And All The Powers of Hell!

Part Eight: Defending the Wood Perilous

We have established that the Wood Perilous is perilous. We have established that what it needs defending from is the perils themselves—because it is the perils who benefit from making the wood seem ordinary, banal. It is the perils who benefit if people forget to be wary of them.

Which leads to the question…who is the greatest peril of all?

Who is the danger who, more than any other, has managed to convince the modern world not to be afraid of him—even more so than Anansi’s de-toothed (supposedly) Tiger?*

*—brief note: My thoughts about Anansi and Tiger are about that parable in and of itself, not about the use of Anansi and Tiger in Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, which I rather liked.

Who has done such a good job of publicly de-clawing himself that he has convinced us that he does not exist?

The Devil.

If we truly wish to Defend the Wood Perilous, to put heart back into heroes and soul back into stories, we have to give the Devil his due by restoring to him his perilousness.

He is the most dangerous destructive being in the universe—and yet most modern people chuckle if his name is mentioned. This is a far greater con than the Spider and the Tiger. This is the greatest con ever pulled.

So how do we restore the awe proper to All the Powers of Hell?

I thought this next part was going to be hard. Then I read of a real-life visit to Hell, and I realized... to restore the true majesty and depravity of the Devil, all we need to do is break his spell.

And we already know how to do that from our last post, The Secret of the Perilous Wood. All we need to do is…

Tell the truth:

Without further adieu, the real-life visit to Hell of Dr. Gloria Polo

My Judgment Before God: The Story of Dr. Gloria Polo

Translated from Spanish to English by Susanna Vallejo.

Foreword by Eric R. Dunstan
Doctor Gloria Polo was an orthodontist living in Columbia when she was struck by lightning and had a near death experience in which she was judged by Jesus and condemned for mortal sin. Fortunately, a very pious, humble farmer who saw a picture of her in the newspaper prayed for her soul and Jesus granted her a second chance, with a mission to repeat what she witnessed not only a thousand times, but a thousand times a thousand; and that when she comes back before Jesus to be judged again, she will be judged with greater severity, due to her second chance and all that she saw while over there. Susanna Vallejo personally met Dr. Gloria Polo on several occasions and painstakingly translated her testimony from Spanish audio recordings to English and sent me this copy which I have posted on this page. Consider this therefore to be furthering the mission given to Dr. Gloria Polo.

She describes how she was hit by lightning and died. Here are a few excerpts, but the whole thing is truly worth reading:

When you are over there being judged, it’s your thoughts that speak the loudest. You re-live your life because our Lord opens the Book of Life and he goes over your entire life with your and so you re-live every second of it. You see your life go before you, including what your thoughts were at that moment in your life. And when you act in certain manners you see all the people that were damaged or hurt due to your actions at that instant of your life that is being shown to you in the Book of Life. It’s very painful. Our Lord shows us how our sins do not simply stay within us. Like a rotten fruit, if it’s not removed, it will rot all the fruit around it. If I allow sin in my life, what is the closest thing to me that is going to get damaged? My children.

You know what, brothers and sisters, remove those earplugs from your ears because I want you to hear this, when you fall into mortal sin, the devil compromises you and you sign your soul over to the devil. And your soul immediately becomes the devil’s possession. Once we do that, the saddest part is that the devil tells us, “Now, bring me all those around you.”

A mother who is always gossiping, a father who is filled with hatred, or unfaithfulness, or a drunkard, what is the closest thing that he or she has? His or her children. The Lord calls that the bad administration of the talents that the Lord gives a father and mother to inculcate to their children graces of salvation. Every time that my biological brothers would get drunk and would be sleeping around with women other than their wives, my dad, over there in those swamps, would scream and wail. My dad felt a lot of pain when he was down there because he was given the understanding that due to his lifestyle, he had handed his sons over to Satan in a silver platter.

…

When one breaks that pact, you cannot imagine, how blessings are removed from your married life. When my husband and I received the Eucharist, the body and blood or our Lord, you want to know what happened? It’s no longer a couple. It becomes three because immediately our Lord Jesus incorporates the souls of the couple and he takes them into His heart. And it’s no longer three, but one because we become a trinity, the groom, the bride and Jesus, in His heart. Who can separate that? No body. No body. Once the marriage is consummated, if the young lady is pure, many, many graces and blessing get poured upon them, more so upon the couple in which both of them are virgins when they get married, because you are married to God.

When my father, slipped the ring into my mom’s finger, and they were declared husband and wife, our Lord Jesus handed over to my father a staff of light, like this. Do you know what that is? It’s a grace, the gift of authority, which God bestows upon the father/husband, the authority of God the father. That authority is to be used by the father/husband to guide his little flock through this world, in which so many wolves exist that try to devour marriages. My husband also received that staff, all men who are sacramentally married do.

When my mother got married, she received a fire upon her heart, like a humongous ball of fire. Do you know what that is? The love of God. The beauty of it is that my mother was a very pure woman and God was very pleased with her.

When my father was 12 years old, my grandfather took him to the brothels. Can you imagine how many evil-worldly spirits entered my father’s soul? Those evil-worldly spirits look like larva to me. They’re like larva. When someone has relations outside of marriage, those evil-worldly spirits immediately attach themselves to those persons all over their bodies. They begin by attaching themselves to their genitals but they end up taking over that person. They take over their hormones. They get into their brain. They take over the hypophysis (pituitary gland). They take over the pituitary gland. They take over the neurological part of their organism. And they begin to generate a great number of hormones that leads them to very low instincts. They turn a son or daughter of God into slaves of their genitals. And they become genital human beings. They’re enjoying life, excuse my language, if they are wallowing in bed, in sin. When the couple is pure, many blessings get poured upon them. God glorifies himself in that because the blood is there as a pact of unity and sanctity between the couple.

Sexuality is not a sin, brothers and sisters. God gave it to us as a blessing. He gave it to us for a couple to love each other. True sexuality is the couple and God. When you get up there, you are going to be shown too how the Holy Spirit is always in the sacramental bed because the bed ends up being a sacrament of love, that is, in that bed exists the blessing of the Sacrament of Marriage. And in that sacramental bed dwells the Holy Spirit. God also leaves a cloud, that is, his presence in a home at the kitchen table. If there isn’t a table, he leaves a cloud over wherever the family gets together to share a meal. God blesses. God loves going home with the couple. When I got married, did I take God with me? No. I left him at the altar. I went straight to the party, and then the honeymoon, and then we arrived home and our Lord was left outside. But nonetheless he remained in the sacrament. That is something that cannot be denied.

Back to my parents. The beauty of that matrimonial blessing that my parents received is that the Lord was restoring within my father many spiritual gifts because he was married to a pure woman and that was healing my dad’s inherited sexual bondages. But since he was a macho man and his friends began instigating him; that he better not allow himself to fall for a woman; that he had to continue living his party life. So what does my father do? 15 days after his marriage, he ends up in a brothel to show off to his friends that he continued being the macho man that he was before he got married. Remember that staff that he had received at the altar, well, the Beast stole it from him. That larva became attached to my father. He went from being the shepherd of his home to a wolf.

While in those swamps, my father, crying would say, “Thanks to those 38 years of prayer of that holy woman that God gave me as a wife, my soul has been saved from eternal damnation.” My mother spent 38 years of her life praying for the salvation of my father’s soul. Her prayer went something like this – she would go before the Blessed Sacrament and would say, “Lord, I know that you will not allow your servant to die because I trust in you Lord, you will not allow this servant of yours to die without seeing the conversion of her husband. I don’t only pray for my husband, but for all the poor women who are going through what I am going through. I especially pray for the wives, who instead of kneeling before you in prayer, are going to witch doctors, fortunetellers, or are doing the same thing as their husbands, handing over their souls and the souls of their children to Satan. I pray for them too, Lord.”

You want to know why I loved my father, rather than feeling hatred towards him? Because my mom was a good woman. She never, never, never taught us to hate my father nor anyone, for that matter. I used to say, there goes my mom again with her crazy stuff. She used to say, “The Lord has revealed to me how the earth opened up and swallowed up your father.” That’s how my mother would describe mortal sin, by saying that the earth would open up and would swallow people up. But when I was up there, I discovered that my mother did have a mystical vision. My mother used to tell me, “I saw it. Satan has chained him. But you know what I do, daughter, I hold on to him with the rosary. And I take him to church with me every day, tied up with the rosary. And the devil pulls him downward and I pull him upward. And I take him up to the Blessed Sacrament and I tell him, ‘Here he is, Lord. And I trust that you are going to save him.'”

My father converted eight years before he died. He asked for forgiveness and God forgave him. That is why my father was in purgatory, in the lower parts of purgatory, in the swamps. But my father did not atone for his sins. To atone for our sins is something that we don’t really delve into very much and we cannot atone for anything, but Jesus in the Eucharist can. When a soul goes to adore our Lord before the Blessed Sacrament, he invites us and gives us the grace to repair the wrong that one has done. It’s a terrible thing because when you’re over there, our Lord shows us the consequences of our sins. Sin is not simply, oops, I stole something. When you’re up there, He will show you the damage that it causes others. What hurts God the most is not the act of stealing, yes, that is bad, but what hurts him the most is the pain that one causes one’s brethren.

The Lord held me accountable even for a dirty look that I gave someone. He held me accountable for a bad word that I said to a brother. Those errors hurt so much when you are over there being judged. My mom used to tell my dad to advise my brothers not to live a sinful life. My dad would answer her by saying, “Sweetheart, let them enjoy life. The boys are young. When they get older, the boys shall change their ways.” How painful it is for a father to turn his children over to eternal death.

…

I wasn’t even able to stay in the lower parts of purgatory with my father. I continued descending. And when my descent came to an end, I came to a flat surface. You can imagine the horror I felt when I realized that I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even stay in the last corner of purgatory. I continued descending. When I came to that flat surface, a mouth opened up. And that mouth swallowed me in. It was real. It was alive. Everything is very real over there. That is reality. Over there, there is nothing unreal. Everything is very real. And I go in there head first. When I am on my way into another mouth, I was yelling and screaming like a crazy person. I knew that once I entered in there completely that I wasn’t going to be able to stay in the cavity. I knew that I had to continue descending. That hole had another mouth. And I knew that once I entered through that mouth, that I would never come out. It was my spiritual death, the death of my soul. But when I am headed towards that mouth, thanks be to God, St. Michael the Archangel grabbed me by the feet and I entered in a light manner, like a feather, into that hole. The light of my spirit bothered all of the demons that were there and immediately demons that looked like larva jumped at me and covered up my entire body as to cover up any little bit of light that might have been left within in me. I was horrified at that sight. I would yell and scream like a mad woman. When those things attached themselves to me, they were burning me alive. They are darkness that is real and alive. The hatred that exists there is real and alive. It’s a form of hatred that burns you up alive, hatred that makes you explode, hatred that devours you. And I am there covered up with that larva.

…

 I was very impressed when I watched the movie, The Passion of Christ; Remember when they were scourging our Lord? Remember that Satan pulls out a baby from over here and that baby looks at our Lord and laughs at him? That thing is what I want to tell you about. Nowadays that thing is no longer a baby, it’s a gigantic and perverse child. It has many, many people in slavery through human pleasures, witchcraft, and mixed theology; for example,the belief that Satan does not exist. Imagine the shrewdness of Satan to be able to convince humanity that he is not real. He manipulates the destruction of men. He walks men through the path of destruction.

…

The Lord showed me, how a community can be capable of killing its own children by sacrificing them to the devil through abortion. That’s the worst of all sins, to kill your own children, to kill a baby. But each time that there is an abortion, Satan releases from the pit of hell — what is an abortion? Abortion is the same as killing an innocent baby, precious innocent blood is shed because that baby is sinless. That baby is like a lamb without blemish. Who is the only lamb without blemish? Jesus is. At that moment, the baby is an image of Jesus Christ. The act of aborting a baby brings such power to darkness, the fact that the mother herself kills her child. I am only talking about provoked abortions, not spontaneous abortions. All those demons come here to destroy humanity.

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Now, let me ask you, how many crimes occur on a daily basis? God loves us so much that He remains on the cross begging us. The worst of all the sins I committed was the sin of abortion. And I used to say that I had never killed anyone. When I killed my baby through abortion, our Lord showed me how there was a huge, gigantic, stadium filled with demons. There were so many demons. It looked as though the demons were attending a World Cup game but with many, many, many more demons in attendance enjoying the human sacrifice, that happens every time there is an abortion. They enjoy that so much. Imagine, how can it be that a mother to whom God has given the gift of giving life chooses to kill her own baby, a mother who against wind and fire protects her own child and that same mother kills her baby through abortion. I feel a lot of pain when, in my country, I see commercials on TV that tell us to enjoy safe sex by using a condom. Well, with two condoms and everything else, I ended up pregnant. Through the waves of communication and all of his strategies, the devil has led humanity to kill their own children. Why do you think that is? That is because that is the worst sin of all. When we kill a baby, what are we doing in reality? Are we offering that baby up to God? God is love.

Every time, there is an abortion, the blood shed by that baby is like a key that Satan turns and the Lord showed me something that looked like seals on the ground and every time there is an abortion, those seals open up and millions of spirits get released on to earth from the pit of hell, spirits such us: the spirit of homosexuality, the spirit of lust, the spirit of satanic worship, the spirit of atheism, spirits of suicide, of abortion, spirits of everything that we are seeing nowadays. Haven’t you noticed how human beings are becoming less and less Christian?

…

Right then and there, the Lord gave me my mission. He gives me my mission and he says to me, “All this that has transpired, you are not only going to repeat it a thousand times, but a thousand times a thousand. And woe to those who hear your testimony and do not change because they will be judged with greater severity, in the same manner that you are going to be judged with greater severity. Be it (priests), my anointed ones, or whoever because there is no greater deaf person than he/she who does not want to hear, nor is there greater blind person than he/she who does not want to see.”

Read the rest. It’s worth it! There’s even a book.

Or on Amazon:

Again, truth is the thing that shatters mesmerism. To return majesty and eerieness to theWood Perilous—to make it perilous again—what we need is to restore the proper fear of Hell—and thus the proper awe of the one Power greater than all the powers of Hell—is tell the truth.

Tell people the truth about Hell, about the Devil, and most of all, about Christ and God.

The very best stories are about the truest things!

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To that end:

In case you don’t read Dr. Gloria Polo’s whole testimony and miss where she says this herself, remember, even at the last minute, souls have been saved. If you ever find yourself falling into Hell, call for Jesus Christ. I have read a number of near-death experiences where that one thing saved someone at the very last minute.

I will say this one more time: Even if you have lived an abominable life— stolen, killed, cared for no one, committed a hundred abortions—if you call on Christ, it can all be forgiven.

Even at the very, very last minute.

Of course, it might be easier on you—and the rest of us—if you don’t wait that long. ;-)

Previously: Part Seven: The Secret of the Perilous Wood