Beware the Technologically Advanced Mermaids

Having published Al Blenney's article a few weeks ago about a local “School of Prophets”, and then talking with him on our podcast about how there are several groups in New Zealand that promote Christian prophecy and run annual conferences, I wasn't too surprised to read last week about “ReAwaken America”, a Christian event held in Miami at the Trump National Doral hotel. The story that caught my eye was about a “prophet” called Amanda Grace who warned the assembled crowd about mermaids. Specifically, she said:

“There's wickedness attempting to completely cover this nation, in perversion and seductive seducing spirits. I have never seen more images of more mermaids and more water people in my life. That's a division in the kingdom of darkness, and they're highly technologically advanced. And we have to understand what we're dealing with. And we have to understand the rules of engagement in spiritual warfare. And we are meant for hand-to-hand combat. And we are meant to bring our cries before the throne of God to bring judgement on the rulers of darkness of this world and of this nation. Because the rulers have set up a throne in this nation, they set it up. Darkness has completely covered this nation and eclipsed the Whitehouse of this nation.”

So, what the heck is she on about? I'm guessing this prophet isn't thinking of the old-school “Fiji mermaid” hoaxes that were popular a couple of hundred years ago, when people would sew the back half of a dead fish to the front half of a dead monkey, and parade it around at fairs claiming it was caught by fisherman off the coast of Fiji.

My first thought was that this might be from QAnon, or maybe some QAnon-aligned conspiracy. After all, Q has found a welcome home in the US both among conservatives and inside many churches. But a quick google search didn't bring up anything trending in the news.

After I bit more fruitless searching, and a realisation that this likely wasn't an emerging pop culture phenomenon, I eventually found a video on YouTube of Amanda Grace giving a 1 hour talk about her prophetic visions. The video was posted by a random looking Vietnamese account 11 days ago - before she gave her recent and now famous mermaid talk at the ReAwaken America event:

I watched the video so you don't have to, but although I can spare you most of the pain, you're still going to have to suffer from my executive summary if you want to read the rest of my article!

In the video she starts off (at around 9 minutes, after some preamble) by mentioning a vision she had where she saw ex Fox News host Tucker Carlson wearing jeans, a dark blazer and a white shirt. In this vision Tucker stretched his arms up, and Amanda saw a mermaid tattoo wrapped around his trunk. In case you're having problems imagining what this would look like, I've had Bing Search draw this for you (my MidJourney credit ran out, sadly). Obviously Bing doesn't know who Tucker Carlson is, but that being said I think it did a great job on this one:

Later in the video we arrive at “seducing spirits” (from about 23:10), who Amanda says are ruled over by Dagon, chief of the Philistines. Apparently Dagon was half man, half fish, and he controls a marine faction, or division, who are battling with humanity. I say apparently, because Wikipedia has a lot to say about this interpretation:

**_Fish-god interpretation_**

_The "fish" etymology, while late and incorrect, was accepted in 19th and early 20th century scholarship. It led to an erroneous association between Dagan and Odakon, a half-fish being mentioned by Berossus, and with "fishman" motifs in Mesopotamian art, in reality depictions of Kulullû, an apotropaic creature associated with the god Ea.

The association with dāg/dâg 'fish' was made by 11th-century Jewish Bible commentator Rashi. In the 13th century, David Kimhi interpreted the odd sentence in 1 Samuel 5.2–7 that "only Dagon was left to him" to mean "only the form of a fish was left", adding: "It is said that Dagon, from his navel down, had the form of a fish (whence his name, Dagon), and from his navel up, the form of a man, as it is said, his two hands were cut off." The Septuagint text of 1 Samuel 5.2–7 says that both the hands and the head of the image of Dagon were broken off.

The first to cast doubt on the "fish" etymology was Hartmut Schmökel in his 1928 study of Dagan, though he initially nonetheless suggested that while Dagon was not in origin a "fish god", the association with dâg "fish" among the maritime Canaanites (Phoenicians) would have affected the god's iconography. However, later he correctly identified it as a medieval invention. Modern researchers not only do not accept it, but even question if Dagan/Dagon was worshiped in coastal areas in any significant capacity at all._

Amanda moves on to talking about how these mermaids are “highly technologically advanced”, including in warfare. She also talks about how the media has been flooded with images of Dagon, and what immediately came to mind was the upcoming live action remake of The Little Mermaid, as well as the recently released new Avatar movie, Way of the Water - which, from what I can gather, introduces a new type of blue alien that is aquatic. And why are the media flooding us with images of mermaids? Because they're deceiving us into thinking that mermaids are our friends, when in reality they are dangerous foes.

Sure enough, in the video Amanda goes on a rant about the new Little Mermaid movie and its titular hero, Ariel. She claims that Ariel's father in the original Disney cartoon has been drawn exactly how Dagon looked in real life:

Next up, Starbucks! The Starbucks logo is meant to seduce us into trusting mermaids:

Then she's onto Poise feminine pads. I thought maybe she was going to say that “poise” is part of the word porpoise, and that porpoises are mermaids, but no. Apparently the sanitary pad manufacturer has used a mermaid in one of their TV ads, and Amanda saw the ad when her husband was watching American Football.

Then we get to Avatar - which I would call my second hit, if I was claiming to be psychic. Amanda claims that the producers of the new movie must have been given images of these mermaids directly into their minds, and based their movie's characters on the images they were given - because the Avatar aliens look just like mermaids Amanda has seen in the “spirit realm”.

Then we move on to how Navi, the name of the aliens in Avatar, sounds a lot like Nazi, and this starts of a 10 minute rant that seems even more unhinged than what's come before it, dissecting the Avatar movie plot she's read online and making connections to Hinduism, pantheism, environmentalism and many other movements she considers to come from the devil.

After this Amanda moves onto some biblical-heavy talk about the Ark of the Covenant, and how the forces of darkness have been wanting to steal it for thousands of years. And so we arrive at the warning, that the world is in the middle of a spiritual battle, where everywhere around us there are dark forces trying to destroy us all, and that we need to be prepared to fight.

Watching this video I was disappointed that this technologically advanced mermaid thing is nothing more than evangelical Christian nonsense, scaring people into thinking that they are in the middle of a war for their souls. I was hoping for something a bit more original and exciting, like maybe a new spin on the Atlantis myth. Amanda reminded me of David Icke, who is similarly obsessed with movies and seems to be inspired by them - although David and Amanda both say that the media has been inspired by what its creators have observed in the “spirit world”, or “higher dimensions”, I suspect that the exact opposite is going on. These “prophetic” people's imaginations have been inspired by the movies they've watched; they're basically stealing someone else's ideas, and recycling them as their own. David and Amanda also seems to share David's trait of having an overactive imagination - drawing spurious connections between unrelated topics, and making massive logical leaps to try to make everything in their “world” seem interconnected.

I'll leave the last word to the National Ocean Service, part of America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

_But are mermaids real? No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found. Why, then, do they occupy the collective unconscious of nearly all seafaring peoples? That's a question best left to historians, philosophers, and anthropologists._