Although it might seem that demon possession exists only in horror movies, the opposite is true. Belief in evil entities, and in their ability to control the human mind, is one of the longest-running beliefs in human history. After all, even in the Bible itself we can find mentions of exorcism (for example, Jesus casting out demons, which he then sends to a herd of pigs, which then throw themselves from the cliff into the sea).

The idea that invasive spirits are inherently evil is based on the Judeo-Christian concept. Many religions and belief systems accept an obsession of two kinds: good and bad. However, both forms are not alarming to them, they consider them normal aspects of spiritual life. In 1800, a religion called Spiritualism, whose supporters were convinced that death is merely an illusion and that the spirits can possess human beings. Proponents of the movement New Age they tried to intentionally invoke various entities by means of the so-called channeling and allow them to possess the medium that served as a sort of communicating channel between the world of the living and the dead.

Fictive exorcism

Hollywood certainly has the largest share in the popularization of exorcism. It created films based on "real events" -  The Last Exorcism, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, The Devil Inside whether The Rite - each of them had a different level of quality and degree of fright. However, logically, Exorcist. After its release in theaters in 1974, the Catholic Center in Boston received perhaps the most requests for exorcism in its history. He wrote the script W, according to its amendment of the same name. It was based on a newspaper article from 1949, which described a case of possession of a devil by a boy from Maryland. Blatty was convinced of its veracity, although it later turned out that the whole story was not very believable.

Michael Cuneo in your book American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty, considers Blatty 's Exorcist to be the source of today's fascination with demon possessions. Although Cuneo states that the whole novel is just a contrived fantasy based on the weak foundations of a priest's diary, it must be said that there was indeed a boy living in Maryland who underwent an exorcism ritual, but there were no downright scary and obscene scenes. , which we know from the famous film itself.

Real exorcism

Even though many people think that exorcism is a matter of the Middle Ages, this is not the case, it is still practiced on people with mental health problems, who are often very strong believers. In this case, however, the exorcism process itself does not work, but the power of suggestion. If a person is convinced of his obsession (and that exorcism will cure him), a short-term or long-lasting improvement can occur.

Exorcism originated from the Greek word for oath: exousia. James Lewis in your book Satanism Today: an Encyclopedia of Religion and Popular Culture, explains that exorcism means summoning a higher authority that forces the evil spirit to leave (forcing it to swear to leave its host 's body). That is why the priest refers to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The first handbook for exorcists was published by the Vatican in 1614 and revised in 1999. We read that the obsession is characterized by superhuman strength, aversion to holy water, and the ability to speak foreign languages, which the person is demonstrably fluent. Other possible features are spitting, swearing and "frequent self-cutting".

There are only a handful of consecutive displacers operating in the world, and hundreds are doing "amateur". Michael Cuneo took part in fifty exorcisms in his life. Never, however, he said, he saw nothing special: no turning, no scratches or scars, suddenly appearing on the obsessed face and no levitation. Only a handful of very emotionally excited people on both sides of the ritual.

Many people enjoy watching movies about obsession, but it's good to keep in mind that exorcism can actually be fatal. In 2003, an eight-year-old autistic boy was killed during an exorcism ritual; his parents considered the boy's disability to be evidence of demon possession. Two years later, a young Romanian nun died at the hands of a priest, tied to a cross, gagged and left without water or food for several days. And in 2010, during Christmas, a fourteen-year-old boy was beaten in London and then drowned by his relatives, who also tried to cast out demons.

Let us therefore ask ourselves whether it is possible that there is an obsession with demons. If we accept the fact that the evil entities are real (on the basis of many documents, reps and experiences that have been recorded since the very beginning of the ages), would we be able to expel them by mere words and belief in higher power? Or is the whole ritual worthless and damaging only those who are out of the general concept of "normality"?