Alexander Diaz
Capstone
Rah ‘17
Count:
The Old Deluder
Temperance was a time of reform in alcohol from what people thought was a sinful thing. Some would call for moderation while some would call for complete abstinence. The temperance movement in America started in the 1820’s when the American Temperance Society was first established. And even though alcohol had affected men the most, it was still a woman’s problem too because men’s drunkenness would eventually come around to hurting innocent women and children. During this time people fought the distribution and use of alcohol in many ways, to include literature, poems, and even songs. Through their writings and poems, temperance writers created stories of life and how better it would be if it were a life of temperance. They were stories of how evil drunkenness manifested itself through a bottle and how the sunshine in that bottle that so many people enjoyed was merely just darkness waiting to take over. These temperance stories usually showed the consequences of drinking, showing that change could only be for the better for all parties. The American Temperance Encyclopedia gives a story of a man that is persuaded by his wife to stop drinking. The story, named A Remedy for Drunkenness tells the story of a man who comes home drunk to his wife. The wife proceeds to pick him up and roll him into a blanket. Once he is successfully rolled into the blanket she proceeds to beat the husband in the blanket until he was sober again. The effect to that was that he never got drunk again (Wakely 138). This was the general mood for most temperance stories. They tried to show how the abstinence from alcohol would be better for everyone, and they could do it all while having some fun with it. Before 1830, temperance literature had been produced by two sides, the protestant clergyman who preached that God himself would not visit the inebriated and the rationalists, who emphasised the harmful effects on both the mind and body if one were to drink in excess (Reynolds 65). Either way, the idea of human perfectibility characterized the end goals of temperance societies such as The Sons of Temperance, Temperance Cadets, and the American Temperance Society. This idea set well with people, because numbers grew within these organizations from 1826 to 1832 to have membership of these societies from 100,000 to over a million. Temperance had rapidly become one of the most influential and most broadly based reform movement in America (Reynolds 66).
It was not until 1833 where temperance writing started to take a turn to the darker side of the spectrum. Writers would no longer write about what remedies would come from abstaining from alcohol, but instead they would talk about the repercussions of becoming drunk. No longer was the motive of these writings to show people how good life would be without alcohol. Now it had turned to how tormented one could become with the constant use of alcohol. Whitman says that “Temperance writing had so many sides to it: noble or devilish. As it grew, temperance writing went from a conventional genre and assumed a notably “devilish”, subversive aspect as it fell into the hands of immoral reformers and opportunistic publishers.” (Silverman 65-66). Whitman went on to explain how the writing of these authors began to posses post-Calvinist universality and Gothic savagery. He brings up one story from McDonald Clark, called The Rum Hole which tells a story of a place where alcohol is produced. But this is no normal place one might think. Instead this place burns and is built on a ledge of human bones. It is called the lighthouse of hell in which human blood is its cement. It is said in the story that this place swells with bad memories and floods with people tears. Certainly a more gruesome and terrifying way to describe a place that makes something so simple as alcohol (Wakely 66). This story greatly differs from the former temperance writing above. Before temperance writers used humor in order to bring about their message saying that there is a remedy that can be found in order to abstain from alcohol. But in this story we can see that fear and intimidation is the main method in order to get the message across. This type of gothic savagery is evident in the second story. It was these authors who had influenced Edgar Allan Poe in joining the temperance writing movement. David Reynolds states that “All of the major American Renaissance authors were influenced by the temperance movement. Poe had close friends in the movement and actually joined it before he died, and used the devices of dark temperance in his tales.” (Reynolds 32). Here in Reynolds quote we can see that Poe was actually influenced by his friends who were already involved in the temperance movement and how he used dark temperance or this “gothic savagery” in order to make his tales a little different from his friends.
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, and critic for his tales of horror and mystery. Poe was born on January 19th, 1809. He was known for his uncanny short stories and poems that captured the reader and used their imagination in order to depict a picture within their heads that would last. Some even called his stories the modern detective tale because of how he left his readers in suspense, hurrying to turn the page in order to know who was killed or what they were killed by. Poe’s stories seem to always have an underlying message under them. Whether it was about depression, alcohol, or anxiety, the sense of what Poe was living was always prevalent in his works. This was more concretely seen during the years of temperance, where temperance writing became the norm. But it is clear, when looking at Poe’s stories, that he was not interested in the normal way of writing temperance stories that aimed to change a person’s mind on what alcohol really is. No, Poe took a more uncanny route to writing, a more sinister route. Kenneth Silverman states “Poe was influenced by the temperance movement which produced a body of literature and lectures filled with the kinds of horrifying images that fascinated him.” Everyone knows that Edgar Allan Poe had an uncanny way of writing stories, so much so that we classify them as gothic or horror. It is my belief that Edgar Allan Poe produced such horrific stories, stories that made the skin crawl and the mind wander, by drawing from the studies of demons and their abilities in order to create his own dark temperance stories, stories where the main characters would be possessed by this demon and do unspeakable acts in order to have his readers thinking twice on whether or not to take that next sip of dark rum. This use of demonology can be traced back to two stories specifically being: The Black Cat and Hop Frog. In both stories, the reader can see resemblances back to one demon in particular; Ba’al, the prince of hell.
Poe uses demonology in his works is because of the undeniable similarities between his works and demon possession. Poe wanted to do more with his stories. He wanted to make them darker and more terrifying than anyone had done it before. Poe wanted to make those dark things that other authors wrote about in their stories come alive into this physical manifestation of fear in his readers minds. So Poe does the unthinkable and makes alcohol the key that opens the door to the realm of demonic forces. He makes the sipping on that glass of rum and getting to the bottom of that bottle a thing to fear. To explain how alcohol can possibly connect to demonic possession we must first go back to the root of the word alcohol.
It is said that when we black out it is really just an evil forcing pulling our strings making us do things we normally would not do. Although our good soul is still tethered to the body, the discomfort of the body being heavily intoxicated makes the soul wonder and leaves the body open for more sinister things to take its place. This is why, when drunk, we see people carry out dark acts such as violence, sexual encounter, rape, destructive behaviors, and more. The word alcohol, sometimes also known as spirits, goes back to the arabic root Al-Kuhl which means “body eating spirit”. It is called a body eating spirit because it is believed that alcohol has the ability to eat at one’s own soul and make a person more susceptible to the evil forces around them. This is why we sometimes call alcohol “spirits”, and people black out without remembering what happened. In her article Sita quotes a writer and health enthusiast, Jason Christoff who states that demonic possession can be explained by going back to the root of alcohol when used in alchemy. “In alchemy” Christoff says “alcohol is used to extract the soul essence of an entity. Hence its’ use in extracting essences for essential oils, and the sterilization of medical instruments. By consuming alcohol into the body, it in effect extracts the very essence of the soul, allowing the body to be more susceptible to neighboring entities most of which are of low frequencies.” ( qtd. in Christoff). So what Christoff states here is that ingesting alcohol can actually make you more vulnerable to lurking entities outside of your body. This is because the alcohol makes your soul leave the body, leaving it open for other spirits to be able to take control. Christoff goes on to explain what this means for the body and how it effects us. “That is why people who consume excessive amounts of alcohol often black out, not remembering what happened. This happens when the good soul leaves because the living conditions are too polluted and too traumatic to tolerate. The good soul jettisons the body, staying connected to a tether, and a dark entity takes the body for a joy ride around the block, often in a hedonistic and self-serving illogical rampage.” (qtd. in Christoff). So what Christoff is stating here is that the soul is still connected to our bodies, yet we are no longer in control. This allows for something more sinister to sneak in and take the reigns for a while until the body returns to its natural state in which the soul can then return to the body and continue normal functions. Christoff ends his statement with a quick conclusion stating; “Essentially when someone goes dark after drinking alcohol or polluting themselves in many other ways, their body often becomes possessed by another entity.” (qtd. in Christoff). Although Christoff is not specific about what entities specifically can enter one’s body, we can assume that the entity that takes over is not one that will have good intentions. It is terrifying to think that something so mainstream in our world’s culture can hold such a powerful effect over us. This idea of alcohol has been around long before Poe, so it is not far fetched to think that Poe had knew about this fact of alcohol and mixed it into his stories. Now that Poe had his story that would bridge alcohol and demonic possession, he needed a demon that would live up to its name, someone well known and rightly feared. It is my belief that Poe uses the ancient demon Ba’al in his stories in order to strike terror in his readers.
The ancient demon Ba’al is one that goes back for centuries and is well known amongst the supernatural scholars of the world. Ba’al is referenced many times throughout the bible and was once even hailed as a god amongst some groups of people such as the canaanites. To some, Ba’al was the god of the sun, to others he was the god of fertility. But when Christianity came around, they labeled Ba’al as a demon, but not just any demon. Ba’al in christian religion, is labeled as one of the seven princes’ of hell, and has even been labeled as the chief of these princes’. Ba’al is also mentioned many times in the Old Testament of the bible as someone the Canaanites worshiped within their own communities. Numbers 25:3-5 reads, “So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the LORD was angry against Israel. The LORD said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the LORD, so that the fierce anger of the LORD may turn away from Israel.” So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you slay his men who have joined themselves to Baal of Peor.””(Knowing Jesus). Clearly God was not too happy about the worship of Ba’al and wanted his followers erased from the world. But what is more interesting is what the Dictionnaire Infernal says about this demon Ba’al. For those who do not know, the Dictionnaire Infernal was basically an entire dictionary that aimed to define and describe every demon known to man. This dictionary was written by Jacques Auguste Simon Collin de Plancy in 1818 and has been revised many times in order to update the book on new found demons or even on their images. The Dictionnaire Infernal states that “Ba’al is cited as the head of all infernal powers. He is the first king of hell with his estates in the east. He is depicted as a demon with three heads: one of a man, one of a toad, and one of a cat. He repays those who invoke slyness and cunning and teaches them how to become invisible.” It is no coincidence that Ba’als main forms are of a man, a cat, and a toad. These forms relate straight back to Poes’ own stories of Black Cat and Hop Frog.
Works Cited
“Baal Worship, History.” 33 Bible Verses about Baal Worship, History. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2017.
“Demon Profile: Baal.” HNN | Horrornews.net 2017 – Official Horror News Site. N.p., 18 Apr. 2012.
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De Plancy, Jacques Auguste Simon Collin. Dictionnaire Infernal. 6th ed. Paris: n.p., 1863. Print.
Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of
Emerson and Melville. New York, NY: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.
Reynolds, David. “The Serpent in the Cup.” Google Books. University of Massachusetts, n.d. Web.
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Silverman, Kenneth. “New Essays on Poe’s Major Tales.” Google Books. Cambridge University, n.d.
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Sita, Zahrah. “The Spiritual Consequences of Alcohol Consumption.” The Costa Rica News. N.p., 08
Oct. 2017. Web. 10 Oct. 2017.
Wakely, Joseph. “The American Temperance Cyclopaedia of History, Biography, Anecdote, and
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