One element of particular interest is
something I think of as the big anomaly, where people who seem to have
everything behave as if they have nothing. They are the exact opposite on the
inside of what they appear to be on the outside. They are a combination of
glamorous image and empty desperation.
I have some ideas to explore about this
phenomenon.
I said in a previous article that it is
perfectly natural for some people to feel that there is nothing for them but a
life of unbearable drabness. Their lives may indeed be very restricted, and
there may be little hope of any improvement in the future.
I also gave examples of cases where this
feeling was not natural and not based on reality: it was induced by an
unscrupulous black magic practitioner.
The feeling some people have that there is
only one thing to live for and that if they lose it or don’t get it they will
be destroyed is also understandable in some, perhaps extreme, cases. The last
ship might really have sailed or be about to sail. Sometimes one chance is all
we ever get. Some people may be devastated because they know very well that
they could have made the world a better place for many others if they had only got
what they wanted.
However, it is very strange when people with
many options, people such as Madeleine L’Engle’s Zachary Grey and Stella
Gibbons’s Esmé Scarron, feel this way and behave like desperate predators who
have pounced and missed, howling in rage and disappointment because now they
will starve to death.
What is going on here? We can only speculate.
Looking in all the wrong places
It seems to me that people such as the two
above sense that something of supreme importance is lacking in their lives.
They feel that they are in great danger and they desperately need something or
someone to save them, but they look for the solution in all the wrong places.
They desperately pin their hopes on something
in the outer world when they should be looking inside.
They need to realise that they are
disconnected and living in a void and a vacuum.
They need to think about good and evil. They
need to think about which side they are working for and what it is doing to
them.
They need to think about the effect that
their actions are having on others.
They need to do some research to find out how
people like them usually end up.
Zachary Grey is a relatively mild case
compared to Scarron, perhaps because Zachary is still very young, but the basic
elements are still there.
The last person syndrome
There is something that I have come to think
of as the ‘last person syndrome’. Not only is someone not suitable for a
particular role, they are about as unsuitable as it is possible to get.
Seeing someone as being very different from
and much better than they really are is very common. Sometimes there is little
more to it than wishful thinking or delusions, but sometimes unseen influences
of a sinister kind may be involved.
Perhaps the price for Scarron’s influencing
people so that they see him as being much better than he really is, for a while
at least, is falling into his own trap. He cannot see through his own
smokescreens. He is the last person to make Meg Lambert a good husband, which
she eventually realises, and he should be able to see that she is the last
person to be a suitable disciple, never mind his wife. She has not got the knowledge,
strength of character and maturity needed to make him a better man or to resist
the contagion from him and his awful friends.
Scarron begs Meg for help, but she is the
last person to be his saviour. A team of exorcists might be a better bet.
How can any young girl possibly save people
like Zachary Grey and Esmé Scarron?
They are like vampires who destroy their
victims. They cannot be saved by ordinary people. They are far more likely to
drag the girls down and corrupt and contaminate them than the girls are to
redeem them.
I have come across a few real-life cases of
the last person syndrome, some mutual some not. It is not always obvious what
is behind it.
Perhaps something evil likes to play games with
certain selected people, using them as pawns and puppets, blinding and making a
fool of them, giving them wrong ideas, forcing them onto the wrong path and
wasting their lives.
Crime and punishment
I have an idea that some people are desperate
to obtain or achieve something because they sense deep down that the
consequences will be terrible if they fail.
They may not consciously realise this, but
they behave as if they have been given assignments and told that they will be
treated as criminals and severely punished if they fail to complete them.
They may have sold themselves to and be in
the power of something that is using them for its own purposes.
The assignments may be to ruin the lives of
as many people as possible, or at least to do as much damage as possible. The
conscious intention may be quite different, but the effects and results will speak
for themselves. Some people poison everything they touch. They are agents of
and slaves to the forces of darkness.
Black magic and backlash
There is another possibility in the case.
Black magic has been described as an
illegitimate short cut, a way of getting something that hasn’t been earned. It
has also been described as using the powers of the subconscious or unconscious
mind for the practitioner’s own benefit.
Both of the people mentioned above use
certain powers against the girls they target.
A major difference is that Zachary Grey uses
his powers to influence others more or less unconsciously, but Esmé Scarron
does it deliberately. He uses black magic techniques that he has learned.
Perhaps to make it operate effectively people
have to invest all their energy in it, so if they miss the mark they really do
have nothing left. If so, it is just a natural law and the rules of the game;
it is just the way it works.
It may well be that people who use
illegitimate methods to get something sense or know that they must achieve
their goals otherwise it will all backfire and rebound on them: the backlash
will hit them very hard and cause immense suffering.
No end in sight yet
This was to have been the final article about
Stella Gibbon’s ‘romantic novel’ The Shadow of a Sorcerer, but there was so
much to say about the big anomaly and the book has so much material of interest
that another article is on the horizon.
