Pazuzu - in Modern Culture

In Modern Culture

  • In the 1971 novel The Exorcist and the movie based on the novel, Pazuzu is supposedly one of the evil spirits that possesses the young girl Regan MacNeil. He reappears in the 1977 sequel Exorcist II: The Heretic. In this movie, Pazuzu is both named as the demon antagonist of Regan MacNeil and the unwitting helper of Father Philip Lamont (played by Richard Burton), as he seeks to finally free Regan from his hold. In the end, Father Lamont finally defeats the demons.
  • Pazuzu appears on the album cover of the Gorillaz compilation album D-Sides, as a statue in front of the band's former recording studio, in the music video for the band's song "Dare," in the video for the song "Rockit" and in the unmade video for "Rhinestone Eyes."
  • In his author's bio in the first issue of Warrior magazine in 1982, comic book author Alan Moore claims to be "possessed by the demon Pazuzu."
  • Pazuzu is mentioned in the so-called Simon Necronomicon, a publication of Avon Books that purports to document incantations to invoke "incredible things, beings, and monsters into visible form." He is described therein as "Lord of all fevers and plagues, grinning Dark Angel of the Four Wings, horned, with rotting genitalia," and as the "brother of HUMAWAW." The book claims that he is among the most fearsome of all entities, stating in part: "It is the able magician indeed who can remove PAZUZU once he has laid hold of a man, for PAZUZU lays hold unto death." Although the book makes the claim that PAZUZU (like all entities listed therein) was of Sumerian origin, critics John Wisdom Gonce III and Daniel Harms document the erroneous nature of such a claim, stating: "Likewise, the demon Pazuzu does not appear in myth until Assyria's rise in the first millennium B.c., long after Sumer's prime ... Thus the beings of the Simon Necronomicon bear little resemblance to either Sumerian myth or Lovecraftian fiction."
  • Pazuzu is the demon that haunts Adèle Blanc-Sec in Tardi's graphic novel "The Demon of the Eiffel Tower" ("Le Démon de la tour Eiffel," 1976). Pazuzu also appears in "Mummies on Parade" ("Momies en folie," 1978).
Mythology portal
Ancient Near East portal

Read more about this topic:  Pazuzu

Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or culture:

    Families have always been in flux and often in crisis; they have never lived up to nostalgic notions about “the way things used to be.” But that doesn’t mean the malaise and anxiety people feel about modern families are delusions, that everything would be fine if we would only realize that the past was not all it’s cracked up to be. . . . Even if things were not always right in families of the past, it seems clear that some things have newly gone wrong.
    Stephanie Coontz (20th century)

    The fact remains that the human being in early childhood learns to consider one or the other aspect of bodily function as evil, shameful, or unsafe. There is not a culture which does not use a combination of these devils to develop, by way of counterpoint, its own style of faith, pride, certainty, and initiative.
    Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)