“Eventually, because of this unflinching resistance, the diabolical entities subjected the girl to terrible mental and physical torment, such that the only remaining alternative was to resort to exorcism before these things destroyed her completely. As a result, early in 1976, the Jesuit exorcists began reading the Roman Ritual of exorcism over the girl. After six arduous months, the exorcists had read the ritual a total of sixty-six times—notice the number—at which point she succumbed to death. Death was a release for the girl: like a martyr, it was her only access to freedom.”
Why didn’t the entities obey the commands of the exorcist, as they’re supposed to do?
“The demonic entities did leave. The devils, on the other hand, defied not only the exorcist’s commands but the laws of God, for which they will experience rebuke beyond all our reasoning. Rather than give up the possession, these diabolical entities used it instead to affirm their hate for God. Like Christ, the girl’s life was unfairly taken away from her by others. And though she died in a physical sense, she survived with her soul intact and her spirit unblemished. It wasn’t the priests who killed her. Nor did the ritual of exorcism have anything remotely to do with it. The girl was killed by the devil, and that’s a fact documented on tape.”
Some cling to the belief that diabolical possession is a purely psychological event—that there’s no such thing as “external entities,” and talk of spirits is hogwash. Considering that so much of the activity of the demonic does have a psychological interlink, it is only fair to ask where pyschology stands on the subject of demoniacal oppression and possession.
Until roughly a century ago, all mental illness was treated as a sign of possession. Today, all oppression and possession is treated as a sign of mental illness. This drastic change from one absolute interpretation to another has done nothing to solve the ongoing problem of demoniacal influence: it has only resulted in a change of labels. Thus, in the past, an individual who displayed unseemly behavior was branded as “possessed” and locked away in an institution. Today, the oppressed or possessed individual (who also displays unseemly behavior) is diagnosed as being “mentally ill” and once again locked away in an institution.
“The majority of people who complain about being oppressed or possessed by spirits are mentally ill,” Ed notes, “but this isn't always the case, as I’ve learned by experience.
“Back in 1971, I was approached by a family who calmly and reasonably told me they believed their son was under possession by a demonic spirit. I let them talk, then said, ‘Okay, where’s your son so I can take a look at him?’ They told me he was in a New York state mental hospital, where he’d been committed eight years before as a schizophrenic.
“As a patient, the young man complained about something else in him, while making occasional murmurings about the devil. No one took him seriously except his parents, who read about the subject of possession and found enough data to convince themselves that their son just might be possessed.
“A few weeks later, I accompanied the family to the hospital to see the son. Well, he was a dribbling, mental wreck; he hardly moved, and recognized no one. I’d brought a cross with me at the time and started to walk up behind him. I was about to put it behind the boy’s head when he suddenly swung around, his eyes wide open like saucers, and stared at me with that look of furious hate so characteristic in the possessed. What we all saw was not the boy who had been brought into the room in a wheelchair. We saw another being emerge: this one alert and vicious, which had been provoked by a religious object that the boy never saw.
“The son’s previously healthy background, coupled with his reaction to the cross, gave me reason to believe that he just might be possessed. To make a long story short, I went ahead and assembled all the facts available on the case, which kept tilting toward the possibility of possession. I then went through a lot of effort, even putting my reputation on the line, to get an exorcist assigned to the case. Well, I succeeded, and a few months later the Catholic Church assigned an exorcist to conduct the ritual.
“When the priest flew into New York from abroad, I had everything arranged. With the permission of the hospital authorities, the parents picked up the boy and brought him home. He was limp and lifeless and had to be helped around like a child. The boy was laid down on a bed. The exorcist then read the ritual of exorcism over him. During the reading, nothing unusual happened. The boy just lay there, inert and barely conscious. There was absolutely no indication of possession until the very, very end, when the exorcist commanded the spirits to vacate the boy’s body. Suddenly he convulsed and thrashed around and moaned and panted and sweated and hollered and yelled.
“A minute later, he collapsed back into bed. A look of serenity and peace swept over his face. The boy opened his eyes, now clear and devoid of any negative influence, and articulately said, ‘It’s over: the spirit is gone.’ Well! Twenty minutes later, that young man stood up and was just as sane and well-spoken as anyone in the room. A few days later, he was discharged from the hospital, and he’s never had a problem since. Whether that boy’s condition was mental illness—or possession, as I contend—the fact remains that exorcism cured his problem.”
Psychology tends to see all cases of oppression and possession as being the manifestation of one or another type of mental disorder. The prevailing tendency is to diagnose such cases as paranoia, hysteria, or schizophrenia because the outward symptoms of spirit oppression or possession (stress, anxiety, disorientation, fantasy images) are similar to textbook symptoms of neurosis and psychosis. Yet no matter how similar the overt symptoms, the etiology or cause of the problem is not the same. Rather, closer scrutiny of the oppressed or possessed individual’s complaints should reveal that, although his behavior may appear abnormal, he is functionally sane. All he’s really doing is reporting exactly what’s happening to him—namely, that he is being harassed by external forces. However, because these “external forces” have long ago been exorcised from scientific literature, closer scrutiny is rare. And so the spiritually-afflicted individual gets put away in an institution instead.
Dr. Jean Lhermitte is a French neurologist and medical examiner for the Catholic Church to whom many potentially possessed individuals have been referred for diagnosis. In True and False Possession,* Dr. Lhermitte notes:
Whatever sceptics, unbelievers and the ill-informed may think, demonopathic manifestations are not extinct; we still observe the phenomena which startled and alarmed our forefathers, but with a critical sense and knowledge they did not possess. But I must make clear that while the neurologist and the psychiatrist are qualified to discern and define an abnormal structure of the mind or some bodily disorder, they should remain physicians and not exceed their powers, so that in cases where mental illness is not clearly present, the neuro-psychiatrist ought to call in the help and cooperation of the theologian.
Given such concepts, it is no wonder priests and psychologists have been called “half brothers” in the study of man. But how can true cases of diabolical possession be differentiated from mental illness?
The first, and probably most significant distinction would be loss of self. Nowhere in psychology is loss of self considered to be a real factor in mental illness. Indeed, Freud notes in his Outline of Psychoanalysis that loss of self is not a medical condition, no matter how complete the degeneration of mind might appear to be.
Even in a state so far removed from the reality of the external world as one of hallucinatory confusion, one learns from patients after their recovery that at the time in some corner of their mind (as they put it) there was a normal person hidden who, like a detached spectator, watched the hubbub of illness go past him.
Yet, in true cases of possession the individual does experience the phenomenon of loss of self. What replaces the self, or spirit, of the human being is an entity totally independent of the person. As Ed explains: “The demonic spirit may either dislodge the human spirit or cohabit the body with the human spirit. When this happe
ns, both the possessing entity and the person may speak from the body at the very same time. In cases where more than one entity is possessing a human body, as often occurs, the problem is determining how many possessing entities are in the group. In those rare cases where more than one person in the family is under possession, the possessing entities tend to reveal their identity inadvertently by speaking from either of the two bodies.
“As for distinguishing characteristics, possessing entities usually talk in the gruff, manlike voice I mentioned earlier, even when speaking out of the body of a woman or young child. When speaking through a woman, though, the demonic will occasionally use a high-pitched falsetto. Utterances may emanate from the voice box—-although the possessed individual may be inert and unconscious at the time—or else simply resonate from somewhere out of the body. If it so desires, the demonic may identify itself by name: It will tend to say, for instance, ‘I am Hate; I am Sloth; I am Lust’; or else go further and give its demonic name, usually one of ancient origin that is already on the books. The possessing entity or entities may use familiar language, but it isn’t uncommon for them to lapse off into foreign or dead languages of which the possessed individual has no knowledge whatsoever.”
Not only does the truly possessed individual experience a loss or displacement of self; there are additional symptoms that bear no relation whatever to classic psychological disorders. One factor is “metamorphosis,” for want of a better term. In other words, physical transformation of the face and body may occur. Again, this phenomenon is not a medical condition. People cannot and do not grossly transform from one appearance to another—unless possession is a factor. Yet, as Ed states, “I, along with other witnesses, have seen the appearance of the possessed change into that of a wolf, a pig, and most often, a gorilla. I have seen the possessed take on the features of the dead, as well as transform into things that could only be described as macabre grotesqueries. And all these changes are physical. The skin and bones actually change their form, then recede back to normal once possession has passed.”
Besides loss of self and “metamorphosis,” a third factor unseen in cases of mental illness is the occurrence of distinctly supernatural phenomena in the vicinity of the possessed individual. “In cases of possession, external, observable phenomena occur about fifty percent of the time,” Ed notes. “The activity tends to be of the order of levitation, teleportation, materialization, and dematerialization of physical objects. The demonic spirit brings about unnatural activity to prove to witnesses that inhuman powers are in effect In a nutshell, the distinction between mental illness and true diabolical possession is often as different as night and day.”
When a person has truly come under possession by the demonic, only exorcism will reverse this humiliating seizure of a human being. But it is not simply the body that the demonic takes into bondage, but ultimately, the soul—the metaphysical essence of the human being. “If you want to understand why exorcism is necessary,” says Ed, “then you’ve got to understand what man’s got going for himself. He’s got life, he’s got free will, and he's got that touch of grace called soul. The life and free will part belong to man, but, theoretically, the soul belongs to God. So to use an analogy, the soul is like a relic of God that man’s been given and told not to lose. But along comes the demonic spirit that sees man as the hateful image of God, and so it attacks the soul, for no other reason than spite—to withhold it from God as a show of force. In The Exorcist case, the letters S-P- I-T-E actually showed up in red welts on the possessed boy’s chest.
“Nevertheless, the demonic spirit can’t just possess a body and take the soul—because if it could, it would! Instead, it's got to find a way to get it from you. This it does either by breaking down the will, or by influencing the will away from the positive and toward the negative. In time, if permission is granted or if the influence has been successful, there comes a point when possession must almost inevitably take place. And in most cases of possession, the spirit claims it has earned the soul because it was able to effectively dominate the person’s will. Even if the person has been tricked, this is basically true; so the only thing that can be done is to exorcise the spirit, then reeducate the person to the black facts of life.”
Exorcism literally means “to cast out evil spirits in the name of God.” All major religions have some form of exorcism ritual as part of their liturgy. The ritual with which most people are familiar is the Rituale Romanum which was developed by the Church of Rome for the express purpose of exorcising diabolical spirits from the body of man. Not all exorcisms are of a major order, however. As a religious procedure, exorcisms vary in type and function.
“There are minor and major exorcisms,” Ed Warren explains. “Minor exorcisms take the form of a blessing. In fact, it’s a rare person who hasn’t undergone the most basic rite of exorcism. Although it’s not generally known, baptism is actually an exorcism ritual, and one of the chief reasons why so few people come under spontaneous possession during the course of their lives.
“Beyond that, minor exorcisms are intended to clear a house of demonic spirits, or rid a person of negative spirits that may be bringing about oppression. The point is, a negative influence can dominate a person or dwelling simply because there isn’t any positive influence to counteract it. When a blessing is performed, positive supernatural power is deliberately and methodically brought to bear to counteract the negative. The clergy man conducts the ritual in the name of God. As a result, if the demonic violates the exorcism, it doesn't have to contend with the clergyman, but with the wrath of God.”
Even though minor exorcism may clear a dwelling of negative spirits, in reality, the demonic does not possess homes or objects. Reverend Christopher Neil-Smith, an Anglican clergyman and one of the better-known exorcists in the world, explains it this way in his book The Exorcist and the Possessed:
Exorcism is not intended essentially to deal with ghosts or even houses, but with states of soul of living people molested by evil spirits.... Evil comes through people and [exorcism] only has a secondary or residual effect on places or houses. Places are affected because the people who lived there enacted evil deeds.
Thus a home has no soul; the devil has no soul. Only a person has a soul; and it is that unique commodity, that key to immortality that the demonic seeks to possess—if only to destroy it. For this reason, major exorcism of the possessed is not a passive blessing, but an active expulsion of spirit entities that will not leave unless properly commanded to do so. In contemporary terms, demonic spirits are inhuman terrorists that possess an individual’s body and hold the soul as hostage; major exorcism is therefore a prayerful procedure for freeing the soul from such tyranny. “When a major exorcism must be conducted, it means that an inhuman spirit has possessed a person’s body and soul, and that soul has got to be saved,” Ed declares.
In the West German case, the ritual of exorcism performed over Anneliese Michel was the Rituale Romanum, the major ritual of exorcism. It is a black day indeed when this ritual must be performed. Because if it has been determined necessary to perform a major exorcism, church authorities will have so judged after long and diligent deliberation that a human being has been possessed by that which calls itself Legion. And this is no frivolous decision; in fact, before church authorities will even contemplate a major exorcism, the evidence for possession must be unchallengeable and overwhelming. All natural explanations must be eliminated, while all supernatural claims must be proven and verified.
The individual under possession will have to be thoroughly examined by a medical doctor. Brain tumors, hormonal imbalances and narcosis, for example, are just three of many routine factors that can alter an individual, physically or mentally. Even if examinations, X-rays, and medical tests show the person to be physically sound, a psychiatric examination will be called for next Abnormal psychology is tricky and complex, and the consulting psychiatrist is charged with determining whether or not the person is possessed or experiencing delusion
, hallucination, multiple personality, or any of a variety of mental disorders that seem like possession.
While the individual’s physical and psychological health are being checked out, church authorities will assign a demonologist to the case.
“The demonologist is responsible for conducting an onsite investigation to determine the validity of any alleged case of possession,” Ed explains. “This investigation involves interviewing all persons related to the case, including the individual purported to be under possession, to learn if factors were present, or actions were committed, that could have permitted an in human spirit to inflict possession. If external phenomena have been reported in association with the case, the demonologist must personally witness the occurrence of any such activity; then determine whether that activity was caused by natural or supernatural agencies. Lastly, the demonologist must witness the possession in order to assess the nature, power, and number of spirits involved, and if at all possible, attempt to learn the identity of the possessing entities.
“Yet the demonic spirit is hardly eager to reveal itself to someone in authority who would be able to bring about its expulsion,” Ed goes on. “So in cases where possession is not readily apparent, which happens about half the time, the demonologist is forced to use religious provocation—kind of like using tear gas—to bring the entity forward.”
When asked for a specific example, Ed rattles off at least a dozen cases where he’s had to use provocation to test for possession, and then expands on one particular case that certainly illustrates the process.
The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren Page 24