Marie D. Jones - Demons, the Devil, and Fallen Angels

P HOTO S OURCES

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C ONTENTS

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

M arie and Larry would like to thank Lisa Hagan, their wonderful agent, for securing this book deal. Lisa, you are the best! Thanks also to the entire team at Visible Ink Press, especially Roger Jnecke and Kevin Hile. Thank you, Roger, for allowing us the pleasure to work with Visible Ink Press, and thank you, Kevin, for your editing expertise and insights! We look forward to working with the entire staff to make this book a success!

Marie would also like to thank her family, including her mom, Milly, who is my biggest cheerleader and is always there for me; my dad, who is watching from the stars and galaxies above and hopefully proud of me; my sister, Angella, and brother, John, and my extended family; my friends and colleagues; and to all my readers, fans, and followers everywherethank you. I also must thank, of course, Larry Flaxman, for another great collaboration together. It has been a long journey over nine books together, with ups and downs, good times and bad, but it has all been worth it. Most of all, I would like to thank my son, Max, who makes it all worthwhile! He is my sun, my moon, and my stars, and everything I do is for him.

Larry would like to thank his mom and dad, who continue to be his biggest supporters even from the other side of the veil; his family, friends, fans, colleagues, followers, and even his critics. Thanks also to Marie D. Jones for putting up with me over the last nine books. The past few years have provided many, many challenges, opportunities, and new experiences. There have been many times when I doubted myself. Believe it or not, I even made a few mistakes that caused me to second guess myself. Not only did you help me to learn from my mistakes but you proved that I could succeed in the literary world and have pushed me in directions that I likely would not have explored without you. Finally (and most importantly), I would like to thank my sweet daughter, Mary Essa. You are truly my greatest creation. Through your eyes, I have seen the same spark that I held as a child. Your curious nature and wonder at our amazing world (and reality) drives me to be a better person. You have proven to me that true, unconditional love existsand I will forever strive to not only be the best human being that I can be but also the best role model for you.

I NTRODUCTION

W hen asked to write a book about the devil, demons, dark entities, fallen angels, and the like, your first reaction might be one of fear or even abject terror! Perhaps by writing about these scary and often misunderstood things, you might be inviting them into your experience, too, something other paranormal writers echoed when asked for advice. They claimed that electronics and computers would glitch. They did. They claimed sickness and sleep disturbances would occur. They did. But along with a number of other intriguing issues, were they really opening the door to looking deep into the heart of evil?

Yikes.

Devils and demons bring up frightening images and terrifying thoughts. We are trained to look upon them as objects of horror to be feared and avoided at all costs. But everything has an origin, and that means devils and demons do, too. Where did these concepts come from? Did they always exist? Are they only real to those who believe in them? Are they a part of our collective reality?

The quest to track an idea to its origin is what books like this are about. The best way to understand something is to know where it began and look at how it evolved over time. Sometimes, the originor zero pointof a concept can be completely different from the modern perspective or interpretation of it. Quite often, our attempts to interpret primitive and ancient ideas with our modern brains ruin the initial intentions behind these ideas. A demon may have originated one way, and now we experience it entirely differently because of the long road of changing perspectives (including those of the entertainment industry) that instantly make us think one particular thing when we hear the word.

Much of our modern perception of evil and the entities that represent it really do come from popular culture, but that is often rife with imagery, beliefs, and perceptions from far older times. Our history with such dark subjects is rich and deep, and like a snowball it gathers more mass as it rolls along. By reaching back into the past, we can better understand our present and possibly prepare for our future, and that includes our shifting concepts of bad, evil, death and destruction, and demonic entities that, as our religions tell us, may be responsible. It also might help us see the more than human origins of such ideas and how we ultimately need to take more responsibility for our own demons, devils, and evil behaviors.

Are demons real? Can the devil manifest into our world as human beings, a beastly entity, or even a nasty pet? Do fallen angels still walk the earth, or have they found their way back home? Or is this all simply the stuff of pure myth, paranormal speculation, and religious doctrine?

This book will serve as both an academic/objective and a speculative/subjective resource, as well as being just plain entertaining and enlightening. We will go way back in time to see from whence these dark beings emerged and how they got to be the way we see them today. Its a terrifying journey, no doubt, but its been said that the more we know about something the less we fear it. In the immortal words of Eleanor Roosevelt, You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.

By reading this book, hopefully the reader wont be opening a doorway to the other side, allowing all kinds of evil things to enter your realm of experience. You just might learn enough about the dual nature of humanity and the world we live in to make you rethink many of your ingrained beliefs.