My children were raised with liberal doses of television.  I will admit sometimes I too was caught up in the cartoons of the day.  Now I am not to the level of a devote or a critic, but I do remember one series that sticks in my mind.  Scooby-Doo.  If you don’t remember this bit of comedic drama, here is the description from Wikipedia:

Each episode featured Scooby and the four teenaged members of the Mystery, Inc. gang: Fred, Shaggy, Daphne, and Velma, arriving to a location in the “Mystery Machine” and encountering a ghost, monster, or other supernatural creature, whom they learned was terrorizing the local populace. After looking for clues and suspects and being chased by the monster, the kids come to realize the ghost is anything but, and – often with the help of a Rube Goldberg-like trap designed by Fred – they capture the villain and unmask him. Revealed as a flesh and blood crook trying to cover up crimes by using the ghost story and costume, the criminal is arrested and taken to jail, often saying something to the effect of “…and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for you meddling kids!”

What brings this to mind today is that in reality it a picture of the change of the world has morphed through in the last couple of hundred years or so.  It is the transition from the perception of life full of monsters and witches to a world of science.  Scooby is always afraid of the monster and ultimately that monster is revealed as something considerably less frightening.  Previously our world was filled with ghosts, demon possessions, witches and things that go bump in the night. In that day there two worlds of the spiritual and the natural.   These two worlds were held apart only by a very thin veil.  One world was always invading the other. Now it is called superstition.  Black cats and walking under ladders was bad luck.

Scooby was always the first to acknowledge this invasion of the dark world into his by running away and grabbing Shaggy and crying in fear.  But once the mask was removed even Scooby had to acknowledge the impossibility of the monster.  But next week he fell for the same ruse.

Today there is little use for monsters outside of the movies.  We have become more modern.  We have put away childish things.  Science, technology and skepticism now rule. We have become so modern we have to purposely go to the movies to be scared.  An entire entertainment genera exists just to scare us. We have become so hardened to the spiritual we have to artificially experience something just to feel.

Thinking again about Scooby-Doo I realized how closely the show traces, in a single episode, this movement from enchantment to disenchantment. The episodes begin with enchantment, with a supernatural monster, specter, ghoul or ghost. But as the kids investigate they get suspicious, reason asserts itself and the monster–the agent of the occult–is eventually revealed to be Mr. Jenkins the greedy banker. The story ends with disenchantment. The supernatural was simply a “cover” for workaday greed, theft and corruption.

We moderns think the world has been rid of the dark forces–the ghouls, ghosts, demons and monsters. But these occult forces of evil haven’t been expelled, expunged or exorcised. They still haunt and torment.  We may well call them other things, but in reality the spiritual world exists.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12

Contemplating Scooby-Doo I began to wonder. Perhaps this isn’t a tale of disenchantment after all. Perhaps Scooby-Doo really is a story about the occult and the demonic. We’ve just lost the ability to see it.

What do you think.  Leave a comment.