I'd like to meet:
From the moment the exorcist enters the room, a peculiar
feeling seems to hang in the very air. From that moment in any
genuine exorcism and onward through its duration, everyone in the
room is aware of some alien 'Presence'. This indubitable sign of
possession is as unexplainable and unmistakable as it is
inescapable. All the signs of possession, however blatant or
grotesque, however subtle or debatable, seem both to pale before
and to be marshaled in the face of this 'Presence'.
There is no sure physical trace of the 'Presence', but
everyone feels it. You have to experience it to know it; you
cannot locate it spatially - beside or above or within the
possessed, or over in the corner or under the bed or hovering in
midair.
In one sense, the 'Presence' is nowhere, and this magnifies
the terror, because there 'is' a presence, an 'other' present.
Not a "he" or a "she" or an "it". Sometimes, you think that what
is present is singular, sometimes plural. When it speaks, as the
exorcism goes on, it will sometimes refer to itself as "I" and
sometimes as "we", will use "my" and "our."
Invisible and intangible, the 'Presence' claws at the
humanness of those gathered in the room. You can exercise logic
and expel any mental image of it. You can say to yourself: "I am
only imagining this. Careful! Don't panic!" And there may be a
momentary relief. But then, after a time lag of bare seconds,
the 'Presence' returns as an inaudible hiss in the brain, as a
wordless threat to the self you are. Its name and essence seem
to be compounded of threat, to be only and intensely baleful,
concentratedly intent on hate for hate's sake and on destruction
for destruction's sake.
In the early stages of an exorcism, the evil spirit will
make every attempt to "hide behind" the possessed, so to speak -
to appear to be one and the same person and personality with its
victim. This is the 'Pretense'.
The first task of the priest is to break that 'Pretense', to
force the spirit to reveal itself openly as separate from the
possessed - and to name itself, for all possessing spirits are
called by a name that generally (though not always) has to do
with the way that spirit works on its victim.
As the exorcist sets about his task, the evil spirit may
remain silent altogether; or it may speak with the voice of the
possessed, and use past experiences and recollections of the
possessed. This is often done skillfully, using details no one
but the possessed could know. It can make everyone, including
the priest, feel that it is the priest who is the villain,
subjecting an innocent person to terrible rigors. Even the
mannerisms and characteristics of the possessed are used by the
spirit as its own camouflage.
Sometimes the exorcist cannot shatter the 'Pretense' for
days. But until he does, he cannot bring matters to a head. If
he fails to shatter it at all, he has lost. Perhaps another
exorcist replacing him will succeed. But he himself has been
beaten.
Every exorcist learns during 'Pretense' that he is dealing
with some force or power that is at times intensely cunning,
sometimes supremely intelligent, and at other times capable of
crass stupidity (which makes one wonder further about the problem
of singular or plural); and it is both highly dangerous and
terribly vunerable.
Oddly, while this spirit or power or force knows some of the
most secret and intimate details of the lives of everyone in the
room, at the same time it also displays gaps in knowledge of
things that may be happening at any given moment of the present.
But the priest must not be lulled by small victories or take
chances on hoped-for stupidities. He must be ready to have his
own sins and blunders and weaknesses put into his mind or shouted
in ugliness for all to hear. He must not make excuses for his
past, or wither as even his loveliest memories are fingered by
ultimate filth and contempt; he must not be sidetracked in any
way from his primary intention of freeing the possessed person
before him. And he must at all costs avoid trading abuse or
getting into any logical arguments with the possessed. The
temptation to do so is more frequent than one might think, and
must be regarded as a potentially fatal trap that can shatter not
only the exorcism, but quite literally shatter the exorcist as
well.
Accordingly, as the 'Pretense' begins to break down, the
behaviour of the possessed usually increases in violence and
repulsiveness. It is as though an invisible manhole opens, and
out of it pours the unmentionably inhuman and the humanly
unacceptable. There is a stream of filth and unrestrained abuse,
accompanied often by physical violence, writhing, gnashing of
teeth, jumping around, sometimes physical attacks on the
exorcist.
A new hallmark of the proceedings enters as the 'Breakpoint'
nears, and ushers in one of the more subtle sufferings the
exorcist must undergo: confusion. Complete and dreadful
confusion. Rare is the exorcist who does not falter here for at
least a moment, enmeshed in the peculiar pain of apparent
contradiction of all sense.
His ears seem to 'smell' foul words. His eyes seem to
'hear' offensive sounds and obscene screams. His nose seems to
'taste' a high-decibel cacophony. Each sense seems to be
recording what another sense should be recording. Each nerve and
sinew on onlookers and participants becomes rigid as they strive
for control. Panic - the fear of being dissolved into insanity -
runs in quick jabs through everyone there. All present
experience this increasingly violent and confusing assault. But
the exorcist is the one who rides the storm. He is the direct
target of it all.
The 'Breakpoint' is reached at that moment when the
'Pretense' has finally collapsed altogether. The voice of the
possessed is no longer used by the spirit, though the new,
strange voice may or may not issue from the mouth of the victim.
The sound produced is often not even remotely like any human
sound.
At the 'Breakpoint', for the first time, the spirit speaks
of the possessed in the third person, as a separate being. For
the first time, the possessing spirit acts personally and speaks
of "I" or "we", usually interchangeably, and of "my" and "our" or
"mine" and "ours".
Another very frequent sign that the 'Breakpoint' has been
reached is the appearance of what Father Conor called the
'Voice'.
The 'Voice' is an inordinately disturbing and humanly
distressing babel. The first few syllables seem to be those of
some word pronounced slowly and thickly - somewhat like a tape
recording played at subnormal speed. You are just straining to
pick up the word and a layer of cold fear has already gripped you
- you know this sound is alien. But your concentration is
shattered and frustrated by an immediate gamut of echoes, of
tiny, prickly voices echoing each syllable, screaming it,
whispering it, laughing it, sneering it, groaning it, following
it. They all hit your ear, while the alien voice is going on
unhurriedly to the next syllable, which you then try to catch,
while guessing at the first one you lost. By then, the tiny,
jabbing voices have caught up with that second syllable; and the
voice has proceeded to the third syllable; and so on.
If the exorcism is to proceed, the 'Voice' must be silenced.
It takes an enormous effort of will on the part of the exorcist,
in direct confrontation with the alien will of evil, to silence
the 'Voice'. The priest must get himself under control and
challenge the spirit first to silence and then to identify itself
intelligibly.
As in all things to do with Exorcism of Evil Spirit, the
priest makes this challenge with his own will, but always in the
name and by the authority of Jesus and his Church. To do so in
his own name or by some fancied authority of his own would be to
invite personal disaster. Merely human power unadorned and
without aid cannot cope with the preternatural. (It is to be
remembered that when we speak of the preternatural, we are not
speaking about what are known as poltergeists.)
Usually, at this point and as the 'Voice' dies out, a
tremendous pressure of an obscure kind affects the exorcist.
This is the first and outermost edge of a direct and personal
collision with the "will of the Kingdom," the 'Clash'.
We all know from our personal experience that there can be
no struggle of single personal wills without that felt and
intuitive contact between two persons. There is a two-way
communication that is as real as a conversation using words. The
'Clash' is the heart of a special and dreadful communication, the
nucleus of this singular battle of wills between exorcist and
Evil Spirit.
Painful as it will be for him, the priest must look for the
'Clash'. He must provoke it. If he cannot lock wills with the
evil thing and force that thing to lock its will in opposition to
his own, then again the exorcist is defeated.
The issue between the two, the exorcist and the possessing
spirit, is simple. Will the totally antihuman invade and take
over? Will it, noisome and merciless, seep over that narrow rim
where the exorcist would hold his ground alone, and engulf him?
Or will it, unwillingly, protestingly, under a duress greater
than its single-track will, stop, identify itself, cede, retire,
disappear, and be volatized back into an unknown pit of being
where no man wants to go ever?
Even with all the pressure on him, and in fullest human
agony, if the exorcist has got this far, he must press home. He
has gained an advantage. He has already forced the evil spirit
to come out on its own. If he has not been able to until now, he
must finally force it to give its name. And then, some exorcists
feel, the exorcist must pursue for as much information as he can.
For in some peculiar way, as exorcists find, the more an evil
spirit can be forced to reveal in the 'Clash' and its aftermath,
the surer and easier will be the 'Expulsion' when that moment
comes. To force as complete an identification as possible is
perhaps a mark of domination of one will over another.
It is of crucial interest to speculate about the violence
provoked by Exorcism - the physical and mental struggles that are
so extreme they can bring on death. Why would spirit battle so?
Why not leave and waft off invisibly to someone or someplace
else? For spirit itself seems to suffer in these battles.
Time and again, in exorcism after exorcism, there occurs
that curious thing to do with 'spirit' and 'place', the strange
puzzle mentioned previously in connection with the room chosen
for the exorcism. When Jesus expelled the unclean spirits, those
spirits showed concern for where they might go. In record after
record, as well as in several exorcisms recounted in this book,
the possessing spirits wail in lament and questioning pain:
"Where shall we go?" "We too have to possess our habitation."
"Even the Anointed One gave us a place with the swine." "Here...
we can't stay here any longer."
Evil Spirit, having found a home with a consenting host,
does not appear to give up its place easily. It claws and fights
and deceives and even risks killing its host before it will be
expelled. How violent the struggle probably depends on many
things; the intelligence of the spirit being dealth with and the
degree of possession achieved over the victim are perhaps two one
could speculate about.
Whatever determines the actual pitch of violence, once the
exorcist has forced the invading spirit to identify itself, and
sustained the first wordless bout of the 'Clash', and then
invoked its formal condemnation and expulsion by the Exorcism
rite, the immediate result is generally a struggle tortuous
beyond imagining, an open violence that leaves all subtlety
behind.
The person possessed is by now obviously aware in one way or
another of what possessed him. Frequently he becomes a true
battleground for much of the remainder of the exorcism, enduring
unbelievable punishment and strain.
It is sometimes possible for the exorcist to appeal directly
to the possessed person, urging him to use some part of his own
will still free of the spirit's influence and control, and engage
directly in the fight, aiding the exorcist. And at such moments
no animal pinned helplessly to the ground struggles more
pathetically against the drinking of its life's blood by a
voracious and superior cruelty. The very nauseous character of
the possessed person's appearance and behaviour appears to be a
sign of his desire for deliverance, a desperate sign of struggle,
evidence of a revolt where once he had consented.
Increasingly what had possessed him is being forced into the
open, all the while protesting its victim's revolt and its own
expulsion. The violence of the contortions and the physical
disfigurement of the possessed can reach a degree one would think
he could not possible withstand.
The exorcist, too, comes in for full attack now. Once
cornered, the evil spirit seems able to call on a superior
intelligence, and will try to lure the exorcist on to a field
boobytrapped and mined with situations from which no human can
extricate himself.
Any weakness in the religious faith that alone sustains the
exorcist or any fatigue will allow the exorcist's mind to be
flooded with a terrible light he cannot fend off - a light that
can burn the very roots of his reason and turn him emotionally
into the most servile of slaves desperate to be liberated from
all bodily life.
These are only some of the dangers and traps that face every
exorcist. His pain is physical, emotional, mental. He has to
deal with what is eerie but not enthralling; with something
askew, but intelligently so; with a quality that is upside down
and inside out, but significantly so. The mordant traits of
nightmare are there in full regalia, but this is no dream and
permits him no thankful remission.
He is attacked by a stench so powerful that many exorcists
start vomiting uncontrollably. He is made to bear physical pain,
and he feels anguish over his very soul. He is made to know he
is touching the completely unclean, the totally unhuman.
All sense may suddenly seem nonsense. Hopelessness is
confirmed as the only hope. Death and cruelty and contempt are
normal. Anything comely or beautiful is an illusion. Nothing,
it seems, was ever right in the world of man. He is in an
atmosphere more bizarre than Bedlam.
If, in spite of his emotions and his imagination and his
body - all trapped at once in pain and anguish - if, in spite of
all of this, the will of the exorcist holds in the 'Clash', what
he does is to approach his final function in this situation as an
authorized human witness for Jesus. By no power of his own, on
account of no privilege of his own, he calls finally on the evil
spirit to desist, to be dispossessed, to depart and to leave the
possessed person.
And, if the exorcism is successful, this is what happens.
The possession ends. All present become aware of a change around
them. The sense of 'Presence' is totally, suddenly absent.
Sometimes there are receding voices or other noises, sometimes
only dead silence. Sometimes the recently possessed may be at
the end of his strength; sometimes he will make wake up as from a
dream, a nightmare, or a coma. Sometimes the former victim will
remember much of what he has been through; sometimes he will
remember nothing at all.
Not so for the exorcists, during and after their grisly
work. They carry nagging doubts and bitter conflicts untellable
to family, friend, superior, or therapist. Their personal
traumas lie beyond the reach of soothing words and deeper than
the sweep of any consoling thoughts. They share their punishment
with none but God. Even that has its peculiar sting of
difficulty. For it is a sharing by faith and not by face-to-face
communication.
But only thus do these men, seemingly ordinary and
commonplace in their lives, persevere through the days of quiet
horror and the nights of sleepless watching they spend for years
after as their price of success, and as abiding reminders that,
once upon a time, another human being was made whole, because
they willingly incurred the direct displeasure of living hatred.-an excerpt entitled "A Brief Handbook of
Exorcism". It is taken from a classic work
on the subject of possession and exorcism called, "Hostage To The
Devil".
57. They will be like thunder-clouds flying through the air at the slightest breath of the Holy Spirit. Attached to nothing, surprised at nothing, troubled at nothing, they will shower down the rain of God's word and of eternal life. They will thunder against sin, they will storm against the world, they will strike down the devil and his followers and for life and for death, they will pierce through and through with the two-edged sword of God's word all those against whom they are sent by Almighty God.
-st. louis de montfort (true devotion)
When Christians stand by their beliefs, they are intolerant. When they sin, they are hypocrites.
