The beautiful side of evil First published in Subjects Occultism , Parapsychology , Psychic surgery , Christian converts , Christian life , Biography. Edition Notes Bibliography: p. Genre Biography. Classifications Dewey Decimal Class M48 A32 The Physical Object Pagination p. Community Reviews 0 Feedback? Loading Related Books. October 21, August 10, June 24, Edited by ImportBot. September 1, And, then how she came to faith in Jesus Christ. I was turned off by the preachy feel in some areas, but it was contained and a very small portion of the whole book It has opened my eyes into deeper understanding of scripture that warns us of these very things!
Here is a link to the website that belongs to her and her husband: So the book is worth just that part alone. Here is a video below by way of example. I have three pages left, and I read this in one sitting. When she turned into Hermanito, Pachita took johana masculine mannerisms and gained the ability to perform what is commonly referred to as psychic surgery.
Johanna Michaelsen is a noted author, researcher, lecturer and authority on the occult. He had begun to attend seances in an attempt to reach out to his son who had died unexpectedly. She states she is Charismatic and believes johwnna all the gifts of the spirit. Once she knew that these things were wrong, she renounced all affiliation with the occult and occult practices. Johanna Michaelsen apparently also had a beahtiful adverse association with Hal Lindsey, the influential pre-trib rapture and once saved always saved teacher!
Simply that it opened my eyes in my youth to the darkness that surrounds us reaching depths of unfathomable wickedness. Rather than being the last time of seeing occult activity at any church, it would become the norm. There, at the end of my bed, suspended in mid-air, floated a grotesque head, severed , oozing blood and gore at the neck. The thick black hair and heavy beard were matted with blood and the mouth hung limp and open letting the groans escape it.
Then the groans changed to a soft, deep laugh that slowly faded with the head. On other nights l would walk into my room and see. After a few seconds it would fade away, while the same slow laughter surrounded me. Over the years several maids quit and many refused to spend the night in our house, saying that "something gave fright" in it.
Yet it apparently never manifested itself to Mom and Dad. There are other memories of those years-happier memories of trips to the local pyramids to collect ar rowheads and rocks, of hugging soft kittens and romp ing through lush green gardens with assorted dogs as we "helped Mama" tend to her hibiscus bushes.
There were days spent in the sunshine by the pool with Dad dy and lively games of checkers in which he sometimes let me beat him. And I will never forget the sound of Mama's faint Georgia accent, barely perceptible as she read from Charlotte's Webb or Stuart Little, but which burst forth in all its unintelligible glory when confronted with the Southern-fried tales of Uncle Remus.
To her great disappointment, she never got past the first few pages with us, and I was a sophomore in college before I finally figured out what a "Bre'r Rabbit" was. I also remember ballet classes, enchanting but for a broken leg acquired at the age of seven while practicing fire-bird leaps in the garden after rehearsal one eve ning, and the memory of a flubbed recital which is best left unrecounted.
But mostly I remember the nuns. The then austerely garbed sisters of the Sacred Heart of Mary arrived in Cuernavaca in time for me to be enrolled in the third grade. The nuns were formidable in their habits and seemed to move about the antique panelled halls and marble columns of the school in an aura of untouchable dignity and holiness, an illusion further enforced by mandatory curtsies to be rendered at every encounter.
Underneath the blanket of that impression lived warm, caring women who, for the most part, did their best to prepare us for the world in general and college in particular, in light of which I will forever bitterly re sent having been forced to graduate the year before Sister Sarah taught her World Literature class. Bishop Pike and his family spent a month in Cuer navaca in , the summer I was fourteen. The Senior Warden of our church to whom the privilege of hosting the Bishop would normally have fallen was ill, so the task fell on Daddy, the Junior Warden of St.
The two families seemed to take an immediate liking to one another and spent a good deal of time together during that month. I remember lively evenings in our home during which the Bishop discussed the subject matter of some complex book he was writing while Father offered highly creative, if not altogether ap propriate suggestions for titles. The Bishop brought three of his children with him.
Connie, a year or so older that I, was attractive, slender and very popular with the American boys who had come home from school for the summer. The Bishop's two sons fell into the typical "preacher's kids" category. Chris was thirteen and didn't seem to like me in particular.
He once took my finger and twisted it un til I cried. The more disturbing of the two, however, was Jim. At seventeen he had a dark, brooding air, which could erupt easily into violence when he had.
It was hard for me to understand what seemed to be such overt rebellion and dramatic public outbursts. I was frightened of him, yet felt a strange af finity for him. I sensed in him the same unanswered cry for help I carried within myself. I thought of him fre quently during the next few years. In February of young Jim was dead. He shot himself while on drugs in a New York hotel.
His death and the widely publicized display of psychic phenomena which followed proved to be a turning point in my life. My heart leaped when I heard that the Bishop was attending seances in order to contact his dead son.
I wasn't the only one experiencing bizarre phenomena! Perhaps in the Bishop's search I would find the key that would help me understand and deal with the beings who surrounded me. I now eagerly read any book or article I could find on the occult. Strange dreams of myself in different forms and different places came to me as I slept and I would hear a voice within my mind tell me these were memories of different incarnations.
My thoughts were filled with death and the peace it could bring. There were times I felt imprisoned by my body almost as though I had been dropped into it by mistake, and I yearned to be free of it, although I never would have dared to take my own life. The deeper I studied, the more aware I became of the spirits' almost tangible companionship; not all seemed to be evil. I saw dark figures by my bed, heard their soft voices cal ling to me, telling me what people were thinking, thoughts which often betrayed what their mouths were saying.
The resulting distrust and dislike I felt for most people gradually deepened into solid contempt. Yet my feel ings were generally masked in such outward com posure and serenity that an old Spanish priest once. She reached out to me as one might to a frightened kitten. Her concern and companionship made the black depression of my last two years of high school almost bearable.
During this time school had become little more than a necessary evil. I plodded through my classes, having basically lost interest in anything that was taught.
I per formed because it was expected. Then one day during my senior year in high school, the subject of witchcraft was brought up in class. Was it real?
Most of the girls expressed skepticism. Is it so improbable that there are those who see them and have, perhaps, learned the secret of harnessing these forces? Perhaps even some of us here are learning to do that," I added softly. There was an uncomfortable pause before the nun in charge of the class cleared her throat and dismissed us for our break.
Do they really work? Can you help me get him back? She performed a strange ritual alone, deep in the forest, using two clay dolls she made, a magic circle, a short wooden stake and a fresh , raw sheep's heart. Mysterious incantations com pleted the ritual.
Her boyfriend, for better or worse, was back within the week. Frankly, it seemed a bit ex treme to me; witchcraft was something l had always been afraid of because of what to me were its obvious satanic overtones. Besides, a lot of the ritual struck me as being somewhat ridiculous and overstated. But if Terry need ed a ritual and was desperate enough to think a boyfriend worth the effort, then why should l stand in her way. That weekend l received a call from Terry. All was ready. Just one small problem, though-this business about the sheep's heart.
Was that really necessary? It was. Well then, could l help her locate one. You must find it yourself. That's part of the ritual," l told her, admitting inwardly that the sheep's heart was every bit as repulsive to me as it was to her. Terry tried for days to coax me into helping her. What had initially amused me was now beginning to ir ritate me.
Finally one morning l turned to her, interrup ting another of her pleas for help , and said, "Terry , you've been bothering me with this long enough.
You would do better to leave me alone and to watch out for your hands! The skin up to the forearms had been scrubbed and scoured until it was raw and angry looking.
The explanation was simple enough: She had been dying a friend's hair the night before and the gloves had leaked. But the look on her face plainly said she felt I had hexed her and was to blame.
In any case, it was the last I heard of the sheep's heart. Later, however, several of her friends approached me in the hall. One of them suddenly held up a cross to my face with all the earnestness of Doctor Von Helsing before the countenance of Dracula, just to see if I, perhaps, was a true witch after all and would fall writhing to the floor at the sight.
Ironically, it was the cross I clung to in the midst of the agonizing loneliness and despair I felt closing in on me from every side. As for Terry, she dropped the subject altogether, but when I contracted infectious hepatitis in an epidemic at the school a month later, she sent a note on a card jok ing somewhat nervously about the hex she had placed on me in revenge. The woods stood thick and dark behind me as the sun dropped slowly out of sight, the cue for countless frogs and crickets to begin their night ly recital.
I had not been at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia three weeks before I again succeeded in having myself labeled the one thing I knew I was not-a witch. On that first day of class, Dr. Bryce ' paced up and down the room critically eyeing the freshman troop of would-be actresses and directors who sat before her.
You must become interested in all that which stimulates your imagination, in that which is dif ferent. Bryce stopped, then turned and stared at me for a moment, as did the rest of the class.
Some girls from my acting class sat next to me and began speaking about Dr. Bryce-what a fascinating person she was, what a fabulous sense of humor she had, how exciting her class was proving to be. Do you know much about it? We really want to know! My au dience was with me all the way. Then one girl asked if I could cure warts. There was an enormous one on the finger she held in front of me.
Just give it a couple of weeks. I forgot the whole thing until one afternoon two weeks later when I was accosted by a girl with a strange expression on her face. She looked vaguely familiar.
For what? It fell off last night, and within the two weeks. Thanks a lot! I looked down at her extended finger. Sure enough. The silly thing, which I now remembered vividly, was indeed gone. I knew I had nothing to do with it, but if she wanted to think I had, that was fine with me.
Word of my power over protruberant viral appen dages that's "warts" to you spread quickly through the campus, and "witchcraft" came to be the most like ly explanation for what had occurred.
After all, I did dress mostly in black and spent long hours walking alone in the woods collecting mysterious herbs and leaves used as decorations on my desk , and I did have a statue of Mephistopheles on my dresser, a gift from my parents' shop and a takeoff on my mother's graduate school motto: "He must needs go whom the devil driveth" and I did speak of the occult to Dr.
Bryce on the first day of class. Besides, it was obvious she liked me that alone might have sufficed to build their case against me. Then , of course, there was the matter of the subject of my freshman term paper. I had elected to write on voodooism in Haiti-an unfor tunate choice, I will admit, but then it was the only in teresting subject I could think of at the time. Worst of all, I was in theater and loved cats. What more proof could anyone ask for?
Witchcraft was the only possible answer. By now I had collected a small group of par tisans who reported these conversations to me. My initial reaction of frustration to all this began to give way to amusement. It is rather fun to watch them squirm, though.
It had been over a month since I had been aware of its presence. Perhaps I would never see it again. The prospect of that made me breathe a little easier. Then it happened. It was cold and silent in the theater that October evening. Everyone on campus had gone to dinner. I had been working for over five hours straight and was tired, but decided to work overtime in order to com plete some props needed for rehearsal that night.
Bryce had appointed me properties mistress for the first show of the year, an original musical. I did not wish to incur her inimitable "heads will roll" invective which I knew, however much she might like me, would be forthcoming if the "realistic" gray fish needed for the monger's stall were not ready.
The forfeit of hot dinner seemed a small price to pay for the keeping of my head. The tiny workshop behind the enormous stage was filled with the stench of stock paint simmering on the burner. I switched it off and gave a final stir to the bub bling grey brew. Just a few more touches and those mackerel would fool anyone at thirty paces.
I turned to reach for my brush and stopped. The temperature in the room suddenly dropped. I shivered. I glanced around the room to see if perhaps I had left a window open. They were all shut.
Then I. What are you doing here-Get out! There was no one there. Then the voice seemed to be com ing from the stage: "Get out-this is my time. Then I saw a large glowing ball of light pulsating slowly in the darkness at center stage. The woman's voice came again, screaming hysterically now.
I didn't know this was your time. I'm leaving. I turned and walked slowly down the steps that led from the stage into the auditorium. As I reached the back of the auditorium , the voice from the pulsing light screamed again. I was halfway across the courtyard when I felt an icy stare cut through my back. I glanced over my shoulder and whirled around.
There, in the doorway through which I had just come, stood a woman in a long white dress. She stared at me for a moment and then threw her head back and laughed. I turned and ran. There was scarcely a time when I was in that theater alone a situation I now avoided as much as possible that I didn't hear the same shrill laughter, usually ac companied by loud footsteps or the sound of rustling skirts.
There were times when others with me sensed that same presence. Donna, a fellow acting student, was one of those. We had both been cast in Enid Bagnold's The Chalk.
One evening a few days before tryouts I felt a sudden compulsion to draw vine leaves. When I read the play and saw that Madrigal, the protagonist, spent many hours drawing vine leaves on altar candles, I knew the part would be mine even though I wasn't much of an actress. I spent so many years feeling I was not part of my body and wanting to disassociate myself from it, that now when I needed to convey to an au dience the inner being and soul of the character I was portraying, it refused to respond with ease to my com mand.
I was having an especially difficult time making myself heard in the back rows, so this night Donna of fered to stay after rehearsal and help me work on my projection. The curtains on stage had been drawn shut. I stood on the wide apron, center stage, while Donna settled into a seat in the back of the theater. We had been working on a scene for several minutes when I heard a sound like a sigh and soft footsteps directly behind me on the other side of the curtain.
The feeling someone was about to reach out through the part in the curtains and place a hand on my shoulder was overwhelming. Abruptly I spun around and flung aside the folds. As the curtains parted, Donna and I saw a filmy white figure retreat into the darkness.
Then soft footsteps and a softer high pitched laugh like the one I had heard before echoed as it withdrew. That was the last time Donna offered to work late with me in the theater.
I tried to appease the hatred of this phantom woman with offerings. Several times I gathered small bouquets of colorful leaves and wild flowers which I left on stage for her. I've brought you these. Please, can't we be friends.
Then fear and anger would swirl around me in. Thanksgiving came quickly that first year at Wesleyan. I spent it with my mother's sister, Dorothea, and her family. Aunt Dot in her warm, gentle manner immediately made me feel at home. To ease the trauma of my first holiday spent away from my parents, she gave me a gift , a Ouija board. I heard of it through my studies but still had not realized how easily they were obtained in the States.
As soon as I returned to Wesleyan I showed the board to Katy' and Jill ' , who roomed together down the hall. They were as eager as I to try it, as was my roommate, Ruth '. We spent many hours working the board in a dimly lit room. The sense of a presence would surround us-then the marker would begin spelling out messages. It was all amusing and seemed quite innocent until one evening the presence that arrived was overwhelming in its feeling of evil. The water pipes in the room began to bang loudly and bright lights seemed to flash at the doorway.
I looked up and saw the same misty white-garbed woman I had seen at the theater. That experience, plus the fact that some ugly predic tions which the board had made about one of the girls present had very nearly come true, frightened me so badly that I vowed never to use the board again. There was something dangerous and sinister about it. It was no innocent toy. I had sworn all the participants in the board ex periments to silence, but, not surprisingly, word of the strange occurrences spread through the campus.
She was certain I had hexed her and she would die. Girls would spot me coming down the hall of certain dorms, and doors would slam on either side. Early one morning a friend awoke to see me stand ing outside her window. She was about to ask me in, when she suddenly realized her window was on the second floor.
I was in my room at the time, asleep. In my dream I could see her lying in bed, awakening with a start as she looked out her window. Unfortunately, the president of the college heard of the commotion, of which I seemed to be the source. One morning I passed him in the cafeteria. I hear you're indulging in the powers of the occult, my deah" he drawled.
You be careful now. Good day," he said as he backed out the door. I heard later from an upperclassman that several girls had been expelled for attending witches' sabbaths down by the lake several years before I arrived. They claimed responsibility for an unusually severe hailstorm which pummeled the campus shortly after their dismissal, so it was understandable if the president was somewhat fidgety about the subject.
I was tired of leading men, recruited from the art department or the Air Force base, who gulped tranquilizers on opening night and then proceeded to ad lib the entire script. I also wanted additional courses in directing and makeup. Most of all I wanted a sense of freedom.
Life for me at Wesleyan had become as stifling as that in Mexico, where every move was watched and accounted for lest my reputa tion be permanently maimed. I knew I would miss Dr. Bryce and the evenings spent discussing theater, listening to Rachmaninoff, Vaughan Williams, and Tchaikovsky, but I had to move. I certainly was to find the "freedom" I wanted, but as far as any further progress in theater it was the worst move I could have made.
I stepped inside the quaint, peaceful theater and looked down at the stage. How different this theater and the whole campus were from what I had left behind at Wesleyan. I walked down to the stage, placed my hands on the ledge and looked across to the wood floorboard.
No melodrama-just a statement of fact. Yet the feeling, unexpectedly, was warm and embracing-so unlike the cold hatred of the being at Wesleyan. Tears ran down my face. I had finally come home. Nevertheless, the transition to Chapel Hill was not an easy one. Coed classes were strange to me. In act ing class especially, I blossomed into a prime example of how a suddenly uncovered gamut of inhibitions can stifle a performance. My acting coach seemed to think playing the part of a nymphomaniac, and hurtling de fiant and obscene raspberries at the class, would somehow break the barrier of my "hangups.
It was obvious to me Professor Benecroft' felt. All the confidence I had sensed from Dr. Bryce in my growing ability vanished. What talent I had was not enough to overcome a growing sense of defeat.
Well, what did it matter? I had known for several months that I would probably never go into acting as a career. I wanted to change to a directing major but was unable to do so because of the way the program was set up at the time. All the courses I had hoped to take when I made my decision to leave Wesleyan were now unavailable to me. So acting became a cover, an ex cuse.
I could give full reign to my eccentricities I had come to accept them as such and knew few people would question them. After all, I was "in the theater. The theater brought a number of us into a special bond-a kind of secret brotherhood.
After rehearsals we would sometimes gather in Jack' and Adam's' room on the top floor of Graham Memorial, our theater building, to smoke pot or hash and talk. I didn't even know what pot was until now, but in my new surroundings it seemed innocent enough. It was an interesting group. Jack was an acting ma jor. Despite his determination to play Richard Ill he was kind and gentle.
He had a good singing voice and I enjoyed watching his craggy, serious face as he bent over his guitar. Adam, his roommate, was in tech and had the most marvelous auburn hair I had ever seen. One morning not long after I arrived at Chapel Hill, Kevan informed me. It never occurred to me they would even know what a Ouija board was. Kevan blushed a bit and stammered, "Well, it, it said you are the incarnation of a priestess from another planet. Actually, everyone is just a little afraid of you.
It sounded ridiculous when he said it, but what the board had told them was astonishingly close to what I had felt about myself for many years. They can be dangerous. I gave Kevan a side-long glance as we con tinued walking, evaluating him in a new light.
It was obvious his knowledge of metaphysics was limited, but at least he had the nerve to come directly to me with his questions. Perhaps I had found a friend who would understand. Beck' was part of the group also. He reminded me of a portrait I had once seen of Shakespeare, with his large brown eyes, long hair, and high forehead. Beck liked me, but I kept him at arm's length for well over a year. Damon-dark, brooding, intense-reminded me of myself. He had a girlfriend, a lovely dark-haired girl, and that disappointed me.
I knew I would probably never get a chance to know him. As much as! I could sense his presence even though there had not yet been any physical manifestation. I called him "Professor Koch" after the founder of Playmakers. Then, late one night , the summons came. I was awakened by dark figures standing by my bed, whispering, murmuring, beckoning me to the theater.
I rose, dressed quietly so as not to awaken Paula ' , my roommate, and ran through the arboretum and across the silent campus to the theater. I had managed to ob tain my own key to Playmakers within weeks of arriv ing at Chapel Hill. I slipped into the dark hall, pulled the doors shut behind me, then ran up the few steps to the light switch. Soft lights filled the theater. I sat on the steps by the stage and waited, knowing I had been summoned, but still not certain why.
Minutes passed, then I heard the inner swinging panels at the front en trance begin hitting against the locked doors. The sound stopped as abruptly as it had begun. Then a two-dimensional, hazy figure of a man with thick grey hair and dressed in dark striped pants and a white shirt with an odd little tie appeared at the door. He paused and looked at me for a moment-then drifted towards me.
He stopped halfway down the ai sle, sat in a seat, and looked at me again. There was no need. I sensed he knew ali i was thinking, all the expectation tinged with fear I was ex-. A melody filled the theater-urgent, beautiful, a song of unrestrained longing and loneliness.
The melody, in minor key like an old Hebrew desert song, rose and fell and spoke to me of the serenity of death. Then I realized my voice had become the instrument for that melody, that it was coming through my mouth, that it had become my own.
When the song had run its course I stood, opened my eyes and looked again at Professor Koch. He smiled at me, then faded quietly from my sight. The gift of the song had been given. It was time to leave. Several days later, the Little People made their ap pearance. Their small ugly faces were plump, ruddy and their eyes twinkled as they peeked out at me from behind a wood pile at the theater workshop. Frequently four or five of them accompanied me on the walks I took through the mossy graveyard planted just behind my dormitory.
They never spoke-just played and romped and made me smile. Yet sometimes, unlike the certainty of what I saw in the theater, I wondered if I really saw them-if they were really there. The harsh ring of the phone startled me, and my head turned sharply towards the sound. Several candles stood lit about the room casting strange, un dulating shadows on the walls. The sweet aroma of myrrh and frankincense burning on a small coal filled my head.
The ring came a second time. I turned from the dresser where I had been standing, and lifted the receiver off its hook. I need to talk to you. May I come over now?
What does he want, I wonder. He has spoken to me only a few times, but I've felt him watch me with those dark eyes of his. How strange that he should call. His deformed, bald head tilted forward as he sat cross-legged, his chin resting on. His mouth curved upward in a mirthful knowing smirk. He looked wise and ancient, this "old man with wrinkled dugs. Tiresias gave me my "language" one night while still at Wesleyan as I sat staring at him in the flickering candlelight-an unspoken language half Chinese, half Arabic in appearance, which, when written, could ex press every emotion, every raging passion of a soul, which was unable or, perhaps, just too afraid to translate its surging life into the spoken word.
And the longing and hope and love that I wrote I surrounded with the vines I first drew for Madrigal-thick, full vines from which these fragile feelings could draw their strength so that they would not die before they were fulfilled. There was a soft knock on the door before it swung open.
A tall, thin figure with piercing, strangely slanted eyes stood in the hallway. A faint half-smile played about the corners of his lips.
He carried a long black cape which he was using for his performance as Count Dracula, the current Playmakers' production. Eliot- The Wasteland. He stared intently at me for several seconds, then drew something out of his pocket-two small lumps of tin foil-and placed them on the dresser in front of Tiresias. He carefully unwrapped the tablets and handed me one. A faint bitter taste hit the back of my throat as I swallowed it. I passed the cup to Damon and watched as he placed the second white tablet in his mouth and swallowed.
It's cold outside and we'll be walking. We stepped outside into the crisp clear Carolina night and made our way across campus. Within minutes the entire world seemed transported to a fairy land where tiny diamonds flashed and sparkled and burst into multi-colored flames everywhere I looked.
What awesome beauty was around me. I felt as though at any second my spirit would be lifted from my body and flung open-armed into the sparkling universe around me, never to return. We made our way to Graham Memorial. Jack and Adam weren't home. We stepped back out into the glossy darkness. And I was flying, set free at last from this body which had shackled me to earth.
I looked down at myself walking beside Damon and wondered what it was that kept my body gliding there beside him. We floated through the night for hours-or. Damon moved ahead of me. He no longer was a talented actor rehearsing the role of Count Dracula in his long black cape.
He was Dracula. I looked about me as I walked and the rocks became faces with flesh that shriveled and fell away leaving only skulls with gaping eyes and scream ing mouths. I forced my mind to see the rocks I knew were there. Damon stopped beside a crumbling gravestone. He turned and looked at me, his eyes hard and cold, the half-smile on his white face ghastly.
Then he slowly bent to the ground and stretched himself out along the grave and folded his arms upon his chest. I stood by the grave next to him and then lay down beside him, also like one dead.
I could hear voices all around me, voices that I had heard at other times while in the graveyard. Only now, somehow, they were clearer, less distant, and they were sobbing, mourning the death of a beloved. Their voices seemed to mingle oddly with the cries of those long caught within their graves, lamenting their im prisonment.
The voice beneath my body groaned and whimpered and pressed within the confines of its cof fin. Could it be that even in death there was no peace? I thought there would be peace.
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