After watching the new movie, Seance: The Summoning, it is basically IMPOSSIBLE for me to shut my mouth and not blog about this. Seriously. How many of you have seen this movie yet?
First of all, I had to turn it off after one of the most ridiculously bloody scenes I have witnessed yet in which the devil himself basically bit a girls tongue off and the blood started spewing.
There are so many points that need to be made here. First, I find it absolutely adhorrent that witchcraft is being portrayed in this light. Not that by any means is this the first time I have seen magick get portrayed as devil work, but this movie just brought all of that back to light.
It started out good, but immediately became cliche'.
While using the ouija board to do a seance for a school video project, a witch tries to prove to her friend that spirits are among us and real. I thought the film would be very interesting and it definitely started out that way. Then, when the doubting friend breaks the circle, a demon finds a loop hole in which to enter into the room. Feeling that she needs to end the session and close the door, again, which is correct when using a tool like the ouija board, the demon becomes overpowering and again the closing is not completed, and at that time the demon makes his move to possess the friend who is in doubt. They really should have stopped the movie there.
But of course, they didn't. The witch, whom appears in the film to be well trained by her grandmother who was drowned by members of the Catholic church (although that doesn't make any sense based on a simple mathematic equation of time frames in history - as obviously, this witch is only like 25 TOPS, and her grandmother definitely didn't live during the burning times, or any other time for that matter that would have allowed the Catholic church people to drowned anyone without serving prison time) suddenly does not have any clue how to exorcise and banish a malicious spirit. Seriously? Her grandmother was very gifted and taught her a lot. But she has no clue how to deal with this?
Of course, that's when the bloody scenes seem to start. The "demon" suddenly starts referring to how he is the ruler of hell AKA Satan. Yup. That makes A LOT of sense. Satan himself decided to come and possess this kid. Right. And as the story goes, the witch has no clue what to do, and both of them are completely antagonized by Satan, which coincidentally is EXACTLY how Satan is portrayed in the King James Bible.
Then the Catholic friend decides that the witch needs to read out of the bible in order to get Satan to go away. But when they try to do so, it just won't work because the witch has not accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior and given up witchcraft and magick. Nice move Catholic Church. And all respect I have for this movie just FLEW OUT THE WINDOW. Seriously. I guess the Catholic Church has funded this movie. Yup. Let's FEAR people into church. Then we can guilt people into giving up everything they have in their wallets as the first of 3 collection baskets gets passed around. I guess we can take from this that the church needs more followers.
Of course, as I am watching, my mind is going insane. The movie is getting more and more outrageous. The only things that seem to cause Satan any pain at all happen to be burning him with the crucifix and spraying him repeatedly with Holy Water. It was great. Very clearly writen to scare the shit out of ANYONE who is a Wiccan, Pagan, Druid, Shaman, or JUST ANYONE that hasn't been to church for a while. You better quick run to your local church when you get done reading this so you can make your tithe. And if you haven't been there is a REALLY long time, you may even need to get saved again, with the whole congregation watching.
Look, I do not have any problems with any religions. I believe in coexisting. But I believe in RESPECT for all walks of life and belief systems. Listening to the little remarks that were made about how "witches" were evil and of the devil, and how witches "rule" hell with Satan, and my ultimate favorite, how "Satan" mentions that the witch's grandmother, who supposedly was killed by church people because she was a witch, is currently in hell being sexed by Satan himself, just made me sick.
What a disrespectful movie. Do I believe that you can be protected by Archangel Michael, God, Jesus, White Light, whatever you believe? Yes. But do I believe that condemned are the witches, and we are going to hell, and we are not strong enough in our magick to be able to protect ourselves? Umm, no. Not even in the least. This was clearly the most ignorant, opinionated, and religiously discriminating movie I have seen in a long time.
If you want to watch a movie more realistic, watch Practical Magic or the Skeleton Key. At least you will be able to see magic that isn't portrayed in an unrealistic fashion. There is white, black and gray, which is clearly portrayed in the Skeleton Key, but neither one of those movies above went through great lengths to make one "evil." The Skeleton Key shows voodoo used in a very dark way, but its a much more unbiased viewing in my opinion, because although it was dark, it's all in what you believe in and they never pitted one religion against another. The same is true for Practical Magic. It gets a little colorful, but it's not like the witches were suddenly unable to find any sort of resolution or help within their own belief system and had to call upon the Catholic church, or any other religion for that matter, to come and save them.
I know this seems like more of a rant than anything else, but I just felt the movie was so disrespectful to Pagans everywhere. Hopefully I save some of you from seeing this horrible film where we are once again persecuted for our beliefs and in need of another religion to come rescue us. I don't care what religion you are - I can respect you and that you may feel differently than me about what you believe - But I am NOT going to persecute you for it. Lets coexist. Lets end all this fighting to prove a point that can NEVER be proved. Lets spend our time loving and worshipping however we want to.
Coexisting is essential to peace.
There are many paths up the mountain - but the view of the moon from the top is the same. - Ancient Japense saying.
