...Nicholas Canino Dr. Patrick A. Polk Humanities 491 30 September 2013 Demons are with us every day when we sleep, eat, work and even to some extent when we are at church. The traditions that demons have to do with are in Christianity. There are other religions where “bad spirits” are talked about but, demons derive from the devil which is associated with the Christian church. The main mode of communication that was and is so important to spreading the knowledge of demons was through the Bible and films. The Bible is the oldest dissemination of demons where it talks about Jesus calling out these spirits from inside of people. Films or movies have been the most popular form in recent times. Some characteristics of a demon include: Spirits with no physical body form, they are shape shifters, can communicate telepathically or by impressing thoughts, Require certain sacrifices and offerings for survival, able to occupy bodies and objects and control them, They are imitators and impersonators(especially of Christians, God, and prophecy), and are prone to corrupt, defy, and terrorize. This spirit is important because in a way this is proof for Christianity that there is a heaven and a hell. Demons are the children of the devil, who is the prince of darkness aka hell. If there is a hell, there is proof that there is an afterlife. All demons derived from the one of the biggest mistakes of all mankind. Adam and Eve were the first to experience, a demon in true flesh. They were both told...
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...The Significance of Eve’s Dreams in Paradise Lost Some of the most telling aspects of John Milton’s Paradise Lost are in the few instances in which the reader is privy to the contents of Adam and Eve’s dreams, and these instances contribute significantly to the outcome and overall meaning of the poem. Milton’s use of dreams in Paradise Lost serves several distinct purposes. These passages allow us to glean insight to the inner workings of both Adam and Eve’s subconscious, as well as to God’s respective plans for them. Adam and Eve’s dreams illustrate the differences inherent within them and their very different relationships with God. Eve’s dreams are particularly dramatic in their substance, and in their drastic contrast before and after the fall. I propose that Milton’s use of dreams in Paradise Lost demonstrates that prelapsarian Eve could never have truly comprehended good and evil. All of Adam’s dreams in the poem are divinely inspired, while Eve’s first dream is induced by Satan, and her final, postlapsarian dream a vision from God that shows her that she will go on to bear the “promised seed” (12.623) that will deliver salvation. This essay will examine the different ways in which Adam and Eve receive information and how it affects their understanding and, consequently, their actions. We are first introduced to Adam and Eve as Satan is observing them in the Garden of Eden, acting as the first anthropologist in order to ascertain how to bring about their demise. Satan...
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...worldview of a believer. These myths often guide the behavior of the believers and help to provide models that guide the believer's behavior. In Christianity the myth of Jesus is a huge example. Jesus was portrayed as someone who was everything that people should aim to be. He was pure, selfless, loving, and holy. Myths can also explain away a discrepancy, in the example of Jesus the discrepancy was about how Jesus was born out of wedlock. In Judaism you have the Myth of Lilith. According to Jewish folklore Lilith was the first wife of Adam. She was banished from the Garden of Eden when she refused to make herself subservient to Adam. After she was cast off she was made into a demon figure while Adam was given Eve, his second wife. She was made from his rib to insure her obedience to her man. The story then goes on to describe some of the evil things that Lilith would do. These myths would describe how Lilith would capture babies in the night at eat them and how she would lead young girls and husbands astray. Lilith was viewed in Jewish culture as a symbol of promiscuity and disobedience and this myth is used a warning to others, helping them guide their behavior and stray them away from taking part in...
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... and darkness and the novel, and she represents the majority of the corruption in the novel as a whole. East of Eden is most widely known for being a biblical allusion. Cathy’s role in the allusion can be argued as two biblical figures: The Devil and Lilith. One common similarity shared between the devil and Cathy is having multiple faces or forms. According to the Bible, the Devil started in Heaven and then was sent to Earth as a serpent. When the serpent deceived Eve, he was damned to Hell and became known as Satan. Cathy follows a...
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...Descent Into Hell Who or what is Lilith and what is her role in the book? According to Charles Williams, Lilith is the apparition of all that one desires; she promises to give health, money, life, and even love but gives only false hope. She is the seductress, disguised as an old lady, who guards the grand gate of Gomorrah (Descent Into Hell 204). Williams describes Lilith as such, “Their enchantress sat there, the last illusion still with her, the illusion of love itself; she could not believe her breasts were dry. She desired infinitely to seem give suck; she would be kind and good, she who did not depend, on whom others had depended…” (207). She is not real love, but merely the chimera of love, and does not give true life. Williams further describes her, “She would not see and she would not go to the door because of that unacknowledged crowd, but she sat there, cut off from earth she had in her genius so long universally inhabited, gazing, waiting, longing for some of the living to enter, to ask her for oblivion and the shapes with which she enchanted oblivion” (207). She deceives people and gives them want they think they most desire; she traps people with their fantasies and then pulls them down into Hell (208). Lilith is portrayed as a weak, depressed old woman who guards the gate to Hades and who promises to care, nurture one’s soul, and to give what one desires. However, what she promises is actually void and empty; she really intends to starve and deprive people...
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...notebook to one of Tilly’s friends named Chuck, who explains that it is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure made for a single player. Agnes starts playing with Chuck as the dungeon master. As she starts, she meets her sister in the game, along with two other characters named Lilith and Kaliope. They are on a quest to retrieve a lost soul from the lord of the underworld, Orcus. They go talk to Orcus, who says he has quit being the lord of the underworld because he is sick of fighting people. He tells them he has sold the soul, which turns out to be Tilly’s, to the dragon Tiamat in exchange for a VCR. The adventurers decide that they will go to Tiamat, fighting through her three deadly guardians, to reclaim Tilly’s soul and that they will bring Orcus with them. They come across the first guardian, a small farie, who demonstrates her power by ripping a character’s throat out. They kill her, and meet two succubi, where Agnes learns her sister was homosexual. She is upset that she never knew about this and starts to realize how little she knew about her sister. Outside of the game, Agnes meets the real Lilith, who she asks about being Tilly’s girlfriend to the point where the girl leaves in supposed confusion. Lilith, or Lilly, talks about how she is dating a football player and didn’t know Tilly that well. Back in the...
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...Some people with extreme allergies are stuck in a bubble, but the entire human race is trapped in a bubble. That bubble is gender, and the role it plays in dividing our society. Octavia E. Butler’s explores this concept in her novel “Dawn”. Butler first demonstrates the walls that gender roles create by switching what humans see as the typical gender roles. The female ooloi are tall, and are not as open and talkative as what is seen as normal. The males have a more approachable nature. The “teachers” are also male. Although Butler flips the roles of male and female, she still introduces the genderless Oankali to show that no matter what traits males and females if humans define themselves as different they cannot create a society that will...
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...Mengjiao Zhou Dr. Raina Manuel – Paris Myth and Symbol 3/24/2015 The hero It must have been around midnight when I first stirred from my slumber. I glance at the sky above with puffy eyes. Only a few stars dot the night. Polar bears do not hibernate in the colder months, but I thoroughly enjoyed sinking into the deep sleep. It let me get into my head. Things aren’t nearly as quiet and lonely inside my head than it is in North Pole. My grumbling tummy forces me out of my cave and into the cold. It’s time to hunt. To my surprise, treading through the dark lifts my spirits quite a bit. It is a lovely evening – the air is clear, the snow is hard… it’s perfect. It has been a long time since I last felt at peace. Ever since she left, things just haven’t been the same. I am not a fan of jumping into the water to catch fish. Therefore, I dig a hole through softer ice, spread my net, and wait for them to come to me. I have a lot of time to kill, anyway. An explosion of noise jolts me awake just as I was about to drift off to sleep. I stand on all fours and stare at the hole, anticipating a catch. When a shadow passes, I drop my paw in and quickly pull out my meal. What I manage to grab ahold of throws me off guard, and I throw it to the side almost immediately, startled by its screaming. “A penguin?” I mutter under my breath as soon as my heart slows to a regular pace. The penguin gets up, takes a deep breath, and then kneels before me. “Prince Jay,” she begins...
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...them ashore (Hamilton 294). In Homer’s Odyssey, Calypso tempts Odysseus into staying with her as “a virtual prisoner on [the] island” that she ruled over (Hamilton 305). Future societies would draw on these mythological tales and the negative portrayal attractive women and their sensuality. Many female figures in religious texts have been associated with lust and temptation in order to demonize them and assign blame. Lilith, she-demon and first wife of Adam, has epitomized the dangers of female sexuality for centuries. In the Alphabet of Ben Sira, although believed to be satirical in nature, Lilith leaves Adam because she is treated as his inferior. However, Lilith was not seen as an enlightened female figure to the ancient societies and religions that regarded her as real. As early as 2000 BCE she has represented the “chaos, seduction, and ungodliness” of the world, and was used an explanation for high infant mortality rates (“Lilith”). In the Zohar, she is regarded as a “temptress of innocent men,” a mother of demons, and a patron of deviant sexual practices (“Lilith”). Adam’s second wife, Eve, received a similar fate. She was the one who committed the original sin, who tempted Adam to eat the apple, who brought about the downfall of man. In response to this action, God declared that, “[man] will dominate [woman]” (New International Version, Genesis 3:16). Eve’s mistake inspired many repressive Bible verses pertaining to women, such as forcing them to “learn in silence with all...
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...an ambiguous linear system such as this one, where Albers employs no patterns and no clear distinction of which lines overlap which, our visual system is always trying to grasp dominant structural patterns and order each detail into a logical whole. As you continue to look, your mind thinks it finds a version of the structure that makes more sense, and thus shifts to the perspective to accommodate the new perception. If you walk down the stairs from the second to the first floor of Modern and Contemporary Art, you will be struck by the presence of Lilith, a 1994 sculpture by Kiki Smith. In Jewish folklore, Lilith was Adam’s first wife. Rather than from his rib like Eve, she was created from the same soil as him. Seeing herself as Adam’s equal, she refused to be submissive to him. When she was denied to possess this status, she ended up abandoning Eden, and is now said to wander the Earth in a state of untamed rage. To me, Lilith not exist simply exist as an object to represent this story, rather she actually lives and breathes to tell the story. Her spirit occupies a physical body and space. She differs from thousands of pieces in the Met, actively challenging the traditional depictions of the female form by Western male artists, who depict them as beautiful and graceful forms to be marveled at. Looking back at Odalisque in Grisaille Ingres himself clearly defied anatomical correctness in order to achieve his vision of the ideal female body, constructing the odalisque as unnaturally...
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...The Origin of the Vampire Vampires, are they a mythical creature that was created by superstition and folklore or did they begin from someone’s fantastic imagination based on a real live person? Or maybe it was created to explain a cluster of misunderstood medical conditions that began before the medical world had advanced science and knowledge on the body and its psyche. It’s a word that inspires awe, fear, and romanticism all at once. Vampires are known in every culture and have been kept alive through stories that have been told throughout the generations. When someone utters the word “vampire” most people’s mind jump to Dracula from the great love story written by Bram Stoker. Dracula was created because Stoker was inspired by a real live man, the infamous, Vlad Tepes from Romania. That story is where love and vampires were intertwined and a kind of admiration was born. Only till recently they have become these seductive beautiful men and women in movies like ‘Twilight’ and ‘The Lost Boys’. So we are going to embark on the journey of where vampires began and explore the different aspects and origins of vampires. How these creatures were created was recorded in European folklore, Greek Mythology, found in medical conditions, and even taken from an excluded book of the bible. What is a vampire? Where did they come from? Well to get some answers we must first start at the beginning. First we must look at the word vampire. It is also spelled “vampir” or “vampyre”...
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...Questions to Consider for your Interview (Due Week Five) Religion 134 a. How your beliefs make up a religious belief system. Foundation for the faith b. How you acquired your religious belief system. Through some experience’s in life. Raised in different homes foster child, had different exposures to various religions and believe the most from the Jewish faith that thought was the biological religion. Learned the faith to learn about biological heritage. c. The benefits and disadvantages of having your particular belief system. Disadvantages are not the traditional beliefs of society, so is kinda in the closet regarding religion. Because it in the closet it private to believe and study and don’t have to explain self to society, the private aspect makes it more real to him to practice his faith. Positive in the Jewish religion there is less bigotry with the Jewish faith then other Christians they seem to be more true to what they are doing and how they live their live, they seem more genuine in their beliefs and lifestyles. d. The role of tradition in your religious belief system. Lite the menorah (candle thing) Hanukkah 8 days Pray and meditate and give thanks during the 8 days. e. The role of tradition in religion in general. Moral compass to remind self to behave f. Why it is important to be knowledgeable about other people’s beliefs and attitudes towards religion. Do not judge them, Does not tell people what they are or are not, believes that...
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...Art as Technique 1. Defamiliarization is stripping objects or subjects from their individual or “familiar” characteristics and giving them unusual or “unfamiliar” traits to allow the reader to see it in a whole new perspective. An example of this is in Tolstoy's defamiliarization of spanking, explaining the act as “to strip people who have broken the law, to hurl them to the floor, and to rap on their bottoms with switches.” The crude description removes the disciplinary context it had and creates a vicious and “savage” form of abuse. This continues with Tolstoy saying “Just why precisely this stupid, savage means of causing pain and not any other – why not prick the shoulders or any part of the body with needles, squeeze the hands or the feet in a vice, or anything like that?” The initial reaction to the latter quote is condemning its barbaric nature. However upon thinking that, it exposes several contradictions and hypocritical opinions as the only thing that changed in both scenarios was the form of punishment, not the infliction of pain on the child itself. Like Shklovsky said “the object isn’t important,” it is the connotations it conveys. 2. The concept is quite prevalent in feminist literature, specifically in the feminist critique in which most, if not all, the female characters are produced by men and male-oriented literature. However, gynocriticism isn’t immune to this technique as it could easily be exploited to further “radical feminism”. In the feminist...
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...choose the novel Step by Wicked Step written by Anne Fine. The most important moral value that I have learnt from this novel is honesty. There are many examples which show the importance of honesty throughout this novel. First of all, we can see that in this novel, parents are not being honest to their children. They do not tell their children what is happening between them. This causes the children a lot of stress and worry. For example, Lilith Harwick does not tell her children that their father is dying. We see how distressed Richard is when guessing the truth about his father's condition. When Colin's mother decides to leave Colin's dad and move up north, she does not explain the reason to Colin. Colin does not like his new life and misses his dad a lot, but his mother does not seem to be aware of how he felt. Apart from that, the parents' lack of honesty makes the children keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves. This is bad because it may cause the children to take the wrong action. For example, Colin stops talking about his dad to his mother, but plans to run away to find him one day. However, when parents are honest about their feelings and open up to their children, their relationship will get better. This can be seen in the case of Lucy and Pixie. After they burst out and tell each other their true feelings, their relationship improves a lot. Pixie respects Lucy and Lucy gives Pixie time and space to adapt to her new family. In a nutshell, honesty is...
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...The Satanic Temple of Seattle has cancelled its plan to launch an “After School Satan Club” (ASSC) at a local elementary school because of scheduling problems. On Tuesday night, Centennial Elementary School principal Erwin Stroosma announced that the Satanic Temple of Seattle had cancelled its request to establish an ASSC at the school, to the relief and applause of those present at the meeting, The Spokesman-Review details. The withdrawal of the request came after Mount Vernon School District told the temple’s chapter head Lilith Starr that there was no available space to be rented out until several hours after school hours because of ongoing district-sponsored activities. “We have our own school activities and that includes our own after-school...
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