AT THE THREAT OF BEING LABELED A “POSTMODERNIST,” I’ll admit to it forthright. I believe all roads lead to the SAME RELIGION. Well, sort of—but more on that in a moment. First, let’s address pre-Christian Gaelic Ireland and their tales of the Tuatha De’ Denann. In ancient times the Tuatha De’ Denann were gods and goddesses, having either come from islands in the north of the world or the sky. We refer to these spirit beings today as fairies. The modern materialist-critic, likely being a cultivated and civilized city man, will not fall for the trap of looking over his shoulder in hopes of seeing Ireland’s little people on command quite so easily as believing you when told that his zipper is down or his shoe is untied. For the well-minded skeptic, the fairies extinction is proof enough. They are fanciful fabrications stemming from the overtly zealot minds of glamorized superstition. Come to think of it, the entire world is wrought with historical contradictions, where mythology is concerned—but only to the untrained eye.

Just so you know this isn’t really about fairies. It is about the Titans and the Olympians; Scandinavian elves and the hammer-wielding Thor of Norse mythology; the domovoi and kikimora spirits of pre-Christian Slavic superstition—and so much more. Though I shall only name most of them in passing. Before poets or composers in ancient Greece began their projects, they would invoke the Muses for help. They were the sister goddesses, and not only inspired the liberal arts, but even “the sciences.” Though their conception is attributed to Zeus—yet another rapturous affair with a young woman—they were raised by Apollo, who personally tutored them in the sciences and arts—each to their own specialty. And as proof that not all past mythologies are extinct, might I point you in the direction of the nearest museum—if you are indeed a cultivated and civilized man of the city. The very word museum means “seat” or “institution of the Muses.” But you probably knew that already.

Then again, this is about fairies, because author W.Y. Evans-Wentz believes in them. In his book, The Fairy Faith (1911), he writes:

“There seems never to have been an uncivilized tribe, a race, or nation of civilized men who have not had some form of belief in an unseen world, peopled by unseen beings. In religions, mythologies, and the Fairy-Faith too, we behold the attempts which have been made by different peoples in different ages to explain in terms of human experience this unseen world, its inhabitants, its laws, and man’s relation to it.”

I therefore ask you to consider the possibility of ONE RELIGIOUS TRUTH. Most importantly, there’s Jesus Christ, who is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever,” as Paul would say (Hebrews 13:8). But my serial reader should already know this about me, including the follow-up—because there is Jesus, our only way unto the Father, and then there are the counterfeits. They of course, our every mythology and religion, are run under the same terrible management. His name was Apollo in Greek times, though Paul might preferably call him in passing, “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2).

King James, also believing as I do in one truth, identified fairies for what they truly were. In his dissertation Daemonologie, the little people of Ireland were exposed as nothing more than demonic entities with the ability to prophesy, consort with, and aide those whom they served. There is little difference between the Celtic fairies, the medieval hobgoblin and gnome, and the demons of the four Gospels—which Jesus had no trouble in casting out; just as it is with the specters of a table-knocking séance in Victorian times and the little green men of saucer mythology today. Jesus holds power over all of them. Non can hear His name without their own knees knocking.

If my critic can entertain the thought of fairies and goblins, the Titans and the Olympians and Muses, then let’s complicate matters, because not so long ago a comic book writer—and somewhat of an occult connoisseur in his own right—Doug Moench, was visited by a black-hooded gorilla named Brutus. Well, sort of. In his book, Mutants & Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, author Jeffrey J. Kripal describes a first-hand story told to him while interviewing prolific comic book writer Doug Moench. Kripal writes:

“Moench had just finished writing a scene for a Planet of the Apes comic book about a black-hooded gorilla named Brutus. The scene involved Brutus invading the human hero’s home, where he grabbed the man’s mate by the neck and held a gun to her head in order to manipulate the hero. Just as Doug finished the scene, he heard his wife call for him in an odd sort of way from the living room across the house. He got up, walked the length of the house, and entered the living room only to encounter a man in a black hood with one arm around his wife’s neck and the other holding a gun to her head: ‘It was exactly what I had written…it was so, so immediate in relation to the writing and such an exact duplicate of what I had written, that it became an instant altered state. The air in the room congealed, became almost like fog, and yet, paradoxically, I could see with greater clarity. I could see the individual threads of his black hood…..It really does make you wonder. Are you seeing the future? Are you creating a reality? Should you give up writing forever after something like that happens? I don’t know.’”

Maybe Moench and the power of graphic novels is too much for the cultivated and civilized city man. Perhaps we should reel the imaginative possibilities and potential realities back several paces, and return to the ancient mythologies. Still the material-critic will likely shake his head at the untidy entanglements of religions and mythologies laid out before him. There are two options I would ask of him to consider. Firstly, the “Naturalistic Theory” states that the gods, spirits, and fairies of ancient times and in all human cultures can best be explained or rationalized by natural phenomenon. To this W.Y. Evans-Wentz writes: “For example, amid beautiful low-lying green hills and gentle dells of Connemara (Ireland), the ‘good people’ are just as beautiful, just as gentle….” He further states: “Without an object to act upon, environment can accomplish nothing.” If this is true, then Twilight Zone writer Rod Serling, who once quipped—and I quote: “There is nothing in the dark that isn’t there when the lights are on,” is full of it. They arrive where the mood best suites them.

But secondly, and just as importantly, we come to the Druids—or what W.Y. Evans-Wentz quite simply calls the “Druid Theory.” In The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928), occultist Manley P. Hall reminds us of their close-connection with all of Satan’s counterfeit religions, albeit the Mysteries, when he writes:  “the Druids were initiates of a secret school that existed in their midst. This school, which closely resembled the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece or the Egyptian rites of Isis and Osiris, is justly designated the Druidic Mysteries.” For Evans-Wentz, the “Druid Theory” is easily explained.

The Druidic Mysteries alone brought the fairies into existence.

Today, some 2.5% of the US population reports having some personal, intimate experience with an alien abduction. These are staggering numbers, and it all began not so long ago with Barney and Betty Hill. On the night of September 19, 1961, having been followed by a bright light on a rural highway, the Hill’s became the first alien abductees in recorded history. Their story—which they told first to a psychiatrist, then in a book and TV movie—secured the many more abductions to follow. It is an American phenomenon. Whether or not the claimed-victims who fill the 2.5% have deceived themselves into an abduction-scenario or not, if they can so easily match their collective experiences down to the fine print, it’s likely because the constituents of an “alien abduction” are boldly bred into mainstream entertainment. We can thank Barney and Betty Hill—and the prince of the power of the air—and television—and the occult which manages it—for that.

The occult needs pop-culture. They need movies; they need comic books; they need toys and merchandise items; they need natural phenomenon and the Druid Theory; they need everything they can throw at us in order for the aliens to land and the specters to creep in our shadow—specifically, for their agents to materialize in our mind’s eye. Or as Kripal states: “The truth needs the trick, the fact the fantasy. It’s almost as if the left brain will not let the right brain speak (which it can’t anyway, since language is generally a left—brain function), so the right brain turns to image and story, to say what it has to say (without saying it).” In other words, the alien needs the science-fiction writer just as the fairy needed the Druid.

The prince of the power of the air demands his fantastical stories; his hieroglyphs; his esoteric texts and hidden wisdom; and all the artillery of books, movie reels, and media that he can throw at us in order to be heard—and also, if you’re catching my drift, for his agents to materialize through the curtain. But is it any surprise?

God uses His Word to speak with us.

Why should we give the fullest attention of our day to Satan? The occult is not lacking. And it needs us. Oh, it so desperately needs us to live and to breathe.

And to eat.

And besides, God has never spoken to me through Shakespeare, Homer, Mark Twain, or Stephen King. They have found their inspiration among the muses. Must they inspire us too?

Let the man who wishes to hear from God pick up His Bible and read.

-Noel