Southern Demonology

Send us Fan Mail Why are so many people afraid of 3:00 a.m.? Modern paranormal culture often calls it the witching hour or the devil’s hour, sometimes claiming that three in the morning represents an inversion of the traditional hour of Christ’s death. The explanation sounds ancient, which is part of what makes it so convincing. The history, however, points somewhere else. In this episode of Southern Demonology, JJ traces the development of supernatural fear at night through biblical texts, a...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when you say a demon's name? Modern horror often treats supernatural names as invitations, as though speaking the wrong one aloud might attract the very thing you are trying to avoid. Ancient magical and exorcistic traditions, however, often understood names very differently. In this episode of Southern Demonology, JJ traces the history of dangerous names through ancient Egypt, biblical and Jewish traditions, Greco-Egyptian magical texts, the Testament of Solomon...

Send us Fan Mail What exactly is an angel? Today, we tend to think of angels as a distinct class of spiritual beings, complete with wings, names, ranks, and an elaborate heavenly hierarchy. Yet the Hebrew word mal'akh and the Greek angelos originally mean something much simpler: messenger. A human being could be a mal'akh just as readily as a heavenly being could. In this episode of Southern Demonology, JJ traces how that job description gradually became an ontological category. We begin with...

Send us Fan Mail For thousands of years, the demonic has refused to remain the same. Ancient Zoroastrianism envisioned a cosmic struggle in which Ahriman and the daēvas invaded and corrupted the good creation. Centuries later, Second Temple Jewish writers described rebellious angels, hostile spirits, Mastema, Belial, and eventually Satan within an increasingly organized landscape of supernatural evil. Christianity inherited that world, but also inherited a problem: if Satan rules a kingdom op...

Send us Fan Mail What if Satan was not always the Devil? In the final installment of Southern Demonology’s four-part exploration of the development of supernatural evil, JJ turns to the figure who would eventually overshadow nearly every other adversary in Western demonology: Satan. But the story does not begin with a fallen angel ruling a kingdom of demons. The Hebrew word satan originally described an adversary or opponent, and the Hebrew Bible could apply the term to human beings, angels, ...