Friday, 29 June 2018

Sympathy For The Devil

In a scene like something from a horror movie, or the Ken Russell movie 'The Devils', Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione of the Palma di Montechiaro convent in southern Italy, woke after a fainting spell on the 11th of August 1676, with her face covered in ink.

Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione
Sister Maria Crocifissa della Concezione And Her Letters

She held in her hand several letters that she had apparently written whilst unconscious.

The letters were a mishmash of symbols and languages and were indecipherable. Fortunately Sister Maria's sisters at the convent were not in the 'burn the devils daughter' school of Catholicism.

Only One Of 'Satans Letters' Survives
Only One Of 'Satans Letters' Survives ... (this is a cleaned version)

So after Sister Maria stated that Satan made her write the letters, and possibly because no one could read them and the contents were therefore unknown, they chose to interpret the letters as having have been delivered by a demon, and that they were actually part of an elaborate scheme by Lucifer to turn her away from God.

And that indecipherable nature of the letters remained the case for the next 361 years, apart from the word 'Ohime' (Oh Me), which her Abbess took as a sign that Sister Maria was resisting the devils commands.

However finally this year, researchers at the Ludum Science Centre in Sicily claim to have decoded 15 lines of the only surviving letter, by using a piece of decryption code they found on the “dark web”. They used a program used by intelligence services to decipher secret messages ... they primed the software with Ancient Greek, Arabic, Latin and the Runic and Yazidi alphabets to de-scramble the letter.

Sister Maria had apparently become a skilled linguist during her time at the convent, and had access to texts in all these languages. The deciphered letter's contents were indeed devilish .... “God thinks he can free mortals, this system works for no one,” one of the translated lines reads. The text also describes the Trinity of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit as “dead weights,” and that both God and Zoroaster were invented by man. The text also added the words 'perhaps now, Styx is certain' .... Yazidism, is monotheistic, combining aspects of several monotheistic religions including Zoroastrianism practises, which is possibly why Sister Maria's letter references Zoroaster.

The scientists at the centre believe that Sister Maria invented the code herself, and may well have suffered from schizophrenic bouts, or bi-polar episodes, during which she imagined dialogues with the Devil. She was blessed in her own lifetime.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, numerous interested Satanic Sects have contacted the Ludum director, Daniele Abate since she published the findings. We forget that Satanists need to have evidence of their masters existence, just as much as the main monotheistic religions like evidence of their God.

6 comments:

  1. The devil's was a frightening movie. I have never been able to watch it a second time.

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    1. I agree that it certainly had many disturbing scenes which stick in the mind. Thanks for the comment.

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    2. The more concisely titled movie "Devil" wasn't a bad watch. I don't like horror movies in general, not that I find them frightening, I think you have to either have some belief in the supernatural to be frightened or be just be overly "jumpy". "The Rose" was good too.

      The results of decoding is interesting although I can't help thinking that thousands of nonsensical results were probably rejected while the ones which fit the narrative were kept.

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    3. If that's the one about the people trapped in a lift and one is the devil ... I saw that. Not bad. 'The devil's' directed by Ken Russell, was more about cruelty, and inhumanity in the name of religion and politics.

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    4. Yes, that's the one, in a lift - a little bit extra for claustrophobes.
      The Rose starred Sean Connery, deducing his way around an abbey.

      I really had to suspend my disbelief for Devil because it was "real" supernatural stuff whereas The Rose was about debunking superstition. On the other hand you have to get used to James Bond in a habit.

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    5. I think that you'll find that its titled The Name of the Rose (based on the book of the same name by Umberto Eco), which is why I didn't recognise your reference earlier. I have seen that as well. Good Movie.

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