Tag Archives: christianity

U Is For Unicorn: Origins Of A Mythical Creature

Despite saving the human race, Noah often gets a bad rap when it comes to the Unicorn–people blame their absence in the world on him not bringing any aboard the ark. I think this is typically done in jest, particularly by folks that don’t believe in the account of the biblical Flood, or in unicorns. Rest assured, though, the Unicorn did survive the Flood and is even mentioned in later books of the Old Testament:

God brought them [Jews] out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn.

Numbers 23:22

His glory is like the firstling of his bullock, and his horns are like the horns of unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth: and they are the ten thousands of Ephraim, and they are the thousands of Manasseh. 

Deuteronomy 33:17

Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast heard me from the horns of the unicorns.

Psalms 22:21

It should be noted that these verses are from the King James Version of the Bible–most other translations use “Wild ox”, rather than “Unicorn”. This is even more interesting—why exactly do unicorns appear in the King James Bible?

King James’ bible translation began in 1604 and was completed by 1611. But by the time of the translations commissioning, Unicorns were well-known in Europe, appearing on heraldry, while the mythical creatures’ horns (alicorns) were sold and traded, used in scepters, thrones, and ground up for medicinal purposes. Unicorns predate the King James bible by centuries–but just how far? 

Pliny, the Greek philosopher, wrote about the Unicorn: “The unicorn is the fiercest animal, and it is said that it is impossible to capture one alive. It has the body of a horse, the head of a stag, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, and a single black horn three feet long in the middle of its forehead. Its cry is a deep bellow.”

In the 7th Century, the scholar Isidore of Seville described the unicorn as “very strong and pierces anything it attacks. It fights with elephants and kills them by wounding them in the belly.” He further went on to add that “The unicorn is too strong to be caught by hunters, except by a trick: If a virgin girl is placed in front of a unicorn and she bares her breast to it, all of its fierceness will cease and it will lay its head on her bosom, and thus quieted is easily caught.”

Pierces an elephant in the belly… feet like an elephant. Wait a minute…

Pop culture is not alone in its depiction of the unicorn as a sleek equine. But what if there is a more grounded reality for the creature? What if Unicorns were not only real, but considerably different than the artistic expressions usually made by people who had never seen one? What if… the unicorn is a rhinoceros?

The Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) is a mono-horned version of the animal so often found in zoos today. It sports a single, white horn on its nose, rather than its forehead. And around the time Pliny described the “unicorn” in his writings, the Greeks were venturing into the Indian Rhino’s native lands…

At this point, you might be thinking “wasn’t the unicorn seen around the world—not just in India?” Well, yes and no. One-horned creatures have been described around the world, not just by the Greeks and Europeans. But that doesn’t mean they were the horny equines so often described. Other creatures can have single horns.

In 2008,  a one year old deer was discovered near Florence, Italy with only one horn—believed to be a genetic defect, as it’s twin had two horns. Could historical unicorns be mutants?

What about the fossil record? Were there ever any unicorns? As it turns out, there was once something more rhino-like, but with a more traditional mono unicorn horn in what is today Siberia: the Elasmotherium sibiricu.  Co-existing with the mammoth, it’s entirely possible carcasses of these creatures were once found and described–or maybe they survived into the modern era, as some claim the Mammoth has

And what about those unicorn horns? Where did they come from? They came from Vikings, who were accomplished sailors who often journeyed into the seas of the Narwhal, another one-horned creature that remained generally unknown until the 16th Century, allowing the trade in faux alicorns to spread far and wide, with specimens even presented to Popes and some horns remaining on display in museums into the modern era.

Whether they were mutants, monsters or just misunderstood, one thing is certain, the folklore of the unicorns will probably outlive the endangered Rhinoceros it was most likely inspired by.

212 – Miracle Worker? Faith Healing with Josh Tongol

The first thing I think of when I think of faith healing is psychic surgery, a form of bloody theater where a practitioner digs into a body without the use of tools and pulls out what’s ailing the patient. It was popular in the mid-20th Century in the Philippines and Brazil and even comedian Andy Kaufman underwent a 6-week psychic surgery regimen before he died of lung cancer in 1984 (how much he did it for show versus actually hoping to be cured is unknown.) It’s an unusual tradition that’s been called a “complete hoax” by the Federal Trade Commission. 

The Amazing Randi performing psychic surgery on The Tonight Show

The first thing Wendy could think of is Steve Martin in the movie Leap of Faith, where he plays a traveling huckster preacher going from town to town to “heal” people desperate for a little bit of holiness in their lives.

I’ve always thought the idea that God could heal you and just chooses not to completely absurd. I’ve always had a materialist bent and in this area particularly because it’s so easy for people to take advantage of the desperate and the sick, much like Steve Martin in the movie. 

But then I thought a little more about it. Faith healing is humanity’s oldest form of medicine. Before a shaman could figure out medicines, before there was chemotherapy, before there were even leeches(!) there was just the basic belief that you will get over your sickness and return to normal. There was the faith that you were going to get better. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t, but isn’t that belief part of what helps you get better?

Even Dungeons & Dragons has clerical healing.

My father grew up in the Christian Science tradition and we all know the stories about how Christian Scientists don’t go to Doctors (which would be a good follow-up episode to this one) and the “laying of hands” was a Christian as well as Jewish faith healing tradition for centuries. According to a Gallup poll in 2013, 39% of Americans go to church every week. And when you’re in church you pray for people that are sick. Even if we’re not believers, we know that good wishes probably can’t hurt them and a positive attitude might help. Now, I’m not making excuses for charlatans, but I am saying that while it might be different verbiage, a lot of us deal in “faith healing” a lot more than we think we do.

I think about a study that was done when I was in college in the 1990s where we were told about kids with cancer playing a video game that would fight their illness and how it had promising results. That was actually the aspect of the field that I was most excited about. But isn’t faith healing just another form of psychological therapy to go along with modern medicine?

Joshua Tongol

Our guest in this episode is Joshua Tongol. While he comes from a Filipino family that was raised in a Christian tradition where they believe in miracles like you would have seen at Steve Martin’s church in Leap of Faith. Josh was born missing a hand and all his life he prayed to be healed. He went to Christian revivals and services when he grew up in California purposely trying to heal himself, he truly believed that God would re-grow his hand. 

It didn’t happen and Josh found himself at odds with his faith. That is, until he started seeing healing in his own life that neither he nor his doctors could explain. Josh’s journey might have taken him away from the church of his youth, but it brought him towards a new understanding of spirituality. In this conversation, we talk about:

  • How Josh’s life was ruined by debilitating sciatica 
  • What transformed in his life that made him a believer again
  • The first steps anyone can take in using their belief to help them heal
  • More than healing, astral travel and how Josh started having out-of-body experiences as well

Josh Tongol has a podcast called The FlipsideRethinking Spirituality and is the author of two books, So You Thought You Knew: Letting Go of Religion and The Secret to Awesomeness: Creating the Life You’ve Always Wanted. He currently resides in the Philippines and you can visit him at his site. JoshuaTongol.com.

For this week’s song, we were inspired to sing about the televangelists of our youths. Guys like Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts were always making promises if they just got a little bit more money. God would provide more for you if you provided for them. And since we were hearkening back to the 80s, we went with some classic 80s’ Heavy Metal style. Here’s Sunspot with “Miracle Worker”.

You say I’ve gotta God Complex,
I don’t think you understand
there’s a millions who know the truth,
they’ve seen my bleeding hands.

The more you believe
the more you will be healed
the more you accept
the more it is real
Faith in mysterious ways
How much can you pay?
Miracle Worker

I feed on trust, maybe placebo
Some use anesthetic, I’ve got the opiate of people.

The more you believe
the more you will be healed
the more you accept
the more it is real
Faith in mysterious ways
How much can you pay?
Miracle Worker




173 – Santa Claus Is Real: Toys, Traditions, and Tulpas

Ho ho ho, friends, it’s a Yuletide tradition for us to uncover the weirdest stories we can about the Christmas season and this Holiday is no different. In the past we’ve covered everything from Krampus to Icelandic Christmas monsters to Holiday ghost stories and Alien Jesus, but we’ve hardly talked about the star of the show in most children’s imagination over the holidays, and that is Santa Claus! It’s St. Nick’s Day on December 6th, so we thought this is the perfect week to talk about him.

In this episode we go through the long history of Saint Nicholas, from his beginnings as a young holy man in 4th century Turkey who came from a rich family and was a deeply generous bishop who saved young women from lives of prostitution to eventually being venerated as a saint because he brought three murdered children back from the dead and he telepathically appeared in the dreams of Emperor Constantine. Awesome, right?

And while Saint Nicholas was a hugely popular saint in Europe in the Middle Ages, he wasn’t always a bearded fat man in a red fur suit who cam e down your chimney,  that didn’t happen until he came to the New World and was popularized as a character in Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit From St. Nicholas” poem in 1822 and Thomas Nast’s illustrations in the 1870s. And of course, Coke spent a ton of money advertising the jolly old elf too, helping out with that red and white suit he’s famous for.

santa claus is real coca-cola
Santa needs some of that “old school” Coca-Cola so he can stay up all night to bring you gifts!

Because Christmas itself is a little bit of a Pagan holiday (burning the Yule log a the Winter Solstice has been going on way before Baby Jesus), there’s a touch of Pagan in our Santa Claus, influenced by Odin and his eight-legged horse! And of course even Saint Nick can’t please everyone, because some Christians think that Santa is actually an avatar of Satan. And while most of us might think that’s kinda funny, the same Puritans who gave us Thanksgiving (ahem… and the Salem Witch Trials) also banned Christmas and made celebrating it a punishable offense. There was too much drinking, too much revelry, and just too much fun for them. The Puritans thought of it was a wasteful and decadent celebration, so they banned it in the New World and in England for a few decades in the Seventeenth Century.

santa claus is real santa's slay
Maybe Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans knew something about St. Nick that we don’t…

Truly my favorite part of this discussion though is when we start getting down to brass tacks. Santa Claus is real and people have been reporting sightings of him for awhile now. Yes, the same way they report sightings of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and UFOs. Kids and adults have seen Santa under the tree, they’ve seen him and his sleigh flying over their houses, they’ve seen him peering into their bedrooms… Yeah, I was taken aback as well.

So, what is it? Is there really an immortal who lives at the North Pole and stops time every year on Christmas Eve to deliver presents to the good boys and girls of the world? Could hundreds of millions of children believe him into existence? A tulpa created with the Christmas wishes of centuries of kids? Could there be something supernatural happening and the kids just interpret it as Santa Claus, kinda like the High Strangeness UFO discussion we had with Robbie Graham and Mike Clelland? That’s gotta be up for you to decide. For me, it’s like my Mom always said, “If you believe in Santa, he’s real.”

A few years back, we participated in a Christmas benefit album for the Salvation Army, we put our own spin on a track called “Hey Santa” by Madison songwriter Joe Snare, who put the compilation together.

 

Hey Santa,
You’ll be coming soon,
I cut my hair and changed my tune,
I’m a brand new man this year.
Hey Santa,
I’ve been counting days,
I cleaned up all my nasty ways,
I got your message loud and clear.

That lump of coal you gave me last year really made your point.
I’ve toned it down a notch or two,
look how I cleaned up this joint.
You’ve got Christmas right there in your hands,
Hey, Santa, won’t you give me one more chance?

Hey Santa,
I’ve been clean and straight,
you got no need to hesitate,
put me on the witness stand.

I couldn’t help but notice how my tree was kinda bare,
last time Santa came to town, you didn’t leave a present there.
You’ve got Christmas right there in your hands,
Hey, Santa, won’t you give me one more chance?

Hey Santa,
When you fill your sack,
don’t forget about me, Jack.
Because I’ll be looking out for you, you know.

Now you and I know I’m not quite an angel or a saint,
I’m doing everything I can,
to be someone that I ain’t.
You’ve got Christmas right there in your hands,
Hey, Santa, won’t you give me one more chance?

135 – Demonology 101: Dennis W. Carroll Vs Evil

Dennis W. Carroll, the co-founder the Carolina Society for Paranormal Research and Investigation had his first encounter with demonology as a teenager in church. The preacher had brought up a troubled man and the whole congregation prayed for him. While everyone’s eyes were closed and the were praying furiously for the man’s soul, Dennis saw three balls of what he describes as “dirty light” flee from the man’s body and disappear into the sky.

From that moment on, Dennis was a believer and has spent much of his life learning more about the invisible world of the supernatural and demonology. In addition to co-founding the CSPRI, he has also authored two books on investigation, Beyond The Shadows: A Field Guide to The Paranormal and The Road Unseen: A Paranormal Journey Into High Strangeness, as well as two collections of poetry influenced by his investigations, In Sunshine and In Shadow.

dennis w carroll demonologist
Dennis W. Carroll compelling some evil entity with the Power of Christ

Dennis has been on hundreds of investigations over the years and he shares what he’s learned as not only a “location exorcist” (i.e., a guy that blesses houses and buildings to drive out any negative energy) but a demonologist who has fought powers that are conspiring to bring down the human race in what Carroll claims is a highly organized ring of evil.

Dennis W Carroll Demonology Demonologist
Demonologist At Your Service

Also in this episode, we feature a quick preview of the latest feature from our friends at The Singular Fortean blog. It’s St, Patrick’s season so they’re featuring legends and folklore of The Emerald Isle all this month.

One of the ways that Dennis talks about opening yourself to demonic possession is by focusing too much on your negative emotions and very few things make people as negative as a bad breakup. This week’s song is all about indulging in those negative emotions and allowing yourself to fully hate your ex. Which might be good for singing songs, but not so much for defending against infernal influences, it’s called “Eat Out My Heart”.

I’ve been waiting so long for you to call,
but now you’re finally here and I’m a wreck.
Worked out a little, even did my hair,
but I’m not the man I used to be back there.

I hope you have an ugly boyfriend,
I hope you’re working at a carwash,
I hope your life went down the drain and everything is not okay,
I hope your best years passed you up.

I dodged a bullet,
One or two since then,
You’re not the only one who still calls me up.
I’m still the jerk who listens to your problems,
I never told you all the times,
I’d wished you died in a car crash.

I hope you have an ugly boyfriend,
I hope you’re working at a carwash,
I hope your life went down the drain and everything is not okay,
I hope your best years passed you up.

I’m eating out my heart.
I’m eating out my heart.

And I’m not happy for you,
That you’re a better person without me.
I’m so glad you decided to apologize,
When I’m too numb to care,
I’m just too numb to care.

I hope you have an ugly boyfriend,
I hope you’re working at a carwash,
I hope your life went down the drain and everything is not okay,
I hope your best years passed you up.

97 – The Christian Whistleblower: An Interview With Jeffrey Daugherty

Jeffrey Daugherty spent twenty years of his life as a Christian preacher and over a hundred thousand hours studying the New Testament in its original language. By looking at the native text, he started seeing a stark difference in the books written by the apostle Paul versus the apostle John.

These differences led to a crisis of faith for Daugherty, who was conflicted between his discoveries and the Church that he had given his whole life to. He had a family to provide for and his entire existence revolved around his affiliation with his church, from where he lived to what he ate to who he spent his time with. As he talked to his elders and asked them about the contradictions, his concerns were swept under the carpet with the “God works in mysterious ways” response or being told that his interpretation was mistaken or his faith just wasn’t strong enough.

But that wasn’t enough for Jeffrey Daugherty. He saw an agenda in the writings of Paul, an agenda of control and manipulation that seemed contradictory to the teachings of Jesus. Using the modern standard of the Bible, the King James Version, Daugherty saw changes in the text over time, once by being vetted and translated by the Roman Empire early in Christianity’s history and again by the English king in the Seventeenth Century.

He re-edited the New Testament so that the books are in chronological order and with Paul’s writings removed and this Diamond New Testament is the place he believes you should start if you really want to understand what Jesus (who Daugherty refers to as Yeshua to separate him from the character created in Paul’s testament) was trying to say.

Moving on from there, with his Final Message From The Last Apostle book, The Christian Whistleblower finds an extraterrestrial alien agenda in the original language of the writings of the Apostle John. And then his book, Apostle Paul Anti-Christ, is about the fear and guilt used to control humanity by studying the original text of  Paul’s writings.  His books are absolutely fascinating and to say his writing and research is provocative is a massive understatement.

This is more than your standard “organized religion is a scam to control humanity by unscrupulous bishops and priests”, Daugherty is flat out saying that a dark being is using Christianity itself to set the stage to take over our planet.

And if that is the kind of idea that you find fascinating like we do, then you’re going to want to learn more about The Christian Whistleblower and check out more of his books and videos. His combination of scholarship, earnestness, and dynamic presentation might even make you a believer.

This week’s song is an unreleased Sunspot track that we arranged for acoustic guitar and violin, “Flesh and Blood”.

Why did you let them take control.
of your mind?
Why couldn’t you see the could burst,
in your eye?
And I won’t believe
in a love that deceives
and I won’t waste my faith foolishly
on cosmic rays
and mysterious ways
that never gave a damn for us anyway
And heaven and earth can fade away
and the mountains might fall
and all the power to which we pray
might never answer our call
Flesh and blood is all we’ve got to survive
and I know
There but for grace or lack of, go I
You dreamed of Hell but you forgot
to look inside
The gravity of your hate weighs you down,
so why don’t you fight?
And the tragedy of humanity
is to know our shells might be empty
and do you feel no shame
for all these lives in vain?
Who would kill themselves just to honor his Name?
And heaven and earth can fade away
and the mountains might fall
and all the power to which we pray
might never answer our call
Eloi Eloi
Lama sabachthani
Eloi Eloi
Lama sabachtahni
And heaven and earth can fade away
and the mountains might fall
and all the power to which we pray
might never answer our call
Flesh and blood is all we’ve got to survive
and I know
There but for grace or lack of, go I.