Long time friend of the show is back in the game with this simulcast, go give him a follow and welcome the OG agent of European chaos back.
Timeline Earth
STS 33: The Dutch Strike Back
[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Welcome back everyone. This is not the Scarlet Thread Society, but in the interest of your safety, I have a little warning for you anyways. Lock your doors, close your windows, cover your mirrors, and light a little tobacco with us. We're dabbling in the dark and scary tonight. Take it away bud. Thanks very much for your announcement and thank you for the construction that we've got going here. So I have decided to, I suppose, revive my podcast. A little inspiration struck me recently and I've got some time on my hands, so let's get right into it. So in June, I was at Graspop, Graspop being one of the biggest European heavy metal festivals, and with heavy metal comes a fair amount of ironic and less than ironic devil worship, but there was one man or one axe that stood out to me in this whole thing that was Bruce Dickinson. For those not in a know, Bruce Dickinson is the lead singer of the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden, and he is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best heavy metal singer alive today, if not ever. Now, with all of these supposed or not so much supposed devil worship, this man's age and his skills because he was born in 58 so I believe that put some somewhere halfway through his 60s. This man still thinks so incredibly good, and he looks a bit strange as well, that I was wondering if there was a little bit more going on behind the scenes, let's say it in just practice. So we got into it just a tiny bit right before we started, and I think we'll get into it in the episode a bit, but there's quite a lot of accusations being thrown at musicians of having sold their souls to the devil. I don't know if you have any examples of the top of your mind part. Well, there is the very famous one here in the United States that alleges the real creator of modern blues and blues rock sold his soul at a crossroad for the ability to play the guitar. And you know, this is kind of a trope that's as old as time, but that should make us more wary of it than it does dismissive, right? Yes. So one of those where there's smoke, there's fire, why have we been repeating this story forever if it didn't come from somewhere? Yes, exactly. That's where I'm at as well. So it's a common trope with musicians, another myth that might not be as familiar, I suppose, to the American mind or to the American culture instead of the flying Dutchman. A phenomenon that I'm sure Americans have heard of. Are you at all familiar with the story boss? Yeah, in the broad strokes, but if you wanted to give a retelling for those in our mutual audiences who wouldn't know that story. Yes, so the flying Dutchman is the tale of a ghost ship that's often seen all around the world, but largely around the so-called Cape Good Hope or the table bay in South Africa. So it's a common sighting of a ghost ship and some say it's a Dutchman war. That was lost, but the story that goes that's more interesting is it was a trading ship in the 1600s and it's sealed from the Netherlands to the East Indies to Java islands. So, especially in the 1600s, there was no source canal, so you sailed all the way around Africa. This journey would take six months if you were quick, if you were real quick. So, supposedly, what happened is that the captain of the ship, a man by the name of von der Decken, sold his soul to the devil in order to cut down the time of his journey from six months to three months. So, supposedly, he didn't show much literally sell his soul to the devil, but the supposed quote that he iterated would be me I'd be eternally damned if I do, though I should beat about here till the date about of judgement. So, pretty much the reason that he is doomed to sail the seas for all eternity and ghost ship. Now, this is what made me wonder about the price, I suppose. Combine this with metal as well, and I think it's probably wise if we make a small but relevant distinction here between actually selling one's soul. And the more I would almost say regular type of devil worshipping or imagery, because I think in music and in pop culture there's a lot of not, well, maybe not real is not the word. But while there's a lot of illusion and memeing and playing with the idea as opposed to taking it seriously and attempting to do it. Yes, yes. And then, of course, you've got people that work in politics who are without a doubt, potential actual demons. Yes. But those are things that are, I think, slightly different from actually selling one's soul to the devil in order to accomplish something. So, one of the things that I was wondering about before we started was what is the price, what is the drawback, right? So, this captain supposedly sold his soul and sealed from the East Indies right back to the Netherlands in three months on an old sailing vessel in the 1600s. The price that he pays is sailing the seas forever, which is quite a high price. So, I started looking into it. And what struck me is, this is pretty much one of the few, if not the only stories that I found that have this kind of an effect. I read about a story about a musician, another musician. Let me see if I can find him. No, well, there's a story of Faust, which is a story that the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote. And he was kind of a fair, type of person, supposedly a doctor of philosophy, gypsy-esque guard reader type. And he supposedly sold his soul for infinite wisdom. However, the price that he pays for this is a bit, I don't know, it seems relatively harmless almost compared to what the flying Dutchman faced, because from the stories that I found, his punishment is he keeps turning over face first or facing down in his grave, which is not pleasant. But at the same time, that's getting off pretty easy. Yeah, there's no doubt that he's in hell, which is not great, but a lot of people go to hell for a lot of reasons. I think that the price for selling one's soul to the devil would be higher, and another story I read, unfortunately I can't find back his name right now, is one of an American man, somewhere around revolutionary times, who had made some sort of the fact where he was already rich, but he would like to become even richer. So he sold his soul and the devil would come at night and put some money in a sock that he'd hung by the fireplace. So this agreement kept on going for a while, he kept hanging up bigger and bigger socks, because of course he'd do. And then at some point, it struck him that he could just cut the bottom out of the sock and then receive essentially infinite money. And it's good for a folktale, but how dumb do you have to be to think a trick like that's going to work? Yes, yes, so that's not a thing I'm wondering about. Oh, we're good. So apparently the devil found out, because of course he did, and burnt his house down. However, both him and his family managed to escape, which again raises the question to me, is this not a little light? Isn't this getting off quite easy for pretty much the most spiritually evil act that one could commit on earth? I mean, having your house burned down is unfortunate, but if you have absurd amounts of money, you can just build a new house. Yeah, must be fine then, right? Yeah, small price to pay. Yeah, but I think getting back to what you were just saying, though, the relevant thing is, well, all sorts of people go to hell anyways, but that doesn't lessen the price of damnation. I suppose I guess is the way I would counter this. When you, if the audience is willing to accept as a prior for the purposes of the conversation, that selling your soul for a material benefit and a spiritual price is something you can actually do, then it's actually a pretty good bargain, because while there is no paying greater than damnation, if you're some sort of atheist chitlib who doesn't believe in damnation, then it must essentially seem free, free alpha, right? Yeah. But the thing is, when you get to hell, the conception of hell in the Christian tradition that I follow Lutheranism isn't so much a literal lake of fire. That's merely an imagery for it. What it truly is, is the total complete separation from the divine and the final loss of redemption. Okay. So by severing yourself from the divine, from God permanently and for eternity, you're gone from all hope. You have nothing but actual obliteration left to you. Right. So while an atheist or a demon worshippers not actually going to fear that outcome, there is no worse possible outcome, because we are mating God's image. So you have this thing where essentially what the sort of pact making boils down to is you're setting up an incentive structure for evil people to confirm their damnation in life and cut off the chance of any sort of final redemption, which then also does make it a good deal for the devil and his minions, because whether or not you literally sign a contract by believing there's some sort of agreement in place, you're already renouncing God in his works. Yes. Does that make sense? Yeah, well, at least to me it makes sense. And I think so. I guess what I'm sort of gesturing at here is it makes there's rather there's very good reason why these freaks would think that that's a good deal. Yes. But ultimately, you want to remind yourself, they want you to think it's a good deal. Oh, yes. I mean, let me add to this that if you're a 16th century Dutchman sailing to and from the East Indies, there's a high likelihood that you're an atheist shitlib and probably evil. So that checks out the thing that I'm wondering about these things seem very asynchronous. Now, of course, it would be a bit of a shitlib remove of my me to accuse the devil of hypocrisy, although the thought is somewhat entertaining to me. But it makes me wonder why is one man condemned to seal the oceans for all eternity and why is one man or most other man, I suppose, simply condemned to hell. I mean, of course, there's not really such thing as simply being condemned to hell, as we just discussed, but it's, I don't know, maybe I can put it this way. If you've read and heard about some of the Greek myths, of course, famously, if you've got Sisyphus, there's a poetic justice in the punishment that they receive. So they trick the gods or they betray some form of holy custom, and then they are condemned to a very specific punishment in the underworld. This also goes for the flying Dutchman. So he received the punishment that was very fitting with the goals that he intended to achieve. What makes it that these people do not receive this type of very opposite or extension of their own goals within their punishment? Well, I think the thing that we should perhaps consider is that, again, by having this discussion, we've got a whole bundle of assumptions we need to make just to have it in the first place. Yes, granting all of that. I would say, I don't think there's anything that says by being put under some sort of curse, you are then not also damned. Well, yes, absolutely. It doesn't necessarily take a soul to pilot a body, necessarily, because we've seen that one of the other things we were potentially going to talk about is possession. You know, as long as there is something to pilot the body, there's no reason the soul can't also be being tormented. So are they necessarily getting off light if they are still piloting the oceans of the world forever? No, not at all, because they're also probably being tormented by that separation from the divine. It also happens that some shard of their mortal existence is also still here because it amuses the freaks, the demons. I think we might be having some connection issues. I think one is absolutely not exclusive to another. So I think there's, once you sell your soul to devil, once you make this kind of deal, be it in actual contract form or otherwise, you are condemned to damnation one way or another. But it just, I don't know, makes me wonder to take Bruce Dickinson, for example, like what's his thing in life, I suppose, is he like a vampire, can he not go out into the sun? I mean, he's short, but that's hardly, you know, hardly a sufficient punishment. Yeah, yeah, I feel like that would not qualify as a devilish demonic evil punishment. To answer that question, I'd say that a good case study could actually possibly be Alistair Crowley. Ah, yes. You know, look at him, he got world famous, he was wealthy for a small time, and he had a great deal of cultural influence. But what did it cost him? Well, it cost him his family, such as it was, not that he ever cared about them. It cost him all of his physical health, and by the end of his reign of terror, he was himself basically a fucking mute. The amount of heroin he'd done had turned him into an absolute freak with almost no mind left in him. And we know that the rock and roll lifestyle is notorious for certain abuses that it puts on physical form. I guess I can't speak to that individual in particular, but if I was forced to speculate, I might assume something along those lines that there is a physical punishment that eats at you until the eternal one also does. I mean, that does make a lot of sense. To be honest, in the case of Joe Dickinson, there's a much higher likelihood that he just ate well and didn't drink all that much. It never did heroin, and as such, by living a healthy lifestyle, he actually managed to keep on going for a while, because the thing that kills the average rock star is not singing too much. It's too much heroin. Or whatever their thing of choice is. Oh, yes. Yeah, heroin, coke, alcohol. As a metalhead, there's a significant list of my favorite singers and musicians that have died from heroin, alcohol, cocaine, you name it. There's a whole thing to go in there about why that is, but that's not topical for today, nor would I have the right preparation to delve into that right now. I think, yeah, I think I don't really have much more to add to this topic of selling one soul to the devil. I think there's not much more that I can add anything you still have in mind, in particular. Well, I would just say that while I accept this as a real outcome, a thing that can and does happen, what people should keep in mind is that even if it is not very physically, literally real. And again, I would stress that I do believe it is, even if it were not, what a person should keep in mind, is that just considering such things, as we said in the case of the less believing people, the more atheist, Satanists, even just buying into that stuff is a serious spiritual detriment. Yes. And so, you know, you're playing yourself in grave danger, even just thinking about that stuff casually as a joke. Yeah, I would think so. I was recently in an old monastery with some friends. We had some bad luck with the weather when we were climbing, and so we decided to go and do some urban exploring. Oh, that sounds like a fun time, huh? It was. It was very fun. So one of the things that stood out to me, so this was an old abandoned monastery for nuns. It wasn't really abandoned for any particular reason. It's just that the order became too small. They, I don't know, moved somewhere else or they were put out of business entirely. And then supposedly some real estate company was going to put apartments in there, but it just never happened. So there's no particularly evil history associated with the building, as far as I know. However, it did strike me that some parts of the old monastery felt significantly more haunted isn't maybe not the word, but definitely gave off a very strong sense that something was not quite right. How much of it, I guess, for me to ask you a question is just sort of that weight of history sort of thing. I, well, that is a very good question. Because, you know, you would know even better than I have. I've been over there a couple of times as a tourist with student groups way back in the day. Right. Never as an adult. And, you know, it was readily apparent even to me, though, that some places were just heavier. And I always attributed, like I said, the weight of history. Yes. I suppose there is some of that. Yeah, I have to think about it, because there's definitely places that you can visit that are significantly older than the entire existence of America as a country. In fact, most churches, cathedrals, castles are from long before major colonization efforts were made over there. But I think in this case, it was less so the weight of history. There was a little bit of that, especially in the old church part of the monastery. But to an extent, you get that also because it's just a ruin. So you get the old fuck. What's the American word? The windows that they put in churches. The stained glass. Yes, the stained glass. So you get broken stained glass in combination with graffiti in there, left and right, and just kind of debris and stuff. And like a roof that's half out. So that gives a bit of an odd vibe, but a bit of an odd feeling in the air. But the thing that felt more off to me was a part a little bit further back. A lot of broken glass on the floor and some clear marks of a fire that had been there. It was also definitely one of the older, but definitely not one of the oldest parts of the monastery. You could see it from the ceiling of the window, or the ceiling of the room. I mean, because it was, you get houses like this in Europe every now and then. But there was very baroque style in which that in the work in that ceiling. So that must have been made somewhere in the eight, but part of the ceiling was gone. You could clearly see that large parts of it had just turned to charcoal. And I was just a lot of like debris on the floor. You couldn't just kind of walk through that room easily. So I suppose the relevant question then at that point starts becoming, is this a case where something's been intentionally destroyed or is this just the nature of disrepair then? Right? I suppose this is what we're kind of getting at. Yeah, that's the thing that you start to wonder, like was there fire set here purposefully? Did one break out? Either way. It definitely was the most creepy, I suppose, part of the whole monastery. The rest was fairly okay. There was not anything particularly strange there. However, I would imagine if one goes to visit old mental hospitals, that is a very strange, very, very scary experience. And that one I can attest to not from firsthand experience, but from second hand and having, so one of the odd things about me that the audience definitely doesn't know and that a lot of new insiders don't even know either because I just don't happen to talk about it much. I know a lot of semi-pro models. Okay, people who do photography for like magazines, calendars, specialist shoots and whatnot. Right, and a lot of them just by interest, you know, the sort of projects they like and the photographers they work for. A lot of them end up doing horror themed shoots. Okay. And so a very common setting for that is, as you're saying, old asylums and sanitariums. And just talking about them when they'll come back from, they're talking to them when they'll come back from the trips. You get a lot of that when there's just, it's not even the age, it's not that the place is abandoned because there's elements of those in those places. Yes, but in that sort of place specifically, there is an actual psychic, negative psychic ways. Yes, yes. Yeah, I think to add to this, there's somewhat close to where I used to live. There's a place that almost goes down. It's right next to a nuclear facility. So, probably around the time it was built, just people moved out in masses. I imagine that they would have been new enough at the time. All that would have happened that people were still scared. It was still relatively unknown as a technology. Yep, so most of the town is still there. It's of course completely in disrepair. And it has a very similar energy. It's a very unpleasant place to visit. And this made me wonder, so there's clearly, I mean, I think in the case of an old asylum or mental hospital of some kind, it's fairly clear why the energy is there, right? A lot of very mentally disturbed people have been there. I've probably died there. A great many abuses under the guise of medical treatment took place there. There's just a very large amount of very bad energy that has always been there and will remain there. But I definitely think there's, in the case of the monastery and in the case of the abandoned town, there's an inherent scariness that comes from something that is supposed to be lived in that abandoned. And I have a sense that there's a greater vulnerability, I suppose, to evil or to evil spirits in such places as well. Yes, yeah, and I think in terms of that, when we want to talk about things like that or consider things like that, one thing we should be attentive to, and this is something I try to stress with your audience, with my audience, is that it's not always what's actually around you so much as the state you let yourself enter in these places, right? Like, when you start to get a little scared, you become vulnerable and you need to think about what vulnerable means. Yes. You need to keep your psychic anchor, right? So, there is indisputably evil places in the world, but then there are also places that aren't evil, but you will leave yourself vulnerable to them through fear, through mistrust, through sadness, even, through XYZ, etc, etc. So, those are considerations you always have to make too. Yes. You know, what about this place? Am I letting this place influence me, or is the place doing it by itself? Right. And both can be true, neither can be true, or it could just be one of the two. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that doesn't make sense. This leads me to wonder as well, and I think this kind of connects with what I'm saying about the abandoned places, and also kind of goes back to the whole metal thing. So, especially metal, there's a lot of imagery and talk that revolves around the devil and around Satanism, especially in black metal. At which point it gets less than ironic, considering that the favorite hobby of the, I believe it was the second wave of Norwegian black metal bands was setting actual Christian churches on fire. However, it strikes me that still in these kinds of types of concert venues, you are still safer from this kind of thing than in a place like an abandoned asylum. But I might be entirely wrong in that on the base of what you were seeing earlier. So it might more be a type of full trust thing than an actual safety thing. Oh, gosh. Yeah. I guess I hadn't even really considered that myself either. I suppose, can you say a little bit more about that expand on that for me? So, let's say I go to this monster. I'm there with two friends, and you feel a sense of scaredness and a sense of vulnerability to a potential danger, either physical, but especially more psychic, because you're not particularly afraid of someone actually clobbering you overhead. But seeing a curtain move in a certain way would make you jump out of your skin. Now, the complete other end of the spectrum is you're with thousands of people at some sort of black metal show. They've got upside down burning crosses, but it's loud. And you're jumping and running around in a marsh pit, so you don't feel the same kind of sense of potential evil or potential danger. Part of that is with metal crowds comes a lot of if you shit lips, but I do wonder if one would actually be more a danger of falling under the influence, I suppose, of some sort of evil at a show, as opposed to in this kind of abandoned place. Because, on one end, you're much more, I suppose, aware of any potential danger at the one based in the other, but I don't know, I do wonder. Yeah, okay, I guess I kind of see what you're getting at now. I'm taking another minute or so there to think about it. I think this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, yes, where you have just this sort of thing where they think it's a joke so hard that it stops being a joke. Yeah. One of the things that I learned from the damn woods and that I still swear by to this day is first it's a joke, then it's a lifestyle, right? Yes. So to your point, yes, there is absolutely a risk of inducing this stuff. If you take it, don't take it seriously, even like as a meme. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's. And that's something you and I have talked about just countless times. Yes, absolutely. Yes, so as it's as I'm sitting here pondering on that, I mean, yeah, of course you can get possessed by going to a metal show. Yeah, I mean, it's not guaranteed to happen, but look out, because yeah, I suppose think about there's no reason you couldn't. I sound like a 90s TV evangelist now, but I talked to myself into it accident. The entire reason I invited you on this was to go to you into re-spreading the Satanic Panic from the 90s. Well, it needs to be done, so. It's true. All right, yeah, I think that wraps it up for me. I think 45 minutes puts us on a good time span. I don't really have much else to add or to say other than. Yeah, yeah, I need to record with you again. Dude, this went so fast. Right. It's been such a pleasure reconnecting. I'm glad you're getting back in the game. Oh, thank you. I suppose one thing. Let me go ahead and shake some rust off for you. Yes. Despite this being your show, we're simultaneously releasing on SDS. Plug yourself for my listeners, please. Oh, hell yeah. I have been back on Twitter, or actually it's called now recently under the @devnotbulshedo, and that was the thing that I was wanting to say before we started, but I think it better now that we wrap up. I have been severely disappointed in all of you from what I've seen on the timeline. You have not spread enough disinformation. There has been too much genuine interacting with topics. You are all falling into the scyop, and we need to launch our own gaunter scyop in the form of ridiculous misinformation. To more absurd, the better. Trade events, fuck the couch, roll with it. It wasn't just a couch, it was the recliner too. Yes, exactly. This man is just a furniture fetishist. And not only did Tim won't suck off a horse, he also took it up to yes by a horse. It's a miracle that the man can still walk. It's good to have you back. Well, that energy has been sorely missing. It's a vintage bag. Yes. All I'm saying is we need to spread more bullshit into the timeline. But be careful with the kind of bullshit that you spread. Yes. Yes. Maybe that's a good note to leave it on. Let me just plug myself once more because I forgot the other half. The podcast this will go live on is most likely NRL or No Real Libertarian, which is found under an RSS feed under some such name. Perfect. All right. All right, man. Yeah, man. Boss, thank you so much for helping me set this up. And I'm sure I will get at you with another topic in the near future. Yeah, any time dude, like I said, it's a pleasure to have you back. Hell yeah, man. Let's plan on it. Hell yeah.