Professor Hex: Malevolent and Fearful Ghosts

The horrible murders in Zion, Illinois, of Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9, is now, national news. According to investigators, the girls were stabbed some time around midnight and, according to early news reports, one of the girl's bicycles was missing. They appear to have not been sexually molested.

I have spent a great deal of time today talking and thinking about ritual murder, due to the reopening of the Atlanta Child Murders case. I wondered if the circumstances surrounding this awful crime or the date of the murder (May 8 or 9 depending on the pending coroner's report) had any occult significance.

On May 8, 1978, David Berkowitz pled guilty to the Son of Sam murders..

It's also occultist Helen Blavatsky's birthday.

May 9 is the beginning of the ancient Roman Feast of Lemures. According to Wikipedia "the Feast of the Lemures, called the Lemuralia or Lemuria was a feast during which the ancient Romans performed rites to exorcise the malevolent and fearful ghosts of the dead from their homes. The of the restless dead (lemures) were propitiated with offerings of beans. On those days, the Vestals would prepare sacred mola salsa (salt cake) from the first ears of wheat of the season."

Lemures and larvae were spirits of the dead. St. Augustine wrote: "He [Plotinus] says, indeed, that the souls of men are demons, and that men become Lares if they are good, Lemures or Larvae if they are bad, and Manes if it is uncertain whether they deserve well or ill. Who does not see at a glance that this is a mere whirlpool sucking men to moral destruction? For, however wicked men have been, if they suppose they shall become Larvæ or divine Manes, they will become the worse the more love they have for inflicting injury; for, as the Larvae are hurtful demons made out of wicked men, these men must suppose that after death they will be invoked with sacrifices and divine honors that they may inflict injuries. But this question we must not pursue. He also states that the blessed are called in Greek eudaimones, because they are good souls, that is to say, good demons, confirming his opinion that the souls of men are demons."

The souls of men are demons, indeed.

"Zion" has many meanings, but one of them is "heaven" or Utopia. Laura's last name, Hobbs, can be related to the English word "Hob", which means goblin or elf. Krystal's last name, Tobias, means, according to various sources, "goodness of the lord" or "god is good". Laura was blonde, Krystal was a brunette. Yin and Yang, Heaven and Hell. Life and Death.

Of course, this is aimless speculation on my part to take my mind off the true horror of what those girls went through and what their families are going through now. The missing bicycle, if news reports are to be believed, in my opinion points to an adolescent killer or an exceedingly dim or childlike adult. Killers are known to take souvenirs but a child's bicycle seems to be an unnecessarily foolish one. The knife seems to indicate some sort of preplanning. I'm not sure if my mind can fully grasp the horror of an adult killer, bloody knife in hand, pedaling away from his atrocities on a small girl's bicycle.

posted by Prof. Hex at 10:38 PM

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