Children’s Pseudo-Gnostic Folk Religion in Miami

[mxmendo]

Jeremy at fantastic planet blog discusses this article: <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.miaminewtimes.com/Issues/1997-06-05/news/feature_print.html">www.miaminewtimes.com/Iss...print.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>This is typical of thier beliefs:<br><br>"This is the secret story shelter children will tell only in hushed voices, for it reveals Bloody Mary’s mystery: God’s final days before his disappearance were a waking dream. There were so many crises on Earth that he never slept. Angels reported rumors of Bloody Mary’s pact with Satan: She had killed her own child and had made a secret vow to kill all human children. All night God listened as frantic prayers bombarded him. Images of earthly lives flowed across his palace wall like shadows while he heard gunfire, music, laughing, crying from all over Earth. And then one night Bloody Mary roared over the walls of Heaven with an army from Hell. God didn’t just flee from the demons, he went crazy with grief over who led them. Bloody Mary, some homeless children say the spirits have told them, was Jesus Christ’s mother.<br><br>“No one believe us! But it’s true! It’s true!” cries Andre at the Salvation Army shelter on NW 38th Street. “It mean there’s no one left in the sky watching us but demons.”"<br><br><br>his observations here: <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.snant.com/fp/archives/childrens-pseudo-gnostic-folk-religion-in-miami/">www.snant.com/fp/archives...-in-miami/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br> <p></p><i></i>

[Avalon]

It's an extraordinarily moving article, and I highly recommend it. Goosebumpy. <br><br>That said, one commentator (maybe it was on Tim Boucher's site?) cautioned that there does not seem to be any outside corroboration of this particular vein of stories, and that must be considered too. <p></p><i></i>

[marykmusic]

I see it as a possible RA situation... homeless families are easy to set up for all sorts of stuff. Just offer a place to live, and they're wherever you want them to be... --MaryK <p></p><i></i>

[doctoradder]

Interestingly, the FANTASTIC PLANET analysis name-checks Rigorous Intuition...<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.snant.com/fp/archives/folk-pseudo-gnostic-miami-myths-2-la-llorona-and-more/">www.snant.com/fp/archives...-and-more/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>"Now we’re getting into that shady area that includes our previous observations about Ultraterrestrials, Archons, and living information– areas which can only be described as existing on the fine line between reality and imagination, and it’s almost impossible to investigate these areas with the limited information we have at the present. There are obviously also darker paths one could travel into this area, paths familiar to readers of Rigorous Intuition, but I’ll leave those to the more adventurous." <p></p><i></i>

[doctoradder]

There may not be readily available independent confirmation of this particular mythic strain, but there are elements that are clearly derived from existing strains. For example, the myth of vengeful "Bloody Mary," summoned from the depths of the mirror, goes back to at least 1978, if not much earlier. See the Urban Legends reference page:<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.snopes.com/horrors/ghosts/bloodymary.asp">www.snopes.com/horrors/gh...dymary.asp</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>"Origins: The research into Bloody Mary goes back to 1978, when folklorist Janet Langlois published her essay on the legend. Belief in summoning the mirror-witch was even at that time widespread throughout the U.S." <br><br><br>According to the<!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em> Miami New Times</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> article...<br><br>"Folklorists were so mystified by the Bloody Mary polygenesis, and the common element of using a mirror to conjure her, that they consulted medical literature for clues. Bill Ellis, a folklorist and professor of American studies at Penn State University, puzzled over a 1968 Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease article describing an experiment testing the theory that schizophrenics are prone to see hallucinations in reflected surfaces. The research showed that the control group of nonpsychotic people reported seeing vague, horrible faces in a mirror after staring at it for twenty minutes in a dim room. But that optical trick the brain plays was merely a partial explanation for the children's legend."<br><br>Visions in the mirror... shades of John Dee! The connections to the magical practice of scrying are clear.<br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>