Falling Down the Spiral

The Dark Side of Religious Yearning

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Photo by Won Young Park on Unsplash

In Junji Ito’s horror manga masterpiece Uzumaki, an obsession with spirals consumes and eventually destroys an entire town. In one harrowing scene, a character crushes his own body into the shape of a spiral, killing himself in the process.

Anyone struggling with religious obsession and the search for a religious home can potentially relate to Ito's horror story. The desperate, frantic search for a religious life that gives one meaning can become a form of OCD—a tightening, ever-more suffocating spiral. Falling down the spiral only provides temporary relief, but the obsession inevitably resurfaces, more ferocious and painful than before.