Monsters from the Id
by Valerie Walker
CNL Samhain 1988
Have you noticed how many movies, books, TV shows, comic books and so on are concentrated on themes from the demonic? Have you noticed the growing focus on the demonic on the part of scare-mongerers, Fundies, would-be censors, and other public watchdogs who find Satan under every bed and Satanists responsible for every missing kid? Does this remind you of anything, like, say, the media assault on Jews and the "International Jewish Conspiracy" in pre WWII Germany? Does this scare you at all? It should.
As a publicly-avowed Witch, I find myself in an interesting position. I have always been confronted with the usual question, "Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?" (to which I usually am tempted to reply "why, I'm not a witch at all -- I'm Dorothy Gale, from Kansas"); but lately, when people see my pentacle necklace, they get a rather strange look on their faces when they ask, "Isn't that devil worship?" The explanations I give, that no, no, Witches a) are not the same thing as Satanists; b) wear our pentacles point up, not point down; c) worship the Goddess; and d) are pre-Judeo/Christian, and thus pre-Satan, have been getting longer. But the interminable media assault does not help a bit.
It seems to me that the real reason for all this hoo-ha about the Devil is the good old psychological concept of PROJECTION. Just as the Germans were able to scapegoat the Jews for all the socioeconomic and psychological ills among them for which they saw no cure, the many, MANY disaffected, disappointed, disenfranchised people in this country can blame it on the Devil and his works. Look around you. Homeless people sleeping in the streets, political leaders trafficking in drugs and child prostitutes, kids on crack, AIDS, the fucked-up environment (rain forest, ozone level, endangered species, acid rain, etc., etc.), more and more reports of child abuse (not that it never happened before, but now we are hearing about it more), threats of nuclear war, terrorist attacks on innocent bystanders throughout the world, famine, flood, earthquake...looks like the Kali Yuga if I ever saw one. And what are the good Christian people of the U.S. of A. getting off their duffs to do? Picket abortion clinics and movies.
Illogical, as Spock would say. Let us look at where these feeling originate: insecurity, fear, a clinging to a vision of an ideal America that never was outside of the Donna Reed Show; and a hatred of the evil which allows this to be a time comparable to the worst eras of history. And where does this evil come from, if not inside ourselves?
In the movie "Forbidden Planet", the scientist Dr. Morbius tries to become godlike with the aid of the technology of a long-vanished race; instead, he only succeeds in releasing the power of the "monsters from the Id", his Shadow side, which is indiscriminately destructive and is killed only by his own suicide. The point apparently is that it was Morbius' quest for knowledge that led to his downfall. This is the typical attitude of science-fiction films of the late 50s and 60s, that science had opened doors it can't close, and that it was wrong to have opened them. This, of course, was based on the perfectly reasonable assumption that scientists and governmental officials, being human, would not be able to handle knowledge which is so far ahead of our social, economic, and psychological ways of handling it. We are still trying to get used to stone axes, and we're playing with nuclear weapons.
Things haven't changed that much since the 50s, only intensified as the stockpiles of weapons and facts grow larger and more dangerous. It is gradually sinking into the collective unconscious that the gun is really loaded; but we aren't quite to the point of figuring out how to put it down. So, instead, we bundle up our fears, our Monsters from the Id, and blame someone else. Blame the Satanists, blame the Jews, blame the Commies, blame the immigrants, blame those assholes on the other side, but don't blame me.
People, let's get our shit together and just stop blaming anybody. You don't blame a child for ignorance-- you teach it to know better. Let's try to teach ourselves to know better, to realize that the only Devil is the one each of us and all of us have constructed out of our own fears and greed. We have to be kinder to ourselves and each other, to stop trying to meet the Monsters from the Id with more monsters of strength and power (a losing battle), but to admit, "yeah, that's part of me too, and I have to cop to it."
To defuse its power rather than trying to meet it head-on is the only way to win out over the power of the demonic, whether individual or collective. And the only place to start is where you are, who you are. As Scoop Nisker says, "If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."
"More than at any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."
--Woody Allen
In full ritual drag and feeling my oats.