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Shocking footage: Teen possessed through phone app

You’ve heard stories about bad things happening through a Ouija board, but a phone app should be safe enough, right? See what you think after watching this disturbing footage of a teenager from Peru who appeared to be possessed after playing with a Ouija game on her telephone. You can see the full story in this news article.

Connecting with entities through these portals is serious business and should not be done lightly. If you plan to play with a Ouija board here are some things that you must do to be safe.

  1. Never do this alone. Make sure someone is around to keep an eye on you. If something goes wrong you want someone there who can notice and help.
  2. Create a protected spiritual space. You might say a prayer and sing a hymn before you begin. You might cast a circle. Do something from your own spiritual practice to call protection to you and ward off darker entities.
  3. Don’t just ask for anyone. This is the spiritual equivalent of  walking out in the street and yelling “Anyone want to come home with me?” Aleister Crowly recommended calling upon specific people and entities. This is a good plan.
  4. If something feels wrong, stop. End the session immediately.
  5. Record your session. It’s good to have a record, but it’s also a way to detect if something odd happened that has been removed from your memory.

If you follow these guidelines you can have an interesting connection with the spirit world. Of course, even these steps don’t guarantee your safety. There is a risk any time that you open this door. Learning what is out there and how to ground and protect yourself are critical.

Of course, sometimes people get hold of Ouija boards and realize that it’s not right for them. If you have a board that you need removed I provide this as a free service to people in the Austin, Texas areas. I will take the board away and see that it is properly handled. I will also perform a sage cleansing of your home to help dispel any lingering negative energy. If you need this service, please contact me directly.

This is the time of year when the veil between worlds is thin, so it’s a great time to reach out. Be smart. Be safe. Have a great Halloween (or Samhain if you will). Take time visit us at the Museum for some extra-spooky fun.

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OF DEMONS AND DREAMS

sleep-demon-130329The correlation between demons and dreams is a complex and highly debated discussion amongst the metaphysical and psychological worlds. Certain camps of thought stalwartly believe in the physical manifestation of these entities existing independently of humanity, without a true spiritual connection to any particular religion, though they are inextricably linked to us through their need to feed from our energies. Other schools of research remain true to the religious concept of demons as “spawn of the Devil” and punishment for our “sins,” while those rooted in pure science and logic claim that they are products of our own chemical imbalances and psychological scars inflicted over time by our fellow humans and ourselves.

The link between visions of demons and other malevolent entities during a sleep disorder known as “sleep paralysis” is explored in a new short film and multi-platform art project, entitled simply “The Sleep Paralysis Project”, by Carla MacKinnon. Based on her own personal experiences struggling with the disorder, the project aims to explore the eerie psychological phenomena in which one’s mind becomes conscious while their body remains in a state of deep relaxation. However, this form of consciousness is not akin to being “awake” for the mind is still in the grips of whatever dream it is processing, thus creating the sensation of a “waking dream” or illusion. This disorder affects between five and sixty percent of the population, according to surveyors.

The strangest part about the documented cases of sleep paralysis is perhaps the consistency of the form of the waking dreams. If they are a part of one’s dream, the hallucinations should be as varied as the individual, taking on a multitude of different scenarios and creatures. However, it appears that the most common hallucinations involve entities with “demonic” appearances, crones, or unseen “malevolent presences” somewhere within the room where the person is sleeping. These creatures are often the perpetrators of an attack in which the victim believes they are being suffocated and in some cases this suffocation takes the form of a supernatural rape by an incubus, succubus, or other supernatural creature. The concept of demonic entities stretches back as far as humanity itself with myths and legends as varied as the peoples who gave birth to them.

This could largely be due to the battle between their engaged/conscious mind and the terrifying sensation of being trapped in their own body, paired with a variety of repressed psychological and emotional issues buried within the subconscious. The link between sleep paralysis and these haunting, iconic symbols begs the question of whether or not this may be a sign of our vaster interconnected “human consciousness” as a sentient species existing in one plane of reality, or perhaps merely a shared understanding of mythology and our own capacity for evil as it represents? Or is it something more sinister that pierces the veil between this world and another during sleep?

MacKinnon’s research to discover the origins of her own waking nightmares has allowed her to explore the gamut of these disturbing tales, as well as interview fellow sufferers for their own intimate accounts. Her artistic short film and corresponding art project are set to debut in May at the Royal College of Arts in London. According to the official website: “The film uses stop motion animation, live action film and projection mapping techniques to evoke and explore the worlds experienced between sleeping and waking. The film is Carla MacKinnon’s graduation piece for the Royal College of Art’s Animation Masters course, created in collaboration with arts and technology studio seeper with music by Dominic de Grande.”

For additional information visit http://www.thesleepparalysisproject.org/ or the project’s blog at http://sleepparalysisproject.wordpress.com/.

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