I recently went public about my past “demonic encounters.” You can read about it in my entry, “Discarnate Entities: Demons, Unattached Burdens, and Intersubjective Parasites,” and watch the presentation that launched The Entity Pill series:
“Discarnate entities,” or simply “entities,” is a catch-all term for non-physical beings that are real and interact with us but remain unseen. The phrase has become synonymous with malicious entities that aim to harm us, such as demons, but it can also refer to benevolent entities that guide us, such as angels.
The “pill” phrase is a riff on the “red pill,” taken from the movie The Matrix. Taking the red pill means awakening to the realities of our world. It has spawned other pills, such as the black pill, the white pill, and the grey pill. The entity pill, then, is an awakening to the possibility that entities exist alongside us.
While belief in entities has been common throughout human history and likely remains prevalent globally, it has gradually become intellectually unfashionable in Western culture over the past 400 years, starting around the time when the father of modern philosophy, René Descartes, wrote about his “evil demon.”
In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes conducted his famous thought experiment involving a malicious demon to challenge the reliability of the senses. He concluded that while our perceptions of the external world can be deceived, the act of thinking cannot be denied. This premise led to his famous assertion, “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”), which posits that the mind and its reasoning are the only certainties.
“I will suppose therefore that some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement.” - René Descartes
By prioritizing propositional knowledge through radical doubt, Descartes laid the groundwork for modern epistemology, shifting philosophy from metaphysics toward epistemology—a shift known as the “epistemological turn.”1 This radical doubt about the reliability of our senses has led to the historically rare disbelief in entities within Western culture. I find it intriguing that a demon lies at the heart of this disbelief.
Institutions regarded as responsible for shaping collective knowledge, such as modern universities—with Descartes arguably serving as their patron saint—are skeptical of any phenomena involving entities. These institutions are gradually being dislodged from their roles as epistemic authorities in our culture for various reasons. This shift is creating space for previously stigmatized beliefs to resurface alongside an embodied way of knowing that relies more fully on the senses.
Let us not risk going too “woo,” though. Skepticism is a handy tool in one’s perspectival toolkit. There are far too many metaphysical rabbit holes backed by questionable epistemologies that one can fall into, leading to undeserved claims of divine authority, which itself can lead to great abuse. Still, I find that a certain agency is afforded when the ontological status of “real” is applied to an entity-like encounter.
Whether such entities are indeed real and regardless of whether you adopt a skeptical or believer stance, I predict that belief in entities will become more widespread, entering the collective conversation more robustly. At least one polarity of the culture war will fully adopt the belief in a non-ironic way. The Entity Pill series serves as a preemptive response to this prediction.
This series straddles the line between skepticism and belief, embracing the tension without resolving it. It offers skeptics deeper insight and compassion into the mindset of believers, enabling them to relate with them with greater wisdom. At the same time, it provides believers with theoretical and practical tools to respond to such entity-like phenomena.
You might think this is impossible, but this is the alchemy of The Stoa.
Part 1 of The Entity Pill series finished with four great guests, which you can watch here:
Starting in September and concluding on Halloween, we'll be hosting part two of The Entity Pill series. The provisional line-up, with more sessions to be added:
If you participated in part one, you're already in and have been contacted via email. If you'd like to join, you are welcome to apply to the series. Applications are open to Less Foolish members and can be found behind the paywall below. While the majority of applications were accepted during the first part of the series, and I imagine it will be the same for this round, the process is still important to screen out any pesky entities. 😉
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