Depression at Christmas

Some of what I said in the article about depression at the autumnal equinox can also be applied to the Christmas holiday season: the winter solstice too may subtly affect us. 

There are obvious additional and external factors when Christmas is involved, however there is sometimes more to it than being overwhelmed and demoralised by practical problems: evil forces may be abroad!

I realised a while back that even if there are no energy vampires, emotional blackmailers and other undesirables in our lives, we can still be influenced negatively by people in general. 

I have found that Christmas is a time when this is particularly noticeable. There is a lot of stress, tension, misery and general bad energy in the air, in the big cities at least, and some sensitive people pick it all up. 

We may be badly affected by the cumulative inner states of both the large numbers of people who are rushing around with too much to do and too little time to do it in and the many unhappy, isolated people for whom this is the worst time of year. 

Then there are the intoxicated ones, people who have been celebrating - or trying to escape - the festive season. People who are under the influence of something are often frightening and dangerous because they are out of control; they may be also be surrounded, affected or even controlled by malign entities that their inner state has attracted.

During the run up to Christmas, the streets are filled with hordes of people moving like zombies on the march. I don’t get caught up in the spending frenzy and the Christmas madness myself; I find it all alarming and incomprehensible.  

I do usually go out to see the best Christmas lights and shop windows, but I try to go at relatively quiet times.

A tale of two foxes

I described some amazing coincidences and synchronous events in my life a while back in this article.

One incident involved a magazine with a picture of a fox cub; now I can add an anecdote involving two adult foxes.

I have only ever seen live foxes on two occasions, and in both cases unseen influences appear to have been at work.

The first encounter happened many years ago, shortly after I saw a beautiful fox in a TV advertisement - for whisky if I remember correctly - and realised that I had never seen a fox in real life, apart from a dead one by the side of the road which was probably left there by a motorist who had hit and killed it.

I used to take my washing to a launderette on a busy main road and go for local walkabouts while the wash was in progress. I favoured a circular route for which the timing was perfect. It took in a public garden and some interesting buildings and back streets.

Lucy M. Boston, her birthday and her memoirs

The English novelist Lucy M. Boston, who is often known as L. M. Boston, was born on December 10th 1892. She was over 60 when her first book was published, and she lived to the age of 97.

She is of interest to me mainly because of her book An Enemy at Green Knowe. The enemy in the title is the scholar, black magician and demon-possessed witch Dr. Melanie Powers, who has been mentioned in passing in a few articles. This is the only book in which Lucy M. Boston writes at length about the battle between good and evil.

There is little in Lucy M. Boston’s life to explain where Melanie Powers and her very familiar characteristics and behaviour came from; unlike Nicholas Stuart Gray’s and Diana Wynne Jones’s witches, she was not based on the author’s mother: Lucy M. Boston’s mother was unhappy and neglectful, but not cruel and evil.

However, the magical house Green Knowe, whose name appears in the titles of her series of children’s fantasy books, is taken directly from Manor House, which was built by the Normans around the year 1130 and was her home for almost 50 years.

Manor House is still in the Boston family and is now open to the public. Maybe I will go to see it some time.

Perverse and Foolish

Lucy M. Boston’s autobiographical work Perverse and Foolish: A Memoir of Childhood and Youth describes her life up to the time of her marriage.

More wise words from Upton Sinclair

Upton Sinclair was just a name to me until very recently.

I now know that he produced some very insightful and inspirational material.

He could be a goldmine, so his writings are on the list to be investigated. In the meantime, a little research has found these very relevant quotations:

“I discover that hardly a week passes that someone does not start a new cult, or revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and liturgies, the hymns...”

From The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation (1918), Introductory, "Bootstrap-lifting".

He was speaking about American-style religious organisations, but his words apply to many other types of cult. There is no end to them, and many do indeed perform brain-washing ceremonies.

“He was burning with a sense of outrage. He had been tricked and made a fool of; he had been used and flung aside. And now there was nothing he could do — he was utterly helpless. What affected him most was his sense of the overwhelming magnitude of the powers which had made him their puppet; of the utter futility of the efforts that he or any other man could make against them. They were like elemental, cosmic forces; they held all the world in their grip, and a common man was as much at their mercy as a bit of chaff in a tempest.”

From Metropolis (1908)

Upton Sinclair could be speaking for many people who realise that they have been cheated, lied to and made a fool of and that there is nothing that they can do about it. They are helpless pawns; they are up against something huge, invulnerable, inexorable and remorseless.

This is a perfect description of how devastated some people feel when they realise that they have been used and destroyed by a cult or an energy vampire and there will be no justice and no compensation.

November 25th this year was the 50th anniversary of Upton Sinclair’s death.

A multi-level approach to finding explanations

When I am trying to understand certain phenomena and occurrences, my method is to start by considering the most obvious explanations. There is no need to assume occult influences or go into full conspiracy theory mode unless and until it is absolutely necessary!

If all the top-level possibilities I can think of are not relevant, if they are inadequate and insufficient to explain everything, if they are the symptoms as opposed to the cause, then I will move down a level to more subtle possibilities.

If these too do not provide a full and satisfactory explanation, I will go lower still.

For example, if someone acts unprofessionally and out of character and causes a lot of damage to the company they work for, I would first check for such personal factors as illness, money worries, family problems or a drink problem. I would then look at the employer and the job and to see whether they were tired from working very long hours, were living in fear of redundancy or had been promoted beyond their capabilities.

Criticism and the future Lord Voldemort

I have learned to recognise signs and symptoms of behaviour and scenarios commonly found in and associated with cults, cult leaders and cult members.

Now that I know what to look for, I can see examples everywhere. 

There is even some relevant material in the Harry Potter books: Lord Voldemort speaks and behaves like a cult leader.

The young Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort to be, shows signs of what is to come. His response to criticism is very typical of the way people involved with cults react; I have encountered this reaction many times myself. 

Response to allegations and criticism

We need to be informed, balanced and objective and consider the source when deciding whether allegations involving cults and cult leaders are true or not. There are such things as revenge, spite and envy; people do lie and exaggerate; people do try to drag down or even destroy someone who is above them or sabotage the work of an organisation that is working to make the world a better place.

The reactions of the accused and their supporters to allegations and criticism may help us decide whether or not the claims are justified and true. Automatic dismissal and denial, ad hominem insults, counter-accusations and the attack-dog syndrome are all dead giveaways!

Tom Riddle and the rejected criticism

J. K. Rowling nails it when writing about the future Lord Voldemort and his first group of supporters.

Some further thoughts about Upton Sinclair’s proposition

The American novelist Upton Sinclair had this to say about the difficulty in getting through to people:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

The previous article expanded on this statement and listed some external factors that might be involved in addition to someone’s salary.

It is not just about employees and possible losses in the outer world: Upton Sinclair’s proposition can be applied to the inner world of many people when psychological factors are involved.

There may also be some unseen influences at work in the form of good and evil forces.

Some psychological factors

Psychological defence mechanisms may be at work in many cases where people just don’t or won’t get or accept an inconvenient, unwelcome truth. For example, we may try very hard but unsuccessfully to get through to someone that they need to take responsibility for their actions.