. Not to mention the orgies we had. Boy howdy! We would spread the blood of our victims over our naked bodies and have sex all night!
NOT!
We did drink a lot of beer and smoke a lot of weed, though.
Honestly, I wasn't even a Pagan at the time that I was accused of being a Satanist. I was a church-going Catholic! A church-going Catholic that loved rock music. But I was also one rebel spirit, and I figured if I were going to be accused of being a Satanist, I might as well check it out. Not that I ever sacrificed anything, mind. Any blood used in my ceremonies was my own.
I'm a bit reluctant to discuss it, but I got the hell scared out of me quite early on and demons attempted to possess me during weak times in my life from that point on until 2005 when my spectral friend and co-author came along and started chasing them away. However, in spite of my fear that I was going to hell, I could no longer bear the intolerance of the Christian religion that I had grown up with, and began investigating Wicca when I was seventeen after a friend did a Tarot reading for me. He was not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was able to give me an incredibly accurate reading, and I was intrigued. I found the Pagan path to be one of peace and enlightenment where you could explore many possibilities. Sadly, I have in my time met more than one intolerant Wiccan, and this is why I am a solitary practitioner and a student of all religions. I have raised a son who is open-minded, tolerant, and fortunately, free of the bonds of guilt and fear that still affect me at various times in my life. He certainly would not have gotten a hurt feeling at being accused of Satanism by some narrow-minded mutton-head. He would have laughed at them. So it would appear that in this troubled life of mine, I have managed to do one thing right.
So I thank you for your comment on the last post, because it gave me this opportunity to explain a little more about myself and my beliefs. Sometimes I find that hard to do in an honest way.
These accusations of Satanism against anyone who isn't a Christian certainly are anti-enlightenment. I used to attend the Unitarian church in my 20's because it didn't have any of the "Bible-thumpin'" that comes with most Judeo-Christian churches, but I stopped going there because of the scoffing attitude about anything spiritual in their case. I personally believe that there isn't only the life and death of the body, but that certain forces survive physical death and there are certain forces that modern science cannot yet measure. However, I did learn some good lessons in my time there. One minister talked about how as a child growing up in a Southern Baptist church, he was actually told that too much knowledge was a bad thing. God did not want humans having too much knowledge. Many narrow-minded people still subscribe to this unenlightened point of view and are greatly afraid of anyone who doesn't want to.
I was in high school when the "Satanic Panics" in the 1980's were in full swing. It is evident to me now that this was an American epidemic. Anyone who listened to "the devil's music," aka hard rock, was of course killing babies, puppies and kittens on the side. Not to mention the orgies we had. Boy howdy! We would spread the blood of our victims over our naked bodies and have sex all night!
NOT!
We did drink a lot of beer and smoke a lot of weed, though.
Honestly, I wasn't even a Pagan at the time that I was accused of being a Satanist. I was a church-going Catholic! A church-going Catholic that loved rock music. But I was also one rebel spirit, and I figured if I were going to be accused of being a Satanist, I might as well check it out. Not that I ever sacrificed anything, mind. Any blood used in my ceremonies was my own.
I'm a bit reluctant to discuss it, but I got the hell scared out of me quite early on and demons attempted to possess me during weak times in my life from that point on until 2005 when my spectral friend and co-author came along and started chasing them away. However, in spite of my fear that I was going to hell, I could no longer bear the intolerance of the Christian religion that I had grown up with, and began investigating Wicca when I was seventeen after a friend did a Tarot reading for me. He was not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was able to give me an incredibly accurate reading, and I was intrigued. I found the Pagan path to be one of peace and enlightenment where you could explore many possibilities. Sadly, I have in my time met more than one intolerant Wiccan, and this is why I am a solitary practitioner and a student of all religions. I have raised a son who is open-minded, tolerant, and fortunately, free of the bonds of guilt and fear that still affect me at various times in my life. He certainly would not have gotten a hurt feeling at being accused of Satanism by some narrow-minded mutton-head. He would have laughed at them. So it would appear that in this troubled life of mine, I have managed to do one thing right.
So I thank you for your comment on the last post, because it gave me this opportunity to explain a little more about myself and my beliefs. Sometimes I find that hard to do in an honest way.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The Big Judgment
Organized religion and the judgmental bullcrap that walks hand in hand with it. It continues to drive a wedge between people and I find it very sad. Of course I came under attack as expected by the so kind fundie faction when I stated that there are more things in this Universe than Christianity and Satanism. One Fundie had this tolerant thing to say. My sarcastic commentary is in italics. Yes, it's childish. But all this is unbelievably stupid, and I am dismayed that it is still going on in the 21st century.
As much as we may not want to accept it or hear it, Wicca, goddess worship, tarot etc. is used as a cover for Satanism.
Yes, Anonymous, I have a secret stash of the bodies of those I have sacrificed to Satan in my basement. Please--don't let the fact that I don't even have a basement dissuade you from this belief! I'm sure it makes your boring, pathetic life far more interesting than it otherwise would be. In fact, all Wiccans have a dungeon in which they keep all their sacrificial victims. But somehow we are never caught by the law. Because guess what--they're part of it too! Yes, me and Constable Clancy and the rest are sacrificing your good Christian ilk even as I type this. Which fails to explain why the churches are still full every Sunday. You'd think we'd have whittled your congregation way down by now with all the sacrifices we do.
The leaders of the harmless nature worshipers/ goddess worshipers are the leaders of the cult as well. I know this to be true. Most occult groups practice a degree system of initiation.
What the fuck are you going on about, you twat? Most wiccans are actually solitary practitioners. Who the fuck are we going to initiate--ourselves??
You learn more and more as you go but things are kept secret from the lower degrees.
I'm so excited that I'm finally going to teach myself the secret Satanic practices this saturday at midnight. I just can't wait! I'll have to sacrifice SIX of the old folks I tend to for this one! Funny how I've never been caught sacrificing the people that are put in my care. I'm a slick one, so I am!
Satanism does the same thing, depending upon the level of programming and worthiness. So, go ahead, and deny and believe the cock and bull story we are fed today, "nature worship" or harmless fun with cards and ouija boards. And while the people sleep, it won't change one iota the truth of what is shared here.
No, while the people sleep I'm going to come sacrifice them. Because it's what I do.
This was my reply to the blog owner, who is a victim of satanic ritual abuse and therefore has reasons to think what she does and is also why I will not reveal a link to her because I don't wish for people to attack her. Damn evil of me that. Ah well. It is far from the first time that something like this has happened. But I will not kowtow. I have to speak what I believe is the truth.The sad thing is that the intolerance of people like Anonymous are what drive people apart from each other. I can assure people until I'm blue in the face that I am certainly not part of some "satanic cult" and none of you lot will believe a word of it. I have never sacrificed an animal to any power and would not deal with powers that require such. I do read Tarot cards and I happen to believe that there are more of deities than just the Christian god and anti-god. I think I try to do good in this world. I am neither a christian nor a satanist. In fact Satan is a Christian anti-deity, and I don't have any use for him. I don't mind calling myself a Pagan. I am not an evil person. I do not rape children or sacrifice babies and deplore such actions. I don't think that you're a prejudiced individual and what you say is true for you. It's sad that it brings out the hate and narrow-mindedness in some people.I don't think I'll be back because I imagine my presence is uncomfortable for you. I'm sorry. I hope one day people will learn that actions are what tell the truth, not what religious path one follows.
As Angus Young (himself accused of being a "satan worshipper" more than once) said, the real Satan is intolerance. Right on, Angus. And rock on.
Things like this are why I despise organized religion. Organized religion has contributed to a lot more deaths than some harmless person picking herbs and calling on the gods and goddesses for a blessing in their miserable lives.
It may not be legal to burn witches at the stake now--but some people sure would like it to be, as you can plainly see.
I have this idea that's a real grin. How about we elect me for president after Barack Obama has served his TWO terms? Wouldn't that be a hoot? A fat old Pagan with bipolar disorder in the Oval Office. Pat Buchanan and his ilk would have an aneurysm for sure.
Tarot readings, AC/DC tunes and mead for all! That's my platform. Vote for me, won't you?
Or at least give me a scratch behind the ears. Because I'm feeling pretty glum right now. Intolerance blows. Maybe I'll go out and sacrifice one of my neighbors to pick my mood up. Because that's what we mostly harmless Pagans do in the minds of the so-good (intolerant) Christians.
Yeah, I eat meat. But so do most of them. Think that Jerry Falwell got that pork belly of his chowing down on leaves and sprouts? I think he was eating members of the congregation!
I want to meet that bastard in hell and give him a full body slam. He bilked my grandmother out of literally thousands of dollars sending her that bullshit about how Satan was taking over the world and the only way he could be stopped is if good Christians sent their money to Jerry. Isn't bilking old folks out of their security checks a sin? Bastard!
There's another thing that this "evil" pagan has never done. Bilking old folks out of their money. Damn this conscience of mine! I could be rich if I just postured as a born again Christian preacher and told everyone to send me their money to save their souls.
Man...if that ain't a ticket to hell on the Bullet Express, I sure don't know what is!
Ah well...guess I'll just keep on being a pariah. At this I seem to excel. Now excuse me while I go back to eating the hearts of the innocent and reading my blood-stained tarot cards.
Lily
the eternally despised
Monday, November 10, 2008
Disagreeing With Respect
I will not be linking to the post that I made these comments on because I don't want anyone attacking the person who made them. However, she made some statements that I felt were very black and white about certain things that were good and evil and I didn't agree. She mentioned Ouija boards, Tarot cards and channeling as ways for the Devil to get in and steal your soul. So here is what I said:
I must respectfully disagree about certain of these things. I don't believe that the Universe is quite as black and white that there is only one positive deity and one force of evil. That there is a force of good and a force of evil is true, in my view, but there are gray areas. I did dabble in the dark arts in my youth and got the hell scared out of me, which is a good thing, because there are demonic forces that would have been more than glad to f**k me over even worse than I already was. However, I haven't experienced much of good from Christianity or at least the folks that practice it. I've been confronted with a lot of judgment and narrow viewpoints that I can do without. Which is to say nothing against Jesus Christ, who I have nothing but admiration for. I did not have very many positive experiences messing about with the Ouija board, so I stopped doing it. However, for me, reading Tarot cards has been pretty well nothing but positive. I just think it's a little too black and white to say "all this is good and all this is bad." There are some things that are gray areas and can be used either way.
I didn't say this in the comment, but I'll say it here. I don't channel for the same reason that I don't use the Ouija board. In my case, there is a weakness in my psyche that allows some nasties to invite themselves in through these passages, so I ain't gonna do it. This is not to say that either channeling or Ouija boards are in and of themselves evil, just that for someone whose defenses aren't extremely strong, they can open doors for some real asshole entities.
The spirits that I communicate with do NOT come into my body. They "talk" to me just as anyone in a body would, except that they communicate through thought and feeling rather than a voice. When allowing my co-author to "speak" through me, I will go into a conscious trance if he has a lot to say. But he does not control my thoughts or actions in any way. And he does not in fact wish to do so. He has never asked to do so. In fact when he initially met me, I was very prone to attempts from demonic entities to possess me. I would wake at times speaking in a guttural voice that I didn't understand and thrashing about, clawing at the air. I was not able to control this. This has only happened once since meeting him, and he returned quickly and chased the would-be possessor away.
There was only one occasion when I first met my co-author where I was very tired. I was resting in my parents' basement, and there was in the past a doorway that energies had been coming through into the house. In defending me from one of these entities, the "Dead" personality briefly ended up in my body, and he was more unsettled by the experience than I was. He hadn't intended for it to happen and was profusely apologetic. He leapt out as if he'd been a cat that had fallen into water and "looked" about as frazzled when I saw him in my mind. Except that he was so rattled, I would have found the whole thing rather funny.
Just in case anyone is interested, this particular personality does not especially care for being called Dead at this point. He says that "it's a little bit obvious, isn't it?" Furthermore, he considers it to have been an unfortunate choice of nicknames, all things considered. However, he's aware that this is how everyone knows him, so he isn't especially insistent on fighting the tide. He says that he may become more so as time goes on, and somewhat likes the name "Shadow." He half jokingly says that "I will most probably reincarnate as my own relative, and will revive the music that I in this life wrote. So again I shall be stuck with this idiot name that I gave to myself. Now, here is proof that the Universe or what have you has a very wicked sense of humor."
All this being said, I don't have any reason to slam the beliefs of others. However, I think a bit of education is necessary. The Universe is not black and white. There are shades of gray to be certain, and many, many other dynamic colors, energies and entities as well.
Blessed be,
Lily and Friends
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Splish Splash
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Who me, heavenly??
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Tuesday, November 04, 2008
New Revelations
I wasn't sure where to reveal this recent occurrence, or even if I should. I decided to do so here, at least parts of it. This involves what happened when I accidentally came across the picture of my co-author's suicide, which was taken by the jealous little sociopathic bitch Arsewipe the Ghoul and somehow got into the hands of some loser in South America who used it as the cover of a CD. (The asshole who did this later blew his own brains out, and him I did not feel sorry for.)
Also, for those who are unawares, it became clear to me soon after meeting him that my co-author had dissociative identity disorder (or multiple personalities.) The main personalities that I deal with are the adult ones, Pelle the host personality and Dead the protector. I will also mention Yngve in this essay who is best described as the lead adolescent personality. He is about 16 years old.
I HATE when I accidentally come across "that" picture. I think a lot of these morons who think it's "cool" to post it can't get it into their heads that it's really real. They've played too many video games. To these nimrods, it's simply another gory image. Anyway, that's a theory of mine.
I was actually playing a bit with my co-author, creating a humorous scenario. We were looking for photographs, which is always risky. We came across "that" picture and I was hit by a wave of emotions, like I always am. I was inside a maelstrom of emotions including regret and a desperate need for acceptance and comfort. These are the emotions that I received when I first made contact with him. But there was something else this time. Dead rembered something beneath the emotions of self-hate that drove him to this act. He said "I'm going to be sick."
I said that he wasn't the only one. I was hit by a wave of nausea that nearly knocked me over. I reached for a plastic garbage bag because I thought that I was going to vomit. This lasted for several minutes. I was breathing deeply and slowly sipping on the water in the bottle that I keep by my bed (ok, the trashed-out collapsed couch that serves as my bed) and being glad that it was cool. He returned to me and although his touches are usually warm, this time he deliberately made his hands cool and touched my face.
"I'm really, really sorry," he said. "I didn't mean for that to happen to you. I don't know where that came from."
I told him that it wasn't his fault. As an empath, I'm going to feel strong emotions of that nature from others. After all, it was feeling the emotions from "that" picture which caused me to connect with him in the first place and I wouldn't change that. This recent incident was a break-through for him even if he can't remember the details, (or I can't yet perceive them) and I'm glad that he had it because it will eventually help him to heal.
I asked him if it hurt when he killed himself and he said that it may seem surprising, but from a physical perspective, there was too much shock for it to hurt very much.
"You know how if you fall and hit your head or if you get hit on the head by something very hard? It's like that," he said. "Momentary pain and then numbness."
Apparently the last desperate act of the body was to send a rush of endorphins to numb the physical pain. He has also described before a "blinding flash of light" and temporary deafness, even when he found himself sitting outside his body. He said that he was stunned and then when he realized what was happening, horrified, as there was "no end to my emotional pain. I am still there, and now I see the truth of what I have done, but there is no return." Of course, as described before, a horrified Pelle appeared at this point demanding "What the fuck did you do?" and the animosity between Pelle and Dead wouldn't be resolved for years.
At this point Pelle also appeared. He told Dead, "It's all right. I'm sorry I wasn't more supportive of you. Maybe if I had been, you wouldn't have done this."
I also realize at this point that their body did incur several head injuries. This comes together partly due to new real-world knowledge and partly due to thoughts and feelings imparted by them. Although intelligent, there has always been a tendency to "spaciness" on all of their parts, which Pelle says some people interpreted as their being stoned, although they didn't do drugs.
Pelle, Dead and Yngve all liked drinking beer to a degree. Regarding smoking, it was mostly Dead's habit. Yngve smoked occasionally, so he didn't mind coming into the body if Dead had recently smoked. Pelle, however, despised the taste of cigarettes. Dead says he still gets a bit of a laugh, thinking about the faces Pelle would make when he returned to control of the body after Dead had been in it and had been smoking.
"He would run to find some mouthwash and brush his teeth--it was fucking funny!" Dead says.
Dead doesn't currently remember the exact circumstances of the head injuries he suffered (or I am not yet able to perceive what he is imparting about them) although he says "the first ones happened very young."
The speculation that Dead had something called Cotard syndrome has merit, given his belief that 'the blood had frozen in his veins' and a sense that he was already dead although he was in a living body. The thing that I find fascinating is that the other personalities didn't suffer from this although they had the same body and the part of the brain that was damaged in such a way as to cause this problem was, of course, the same for all of them. It's also apparent to me that Dead had borderline personality disorder (his black and white thinking when it came to his friends and associates) while the other personalities did not appear to suffer from this. Dead presented as possibly schizophrenic (he wasn't) where Pelle presented as balanced and sane though given to episodes of severe depression. Dead was prone to self-injury. Most of the other personalities didn't do this.
That's the interesting thing about DID. The different personalities react differently, not only in behavior but in physical characteristics. For instance, it's difficult to provide medications for a person with DID because some of the personalities will have bad reactions to a medication whereas others are perfectly fine with it.
Dead also had/has very acute senses. Pelle finds Dead's fascination with smells "mildly disturbing." Dead says that the irony was that in life he sought the smells of death, but now he enjoys "breathing the smells of life." This includes me! I remember that when I first met him I had this funny dream that he was following me around and in some recess of my mind I was worried that he was a brain-eating zombie. At the last part of the dream I was in the grocery store getting something from the freezer case. He was behind me and, being about a foot taller than me, his head was above mine and I could feel him breathing on the top of my head. When I turned to accuse him of trying to eat my brain, he told me that my hair smelled nice, and I could tell by his demeanor that this is exactly what he meant. It's hard for a ghost to lie, especially to someone who perceives emotions, because they communicate in thoughts rather than words. Dead is also rather an innocent being in many ways, despite his dark and imposing persona. It doesn't really occur to him to lie.
Dead will also sometimes "send" me pleasant smells, like flowers or pine. He jokes that "In life, Pelle likes to use this after shave that makes us smell like a fucking pine tree."
Here is a description of Cotard syndrome for those that are interested.
The Cotard delusion or Cotard's syndrome, also known as nihilistic or negation delusion, is a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that he or she is dead, does not exist, is putrefying or has lost his/her blood or internal organs. Rarely, it can include delusions of immortality.
It is named after Jules Cotard (1840–1889), a French neurologist who first described the condition, which he called le délire de négation ("negation delirium"), in a lecture in Paris in 1880. He described the syndrome as having various degrees of severity, ranging from mild to severe. In a mild state, feelings of despair and self-loathing occur, however it is in the severe state that a person with Cotards actually starts to deny the very existence of the self.[citation needed]
In this lecture, Cotard described a patient with the moniker of Mademoiselle X, who denied the existence of God, the Devil, several parts of her body and denied she needed to eat. Later she believed she was eternally damned and could no longer die a natural death.
Young and Leafhead (1996, p155) describe a modern-day case of Cotard delusion in a patient who suffered brain injury after a motorcycle accident:
[The patient's] symptoms occurred in the context of more general feelings of unreality and being dead. In January, 1990, after his discharge from hospital in Edinburgh, his mother took him to South Africa. He was convinced that he had been taken to hell (which was confirmed by the heat), and that he had died of septicaemia (which had been a risk early in his recovery), or perhaps from AIDS (he had read a story in The Scotsman about someone with AIDS who died from septicaemia), or from an overdose of a yellow fever injection. He thought he had "borrowed my mother's spirit to show me round hell", and that he was asleep in Scotland.
It can arise in the context of neurological illness or mental illness and is particularly associated with depression and derealization.
Neurologically, Cotard's is thought to be related to Capgras's Syndrome, and both are thought to result from a disconnect between the brain areas that recognize faces (fusiform face areas) and the areas that associate emotions with that recognition (the amygdala and other limbic structures). This disconnect creates a sense that the face that's seen is not the person's it purports to be because although it is identical with the face it purports to be, it lacks the familiarity it should have. If it is a relative's face, it is experienced as an imposter's (Capgras); if it is mine, I conclude that because I don't have the usual emotional context of self-familiarity associated with the face, I am dead (Cotard).
Treatment is difficult, and tricyclic and serotoninergic antidepressant drugs have shown little efficacy. Electroconvulsive therapy has shown greater promise, "curing" Cotard's sufferers in five studies of its efficacy with that treatment.
[edit] Cultural references
In the Scrubs episode "My Lucky Charm", a character suffering from Cotard syndrome complains of the hardships of being dead.
British electronic musician Matt Elliott named a song for the condition on his 2003 album The Mess We Made.
Chuck Klosterman makes reference to Jules Cotard and Cotard's syndrome in his book, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story. The protagonist, Klosterman, feels like he might be a victim of the syndrome, especially when he is in airports.
American serial killer Richard Chase may have had a mild case of Cotard delusion (blood turning to powder).
In the 2008 Charlie Kaufman film Synecdoche, New York, the main character's surname is Cotard, reflecting the trope of the film.
In the fictional book The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers, the main character's brother suffers from Capgras Syndrome, as well as a few other delusions, including Cotard.
Also, for those who are unawares, it became clear to me soon after meeting him that my co-author had dissociative identity disorder (or multiple personalities.) The main personalities that I deal with are the adult ones, Pelle the host personality and Dead the protector. I will also mention Yngve in this essay who is best described as the lead adolescent personality. He is about 16 years old.
I HATE when I accidentally come across "that" picture. I think a lot of these morons who think it's "cool" to post it can't get it into their heads that it's really real. They've played too many video games. To these nimrods, it's simply another gory image. Anyway, that's a theory of mine.
I was actually playing a bit with my co-author, creating a humorous scenario. We were looking for photographs, which is always risky. We came across "that" picture and I was hit by a wave of emotions, like I always am. I was inside a maelstrom of emotions including regret and a desperate need for acceptance and comfort. These are the emotions that I received when I first made contact with him. But there was something else this time. Dead rembered something beneath the emotions of self-hate that drove him to this act. He said "I'm going to be sick."
I said that he wasn't the only one. I was hit by a wave of nausea that nearly knocked me over. I reached for a plastic garbage bag because I thought that I was going to vomit. This lasted for several minutes. I was breathing deeply and slowly sipping on the water in the bottle that I keep by my bed (ok, the trashed-out collapsed couch that serves as my bed) and being glad that it was cool. He returned to me and although his touches are usually warm, this time he deliberately made his hands cool and touched my face.
"I'm really, really sorry," he said. "I didn't mean for that to happen to you. I don't know where that came from."
I told him that it wasn't his fault. As an empath, I'm going to feel strong emotions of that nature from others. After all, it was feeling the emotions from "that" picture which caused me to connect with him in the first place and I wouldn't change that. This recent incident was a break-through for him even if he can't remember the details, (or I can't yet perceive them) and I'm glad that he had it because it will eventually help him to heal.
I asked him if it hurt when he killed himself and he said that it may seem surprising, but from a physical perspective, there was too much shock for it to hurt very much.
"You know how if you fall and hit your head or if you get hit on the head by something very hard? It's like that," he said. "Momentary pain and then numbness."
Apparently the last desperate act of the body was to send a rush of endorphins to numb the physical pain. He has also described before a "blinding flash of light" and temporary deafness, even when he found himself sitting outside his body. He said that he was stunned and then when he realized what was happening, horrified, as there was "no end to my emotional pain. I am still there, and now I see the truth of what I have done, but there is no return." Of course, as described before, a horrified Pelle appeared at this point demanding "What the fuck did you do?" and the animosity between Pelle and Dead wouldn't be resolved for years.
At this point Pelle also appeared. He told Dead, "It's all right. I'm sorry I wasn't more supportive of you. Maybe if I had been, you wouldn't have done this."
I also realize at this point that their body did incur several head injuries. This comes together partly due to new real-world knowledge and partly due to thoughts and feelings imparted by them. Although intelligent, there has always been a tendency to "spaciness" on all of their parts, which Pelle says some people interpreted as their being stoned, although they didn't do drugs.
Pelle, Dead and Yngve all liked drinking beer to a degree. Regarding smoking, it was mostly Dead's habit. Yngve smoked occasionally, so he didn't mind coming into the body if Dead had recently smoked. Pelle, however, despised the taste of cigarettes. Dead says he still gets a bit of a laugh, thinking about the faces Pelle would make when he returned to control of the body after Dead had been in it and had been smoking.
"He would run to find some mouthwash and brush his teeth--it was fucking funny!" Dead says.
Dead doesn't currently remember the exact circumstances of the head injuries he suffered (or I am not yet able to perceive what he is imparting about them) although he says "the first ones happened very young."
The speculation that Dead had something called Cotard syndrome has merit, given his belief that 'the blood had frozen in his veins' and a sense that he was already dead although he was in a living body. The thing that I find fascinating is that the other personalities didn't suffer from this although they had the same body and the part of the brain that was damaged in such a way as to cause this problem was, of course, the same for all of them. It's also apparent to me that Dead had borderline personality disorder (his black and white thinking when it came to his friends and associates) while the other personalities did not appear to suffer from this. Dead presented as possibly schizophrenic (he wasn't) where Pelle presented as balanced and sane though given to episodes of severe depression. Dead was prone to self-injury. Most of the other personalities didn't do this.
That's the interesting thing about DID. The different personalities react differently, not only in behavior but in physical characteristics. For instance, it's difficult to provide medications for a person with DID because some of the personalities will have bad reactions to a medication whereas others are perfectly fine with it.
Dead also had/has very acute senses. Pelle finds Dead's fascination with smells "mildly disturbing." Dead says that the irony was that in life he sought the smells of death, but now he enjoys "breathing the smells of life." This includes me! I remember that when I first met him I had this funny dream that he was following me around and in some recess of my mind I was worried that he was a brain-eating zombie. At the last part of the dream I was in the grocery store getting something from the freezer case. He was behind me and, being about a foot taller than me, his head was above mine and I could feel him breathing on the top of my head. When I turned to accuse him of trying to eat my brain, he told me that my hair smelled nice, and I could tell by his demeanor that this is exactly what he meant. It's hard for a ghost to lie, especially to someone who perceives emotions, because they communicate in thoughts rather than words. Dead is also rather an innocent being in many ways, despite his dark and imposing persona. It doesn't really occur to him to lie.
Dead will also sometimes "send" me pleasant smells, like flowers or pine. He jokes that "In life, Pelle likes to use this after shave that makes us smell like a fucking pine tree."
Here is a description of Cotard syndrome for those that are interested.
The Cotard delusion or Cotard's syndrome, also known as nihilistic or negation delusion, is a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that he or she is dead, does not exist, is putrefying or has lost his/her blood or internal organs. Rarely, it can include delusions of immortality.
It is named after Jules Cotard (1840–1889), a French neurologist who first described the condition, which he called le délire de négation ("negation delirium"), in a lecture in Paris in 1880. He described the syndrome as having various degrees of severity, ranging from mild to severe. In a mild state, feelings of despair and self-loathing occur, however it is in the severe state that a person with Cotards actually starts to deny the very existence of the self.[citation needed]
In this lecture, Cotard described a patient with the moniker of Mademoiselle X, who denied the existence of God, the Devil, several parts of her body and denied she needed to eat. Later she believed she was eternally damned and could no longer die a natural death.
Young and Leafhead (1996, p155) describe a modern-day case of Cotard delusion in a patient who suffered brain injury after a motorcycle accident:
[The patient's] symptoms occurred in the context of more general feelings of unreality and being dead. In January, 1990, after his discharge from hospital in Edinburgh, his mother took him to South Africa. He was convinced that he had been taken to hell (which was confirmed by the heat), and that he had died of septicaemia (which had been a risk early in his recovery), or perhaps from AIDS (he had read a story in The Scotsman about someone with AIDS who died from septicaemia), or from an overdose of a yellow fever injection. He thought he had "borrowed my mother's spirit to show me round hell", and that he was asleep in Scotland.
It can arise in the context of neurological illness or mental illness and is particularly associated with depression and derealization.
Neurologically, Cotard's is thought to be related to Capgras's Syndrome, and both are thought to result from a disconnect between the brain areas that recognize faces (fusiform face areas) and the areas that associate emotions with that recognition (the amygdala and other limbic structures). This disconnect creates a sense that the face that's seen is not the person's it purports to be because although it is identical with the face it purports to be, it lacks the familiarity it should have. If it is a relative's face, it is experienced as an imposter's (Capgras); if it is mine, I conclude that because I don't have the usual emotional context of self-familiarity associated with the face, I am dead (Cotard).
Treatment is difficult, and tricyclic and serotoninergic antidepressant drugs have shown little efficacy. Electroconvulsive therapy has shown greater promise, "curing" Cotard's sufferers in five studies of its efficacy with that treatment.
[edit] Cultural references
In the Scrubs episode "My Lucky Charm", a character suffering from Cotard syndrome complains of the hardships of being dead.
British electronic musician Matt Elliott named a song for the condition on his 2003 album The Mess We Made.
Chuck Klosterman makes reference to Jules Cotard and Cotard's syndrome in his book, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story. The protagonist, Klosterman, feels like he might be a victim of the syndrome, especially when he is in airports.
American serial killer Richard Chase may have had a mild case of Cotard delusion (blood turning to powder).
In the 2008 Charlie Kaufman film Synecdoche, New York, the main character's surname is Cotard, reflecting the trope of the film.
In the fictional book The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers, the main character's brother suffers from Capgras Syndrome, as well as a few other delusions, including Cotard.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Lone Dragon
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Fairy Meme
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Beauty, eh?
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