Hereditary the Movie and Going Nuts: Inheriting Insanity? Spoiler Alert!
So, in my endeavor to face my worst fears in life and overcome them, I went to watch a horror movie with a group of friends last night. We chose “Hereditary” by Ari Aster and I believe I laughed my way through the irony of most of it, rather than experiencing any response of fear. If only my friends, enjoying their beers while watching the movie, knew how this movie might impact the mothers and grandmothers in our society who deal with mental health issues in our families. We are all aware of custody battles concerning families riddled with mental illnesses and domestic violence in court.
Most people go to watch a horror movie to relax and enjoy peeing their pants. I, however, identified with way too many elements in this movie for most people’s comfort level. I had already voided my bladder and cleared out my colon, so I had nothing to worry about there. I went into this movie experience like an empty vessel.
I am already a spiritual medium, already a channel for spiritual energy, and I’m already THE Queen of Hell. I’ve already been there, done that. Now, I just gallivant around in an average woman’s body with a brain that has absorbed more knowledge in fifty years than what should be considered safe for any one person to hold in a nutshell.
As an astute seer who can see into the future, I already knew the movie would be based on spiritual principles, the Bible, psychological mind control and abuse, and that it would be intended to somehow impact MY brain if I allowed myself to watch it like a narcissist. If I allowed myself to identify my life in any way, shape, or form with what I saw in the movie, I could construe all sorts of ridiculous conclusions after watching this film. I kept thinking through the movie: Yep, been there done that, or have connections to someone who has. Or: Yep, already read that in a book, seen that in another movie, or just heard someone mention that concept. Like a narcissist would, I saw my life in the movie “Hereditary,” and I know there are some other people in this world who are narcissistic, so I can only wonder how they will view this nightmare and from what perspective.
There were graphic scenes that should have had most adults cringing, or sitting on their seat in terror, or at least experiencing slight tension. Me? Nope. Not even the scene where the little girl cuts off the head of a dead bird or the mother wakes up in the middle of sleep walking not knowing why she has a can of paint thinner and a box of matches standing in her children’s room.
Have mommy issues? No? Count your blessings. Have children issues? No? What about grandma issues? Have any issues with nuts? You might after watching this film!
I know that Beatrix Potter and her brother hauled home dead animals from the woods to draw them and turn them into storybook characters. I was raised chopping off chicken heads. A bird that flies into a window is already dead, so it won’t feel anything if a young artist decides to snip off its head. I was more concerned about the germs Milly Shapiro had on her hands after tucking the bird’s head into her pocket. However, artists use all sorts of sources for models and I know children who make jewelry from animal bones. The little kid in Captain Fantastic who dissected animals and had pictures of Pol Pot was a bit freakier than the beautiful little girl, played by Shapiro in this film.
The Northwest was mentioned near the end of this movie. I live in the Northwest. I was born and raised on the Coast of Oregon. Maybe that is why this film wasn’t all that big of a deal or all that scary. Maybe Oregonians are all just freaky weird and insane.
I am a real witch. I have Celtic Tarot cards. I wear an amulet and a talisman. I belong to more cults than I can shake a wand at and have engaged in rituals that could raise the hair on the back of most people’s necks. I used to be a Children’s church teacher. Imagine that! If the average person saw the events that manifested from those religious rituals I engaged in from a birds-eye view of real life unfolding as a result, many might run for the hills. I was once a cookie-cutter Christian and now I have crossed over to the “dark” side.
I am a creative mother with a writing degree, who is no longer ignorant of how mental health plays out in families like mine and yours. I may have inherited it from my mother and grandmother. Oh, no! Whatever shall I do??
I cast spells that come true. All I have to do is write a poem. After a few years. my poetry manifests in some strange way in my life. I have poems and stories saved from my childhood that have even me shaking my head in disbelief. I have been facing down, and overcoming, evil magic since I wrote my first story in the fifth grade.
Now that I am almost fifty and have lived enough years, read enough books, and weathered through enough shit storms in life involving real deaths and horrifying events, I can now walk up to a stranger who is snapping and snarling, barking like a dog, or packing a knife and ask if they can use some socks or a granola bar. That can be real-life scary. I might give strangers a hug or some Yogi Positive Energy tea. Some of my friends and “associates” even have 666 tattooed on their foreheads. Some of them smell like dogs, dog poop, human poop, cat pee, humane pee, and even Nag Champa and cannabis. Imagine that!
Sometimes, a series of bad things can just “happen” and if a person focuses on the negative energy and events entering life it can make things worse. This movie went from “really, mom?” to “whatever” very quickly.
Most mothers try to do their best to keep children “safe” from this big, scary, un-explainable existence involving some power higher than themselves. Black magic exists if people let it. Evil is as evil does.
If we always choose love and forgiveness we will NEVER be able to out-love, out-forgive any evil force, or allow any evil force to out-shine any good in the entire universe, right? I must be delusional to still believe this concept is possible. I believe most of the characters were just misguided nutcases who were victimized by the concepts of good and evil as understood in the Bible in this dystopic movie full of magical surrealism in the negative extreme.
Nothing in that movie scared me except for a few situations I identified in many people’s lives that hit a little too close to home. Teenagers going nuts. Teenagers being allergic to nuts. Mothers being driven nuts. Adults who are nutcases. And spiritual activity in some “other” realm that humans just can’t fathom or wrap our heads around.
That, and the real-life problems of physical and psychological danger done to young people in nice, average looking homes by insane adults with power and control issues. Many parents think their own emotional sense of safety is more important than those of the children around them, or even the other parent involved in taking care of emotionally vulnerable children. The mother in this movie had a hard time owning up to her own control issues and placed way too much responsibility on the children she loves. What in the hell was the mother thinking?
Some children are forced to grow up too soon and are forced to face fears long before they should be ready to face them. Some children are ripped away from one or both of their parents and the mother or father cannot stop it from happening. Some children are terrorized by their dictator parent who lacks self-control. Some children have a parent with out-of-control anger issues that no one knows about except for those behind closed doors and walls.
Some children have parents who drink too much, are strung out on drugs, or who are erratic and unpredictable. Some children have parents who are incapacitated due to health issues or who have surgeries to save their life, so they are able to stick around to still care for them.
Some children are stuck with parents who are riddled with fear and loathing of each other due to past traumas, or from their own childhoods from which they are still healing. Some children have parents who are just sick with worry about them, themselves, and the entire world. Some children have parents whose worse nightmares have already been realized, so the only thing left to do is die and go to hell, or wait and hope the adults in the world grow up before the children all do.
Or, just die and go to heaven where my children’s father, his lawyer, all of my former lawyers, and Justice himself will finally write a well-drafted legal document giving this mother some reasonable time with her children. Or, maybe they can decide what to do with me as I wander around society as the Village Idiot of Eugene, Oregon telling everyone I meet what a great legal system we have over here for poor parents who have not been charged with anything other than being bat-shit crazy. Maybe in heaven there is a position for Court Jester open that pays me enough money to get me an audience with GOD, Trump, or some authority of spiritual heart conditions who is in charge who can fix my broken family.
A movie such as “Hereditary” just does not scare me in the least. However, our children could watch this movie and see us parents in the grandmother or the mother. Both characters are portrayed as psychopathic narcissists who believe in some spiritual force beyond the physical realm that somehow influences or “governs” our lives. I happen believe in the power of books, writing, words, and the influence of those we see who have more power and control over our lives than we have over ourselves.
Welcome to the world we live in. It is called reality. Parents deal with insanity for reals.
My teenage son was once convinced a hobo spider was a demon chasing after him and freaked out, ran around the house sprinkling home-made “Holy Water” on everything, including his teenage sister who “must be” riddled with demons herself because she was suddenly in pain after he threw this water on her. She came running into my room holding her hand over her eye because lavender oil and salt happen to sting. Are my kids insane? Slightly.
Fast forward several months and my children are living at their dad’s house and a homeless 28-year old man and his partner begin living with me and my husband for eight months. This man, who has lived most of his life on the streets of California, believes he alone is Satan and keeps the entire world in balance. He mostly just wanted to get his feet taken care of by using herbs and flowers and wanted someone to take care of him so he could watch The Simpsons. He seemed tormented by his thoughts. This movie brought back memories from living with this sweet, but very troubled young man.
He didn’t want me to kill another hobo spider that made its way into our home until he went through a ritual of humming to its spirit and then smashing it in the middle of the street away from our house in order to protect us from the energy released from its death. Satan was afraid that in killing the spider, it would send out pheromones of fear to other spiders and we would invite more spider invasions. Satan did his best to keep us all safe in our home.
Hmmm. Energy begets energy. For every action, there is a reaction. I have seen Karma at work like a boomerang effect. I hit you, you hit me back. I hit you, you hit the next person, they hit the next person and eventually it comes around full circle. Hugs work the same way.
I know of a woman who lost her husband from a hobo spider bite. Hobos, whether in human or spider form CAN be dangerous and kill. I believe I would rather reason with Satan than a hobo spider. At least Satan and I can have a good laugh about the dents in my refrigerator and how they got there.
Thankfully, so far in life, if you can read this, you are among most of us who have been able to dance around demons and have been kept safe thus far. Otherwise, fear impulses would run rampant and we’d all go nuts. I should know. I have danced upon the devil’s lake with Cat Stevens and have experienced being thrown out of Heaven with my Grandma Lucy, my mother Elaine Helen, and even Sam Chase, all who will NEVER die! I know what it is like to hit rock bottom, and then hit it again, and again, and again, and again. Sam Chase has an incredible song called, “Rock Bottom Never Felt So Good.” It could be the mantra of a recovering alcoholic. I am a recovering Christian. I am a recovering human.
There IS more than one way of dying, being raped, becoming decimated, and learning to accept a lack of self-agency while the children in our world have their heads chopped off in Aleppo, while children die in car accidents, while children go to school and never come back, while children become diagnosed with incurable illnesses, and while we discover just how powerful/unempowered we all really are to fix any of it. Today, so many parents have no access to the children they love and whom they have poured so much life into, just because insane narcissists demand everything be just as they say it should be. It is a death and a trauma to the brain when vital relationships are suddenly ended, even though the people are still alive. Forced death of relationships due to injustices and psychological abuse without any timely and reasonable recourse of repair can lead a person to experience something similar to what is presented in a movie such as “Hereditary.”
Some people sacrifice children through abortions and self-annihilation, and in America our children are terrified of going to school where they might be target practice for some deranged lunatic with access to guns. Where does one find peace?
It’s called giving up on trying to save the whole world after your own blows apart. It’s called almost dying and still being left alive to fight back in whatever way makes sense while keeping damage control levels as low as possible. It’s called renovating my own Frankenstein House so I can re-create a sense of Heaven on earth, while I just let everyone else go to hell in a shit-hole if that is where they choose to go.
Physicians, Heal thyself! Psychologists, psycho-analyse yourself! Lawyers, investigate your OWN motives! Judges, judge yourself and then live with the knowledge of how YOU ruled in such fallible ways that caused undue emotional and physical stress and trauma on naive and trusting MOTHERS (and often powerless fathers) in custody cases. I still don’t know what in the hell Judge Zennache, Judge Love, or Judge Carlson were thinking during their rulings in my family’s difficult situation here in Lane County, Oregon. Somedays, it feels like I’m still trying to catch my breath and recover from the shock and emotional gut punch. It almost feels like being back in my old home pinned against the wall in complete terror with my children’s father screaming at and threatening me.
But, whatever. No one killed me. If you are reading this, no one has killed you and so far we are all alive to live and write our stories another day. Maybe someday, my family will be fodder for a movie filmed in Oregon and the Jones Tribe, infused with real life mental health issues will have a MUCH better ending than the family in A.A.’s “Hereditary.” Maybe, someday, my family can be an example of what can go right in a broken family full of emotional turmoil and mental health issues. Maybe, my very large family will be the trailblazers for healing up and restoring lost relationships. Maybe not. That is not entirely up to me.
At least I don’t have to drink alcohol and open up those spirits into my life; pop pills and open up those spirits into my life; engage in seances and open up those spirits into my life. I don’t have to climb the rafters and bang my head on the ceiling, saw off my head while floating in the air, or chop off anyone else’s head, exhume dead bodies, walk around clucking like an incessant chicken, or recreate my family in life-like miniature renditions of a doll-house world with my own mother haunting the hell out of us, or begin sleep walking while throwing paint thinner all over everyone. Good Lord! I thought Little House on the Prairie was infused with one over the top thing after another happening in short order.
Does that mean I am psychologically healthy, or so far gone that I’m about ready to levitate and float off to heaven or burn in hell once I lose my head altogether? I’ve already faced Paimon, Lucifer, Satan, Demons, Angels, Cheribum, Druids, Magical beasts, fellow witches, warlocks, demonic possession, and all the forces of the universe in both it’s unexplained beauty and it’s ugly, head-scratching horror. I have already fallen into the hands of some living God, have been touched by some finger of electricity, and have personally faced that being “beside yourself complete and total terror” while facing death. More than once in my lifetime. I have also learned to overcome that fear until I have reached a point of utter acceptance of not being able to control ANYONE else’s demise, because I can’t even do anything to control my own.
I wonder if the pharmaceuticals had anything to do with the mother’s sleep walking habits in this movie? I’ve read that some of those “medications” can cause hallucinations and black-out behavior much like alcohol can. I’ve heard of stories where alcoholics come out of a blackout while driving down a freeway. That is scary shit. I wonder how many doctors, lawyers, or average people we talk to and trust with our lives are just operating from a blackout brain and don’t even know what they are doing while doing it.
I wonder if every support group out there is just a cover for occultic practices that individual members engage in like some secret society? I once had an atheistic A.A. sponsor who’s “God” was her lamp, and who clearly appears to be possessed by a spirit of negative depression and self-centered control issues. She’s sober and loony as a raven with burgundy hair. Another sponsor came up to me and insisted that I pray for her because she was going to infuse her sponsee with “the message” of Christianity and “save” her soul. She’s sober and is as loony as the next cowgirl decked out with matching shoes, earrings, boots, and a fur coat. Another atheistic sponsor had no clue that the Big Book of A.A. was based on the spiritual principles found in the typical Bible and just applied in a way to help people overcome addictions. She argued with me. She may have Oppositional Defiance Disorder or something. She definitely was still addicted to smoking and had a slight weight problem. Everyone has issues in some area of their life to overcome.
I know of several parents, lawyers, judges, teachers, and other professionals who have severe weight issues. Healthy bodies make for healthy brains. Healthy brains help us all make healthier choices, right?
This movie was infused with a clear case of “fuckerism” and “addictionism” at it’s finest. Well, not really. Maybe, this isn’t the best movie out there.
That would, of course, be reality as experienced by the movie-goers who watch it. As someone who has engaged in, and experienced results from, cultic religions and occultic practices, I can say three things:
1. Evil grows exponentially like yeast.
2. There really are demonic energies that can grow when fed. Most of them are housed in your head and how you perceive other people who you don’t entirely understand.
3. Don’t drink the kool-aide (alcohol or religious poison) or eat the bull-shit from psychological movies or the bullshit lies and heart-ache from family relationships involving psychologically damaged parents and spouses. Also, eat healthy foods in healthy amounts, stay positive and grounded in reality, don’t listen to the itty-bitty-shitty committee in your head, and don’t eat the “pharm” unless you really need it to stay ALIVE! You might end up looking like a dead cow in the end. Cows can be skinny, too. But, dead is dead, so do your best to keep everyone around you alive and show respect for those you once professed to love. Sometimes, telling the truth in love stings our emotions and hurts. But then, maybe the healing can begin.
Psychologically speaking, this movie was quite balanced and made perfect sense. The grandma was a sweet, smiling, lunatic who looked “normal” on the surface but who had major control issues over her family which she wielded by leading a weird-ass cult that engaged in over-the-top Ouija-style seances, conjuring up unknown forces, using intimidation techniques, unhealthy triangular relationships, a series of bad decision making abilities, and lots of playing with fire in more ways than just one. She was also riddled with mental health issues and obsessed with continuing her horror story through her family whom she left behind by instilling fear and loathing in all of them. Her family felt victimized by her non-neurotypical lunacy.
So, she passed her mental health/spiritual sickness down to her daughter and grand-daughter, and bad things began to happen as fear took over. I felt the sorriest for the innocent children who were just lost in the mix of life as pawns in the adult world of insanity. Maybe her children really just wanted to be reassured that their bodies could play tricks on them, and that ingesting something they were allergic to might make it difficult to breath. And whatever you do, don’t stick your head out of a window while your panicking brother is driving at literal break-neck speeds near telephone poles. They might need reassurance that a person’s mind could play tricks on them that might cause them to want to jump out of windows when they hear a freaky clucking sound left behind by their freaky little sister who died and who might be trying to “get back at you” from beyond the grave by playing on your sense of guilt. No big deal. Just sleep with your lights on for a few years and weather through the freaky stuff. If you live long enough, nothing will freak you out anymore.
You won’t even be too freaked out by Donald Trump becoming the new God of the United States and appearing way too close in both looks and mannerisms of your former spiritual leader who once controlled your life like a Stockholm Syndrome reality movie. You won’t be freaked out by the thought of impending doom as our country becomes so extreme that Nazi Germany overtones are appearing more often than what feels comfortable and the Dark Ages are beginning to look familiar again.
It is possible to be abused and raped while you appear in public smiling and sweet, (just ask any real-life actress trained to put on her “soldier boots” for her children’s sake), while your other spiritual leaders (Charismatic, delusional CHRISTIAN pastors) convince you that your only role is to submit to your CHRISTIAN husband in everything just like Sarah did to Abraham and called her husband, “Lord and Master.” Once upon a time, I used to be scared of the world outside of the walls of my home.
Today? Tarot cards don’t scare me. Satan doesn’t scare me. Dying doesn’t scare me. Chopping off bird heads doesn’t freak me out. Slaughtering pigs on an alter doesn’t scare me. Going to hell for infinity and beyond doesn’t scare me (I’d just renovate it and sit on my throne as Persephone and enjoy listening to Prince, Madonna and Jackson’s “Thriller”)…singing Sa Ta Na Ma doesn’t scare me…engaging in Paganistic rituals under the oak groves of the Wild Northwest doesn’t scare me. Sitting naked in hot tubs yodeling up to the stars with strangers doesn’t scare me.
Now, one of my children facing their ultimate fear and terror of realizing that life can spin out of control and there just might not be one god-damned thing any ONE of us can do about anyone else’s behavior and lifestyle choices scares the shit out of me. That, and not being able to poop. The thought of one of my children becoming an insane alcoholic, drug addict, religious fanatic, obsessive fear monger, or becoming sucked into a vortex of negativity and violence or weird rituals that end in death and destruction of otherwise loving relationships scares the CRAP and the BULLSHIT out of me. I should know. I’ve had my veil of understanding ripped in two.
I’ve had reality smack me in my delusional vortex, faced and have either overcome or am still in the process of facing and overcoming all seven deadly sins of Narcissism, including every “ism” and “ology” known to human history. Like Derrida, I can rip through anything in life and break it down to its base elements, analyse anything and everyone, and draw conclusions about this Infinite Universe: We are all infused with an inherited malady known as “FUCKERISM.” If we could all just stop the insanity of fucking with each other, and insisting on getting our own fears alleviated, we might live in a better world all around. Either that, or we could just stop fucking and having any offspring to inherit anything!
Fuckerisms show up in about as many ways as the family issues showed up in the movie “Hereditary.” DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), FEAR (Fuck Everything and Run or drive like a bat out of hell for help, jump out of a window, or chase down a loved one from beyond the grave), RAGE (Real Angst Growing Exponentially), SPIRITS?
If the mother of the children had just accepted that she was insane and been perfectly happy about it, and wasn’t afraid of weird shit happening in life, her children may have also been better adjusted and able to grapple with the facts of life that bad things can just “happen.”
There ARE some people out in the world who engage in dark magic in an effort to control outcomes, and some of those people are running around naked, blind, and poor…living on the streets of Eugene, Oregon. Some of them might be living in your communities. Most of them are abusers, looking for spiritually weak victims who can be easily controlled by fear.
I should know. I lived with two of them for eight months. I had the opportunity to get to know people who engage in different forms of magic, covens, tarot cards, herbs, triangulation and storytelling that could make most people’s skin crawl. I believe some of their stories were based on real-life events that involved real deaths; some of them may have been delusional.
My own personal life story involves weird shit that has resulted in a wake of real deaths, close calls, tons of spirituality, cults, and rituals. I am now at a place in my life journey of almost 50 years where I am experiencing purgatory on earth. That is why I am also at a place where I am calling out GOD on the bullshit of religion, occult, science, psychology, sociology, sexuality, history and its power it can have over others in the form of keeping insane people with power and control issues afraid of going insane or facing their worse fears by listening to and believing other insane people who have power and control issues who are trying to help them avoid experiencing the fear of death and the possibility of hurting those they love or being hurt BY those they love and are supposed to trust.
The grandma in this movie? Sweet woman. Creative artist. She made some beautiful doormats and had some lovely “friends”….but, then she mixed in some black magic, opened her family up to ancient demonic powers involving Paimon, (A.K.A. Azazel from the book of Leviticus in the Bible) and voila’! An entire family of scapegoats are created for our entertainment, and the film industry’s money making pleasure. What incredible powers writers and creative artists can have in our world, especially when so many gullible, ignorant, naive, sheep believe everything fed to them, hook, line, and sinker!
So, the mother? She loses her head, decides to carry on the insanity of her own mother and play God. She manipulates her teen-age son in an effort to keep him safe from killing himself by possibly engaging in drunk driving, smoking pot and hitting on the cute girl (or any other ways of growing up and possibly killing oneself in the process) while at a high school party by insisting that he take along his little sister (played by Milly Shapiro), to keep him “safe.”
The mother, who never wanted children in the first place (major clue…maybe she should have had her tubes tied before having sex at all?), then puts her troubled little girl who was obviously needing both nutritional education (deadly allergies to certain foods and people known as nuts) and who obviously needed mental health education in order to heal up from a traumatic life event of losing a vital relationship with her grandmother who was also mentally unstable. What a family of nutcases!
Why in the hell didn’t the mother make sure her little girl brought along an epipen to the party where teenage behavior was taking place and to which she likely shouldn’t have been at in the first place? Why didn’t the mother ask her daughter if she wanted to just stay home and snuggle on the couch and read a book together? Or work on a doll house together where they focused on the happy memories of their shared mother/grandmother?
Nooooo….the psycho mother goes to a grief support group while popping pharmaceuticals (roots of alchemy and wizardry once upon a time), ends up having even MORE reasons to go back to the support group and then meets up with the REAL evil behind the scene pulling the strings! The very “nice” and caring woman who just might have an ulterior motive for infiltrating this family… Joan. The Queen behind the scenes. Played by Ann Dowd.
I think Joan and her naked cult followers just wanted to ultimately have necrophiliac lesbian sex with Peter, played by Alex Wolff, and his dead sister. But first, she must turn him into Paimon by helping him kill his entire family so he could absorb their spirits, thus setting him free as one of the kings of hell. Spiritually speaking. Magically, surrealistically, and artistically speaking, of course. I’m sure everyone will jump out the window to their deaths if their dog wants to play ball after this movie. It’s all the dog’s fault. Never own a dog. Dogs will drive you nuts.
