Hell Trippers, NDEs, Dante's Inferno and Christian bullcrap
One of the Youtube channels I like to watch is hellbound Heathen. His channel used to be under his double L name which was Celtic in origin. Many of his vids I find both informative and entertaining. He has a series he calls "the batshit crazy zone" and he is one of those online currently who criticizes Bill Schnoebelen and other self-proclaimed Christian "experts" on the occult, Wicca and so forth.
As is typical of individuals who share interest in certain topics, he knows stuff I don't and vice versa. Which is a good thing because in sharing info we educate each other. I find his vids on Schnoebelen to be spot on most of the time, though at one point I notified him that the Jack Chick publication Spellbound was not a Chick tract it was a Chick comic book.
He did one vid on Zachary King, the self-proclaimed " grand wizard" turned Catholic who claims, among other garbage, that abortion is a satanic human sacrifice industry, that he witnessed at one point a trio of females devouring a freshly aborted baby and that he presided at a Bohemian Grove event where he was introduced to future POTUS Obama and when said event was publicised with a printed bill or poster advertising the event. HH didn't go that far looking into King's crappy story, but it is easy to discount King because his story has so many holes in it.
I'm not sure if HH understands that there is a segment of Christianity now which focuses on the "spiritual warfare" imaginary battle they have where they think invisible demons are all around waiting to pounce, that occultists could be your friendly next door neighbor who might be secretly cursing you, giving you headaches and nose bleeds or some such thing. And that these same people see everything, and I mean everything, in terms of angels or demons, but mostly demons. I've learned about part of this during my long term watching of my favorite Christian BS artist McExorcist Bob Larson.
In a way the whole deliverance ministry / spiritual warefare subject is an interesting one, for me at least, in terms not as much as to the claims of these people but as to the mentality and I suspect the mental illness behind this belief system. I am no psychology major so I can't say with authority what mental disorders DMSW people have in common, but even I can spot paranaoia, delusions, hallucinations and obsessions.
A side branch of this is the "trip to hell" people, of whom I've encountered so far three people claiming they were escorted by Jesus Christ into out of body trips through hell to witness how hell is and to report what they claimed they saw to the living in order to "save souls". Too bad, then that their accounts do not match each other. This is one topic I wish I had more reference material to look over, because while its obvious to me that one (" Divine Revelation of Hell") was a really bad imitiation of Dante's Inferno, I don't have enough material on this phenomena to say with certainty where they are getting this belief from or why they think they actually went to hell with Jesus. There is one book about a guy's son who said he went to heaven recently that turned out to be outright fiction by the man's estranged wife and son. This was a popular book that even was made into a movie. Which might be the real motivation for these trip to hell books and stories.
Frankly I found the three stories I've read so far to be bad fiction, at best the product of delusion and at worst some churning out of hack fiction writing to gain attention of the target audience of believers for fame and money. Bear in mind that in this segment of Christianity they are not allowed by their strick beliefs to watch horror movies ( or most movies and TV for that matter) or read horror fiction. Since everything has to be either upholding scripture and praising their god or it automatically is a tool of ther devil ( and yes they do see things in their extreme either-or) they accept only the material that upholds their view. To feed their very human need to deal with fears ( which is one purpose of the horror genre and Halloween), they go to what they see as accounts of demon posession, demonic attacks on believers, and OC to the ultimate fear for them, the torment and eternity in hell.
I think my listening in on the Coast to Coast AM show over the years has helped me become more aware of the way humans like to tell stories they claim are true. Pretty much the good storytellers are most of the guests on the show and the really bad ones are the callers of the show. C2C has had on a few stinky guests, two of which I mentioned in earlier blog entries. Naturally the guests tell an enetrtaining story -- and are selling a product, whether it be a book, a video or a service. So basically C2C now is unlike in the Art Bell days an infomercial for the guest's product. Occasionally Noorey or the other hosts might have on a skeptic as a guest, but the one they seem to choose is a non- offensive one who is not confrontational or challenging. Also occasionally they have on guests who just want to talk about a subject but are not self-promoting.
That being said, the callers are sometimes noteworthy in how their storytelling ranges from the inept to the almost convincing. Bear in mind that as in the case of the show's guests, the callers may or may not be making up their stories. I'm sure some of the callers may actually believe their stories, but I suspect that, like I do with some of the guests, a few are knowingly making it up.
Which leads me back to the Xian trip to hell stories I've found so far. I mentioned earlier Dante's Inferno. That work is well known in the western world enough to become a sort of trope. Bear in mind the Christians who believe in DMSW are mostly frankly not that well educated in general, and OC they have little to no critical thinking skills whatsoever, so they wouldn't spot a bad imitation of a classical work. Dante's trilogy, called the Divine Comedy, of which Inferno is one section, is known for the imagery and for the illustrations. I suspect that some of the imagery and illustrations have filtered ( more like echoed) down into the minds of the hell trippers (which, come to think about it, is not a bad term for the whole DMSW group, as well as "demon goupies" and just plain delusional nuts) so that when they say their alleged tips to hell, they borrow these images.
Not that the three I've come across so far are fiction masterpieces, mind you. "Divine Revelation of Hell," for example, pictures hell shaped like a human woman's body ( which indicates from the female author a bit of misogyny) with those in agony as black skeletons who can still speak, and ironically she shows her guide Jesus Christ lied to her twice when she told her he will never leave her alone with the demons yet he does for a short period of time for some unknown reason. The "58 Minutes in Hell" author, interestingly enough, makes a passing mention of this particular author, though he neither mentions her name or the title of her book. Something that raised my BS radar. IOW he knew of her and her book but didn't want HIS readers to find the book. The third one is an online account of a mother and her daughter where the daughter supposedly had died but came back to life after her mother's fervent prayers. That account is the least credible of the three.
The hell trippers are in a way sidestepping into the Near Death Experience phenomena. According to those who claim to have NDEs, many claim they saw loved ones, that it was peaceful, that they were out of their bodies and that they were told it wasn't their time yet so they returned to the living. Most that is, except for a few who claimed their NDEs were terrifying, of darkness and evil chasing them. I don't think I've seen one bad NDE yet that mentions an actual trip to hell, but to be honest I am not an avid reader of the subject in the first place. And yes there is the rational explanation that it is nothing more than the brain's response to a lack of oxygen. Maybe so, but some NDEs have details proven later to be true that the person couldn't know about during their NDE. Granted they might have added the details on after the fact, so to speak.
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And yes I am wandering in this blog. The whole NDE and hell trippers subject is like the accounts of reincarnation-- stories that are about what happens to us after we die. The NDEs are mostly the we live on after death with our loved ones ( or fear the terrors of an eternal blackness of evil with no mercy) and past lives infers that after this life we just go back to another life, another time as someone else. Which comes back to the hell trippers.
One of my hypotheses of the hell trippers ( aside from them being bad horror fiction writers) is that their version of Christianity ( and yes Christianity does seem to be a major root of the three I know about so far) is focused on hell, demons and to convert the "lost" with their stories. This is remniscent of the play churches in Europe would perform for the public to dramatise stories in the Bible some centuries ago. A long time ago, most people were illiterate, even the aristocracy. Only a few, such as the scribes in the church, were literate. So in order to teach the followers, certain morality and Bible themed plays were acted out in public, usually on certain holy days. In effect the Christ crucifixion and ressurrection pilgramages and Passion Plays are a current version of this live church drama. And many of these are held specifically around Easter. Then OC there is the Easter sunrise services some churches do, which is partly a ceremonial rememberance of the "open tomb" part of the Passion indicating Jesus Christ has conquered death, that he is risen into heaven and that his sacrifice is human salvation.
Conversely the hell trippers common theme is warning against hell. While Dante's Inferno showed various types of people in somewhat poetic or ironic punishment for their selfishness or immorality, the hell trippers make no distinction between good people in hell and those who richly deserve hell. As the only criteria is whether you accept Jesus as savior or not.
I do wonder if a member of another religion or an atheist not raised in the DMSW culture ever had a negative DMSW or hell tripped with Jesus Christ as guide. Or if hell tripping is limited to this one sect of Christianity.