JC Dentun
Appearances
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
Right. Also, I think it's worth pointing out that a majority of the stories that I looked into did happen. You're right. When around the time or after it was published. So it's interesting that that kind of spread. Yeah.
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
I think it is. It's correct in that it's traced back to the dictionary infernal, the, Infernal Dictionary, a French book on demonology from 1818. The first, I checked a few different editions of it, and the first edition, it was kind of put together as a collection of anecdotes, folk mythology, stories that were told that hovered around the topic of demons.
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
The later editions, I think the 1826 edition turns it into a universal library of beings, like an authoritative source. So it moved from being a skeptical examination of, reality into something that's more precise. And I think it's important to point out that in this era of time, this is like after the Industrial Revolution, and the world is pretty smogged out.
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
And I think it was a time in history where perhaps people felt pretty distant from God. It was a time where some people are making money, but there's extreme income disparity in the world and impoverished conditions. So around this time, you start seeing texts, books, and stories about demons and angels, like choirs, hierarchies of these things coming out because...
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
It's almost, you could conceive it as like these are interlopers or like etheric agents between us and the absolute or between God or between whatever your relationship with the universe is. And so it became very important to categorize these things because perhaps if we could no longer hear or were curious or didn't understand God, then maybe we could work with these agents in between.
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
So that's generally kind of the cultural vibe I pick up from that era.
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
Yeah, it's written earnestly. It's written as a work of nonfiction. It's written from a skeptic point of view, but like I said, in later editions, because the man who wrote it He was a skeptic. He wasn't a part of any organized faith.
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
And within a decade, he was a full-on Roman Catholic preaching about the ills of working with demons and working with lesser magics like that, which I think is pretty interesting to point out. The time he spent in contact with these things, as it circulated, a lot of people came back to him and said, I also have experiences with these things. These things are real. And it spread everywhere.
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
fairly quickly, especially for that period of time, you know, in this pre-internet world. And I think these anecdotes coming back to him reinforced the reality of this and made him change his mind from a full-on skeptic to a believer. I looked for anecdotes to see if he had experienced anything on his own.
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
I couldn't find anything, like, I don't think anything from the book came to him, but that didn't stop him from underscoring the fact that he thought they were real, and for the rest of his life, he said as much.
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
Zozo is mentioned with three other demons. I'm just going to pull up my notes here one second. So in this book, there's a story of a young girl who claimed to be possessed by three demons. Mimi, Capule, and Zozo. And the quote that I pulled from the book, the only thing really describing the action is, the girl went down the streets in all fours, sometimes forward, sometimes behind.
Otherworld
What Is Zozo? feat JC Dentun [Patreon Preview]
Sometimes she walked in her hands, feet in the air, at the risk of putting passersby in the confidence of her position. She would tell people that demons were possessing her, and she said it was like a gaggle or like a group of demons or something like that.