Oct. 30, 2022 - Human Events Daily - Jack Posobiec
48:40
Sunday Special: The True Story of Halloween, The Occult, and The Apocalypse with Dr. Taylor Marshall
On this Sunday Special of Human Events Daily, Jack Posobiec is joined by Dr. Taylor Marshall, an author and Catholic commentator to discuss the true origins of Halloween. Is it a Pagan holiday, Christian, Satanic? They also discuss the atheist take on Halloween and how the origins get completely dissected through the horrible lens of comparative religion, and so much more in this spooky yet illuminating episode!Here’s your Daily dose of Human Events with @JackPosobiec Save up to 65% on M...
- Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard for a very spooky edition of Human Events Sunday Special.
It is...
The eve of All Hallows' Eve here on the podcast, here on Real America's Voice, if you're watching.
And I wanted to really dig into this because every year at Halloween or Hallowtide, All Hallowtide, if you're Catholic like me, you get this sort of response from the internet.
Every time I post something like a family photo, we did Adam's family last year, we're doing, ah, not going to tell you what we're doing this year.
You'll have to look.
But we're in the works.
Tanya Tay is hard at work making the kids costumes, and it's going to be great.
My mother, of course, also helping out making so many of the costumes.
But what I wanted to do was explain the true history of Halloween.
Get into this.
Is it a Christian holiday?
Is it a pagan holiday?
Is it Satan's holiday?
What is it?
And I thought, who better than to talk about this and really get in, by the way, to the occult into paganism, exorcisms, all of these different things.
The author of the new book, Antichrist and Apocalypse, my good friend, Dr. Taylor Marshall.
Dr. Taylor Marshall, welcome to the program.
Hey, great to be here.
This is going to be a good show.
This is a good topic.
So right off the bat, answer the question, right?
Is Halloween, was this, we're told every time I tweet about this, I get a comment, this was just a pagan holiday, it was this Irish thing, it was Samhain or Samhain, however they say it, you just stole it and you converted to Christianity and the Pope stole it and he forced everyone to do it and that's what Halloween is.
Is that true?
Well, it's a little more complicated than that.
I mean, we know early in the church, I mean, St.
Ephraim the Syrian, St.
John Chrysostom, I mean, these are guys in the 300s, 400s.
They know of a holy day of all hallows or all saints celebrating all the martyrs.
Originally, it was more of a spring harvest.
It was after the festival of Pentecost, which is a Jewish feast that we Catholics received and continue to celebrate even this year.
Um, and it's, it's really to remember all the saints and hallow Halloween is, is literally short for hallow evening, the evening before how hallows day.
What does hallow mean?
Well, if you say the Lord's prayer, our father who art in heaven, hallowed to be thy name.
What does that mean?
It's right there.
It's right there.
Hallowed.
Holy.
Hallowed.
It's same, same word as holy saint.
It essentially means saint, right?
It's an old English word for saint.
Yeah, the Latin is sanctificator, saint.
So yeah, hallow, holy, saint are all the three same meaning.
So just in an older English, you know, instead of saying holy be thy name, they said hallowed be thy name.
When they refer to the saints, they refer to a hallowed person, a holy person, someone with a halo.
Okay, so hold on, hold on.
So let's say that you're listening to this and you have no idea what you're talking about.
What the heck, then, is All Saints Day?
Is that tied to anything?
Is there any day after it?
What's All Hallowed Tide?
What are these things?
Yeah, so in the early church, you know, For the first 300, 400, first 300 so years, there were, I mean, martyrs galore.
I mean, just if you were a faithful Christian, I mean, you were there getting killed left and right all over the Roman Empire.
And so what early Christians would do in local regions is they would say, you know, our bishop, our pastor, you know, every, August 4th, that was the day he was killed by the Romans.
So every August 4th, they would come together and they'd have a memorial service.
We call it a mass, a requiem mass.
They would usually go to his tomb and they would celebrate the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and commemorate how he conformed his Christ as a martyr, his life to Christ as a martyr.
Now, over time, it was like, well, there's so many people who are holy and went to heaven, they're hallowed, and they don't have a day on the calendar.
Right?
I mean, we Catholics have a saint pretty much for every day on the calendar, but, you know, there's so many other saints who have never been canonized.
Calendar's getting pretty full.
Calendar's getting pretty full at that point.
So there was this idea that we need to come together and, you know, everyone who's in heaven should be recognized, like, high five!
You made it.
You're part of the big cloud of witnesses that surround us here on earth.
And there was, the early church believed, and they teach, and they still do, right?
That if you, if you are martyred for the faith, I mean, you're, you are just considered a saint.
That's just exact.
You are good.
You're good.
Yeah.
I mean, if you give your life for Jesus Christ, you are a saint.
That's correct.
Right, period.
That's it.
Swiss Guards, 1527, Saints.
Boom.
Yeah, you're good.
You're good.
So that's kind of the whole idea of an All Saints Day.
Now, originally it was commemorated the first time formally in Rome.
It was in the Eastern Church and the Syrian Church.
It was May 13th, which is an important day because that's Our Lady of Fatima, 610.
Pope Boniface IV There was this huge temple in Rome called the Pantheon.
It's still there to this day.
It's an amazing building.
It's round.
Pretty well known, right?
I have.
We were just there.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's in Da Vinci code if you, you know, those kinds of movies, but it's this round building with an Oculus in it.
And that was a temple to all the gods.
Pan-all-theon.
Gods.
All the gods.
Well, the Pope was like, that's bogus.
You can't have a temple to all the gods.
So what he did is, is he consecrated, well first he did an exorcism on that building to drive out the demons because it's a false, you know, temple.
And then he consecrated it as a Christian church, as a Catholic church.
And he brought in, get this, cartloads, wagon loads, wheelbarrow loads of relics from the catacombs.
Wow.
Remember in the catacombs are all these people who'd been martyred.
And he brought them into this church, and this church is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and all the martyrs and all the saints.
And so, it became custom to commemorate all the saints in Rome on that day when the church of all the gods was exercised and then reconsecrated to all the saints of Jesus.
So, that happened in the year 610 in Rome.
And then later on, as you get more towards later in the medieval era, in the 800s, 900s, you start to see its transition to celebrating it in the fall.
And that's where we get November 1st as the Feast Day of All Saints, and the eve of that is, of course, October 31st.
And a lot of that has to do with the harvest, and as you know from the book of the Apocalypse and Jesus' teaching in the Gospels, You know, the bringing in of souls to heaven is usually referred to as the harvest of Jesus Christ, bringing people in.
So this harvest idea kind of was more appropriate, you know, for an All Saints idea.
And that's how it got lodged at November 1st.
So it's All Saints Day, All Hallows Day.
Which then, of course, is also followed by All Souls Day.
So that's All Souls is just everyone.
No, and that's a little bit of a different concept.
Have you ever heard about the creepy volcano story, Jett?
Lay it on me, brother.
Lay it on me.
So this is pretty interesting.
So as you know, we Catholics, we pray for the dead because the Jews in the Old Testament prayed for the dead.
The early Christians, all of them prayed for the dead.
You can read that in 2 Maccabees chapter 12, verse 42 and forward.
Martin Luther removed that from the Bible, a little bit of controversy, we won't get into that right now, but in the... And there's instances, by the way, as well in, I believe Acts and in the epistles where it seems like they're referring to that practice as well.
Yeah, in the epistles, there's one place in particular in Paul where it very much, he refers to someone in the past tense and he's saying a prayer and it seems like, well, most people say that he's talking about a dead Christian.
Um, so yeah, that's another show.
If you, unless you want to just go into prayers in the dead right now.
My point is, my point is though, is that it's, it's, it's, it's lodged right there after all saints day.
So it's a day for the dead.
It's all saints day.
And then prior to that is the first day of that, right?
So this is a hallow tide, right?
Halloween, hallows day, November 1st, and then all souls.
So that, so all saints is everybody in heaven, all souls is everybody in purgatory.
We've got to talk about purgatory.
So, here's the cave story.
Listen to this.
This is interesting.
So, in the 900s, there's a French pilgrim returning from the Holy Land, and he's coming back to France.
And he meets this hermit who lives near a cave.
And near the cave is this opening in the earth, like a volcano, where lava comes out, and there's this noise.
And the hermit says that when he prays, he can hear voices coming from the volcano.
All right, this is a legend, but it's kind of an interesting story.
And he hears the demons complaining about all these holy monks at Cluny, which is a monastery, who are praying so much and freeing souls from purgatory.
So this hermit goes and tells the abbot of those monks, hey, I met this hermit who lives in a cave next to a volcano.
And here's what he told me.
Your monks are praying so much and so well that it's delivering all these souls from purgatory.
And the abbot, whose name was Odilo, was so moved.
He said, that's it.
The day after all saints, we're going to do just an all day prayer fest for the souls in purgatory on November 2nd.
And then that spread to the whole church.
But it all started with the volcano story.
So it starts with a volcano story.
So coming up, right?
Lava coming up like a very hellish kind of thing, but also also a connotation of burning, which is tied towards the word purgatory.
Of course it's the same root word as the word for purification, right?
That's the process.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Purging.
Yeah.
Purging.
And so we're coming up on our first break, coming up on our first break.
We've got about one minute left, but, but close out, just close out on this, on this idea that, These dates, I mean, I don't hear you mentioning anything pagan here.
No, no.
And remember, everything that's holy and sacred to God, the devil wants to attack.
So Christmas is about the birth of baby Jesus.
So what are they going to do?
Materialism, like all the, you know, just the indulgence, you know, and all the bad things that can go on with Christmas.
That's just the devil attacking a holy day.
Same thing with Easter.
Easter is the resurrection of Jesus.
The devil wants to thwart that.
So again, you know, of course, if you're talking about all the saints, people who are disciples of Jesus Christ and became holy, the devil hates that.
He's going to thwart that.
So I think we'll talk about this more.
It's not about running away and abandoning a holy day.
It's about reclaiming it.
Reclaiming the holy days, reclaiming all of our holy days, the practices of the early church, praying for the martyrs.
It started with martyrs.
Then it extended to saints, the hallowed.
Praying for the Hallowed.
Stay tuned, we're going to follow this up right next here with Dr. Taylor Marshall on our All Hallowtide special.
And we're back here on Halloween special with Dr. Taylor Marshall.
You know, so Dr. Marshall, last year when I was getting into this online debate, and you know me, if you follow me on Twitter, you know I like to get in these debates, that I found a website, believe it or not, on the Halloween debate called HistoryforAtheists.com.
Now, I know, not exactly the kind of website you'd think that, you know, good Catholic boy, Polish Catholic would be reading, but I said, well, hold on, let me see what it says, because this is very interesting.
Because this is an analysis of Halloween, by the way, they also have articles on Christmas and Easter, that has no dog in the fight, right?
They have no dog in the fight as to whether it's pagan, whether it's Christian, whether it's a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, they just want to know what the actual history of the practice.
And they come in completely on the side with, uh, resources and references.
I mean, the whole thing is like 5,000 words.
Highly recommend everybody read this because it's a completely secular account of, and it includes everything that you just talked.
I don't know if it has a volcano story actually, but, uh, it talks about Samhain and the fact that Samhain was not celebrated in November.
It talks about the early church.
It talks about the dates, how that was moved around from different places.
And by the way, it also gets into the point that, That part of Ireland was not part of the Roman Empire at the time.
So the idea that the Emperor or the Frankish Kings or the Pope would be referring to something that's taking place beyond the bounds of the Empire, beyond the bounds of any part of Christendom, or is considered Christendom, it just doesn't make any sense, right?
The dates don't match.
It's not like today where they're just, you know, Googling, hey, what's a cool pagan holiday we can steal, right?
And what's interesting though in all this is a piece of it that a lot of this comes back to, and I want to read this, that the idea, where does this idea come from?
And it spawns all these pop culture blogs and it comes from basically this really bad 19th century, like a lot of bad things that came from the late 19th century, early 20th century idea of comparative religion.
Right, this idea of the study of comparative religion.
And the original book of this, or the most influential book, I should say, was called The Golden Bough, Golden Bough, by Sir James Fraser.
And in two volumes in 1890, which eventually expanded, it caused something of a scandal for treating Christianity like any other form of ancient mythology, but effectively established the discipline of comparative religion in the English-speaking world.
And so, in their reasoning, All religion is just the same thing.
For the comparative theologists, they would say, well, no, every religion just takes something from the religions that came before and then adds a little something to it, adds their own spin.
But it's really all just the same thing and it's all mixed up.
And that's what we're getting today.
And in doing so, you actually lose the rich tapestry, not only by the way of actual theology, but just human history, right?
Because that's not how it happened in any way.
Uh, you, you had wars, certainly you had, uh, but you had this great religious debate that was going on top.
You know, I actually said this on another show recently, but the reason that atheists aren't discussed in anywhere really in the Bible is because they didn't exist in biblical times, right?
Everyone believed in something.
Everyone believed in whether it's the God of this tribe or that tribe or the God of the Canaanites, you know, whether it was Baal, it was Moloch, a lot of Moloch worship going on today still.
And, The fact was they were dealing with establishing the one true God, right?
For the ancient Israelites and then eventually going into Jesus by fulfilling that through the through coming of the Messiah.
And so this idea that they would be borrowing things from other religions, it's anathema to what actually happened.
Yeah, I mean, it's a good point.
Like you were saying that, you know, Ireland wasn't even that's kind of the narrative that people hear is that they took these Jack-o'-lantern myths and somehow imported them into Rome.
But one of the big, you know, wrenches in the machine is the Pope, who eventually made All Saints on November 1st and moved it from May to November 1st.
He was the last non-European Pope until Pope Francis in 2013.
He wasn't even from Europe.
You know where he's from?
Syria!
Okay, so the Pope... It's Pope Gregory, right?
The fourth?
Pope Gregory the third.
Pope Gregory the third.
Yeah, he he he's the one who, you know, started this process.
And yeah, he was from Syria.
So I don't think he was like trying to get like Irish, like an Irish Syrian, you know, Irish Syrian fusion.
No, it's like it's just like he's as far away from Ireland as possible.
And he's the pope who, you know, starts putting this stuff into place.
So, yeah, it's just a lot of a lot of really bad Research and really bad history that's actually been debunked by secular historians for a long time, but it is a popular idea because it's used to combat the church.
It's used by secularists.
It's used by Satanists and occultists to say, aha, look at you.
We, you know, you took your thing from us and now we're taking it back from you.
If you, if you go to the city of Salem, by the way, we happen to be there passing through Uh, about a year ago.
And it's, it's, it's all a cult there.
Everything is a cult in Salem now.
Um, and it's, it's celebrated.
It's absolutely celebrated.
And I have, I have no idea what was going on back there in Puritan times.
Um, you know, the witches, were they real or the witches or was it just, I have no idea.
Right.
We can't really know.
But what I do know is there's a lot of witchcraft there today.
Absolutely.
I mean, it is a nexus.
It's like what you and I have talked about before, Easter eggs.
People are like, oh, Easter eggs are pagan.
They mean this, it's this goddess.
It's like, no.
In the medieval era and up until recently, you couldn't eat meat or eggs during Lent.
It was part of fasting.
It was penance.
It was to make your life hard.
No protein, right?
You're living on basically a vegan diet during Lent.
And then on Easter Sunday, you got to eat an egg and it tasted so amazing because you hadn't had an egg in 46 days.
And people would paint them and be excited about it.
It wasn't pagan.
It was Catholic.
Which, by the way, for those for those of you who don't understand how chickens work, chickens don't know that it's that it's Lent.
So the chickens continue producing the eggs.
So you've got all these eggs just stacked up around your house and you have the chickens.
You can't just go to the chicken and say, hey, wait.
So, you know, you've got to do something with the chicken.
So there you go.
Yeah.
That's for all the city folks that are listening.
Yeah, just practical Catholicism.
And I think since our society, you know, since the Reformation became more Protestant, especially in America, and then now that we live in a post-Christian era, all of the sort of the Catholic nuts and bolts and the, you know, the underpinning of our culture, it's all forgotten.
And then now we have all these people on blogs who are like trying to impose Wicca on everything.
Which is completely made up, by the way.
Completely, yeah.
So it's kind of ridiculous.
It's not even, if you were an ancient pagan, an ancient occultist, you were definitely not a Wiccan because that was made up.
Yeah, yeah.
So we should talk about that a little bit.
So we're, you know, I feel like that's enough for anyone who wants to read this full article.
I'll actually link it here.
So, you know, I know Jack Posobiec and Taylor Marshall linking to an atheist website.
You know, that'll be fun, but put us in good standing with our fellow Catholics, for sure.
And, um, but, uh, but, but let's get into this idea that, you know, the occultists really have perverted this holiday and so many other Christian holidays, uh, the same way that in, in all occultism, it's always a perversion of the true faith.
Uh, you have the mass, you have the black mass, you have, uh, three, you know, 3 p.m.
becomes 3 a.m.
3 p.m.
The traditional, uh, by, by tradition, we believe that's when, when Christ died on the cross with 3 a.m.
becomes, Satanic hour you see this in movies by the way the exorcist right this there's a lot of Catholic obviously, right?
There's the overt Catholic motifs of the rosary the holy water the crucifix the young priest the old priest But there's even there's even deeper stuff.
If you know if you know the background of 3 a.m.
3 p.m.
It's up, etc like this, by the way Just a another note on that You know, that's one of the coolest things about growing up Catholic is that number one, you never actually have to have this discussion because you just know, uh, you know, inherently that that's what it is.
But then also that, uh, it always means that you get the day after Halloween off.
So just saying.
Yeah, that's right.
As long as you go to church, as long as you go to church.
For us, November 1st is a high holy day.
It's a holy day of obligation, and that means we have to go to mass.
It's just like a Sunday.
We have to go to mass.
We get to go to mass, but we're required to go to mass because we come and we commemorate all the saints in heaven, and we Catholics like saints.
Which, by the way, in Eastern Europe, I don't know if you know this, but in Poland, All Saints Day and All Souls Day are massive.
Just absolutely massive, and All Souls Day What the Poles will do, and you would see this in Ukraine as well, probably not, you know, this year, obviously, it might be harder, but I'd actually, I take that back.
I guarantee you will see this on November 2nd in Ukraine, even in wartime, that for the, in Western Ukraine, you still have a lot of Catholics.
They go to the, they will go to the ceremony, the cemeteries and it's candles and it's flowers for your family, for your ancestors.
And there's sort of this idea that if you're, if you're not taking care of the graves of your ancestors, Um, that you're, you're like, it's, it's, it's a shame, right?
It's a personal shame.
It's a familial shame that you are not, because the idea being that you have to honor your ancestors, which by the way, last time I checked, that wasn't a recommendation.
That wasn't a suggestion from God honoring your, your answer.
That's a commitment, right?
That's a commandment.
And this idea that, and then of course that hopefully someone will do that for you at some point.
That's right.
And I think, you know, people who aren't Catholic get that, they're like, why don't you just worship God, you know, keep it, keep it focused on Jesus.
And we do.
And we have a distinction in Catholicism.
We have this Greek term called Doulia, and then another term called Latria.
Doulia is what we give to Humans, uh, you can say you can give it to the American flag, the cross, like we show respect and honor.
We salute.
Veneration is not worship.
Yeah.
It's a veneration.
It's not a, it's not.
And then the other term Latria in Greek is to, is for God alone.
So only the father, the son, and the Holy ghost get Latria, the true adoration of worship as God.
And then the saints get our, our Julia, like you would respect, you know, in a, Monarchy, a monarch.
Oh, we should even respect our president.
Um, even though we're not thrilled with who he is, but I mean, we, we show, you know, you, like you were in the Navy, you salute, you salute the rank, you salute the uniform.
You salute the uniform, you salute the rank.
And you're not like, someone can't come and like, why are you worshiping that general or that admiral?
Or why are you worshiping the flag?
Well, I'm honoring the flag.
It's custom, it's actually called customs and duties.
It's considered a duty.
Yes, exactly.
And we believe that we have a duty that we should honor those who were exemplars in following Jesus Christ.
You know, St.
Mary Magdalene, St.
Paul, St.
Luke, you know, and all the way into our own time, St.
Thérèse de Lisieux, all these great saints who, and maybe they were martyrs and maybe they were just in their quiet way through suffering or illness.
They carried the cross of Jesus with Jesus.
We are coming up on our next break, so hold that thought right there.
Dr. Taylor Marshall, the author of Antichrist and Apocalypse, coming up next.
Talking saints, talking Halloween, talking the cult.
Be right back.
And we're back.
We're here with Dr. Taylor Marshall, the author of the new book Antichrist and Apocalypse, which is just rocketing up the charts on Amazon.
We'll talk about that a little bit more in the final segment, but I want to ask you another question, a serious question, maybe a spooky question.
Are demons real?
Are these spirits, these ghosts, these ghouls, these goblins, this spiritual world that we're called to believe in?
When I watch a movie like The Exorcist or a series like The Conjuring, they talk about things like this.
When I read the Bible, when I read the gospel, Christ performs exorcisms, including transporting demons like Legion into a herd of pigs.
At one point they fall off the cliff, they run off the cliff.
And so am I supposed to just overlook those things?
Am I supposed to think that these are just, well, you know, that was just an early form of mental illness and, you know, he was just, uh, he was curing them through a form of, of, you know, celestial therapy or something, or, or are these things real?
And should we as believers take these seriously?
They're most certainly real.
If you read the Bible, Old and New Testament, there are fallen angels, and that's what a demon is.
So, we as Christians believe that before our world, our human world, was created, that God made the angelic world, and he gave them a test.
And there's some speculation of what that is, and I talk about that in my book, but basically what happened is Satan said, non servium.
I will not serve.
I will not serve.
And he fell.
There was another angel in our tradition who said, who is like God?
In Hebrew, Mikael.
Who is like God?
And Mikael is Michael, St.
Michael, the archangel.
And so he asked him that question, like, who can be God?
You know, you can't, Satan, you can't be God, you know?
And so Satan was kicked out.
About a third of the angels fell and Satan and those third of angels became demons.
They became dark angels.
And ever since then, they've been wanting to thwart and bother and bring us to hell.
And you see that in the opening of the Bible, Adam and Eve, right?
Satan comes and he starts talking to Eve.
And in the book of Job, you see Satan comes before God and says, you know, I'm going to go after Job.
He's so holy.
He thinks he's so righteous.
That's because he has such a great life.
Let me start taking things away from him.
And he will curse you, God.
And God says, no, he's a just man.
And he allows Satan to start tempting And taking things away from Job.
And for some reason in God's providence, he's decided to allow these fallen angels to remain around us, to influence us, for us to fight against.
And we call it spiritual warfare.
And we have to prepare for that.
We have to be in a state of grace, you know, have to have the sacraments, read the Bible, live holy lives, help the poor, alms, all these things.
And so the demons are real.
And then we find in the Bible that not only can the demons influence us, They can tempt us.
Remember, Satan tempted even Jesus Christ.
And even, even the devil can quote scripture.
He can quote scripture.
These demons are smart.
There used to be angels.
There's also this idea, right?
So if you're, if you're a demon or, you know, a fallen angel and you want to, you want to wage war on God, you want to attack God.
Well, you can't attack God head on, right?
You already lost on that one.
You'd be obliterated.
You're done.
Um, there's nothing you could do, but here's what you could do.
What you could do, Is find God's creatures, find God's believers, find God's flock.
And you could go and you could target them and you can target them and take them away from God because you can see that God is working with them and God wants them to come closer to him because God wants them to attain heaven.
And so you can go and then try and work to thwart his plans.
And so they say, you know, they say every, um, You know, every challenge in every, every time we're faced with something like that, it's also that perennial question, why do bad things happen?
Right.
And you say, well, every, you know, every suffering is a chance for repentance.
And that's tough.
That's a very tough lesson.
I struggle with that lesson.
I struggle with that lesson, that teaching, but it, it is something that I just say in my head over and over every struggle, every suffering is a chance for repentance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Every setback is a set up.
And for some reason, God's allowed that.
And people, when they get possessed, There's two reasons.
I just interviewed an exorcist yesterday, a real exorcist, Father Chatham Perdurin.
I asked, how do people get possessed?
What's happening?
The main way people get possessed is they go looking for it.
It's an invitation, right?
Yeah.
Well, you can make a pact with the devil, which he says is not actually a pact or a deal with the devil because the devil has no legal rights because he's already a defeated foe.
So his covenants and his His, you know, contracts are void, but people who make these with them enter into partnerships with him.
Or, you know, you can do that explicit where you just say, I want to make a deal with you, Satan.
Or they get involved in extremely sinful or demonic behavior, witchcraft, seances, Ouija boards.
You know, some of these dark arts, uh, dark magic, these kinds of things, uh, paganism, pagan rituals, sexual rituals, or really, really criminal, um, activity, uh, mass murdering, you know, these, these really, uh, rapes, child rapes, all these kinds of things.
These invite the demons into us.
And the exorcists say that the demon, when you're possessed, he's not in your soul.
A demon can't get in your soul.
Demons are actually in your bodies.
And when you read the accounts of Jesus exercising people, you see that the demons are in their bodies, not in their souls.
So that's the main reason why people get possessed, is they open themselves up to the satanic.
So, if someone says, hey, let's do a seance, or hey, let's get the Ouija board out, or let's do anything, you just run as far as you can from that.
Because if you want demons, that's how you get demons.
By the way, it's not what is it, you know, I don't know who makes it, the Ouija boards, Fisher-Price or whatever.
It's not like the company's making a satanic instrument.
It's what you're doing with it that becomes satanic.
It's not like you go to the store and it's satanic.
That being said, you can go to a Spirit Halloween and find all sorts of occult paraphernalia there just right on the shelf, right on the shelf.
They have a little section for it.
And the point is, it's not that stuff doesn't come into your home and make you satanic, but what it does is it opens your, you're opening yourself up to it.
You're opening up that world.
You're, you're inviting it in.
You're giving, you're giving it license, right?
You talked about legal rights.
You're giving it license, giving Satan license or some of the lesser demons license to be able to come and then partake, right?
Partake of your life, of your corpus, your spirit is still there.
And you do see this in, Like you said, some of these, you know, even the original Exorcist movie, there's this idea of the struggle within the young girl that she's, which by the way, people don't realize that's based on a true story.
You know, some of the more theatrical elements were added, sure, walking on the ceiling and all, but the, you know, speaking in tongues and the lesions and knowing, knowing information about the people that she's talking to that, you know, you couldn't possibly know, saying, I'm here, I'm speaking with your mother, knowing the mother's name, speak, All of that goes back.
Sometimes they speak Latin, Greek, Hebrew, ancient languages that a person wouldn't normally know.
And that's, that's, those are the kind of preternatural signs that's like, okay, there's something in this person.
So when you do this occult stuff, you're doing something spiritual and you're not doing it with God and his angels.
You're doing it with the underworld and that opens you up and it's really bad.
But the other way you can be possessed, and this is kind of scary to think about is, Sometimes extremely holy people, God allows demons to come into their lives, and they're usually, well, almost always victorious.
And the exorcist yesterday told me a story of a very holy nun who was in, I think, Bavaria, one of the holiest nuns in the region, and she was possessed.
And the exorcist came, and she said that it was revealed that because of a sin that had taken root in the area God had allowed this sign to happen to get everybody's attention.
And he said, what is the sin?
And he says, divorce.
People are turning to divorce.
And so once they knew that he did the exorcism, the demon came right out and then the nun was fine.
Like the supernatural thing that God wanted.
So sometimes you can be very holy and not do anything wicked, just like in the story of Job in the Bible.
He was a very holy man.
There's no rules for God.
If God decides to allow something, it's, you know, he's in.
Yeah.
But, but he said almost every single time you're dealing with someone who's possessed, uh, there is some sort of, of magical dark art, wicked occult practice.
That has happened.
Um, that's usually traumatic to a person.
And, uh, they always, they always do a triage to make sure, you know, this is not some kind of mental illness and they want to confirm that there's something preternatural spiritual in this person.
Um, that's not just psychological.
And once they have that and get approval, they do an exorcism and an exorcism is no joke.
Right.
And, and by the way, there's, there's no, you're, you're, Sanctioned exorcisms are done by priests, right?
There's no...
There's no lay exorcisms.
I mean, you can pray for the person and you can, you can hold it, whatever you want to do, pray there.
And you should, you should be praying for the person, obviously.
But you know, the idea that you're going to be performing this outside, I mean, that's like, that's like saying, you know, you're, you're, you're a member of the laity and you're going to go perform open heart surgery on somebody.
It's probably not.
Exactly.
Or I'm, you know, you're just a lay person and I'm going to go like do a seal team six up on my, by myself.
It's just not, you're not trained for that.
Right.
And there's a lot that goes into it.
Uh, you know, in rituals and preparation and you, you open yourself up to.
Well, that's what they say.
If, if you, if a lay person or someone, even a priest who's not an exorcist, let me emphasize this.
Even a priest who's not an exorcist who tries to do one, he can get retribution and have, and have demons come into his life.
So you have to be properly, you know, appointed, certified in order to do it.
You can tell a little bit into this.
I've read a lot of the work of Father Amorth, watched his videos quite a bit.
So he was the Vatican's exorcist.
He was someone who's been very public about this.
And at one point, he actually made a video and we're seeing the break that you haven't actually seen this yet.
So you got to go watch this now when you're done, that he allowed the director of the original exorcist movie to actually film an exorcism in Italy that he was performing.
Um, it was this, this, uh, Italian, she was a mother, young mother.
And, uh, you hear the speaking in tongues, you see the, the sort of contortions that the body is doing and you, you're able to watch this.
No, it's, it's just him.
It's the director, some members of her family, no camera crew, just him, single camera in the room.
They showed the entire thing.
Wow.
Yeah.
I've never been the one, but I've, I've heard, I've spoken to exorcist priests who have done them and, Um, and it's not just like you come in and, uh, five minutes, it's over.
Like these can go on for months actually.
Well, it's, that's right.
It's, it's, it's a very long process.
It's not like you see in the movies.
It's you, you know, you, you don't just go in once and then it's done.
It's, it's multiple times because at the end of the day, um, and correct me if I have this wrong and we're coming up on a break here, but you, it's, it's not just that you're performing the, The exorcism, because that person has been possessed, God has allowed them to be possessed, and that person has to repent for that sin they committed, whatever they let in, they have to repent for their actions, and then the exorcism will begin to take place.
Yeah, the person needs to be right with God, and the exorcist I spoke to yesterday says, look, you have to He gives him a whole list of things they need to do before he'll even begin the exorcisms, because they've got to be spiritually right.
Wow.
Wow.
All right, we're coming right back, talking exorcisms, getting spooky, Dr. Taylor Marshall.
All right, we're back.
Final segment here.
We've been getting spooky with Dr. Taylor Marshall, the author of Antichrist and Apocalypse, the new book.
We've been talking about the Christian history of Halloween.
Yes, the Christian history before the pagans Had anything to do with it, which they never did, and before the occultists tried to come in, pervert it, take it away, and steal it, as they do to all things Christian.
You know, and actually, Dr. Marshall, we were talking a little bit in the break, and I think we should say this on air as well, though, that the original book of Dracula, right, the original book of Dracula, we said the movie The Exorcist obviously has a lot of Catholic motifs, but the original book of Dracula, It is so much more, uh, Christian based that I don't think people realize where essentially it is, it is the family of Dracul has made this deal with the devil, just like you were talking about.
And the idea is that he's been possessed by Satan.
Um, he has to drink the blood of the living in a perversion of drinking the blood of the eternal, right?
So it keeps him undead as opposed to dead and then achieving apotheosis, coming to heaven.
And then this sense that this is also why crucifixes and holy water are things that ward him off.
So some of it has translated into the movies, but not quite.
Yeah, I mean, it's a perfect segue into the book of Revelation, the apocalypse, because in the book of Revelation, Satan is called the dragon.
And in Greek, it's Draco.
And in Latin, Draco, where you get Dracula.
Dracula means little dragon.
Right.
So so we're literally, you know, Dracula is the little dragon, the little Satan, because he's so given himself over to the devil.
And he's he's using all if you read the novel, by the way, Do yourself a favor and read the original Bram Stoker Dracula novel.
It's short.
It's good.
It's cheap on Amazon or wherever you want to get books.
It's an excellent book.
And as you read it, especially if you're a Catholic, you'll see all this Christian sort of black mirror, you know, analogy that's towards the, that's bent towards the demonic that comes from Christ.
So he's talking about baptism.
He's talking the Eucharistic language of eating the flesh of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, as in the Lord's supper, the Eucharist.
All this sort of Christian theology is inverted and perverted by Dracula, the little dragon, Satan himself.
And he is possessed by Satan.
As you read the novel, you begin to realize that he's in need of an exorcism.
And what he's doing is he's trying to have this Eucharist on other human beings.
He's eating off of them.
Uh, in order to preserve his life.
And we know that Jesus says, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.
That's the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
And then Dracula has completely subverted it in a satanic ritual.
Uh, so yeah.
And even that whole idea of virgins and consecrated virgins in relationship to nuns and all these things are going on in Dracula.
It's very obvious once you kind of just say it to somebody.
And then when you read the actual novel, you realize, oh, well, it was overt in the novel.
And it's just been through Hollywood's lens that they've, they've, you know, diluted all of this.
Yes.
Uh, and takes place of course, in Transylvania, which is kind of Romania ish area with some kind of some interesting Christian, uh, motifs in the background there.
Yeah.
It's a, it's a fantastic story and it kind of just, you know, shows a perversion Of what true Christianity is and how Christ is our life and and how we're incorporated him and consecrated him.
And that's what gives us eternal life.
And I think, you know, our culture now is kind of the same thing.
People prey on other people to perpetuate their lifestyle, their life.
And it's just it's it's totally.
No, it's very sad.
And so, I mean, my my my final point on that is just, you know, if you're going to celebrate Halloween, celebrate, you know, have fun with your kids.
Go out, have a good time, but also don't forget.
Don't forget the original part of it, right?
Don't forget the origin of this.
The martyrs, the holy martyrs, the holy saints, understand the history and the true rich tradition that you're actually taking part in by celebrating not just Halloween, right?
So that's my point.
If you're gonna celebrate Halloween, don't just celebrate Halloween, but also celebrate all saints.
All souls.
So now you're completing what's called the hallow tide.
But what was interesting is that you, you mentioned as well, though, the, that all saints is that it's a holy day of obligation, high holy day for Catholics, but the reading on all saints day is always from the book of the apocalypse, also known as the book of revelation.
Is that correct?
So what's the connection there?
Why is that?
Why is that the direct connection?
Well, when you read the apocalypse, the book of revelation, As in my new book, Antichrist and Apocalypse, there's seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, and then seven plagues.
That's the sevenfold cycle that just starts cycling, literally, twirling around in the book of the Apocalypse.
And as you go through it, you realize that there's this very strong harvest theme in the book of the Apocalypse.
And this goes back to the Gospels, where Christ says, you know, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers few.
The angels will come and collect the harvest.
I mean, there's all these parables that have to do with harvesting, right?
So, and it's harvesting of souls.
Right?
And Christ even has him in the apocalypse.
He's even depicted as having the sickle and reaching the sickle down into the earth and harvesting souls.
So this whole idea that he is kind of this great farmer.
Remember Adam was a farmer, right?
Adam and Eve.
He was cultivating the garden.
Christ is the new Adam.
He was found in the garden.
Mary Magdalene thought he was the gardener.
Remember that?
On Easter Sunday.
So, he is in a way cultivating a garden, but is it just like grapes and grain?
Well, in the Eucharist it is that, but it transubstantiates into his body and blood, and somehow it brings in this harvest of souls.
And so, on All Saints Day, traditionally we read from the book of the Apocalypse, and it's this whole idea, and it's the reading from Revelation chapter 7, where the angel comes and it marks on the forehead With the sign of the Tao, which is a cross, on all the faithful on earth.
And it marks them and denotes them that they are to be harvested for Jesus Christ.
They are to be taken for Him.
And that's the beautiful imagery in the book of Revelation for All Saints Day.
is that we have been marked on our heads with the sign of the cross in baptism.
We're baptized on our heads.
And then in the Catholic tradition, the priest also puts chrism on our heads and marks us with the sign of the cross, the seal of the cross of Jesus Christ, and tells us to preserve this baptism until the day of our death.
So in a way, he marks us for the harvest.
This is why, eventually, I think All Saints Day was moved to November 1st, because it fits with this apocalyptic Book of Revelation harvest theme, because that's the time of the harvest.
You know, that final fall harvest of bringing in everything before it turns winter.
So, yeah, there's all these things going on.
Which, by the way, is obviously just as a normal fall tradition anywhere you are in the world.
It's not tied to paganism, the fact that it's becoming, you know, fall and autumn and we're Collecting the crops, right?
That's just that's just life, you know, that's yeah again part of God's creation But there's no there's no direct and by the way if you if you end up for anyone who ends up reading that article I hope you do it points out that even even by the way, if you go into the Irish Harvest Festival In the ancient times of sewing there was no connection to paganism whatsoever.
Just a harvest festival.
That's all that's it That's all it was Yeah, I mean, you bring in a bunch of grain and you have tons of food and your work is all done.
What are you going to do?
You're going to eat great food and bake some pies and have fun.
Let the kids eat the apples and, you know, just have a grand old time.
And that's kind of part of it is it's celebrating, as we read in the book of Revelation, you know, that Christ has marked us and he is coming back for us.
We're special to him and he wants to bring us into his storehouse, which is heaven.
And that's the great hope of it all.
And that's what All Saints is all about.
We, we look to those who already made it.
You know, it's kind of like if you're, you know, you're overcoming alcoholism or drugs or a sex addiction, meeting and knowing people who have been successful in that journey inspires you like, okay, I can do it.
You know, I can do it.
I can go one more day.
When I say, you know, I'm, I'm 17 years sober.
Um, I try not to make, I try not to, you know, that's like bragging.
It's, it's, but, but I, I try to mention that every once in a while.
Uh, we just, we just had that, you know, just a couple of, uh, what, two, three weeks ago, um, was my anniversary.
And I try to mention that.
I try to mention that, you know, often it's not like, uh, Oh, look, I'm better than you think.
No, it's not like that at all.
It's, it's a message to anybody that is struggling out there that, Hey, 17 years.
Boom.
Didn't, didn't think I could do 17 years, but here I am.
It's possible.
And, and that's, that, that is just an analogy to where we look in this lab, like, is it really worth being a Christian?
Is it really worth trying to live chase?
Is it really worth going to church every Sunday and, you know, praying every day and this family, and then you look at the saints and you're like, they did it.
Thousands of people have done it.
And one day, one day though, when, when we realized that, you know, go, uh, had a priest once who said, you know, the best place to count your money is in the graveyard.
Best place to check your bank account, you know, that, that this is, this is a, you know, this is a testing ground that we're in right here.
This is this, this reality that we're in, whatever it truly is, right?
It's, it's, it's set up for us as a test.
That's the true life, right?
Beyond this.
And this is, you know, so your answer to the test will take place there, not here.
And you'll be there a whole lot longer than you are here.
That's right.
Final words, we're almost out of time.
Dr. Taylor Marshall, the new book, Antichrist Apocalypse, available everywhere that books are sold.
Hasn't been banned yet, get it before it is.
We're definitely going to have to order some for it, because all the producers are asking me for a copy now.
But what's the final word?
Why should people read this book now?
Well, you know, everything creepy—the book of Revelation has a lot of creepy, scary, unusual stuff in it, and all of those things are there, just like the demonic, just like death, just like all these things we're talking about as we get close to Halloween.
All of that there is to inspire us to have hope and confidence that Christ conquered death.
He conquered the demons.
He conquered the devil.
All these things that scare us, He's conquered, and we have hope in Him, and that's the message of all saints.
Be a saint.
Memento Mori.
Memento Mori, folks.
Memento Mori.
Dr. Taylor Marshall, the book is Antichrist and Apocalypse.
