Can you comment on how this might apply in a religious setting? I feel that Pope Francis and some of his bishops are committing narcissistic abuse against certain groups of failthful, like Latin Mass communities for example. Protecting predator priests and then pretending to be super woke, also has the whiff of the the demonic. The demons must really like it when they can get churchmen to commit abuse, two for the price of one. PTSD and the destruction of a person's faith at the same time. I'm looking at you, Cardinal McCarrick. It is also narcissistic abuse to confirm other groups faithful in their sins. It's all just one big demonic buffet of trauma.
Well, Newman wrote that Catholic liturgy appealed to the soul as immediately as flowers to the sense. That's certainly the way it seemed to me--Novus Ordo did not come into the New York Archdiocese until I was 13. (I have no memory of it, but I have been told that at my first High Mass I applauded at the end of the Gloria, which is the correct response.) What better setting for a diabolical transvaluation of all values? It's like an abusive family. What child does not wish to be part of a loving group headed by a mother and a father? And what more gratifying to someone diabolically inclined and his patron than to, how to say it, disappoint the child by abusing him, sexually and emotionally?
The eclipse of Freudian analysis is one of the great stories of the past 50 years. Even when I was 16 years old I could see it removed moral agency from the equation. Cognitive behavioral therapy restores it, and restores it to the abuser, where it belongs, not to the victim.
A couple of the items on that list seem like a bit much. By role-playing games, does he mean the genre of video games known as RPGs? Like, the Final Fantasy series? They’re typically wholesome and feature plotlines that involve saving the world from great evil; sacrifice is often also a significant motif. A few are genuine works of art. I don’t play anymore, but they were fun when I was a kid.
As for when one specifically opened oneself up to demonic attachment, that seems like an area wide open for confirmation bias and the telling of just-so stories. Given a list that comprehensive and at times seemingly even petty, there must be pretty much no one on earth who hasn’t provided demons with *some* point of entry. So while I believe in the metaphysical reality of the stuff, I’m also a little skeptical of how that may become conflated with our subjective narrative constructs.
It is now the middle of the night, and I am in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas. The phone signal’s fading in and out.
(Oh...I think some extreme form of D and D could perhaps open a person up to the dark? But surely not every role-playing game...And I agree, not every instance of doing every item on the list means a demon will attach. But I do not picture demon oppression as a demon getting into a crack, but rather, hanging around, though not inside....ah well...I've not read the book on it.)
At some point it just starts to sound a little paranoid, like the Calvinists in England banning Christmas for being “pagan”. Now, I can understand *why* a professional exorcist would tend toward paranoia and see demons in even apparently innocuous things, but still.
I've never had a problem with celebrating Christmas, but there are reasons for calling it pagan. I can understand them, the way I understand people voting for Trump. The timing of Christmas in the calendar was an attempt to take over the Roman Saturnalia, evicting the pagans while appropriating the mass desire to still have a good celebration. Jesus almost certainly was not born in December, and quite possibly not in the year we call year one, anno domini. Shepherds do not watch their flock by night on the hills of Judea in December -- April maybe. A lot of the symbolism is pagan in origin. One of my favorite carols is The Holly and the Ivy, which as a lot about Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ, but invokes the symbols of the gods of the waxing and waning year in Celtic pagan tradition. My mother, a sometime Elder of our Presbyterian church, said, yeah, it is, but so what? (Mom was what I call a cultural Calvinist -- she didn't really believe in predestination, didn't approve of burning Servitius at the stake for denying the Trinity, and got along fine with our Catholic neighbors and their veneration of the Virgin Mary. But mom kept a tight budget.) There are parallels between the Resurrection and that Eleusinian Mysteries. Was one an incomplete forerunner of the other, a glimpse in pagan minds of the Truth? Was one an appropriation of the other by early Christian writers? Does it really matter? Do they point in the same direction?
The Catholic and Orthodox view has always been that the whole world had been dreaming about Him for a long time, such that prefigurations of Christ can be found everywhere before He actually showed up here. (And that's exactly what we'd expect, given that He is the Logos who created all that is.) So there's nothing at all wrong with "baptizing" all such legends and traditions and integrating them into the faith. This is also what Tolkien and CS Lewis meant with the classic formula that Christianity is the one myth that's true.
"The timing of Christmas in the calendar was an attempt to take over the Roman Saturnalia, evicting the pagans while appropriating the mass desire to still have a good celebration. "
Actually Dec. 25 is the Feast of the Unconquerable Sun. It's the first day the days grow longer.
I haven't read the Martins book, but I did read one of Amorth's. And I thought he talked of possession as being very rare and difficult to attain for a demon. Based on Martins's list it would appear the possessed are everywhere.
I’m scratching my head about RPG’s. I play D&D with church friends and we keep it clean. Not sure how playing that would open you up to demonic possession.
Agree. We are told "You shall know them by their fruits" Christ himself was accused of demonic powers because of his miracles. He made very short and perfectly logical hash out of the accusation.
And what is technology but a form of magic, a manipulation of Nature, that actually works?
Fr. Amorth did condemn Harry Potter. He may have been influenced in that verdict by the badly distorted anti-Potter writings of Gabrielle Kuby. In the 90s, lots of conservative Catholic commentators denounced the books, usually arguing from misreadings of the text. (ex: Voldemort's evil statements were represented as the books' values, the same sort of critique that has been made of To Kill A Mockingbird: the villain is racist so the book/play is racist.)
Precisely. Also, I am glad that Rod received a blessing, but I doubt he was afflicted with, what, a downwardly mobile demon? A demon who had been frustrated in thriving?A faildemon?
I am with you - that is why I was why I said "some extreme form?" and put a question mark. I did not think regular D and D would do that and I don't know of an extreme form. I do know I was warned over and over as a teen to stay away, but I never heard what was so bad - so I was really just asking if there was an extreme form of that, or actually, of any other RPG (I suspect there is of other RPGs).
I think you can take into dark places if you really get into character and are a chaotic evil necromancer or something like that.
There is also material out there where they use the names of demons and there are actual demons in the game with the names of demons in real life. So I would avoid that stuff obviously.
Which is why, as a rule, as a GM, I never allow players to play evil characters or have evil-oriented campaigns. I'm not interested in such games or such attempts at roleplaying, which more often than not, players do not use as an exercise in exploratory storytelling, but an excuse for mayhem. Even if running a Vampire/WoD chronicle, though the players are playing "monsters," this is a world of consequences, and stupid/thoughtless/irresponsible players end up with the world against them. Vampire, for example, a traditional chronicle is built around the Masquerade, the idea that it is a very good ideas for vampires to keep their existence secret from mortals. And to break the Masquerade intentionally not only can expose you to unwanted attention from various mortal authorities, but various vampire authorities will also not be pleased with you. So yes, the vampires do need blood for their immortal existence. But they do not have to kill to obtain it, and Camarilla vampires mostly seek to avoid that. Other vampires of the more evil variety might not be so careful, but I would not run that kind of campaign. Again, the idea would be to explore issues of morality and consequence, not indulge in ugly carnage.
"The sons of poor men porters and the sons of engineers ride their father's magic carpets made of steel."
Talk about mental blocks - as the daughter of a mechanical engineer I first thought those types of engineers were meant when I initially heard the song - only thought of the guy steering the train later. But the point: though there were only a few riders in a dying way of U. S. transport into a sunset, something that seemed magic, but something we creative humans did - they were in it together regardless of background, which is good.
And maybe we will be gone (through) 500 years, 1607 to 2107, when our day is done.
There's a funny one in German from a song called "Pflaster". The line is " Es tobt der Hass da vor meinem Fenster" (The hate rages there, just outside my window) but "der Hass da" sounds exactly like "der Hamster", leaving everyone to wonder what in the world the hamster was doing there in the first place. 🤣 https://youtu.be/DwjF9TMG8z4?si=kGauwZrWTCgSyr-0
Yeah—and even if we grant that a desire for escapism is a risk factor, there isn’t anything uniquely escapist about RPGs. On the other hand, the bit about avoiding sadistic, possibly vicariously traumatizing content makes sense.
Well, depends, right? Reading a Dostoevsky novel or watching a Shakespeare play is more like a dive into a deeper reality. But yes, if we're gonna take aim at escapism, that's a pretty broad scope.
Avoiding sadistic entertainment might make sense for purely secular reasons having nothing to do with demons. I don’t need to, for example, watch torture porn like “Saw,” just for my own well-being.
For the same reason, I avoid hallucinogenic drugs. Not because they invite demons into my life, but because screwing with my brain seems like a bad idea.
When Dungeons and Dragons was popular, I found the concept esthetically interesting, but I just never had time to play. On the other hand, I heard of a woman who went into deep depression and nearly committed literal suicide when her character died, and she had nothing else to live for.
Yes to this. Rod wrote that "demons cannot attach themselves to you without your consent," which clearly makes his earlier claim that I can be oppressed/possessed if somebody cursed my great-grandfather untenable.
I think ghosts are real, in the sense of psychic-electrical energy forms that weren't able to properly depart. So haunted houses wouldn't need to involve demons.
I read that list with the same jaundiced eye that I look on claims that this, that or some other things may cause cancer as it seems almost everything is linked to cancer. I get the concept that sin attracts demons. But since possession is rare something more than just the common sins of humankind is involved.
I'm a "gamer" from around the early 70s (1970s, I ain't that old!). I'm also a mathematician, and statistical analysis was my primary craft in my working career.
D and D was a ground breaker game. It successfully bridged the gap between fiction/fantasy and direct interaction with one's friends. I never got into it myself, too damn much dice rolling, but the creativity of the dungeon master and the creative collaboration between the DM and the players was awesome. By the way, the main cognitive disconnect I have over including RPGs in the "list" is that the very first ones were directly based on Tolkien's works. To this day the vast majority of the games have halflings, dwarves, elves, trolls, orcs and human warriors and magic users. They also have healing magic and potions. They encompass epic quests, and players engage in the best of the duality of story telling: personal level engagement, epic level participation.
It also seems just strange strategy on the demons' part to possess people in such a way that the victims would be inspired to seek exorcism and become Christian.
Well, demons are generally known to overplay their hand, so that part would track. A lot of people run into demons before they go seek God; I'd even say that was how my path got started.
Yes, but their considerable intellects and wills are corrupted by their Fall. They can't help but push things too far as evil contains the seeds of its own destruction in the moral universe God constructed. God sets them up for humiliations and failure as well for as punishment for their pride.
I'd guess the role-playing game element goes back to the 1970s Dungeons & Dragons "Monster Manual" which listed some demons and devils as monsters that players could fight alongside orcs, giant frogs, giants and all the rest. Perhaps a slippery slope/gateway argument of introducing 'dark' themes. I don't see it myself. More like Tolkien fantasy stuff than anything else.
Back in high school, friends played space-opera themed RPGs with no preternatural element that I recall. Space marines fighting alien flying critters. Stuff like that. I don't see the evil influence vector there. Unless the argument is preferring make-believe past times to reality as inherently poor conditioning of the imagination and will.
Increasingly, I see that formation of the moral imagination is important and has ripple effects through life. I don't pretend to know how to best do that other than avoiding the extremes and trying to introduce people to the 'best' of what's been written, said or done. But that just moves the goal posts. What's 'best'?
In re: Puritanism. It seems inevitable that such a brittle system was bound to eventually crack up with the result of liberality flooding its compromised dikes e.g. Unitarians replacing the American Pilgrims, the Restoration court of Charles II following Cromwell's Protectorate or modern day Netherlands.
The RPG and video game thing stuck out to me too. I think its a matter of use and intent. For instance, if I can play Skyrim or D&D with my friends and it's just that, probably ok. But as someone who struggles a bit with daydreams and fantasy/escapism, I can easily see someone going down the road of obsession with it where it starts to become more important and interesting to them than actual reality. Especially these days when the "real" world seems so devoid of enchantment and meaningful struggle, especially for a single man (I write as one). Contrast that to something like the world of Skyrim, with gods, magic, and a narrative you are involved in in a meaningful (to the game world) way. There was a discussion had at a parish visit to a monastery earlier this year where we talked about how the reality we inhabit is lovingly given to us by God for our spiritual development, and so rejecting it is also rejecting God. I'm a big fan of using fitness metaphors to describe spiritual warfare... The world is like a spiritual gym, and we have the perfect personal trainer giving us exactly the workout we need to get stronger. If only we would follow it.
So am I going to get possessed because I play Skyrim on the weekends? Probably not. But if the game world consumes me and I try to escape into it, turning away from the real in a significant way, I could see it being used as a pathway.
Agreed: I think that the real problem is the abuse of the imagination and the withdrawal into a solipsistic realm of phantasms, whether any games are involved or not.
I wouldn't say RPGs per se are dangerous (you'd be amazed at the number of Orthodox who enjoy the genre, including my own priest), but because they do open the imagination they can be a vehicle if you're part of an ill-formed group. My own DnD group is over-represented by Orthodox (and 1 Methodist), and our own group avoids the salacious entirely - we're out to solve mysteries, defeat evil, and save the village (we've actually just moved to Battletech, which trades magic for giant fighting robots).
But I've heard plenty about groups where you get a player or two (or the DM himself) who delights in morally compromised scenarios and tries to get the other players to follow him. This can include anything from sex to actual demonic invocations, including even trying to get other players to say particular things aloud, instead of just letting the players say "my character summons X". And if you push back, they respond with "Hey, it's just a game, right?" In these cases, the game is a vehicle.
It sounds like it really has nothing much to do with the game per se, then. It's just people using their imaginations for better or for worse, depending on who they are.
I had another thought regarding games - I had a friend who sank his life into World of Warcraft for several years to escape the pain of a marriage on the rocks due to a drug-addicted wife (it's all in the past now, Thank God!). The only things that could pry him out of that space were biological and the need to go to work. In a way, the game possessed him.
It just seems bizarre to say “Games can provoke demonic oppression” as opposed to the more obvious claim of “Despair and a desire for escape can weaken your spiritual fiber”.
My concern with games is that many of them are very adult in nature and yet we hand them to children. The ones designed for children are simply preparing them for the adult version. Children live in a much more enchanted world than adults do.
Interesting. I've encountered spirit possession cults in Asia, where the relationship is between the Gods and the community, though of course individuals have their own specific dealings with the spirit world. That's very ancient, and very much culturally-specific and -bounded. Lots of food for thought in that.
Following that - apologies, stream of consciousness here - it would seem, per Rod's other articles, that the Christian/Biblical spiritual world seems to have brought with it as defined adversaries a set of spirit names inherited from ancient Mesopotamia: Middle Eastern entities stripped of their original cultural context - though we know that their ceremonies and sacrifices were cruel by our terms. Other systems, including the Chinese with which I'm familiar, aren't. Still, it seems that each tribe and nation had its own relationship with its own pantheon of spirits, something we know to have been the case from histories of the Celts... which leads us to Tom Holland's proposition that Christianity was different, and original, in its universalism. Could it even have become established without the 'universal' Roman Empire? Hmmm.
What think you of Psalm 82 (81) and the like? Of the Prince of Persia, said to be a fallen angel, mentioned in Daniel who hindered Daniel's prayers until Michael did battle? Many Christians believe that God had a heavenly council, of "gods" - small g - or powerful created beings (angels, a term which means messenger, is perhaps the term, or perhaps not). There are a lot of verses in scripture about small g "gods". Many believe they were assigned to different parts of the earth but fell. Dr. Michael Heiser is my source on most of this. Interesting stuff.
Could Wodan have been the prince of the power of the northlands? I don't know. I do know that while there were forced conversions, many in the north wanted to convert away from the cruelty of their religion.
This reminds me of both Tolkien and Lewis whose fiction posited resident angelic spirits in this world, who could however fall (e.g., Sauron, Saruman) though many remain faithful.
Based on my understanding from the Lord of Spirits podcast, this idea is generally correct. Angels (or small g gods) were assigned to the different nations but "fell" by accepting worship instead of passing on worship to the big g God.
Exorcists claim the same thing. One that stood out to me was after an exorcist had gained control of a demon it confessed that it's assignment was to be among the cohort of angels who appeared to the shepherds in Bethlehem.
Thanks for this: I hadn't heard of Heisner; a quick look at his Wikipedia entry led to the also-new-to-me idea of the Divine Council. Very interesting, and a very useful pointer for further reading.
Yes; and I've always thought it strange and puzzling that Christianity made so relatively headway in the Parthian Empire before its fall in 227. The Parthians seem to have been by all accounts religiously tolerant, unlike their zealously Zoroastrian Sassanid successors.
This makes me wonder about the crossover between serious mental illness and possession, or how to really tell when one begins and the other ends. Obviously, the church tries to sort out which is which, but if the various “negative” feelings that often arise from mental illness are also factors that can invite demonic activity, then it would seem prudent for there to be extra outreach to those with mental illness on the part of the church. I have noticed that prayers for those suffering with mental illness are very common at Mass lately, so maybe there is more awareness than there has been in the past (although, in fairness, it has only been in the last few decades that better research and diagnosis around mental illness has established a purely biological basis for it, not “think positive and you’ll be cured” garbage).
An exorcist told me once that he walked through a mental asylum, some (but not most) of the patients there called out to him in very strange ways, indicating that possession was part of their condition.
I guarantee you if asylums incorporated spirit-filled clergy and exorcists, many of the problems in those places would be cleared up or relieved. Would help with prisons, too.
When I worked weekends as the mental health nurse at the state prison we had six suicide watch beds. The inmates were checked every fifteen minutes. If psychotic they were given Haldol injections for three days. Most responded well. A few did not and were labeled Anti-Social Personality Disorder. These men were dangerously scary, mean, and potentially could hurt others. Could they have been possessed? I often thought about this.
Having grown up with exorcist parents I must confess that I find much of this stuff problematic, especially as it veers into the category of superstition. One gets to the point where you're doing some "Christian" equivalent of throwing salt over your shoulder, avoiding black cats and not walking under ladders. I can't speak to Catholic versions of this spiritual kitsch, but in my upbringing some of the examples were ludicrous, and what came out of it were people who were supposed to be masters of spiritual warfare but in fact were afraid of pictures of owls, melancholic music, and Dirt Devil vacuums.
Christians need to be very careful about replacing one sort of superstition with another.
Exactly. I think that one shouldn’t be so zealous in the pursuit of enchantment as to take critical thinking offline and toss common sense out the window, since then there is indeed no guard left against rank superstition.
For Rod, that ship has sailed and is now halfway around the world. I wouldn’t put it past him to claim that Dirt Devil vacuums invite demons to attack.
Agreed. Which is why I'm ok with Halloween and can't join in with those, however well-meaning they are, who freak out about it. Again, those who cannot keep their fantasy separate from reality, such things can do harm. But it is not the fault of those things themselves, those things don't create or are the source of those problems.
That's why commercialized Christmas doesn't bother me, Laura. And it goes beyond the communal, which, I am convinced, is an atavistic memory of the Christian festal year. If one kid in a hundred listens to Frosty the Snowman on the all Christmas music station and is brought by whatever roundabout way to think of the baby Jesus, it's all good.
I watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" every year. I remember when it first came out. But I tend to avoid a great deal in the way of Christmas movies and music that are about "Look at me having a good time at Christmas" rather than what Christmas is about. I'm not a rabid "Jesus is the reason for the season" fanatic -- I never use those words. But even if its a pagan motif, we are celebrating something. Movies about who made up and fell in love with their ex all over again and it happened at Christmas leave me cold. So does "Home for the holidays." (I'm already at home, and that's where I generally spend Christmas.)
I like spooky stories and atmosphere. It is fun. Same with a well written scary story or a good horror movie (not a fan of horror movies in general. I hate body horror and splatter. I prefer stories that are atmospheric, otherworldly, or psychological.)
A family in our neighborhood were hanging out on their porch giving out gift bags that in addition to candy had some friendly literature and asking the families trick or treating if they could pray with them. I thought that it was a very sweet approach.
I thought the book and podcast would be sensationalist but they’re not. They are solid Catholic teaching, very level headed and not at all superstitious.
No Catholic is going to have exorcist parents as Catholicism famously limits the practice to a very small subset of priests, so we don't grow up with that. On to your larger points.
To the extent I see 'spiritual kitsch' in Catholicism it's usually some ridiculous folk custom (not a part of the Faith) like burying a St Joseph statue upside down in a yard to see the house. Some people swear it works, but I'd like to dunk the real estate agent who dreamed that up in a baptismal font. Or that subset that gets hung up on unapproved apparitions and pious myths to the neglect of what is the Faith, like Scripture, the Sacraments and prayer.
You are correct that one should not use holy water, relics, a blessed St Benedict medal or other sacramentals in a superstitious way. However, I find it's far more common to consider them empty pious symbols rather than 'magic items' or magic's opposite, a means of communicating God's grace.
The bigger problem in my Catholic perspective is how few Catholics take spiritual warfare seriously or are even aware that its supposed to be a daily battle other than in the vague theoretical sense that, yeah, one should watch cholesterol levels or floss teeth, but if you don't you'll probably be fine this week, month, year.
The two generations before me made the mistake of thinking that there was an eighth sacrament of Holy Osmosis, that simply attending Mass, praying before meals was enough for raising their kids to withstand modernity.
It took eight months for my Delaware house to sell. My Catholic realtor kept saying she was going to bury a Joseph statue in my yard. Of course we have some pious customs in Orthodoxy that might need to be looked at with a critical eye too.
For the most part our spiritual warfare involves not exorcism but resistance to temptation and besetting sins. In the list of things above which are said to invite demons it appears that any and every sin is indicated. Which sounds about right. Sin may be demon catnip.
I know a prominent Catholic layman h buried a St. Joseph statue and his house did sell quickly after sitting on the market a while. The custom resembles a medieval practice known as the "degradation of saints" where monks would physically beat the statue of the saint who hadn't answered their request or impose other kinds of dishonor.
That is true. It is obvious, from Scriptural instruction and leading, that we are not to fear. Fear is a natural emotion and has its place. But it is something God does not want us to allow to run the show.
We Orthodox get around that part by not having instrumental liturgical music at all. Contrary to some claims we have updated our hymnody over the centuries. The tones you will hear in most Orthodox churches now are nothing like what you would hear if you could travel back to the heyday of Byzantium. The change to Russian musical traditions was one of the things the Old Believers objected to.
I know someone who believes he is demonicaĺly oppressed if not possessed. He has suffered mental illness and has followed all medical orders but has not received received complete relief. He hears/thinks a voice in his head, which sometimes speaks from his mouth. He has spasmodic and destructive movements when attempting exercise or chores. He cannot work. He is devout Catholic, and believes he knows how a demon gained power over him.
And his diocese does not want to deal with possession, doesn't have an exorcist, does not investigate to rule out his belief. They assume he is mentally ill only. Which might be the case. But they won't investigate.
I listen to the podcast and have been debating whether or not to get this book. I typically don’t read religion books outside of the Orthodox tradition, but you’ve sealed the deal for me. I’ve ordered it and I’m looking forward to it.
Hopefully I get a chance to read it before the Biden administration starts World War Three.
As a lifelong player of rpgs (roleplaying games), I take issue with that broad brush, which hobbyists have been dealing with in the entirety of the existence of the pastime. In fact, it is important to keep that line of hard demarcation between fantasy/folklore and occult practices in the real world. Not remotely the same thing, though that's where some well-meaning Christians get tripped up (seen it happen) as well as gamers, whose grip on reality is precarious and whose vulnerability to spiritual deception is high (seen that happen as well.)
I don't know what Father Carlos meant there, precisely. I played D&D for a couple of years, around age 13 to 15. I didn't get remotely into anything occult there, as far as I knew; it was just Lord of the Rings type stuff. That said, I remember being startled on day when I realized that my high school life was so unhappy that I spent more time fantasizing about the adventures my half-man/half-elf character was having in the game than I did thinking about my actual miserable life. That struck me as ... not healthy.
That's not the fault of the game. That's being a lonely kid whose natural personality and inclinations throw you out of sync with most of your peers. That was my childhood as well. Now, in my youth, I did deal with something that much later, I have come to believe was actually demonic in nature, and through the work of prayer warriors, I was delivered while in my youth. And at the time, I did not have the maturity as a Christian to grasp what was going on. But that's a separate issue. As you say, Dungeons and Dragons is just LOtR stuff, fun for imaginative youth.
In general, living a fantasy life instead of a real life is not spiritually or mentally healthy—think Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, or *The Secret Life of Walter Mitty*. But that ultimately has to do with an abuse of the imagination, which is supposed to creatively engage with God’s world and not solipsistically turn inward and generate its own spectral world. Any object at all could serve as an occasion for a person with such a tendency.
There is an aspect of not-being oneself in RPGs. D&D was a gateway to trans for some trans kids. Or perhaps it attracts kids in search of an identity. Trans seems to be very linked to the demonic.
The psychiatric term is "dissociation". It doesn't have to be D&D. It can be memorizing batting averages, movie dialogue, or song lyrics.
That's the great thing about poetry (taken broadly to include imaginative prose). A lonely kid who starts to read is going to encounter not a fantasy world but Reality. At least that's what I.A. Richards thought, and I agree with him. The word he used, btw, was Truth.
All roleplaying games are, are collective storytelling, with some acting, and some math, mapreading, etc. The issues some people come with can be exaserbated by roleplaying. But that is not the fault of the games. Those are issues those people are dealing with.
That 'aspect of not-being-oneself'. I've wondered whether that drives some very talented, albeit troubled, actors/actresses. In particular, Peter Sellers seemed to be a man without a core, who desired to lose himself in being anybody else.
i think that was true of James Dean also. Harlan Ellison wrote a creepy story whose title I can't remember about an actor who becomes so immersed in his roles that he winds up as a murderer without a face. Not that Harlan believed in either the Devil or God.
‘To me, the most fascinating aspect of this phenomenon is the legalistic one. Every experienced exorcist will tell you that the demons are extremely effective lawyers.”
Now I’m not well versed in Orthodox teaching but it’s my understanding that Orthodoxy dismisses the legal/judicial aspect of Christ’s Atonement. I’m not sure what the RCC view is about this but the Protestant branch of Christianity maintains a legal element. Maybe this is an item that Orthodoxy needs to reconsider since the demons seem to recognize there is a legal claim in the sacrifice of Jesus.
The Orthodox maintain the legal element, but we don't make it primary. The notion that the Atonement was mainly a legal/"federal" transaction is foreign to the Church Fathers.
Thank you for your thoughts on this. As to further clarification, Protestantism never reduces the Atonement to just a “legal/federal transaction”. The doctrine of the Atonement is rich, complex and multi-faceted and there are several ways to examine it with theosis being just one element. My point is, that if the demons see the legal claim to be very important, perhaps, we too should have a deeper consideration of that doctrine.
The Orthodox atonement doctrine specifically includes the Devil's role: it is him to whom Christ paid that ransom, only for Hell to discover that it had taken a body and found God (see the Paschal sermon of John Chrysostom). Our Paschal verses are mildly sarcastic about this. The Devil is parsing out pettifoggery only to find that God has checkmated him.
Jon, St Gregory the Theologian said "Fie!" to such an idea, also to the ransom being paid to the Father. When it's examined in St Gregory and in the Liturgy for Pascha, what one gets down to is that the ransom was paid to humanity in its condition of Death. That just about took my breath away completely when an Eastern Catholic priest put it that way to me.
Yes, Hell was hoodwinked - but that's not the same thing, if I understand correctly.
Well, I've never experienced any "legal doctrine," in these matters as a lifelong Protestant. Protestants in general seem to not address this topic, except in the most general of terms, though that has been changing in recent years, mostly for the good.
Less "legal" and more "permissions." Those beings clearly have a wide range of abilities. But they cannot just use them on a whim. So clearly something is holding them back. And if you go to Scripture, it is clear they require clearances/permissions to use their abilities/act in certain ways beyond a certain line. And the things that God forbids, especially those He sets aside as "abomination", can open up particular vulnerabilities to demonic interaction/interference.
I am very surprised that list does not include drugs (including alcohol), and also hypnosis. Those are two known ways that evil forces can seep into one's body.
The Exorcist Files (podcast and book) are not sensationalist at all. There’s so much Catholic teaching provided by Fr Martins, and thankfully he doesn’t dwell at all on scary side of the stories. Fr Martins’s goal is to get everyone closer to Jesus and to encourage people to live holy lives.
I listened to Father Malachi Martin's discussion of exorcism from the early 1990s and he was very convincing. Some people become possessed by evil, perhaps by Satan. But I wonder what the difference is between someone possessed by evil and a schizophrenic. I have never known anyone possessed by demons but I have known schizophrenics. One attended my church for many years until she died of Covid in a nursing home. Are schizophrenics possessed by evil spirits or are they just plain crazy?
For God's sake, no. Schizophrenia is an entirely physical disease, as significant spiritually as Type I. diabetes.
I know it's more complex than this, but schizophrenics have a fewer number of dopamine receptors than the rest of us. What is for us an ordinary, necessary release of the neurotransmitter, dopamine, becomes for them a ruinous overdose, and it causes the hallucinations and delusions.
Rod wrote: "Demons cannot attach themselves to you without your consent."
That should have been written "Demons cannot attach themselves to you without consent". Yes, the deletion of the world 'yours' matters.
Victims of generational curses do not knowingly or unknowingly consent, but somebody who did have authority over them (typically a parent or direct-line ancestor) consented to evil. Usually something like consecrating their blood line or child to evil. Authority, and its abuse, matters in the spiritual world. Catholic exorcists are pretty clear on this.
Original Sin passed down through Adam is, after all, the ultimate generation curse, affecting us all.
When you think about the fact that we participate with God in creation, the idea of a generational curse, seems more "just". We bear some responsibility to our progeny and our "stamp" is on them in a sense.
when I was in high school I went to a party where the kids got out an Ouija board. I was a born again Christian at that time and when they broke it out I had this intense feeling of dread come over me. I told everyone to stop and felt the need to pray. We all prayed and put the board away. Serious stuff the Ouija board is.
Rod is my friend, my brother in all but blood, and he knows that I do not and will not second guess him. His sharing of personal experience and detail is to be celebrated, not criticized. Please keep that in mind while reading my comments here.
I am a modern Pagan. I have spiritual and religious beliefs which are cherry-picked in Father Carlos' lists, which have only one connection to his logic and his practice: the one ubiquitous commonality all humans share, ego.
Father Carlos: 4) He must lead the victim to conversion. (Scripture warns in Matthew 12:30 that no one can be “kingdom neutral.” One either belongs to Christ, or one is against Him.)
This is the primary reason why so many non-Christians view Christians as enemies, why some nations prohibit entry to them by any Christian, but especially missionaries.
I do not belong to Christ, nor am I against Him. This is the ego-justification for persecuting non-Christians, to branding them without ever even meeting one.
Father Carlos: So, what are some of the common ways they come to possess or otherwise attach themselves to a person? Father writes[...]
His list is a litany of every non-Christian practice. I'm actually shocked that he didn't make direct reference to the "cousin" religions of Judaism and Islam. It seems to me that there is just not enough room on our planet for non-Christians, and it grieves me to say that this is exactly why in some places Christians are persecuted, why in some places their reign resulted in terrible consequences, and was exactly why the Founders of our nation wrote the religion clauses of the First Amendment. I can and will praise Christians for their works. I can and will deny them any level of authority over my life.
Christians name it Satan. In my beliefs, I call it The Adversary. In my social/religious commentary writing, I name it Lucifer. It has a name in every major religion. Spiritual evil is a reality, and absent the very rare "demonic" incidents, it has a name and a face: people. My encounters with it (thank all the gods, very few) are my standard. I don't put an abstract, anthropomorphic visage to it, because people can be evil, and they don't do it because they are possessed. They do it because they want to do it. Ego.
I'd say that as a logical matter, there's alignment and harmony with the Logos versus not: those are the two poles, and since life's always in motion, we're always either tending toward the Logos or away from Him. But it's also by no means obvious that all nominal Christians are tending toward the Logos (Matthew 7:21). And likewise, it's also not obvious that all nominal heathens (such as yourself) are tending away from the Logos. The realities of the spirit are more enigmatic than that.
I totally agree with you here, and perhaps ironically there are few Pagans who would join me in that agreement. The binary structure insisted upon by Christians is equally insisted upon by many of my siblings in faith, and very many non-Christians around the world.
I guess humans just need an enemy or two to justify their egos. I wish I could be sarcastic here, but all I have are silent tears.
My favorite Talmudic source (introduced to me by the son of a Pentecostal minister) teaches that Satan in the Jewish tradition is God's tester, not his enemy, which is why he was welcome among the Sons of God as described in Job, and why he was permitted to test Jon's faith. It also shows up in Jesus's temptation in the desert -- one could read that as God was testing this fleshly son of a human mother to see if he was fully up to being the Word made flesh. As to Lucifer, the same source says that Lucifer Son of the Morning is a reference to a king of Babylon, not to a demonic being. Christian gentile converts just didn't have the basis to understand what they were reading, and connected the dots wrongly. Is this true? I don't know. I'm content to find out when we all get to the other side. But, I'm open to the possibility. It makes some sense.
The trauma connection with demons makes a lot of sense. They must have plenty of material to work with.
Breaking free of PTSD, especially that induced by narcissistic abuse, is much more like breaking a spell than any psychiatry.
That’s me…
Still praying for you daily, Laura.
Humbled and thank you.
That is a great point worth reflecting on.
Can you comment on how this might apply in a religious setting? I feel that Pope Francis and some of his bishops are committing narcissistic abuse against certain groups of failthful, like Latin Mass communities for example. Protecting predator priests and then pretending to be super woke, also has the whiff of the the demonic. The demons must really like it when they can get churchmen to commit abuse, two for the price of one. PTSD and the destruction of a person's faith at the same time. I'm looking at you, Cardinal McCarrick. It is also narcissistic abuse to confirm other groups faithful in their sins. It's all just one big demonic buffet of trauma.
Well, Newman wrote that Catholic liturgy appealed to the soul as immediately as flowers to the sense. That's certainly the way it seemed to me--Novus Ordo did not come into the New York Archdiocese until I was 13. (I have no memory of it, but I have been told that at my first High Mass I applauded at the end of the Gloria, which is the correct response.) What better setting for a diabolical transvaluation of all values? It's like an abusive family. What child does not wish to be part of a loving group headed by a mother and a father? And what more gratifying to someone diabolically inclined and his patron than to, how to say it, disappoint the child by abusing him, sexually and emotionally?
The eclipse of Freudian analysis is one of the great stories of the past 50 years. Even when I was 16 years old I could see it removed moral agency from the equation. Cognitive behavioral therapy restores it, and restores it to the abuser, where it belongs, not to the victim.
A couple of the items on that list seem like a bit much. By role-playing games, does he mean the genre of video games known as RPGs? Like, the Final Fantasy series? They’re typically wholesome and feature plotlines that involve saving the world from great evil; sacrifice is often also a significant motif. A few are genuine works of art. I don’t play anymore, but they were fun when I was a kid.
As for when one specifically opened oneself up to demonic attachment, that seems like an area wide open for confirmation bias and the telling of just-so stories. Given a list that comprehensive and at times seemingly even petty, there must be pretty much no one on earth who hasn’t provided demons with *some* point of entry. So while I believe in the metaphysical reality of the stuff, I’m also a little skeptical of how that may become conflated with our subjective narrative constructs.
It is now the middle of the night, and I am in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas. The phone signal’s fading in and out.
Sethu and Rod - on trains on their northbound odysseys, in parallel.
“Northbound Odyssey” sounds like an RPG title.
Don't let them get you!
(Oh...I think some extreme form of D and D could perhaps open a person up to the dark? But surely not every role-playing game...And I agree, not every instance of doing every item on the list means a demon will attach. But I do not picture demon oppression as a demon getting into a crack, but rather, hanging around, though not inside....ah well...I've not read the book on it.)
At some point it just starts to sound a little paranoid, like the Calvinists in England banning Christmas for being “pagan”. Now, I can understand *why* a professional exorcist would tend toward paranoia and see demons in even apparently innocuous things, but still.
I've never had a problem with celebrating Christmas, but there are reasons for calling it pagan. I can understand them, the way I understand people voting for Trump. The timing of Christmas in the calendar was an attempt to take over the Roman Saturnalia, evicting the pagans while appropriating the mass desire to still have a good celebration. Jesus almost certainly was not born in December, and quite possibly not in the year we call year one, anno domini. Shepherds do not watch their flock by night on the hills of Judea in December -- April maybe. A lot of the symbolism is pagan in origin. One of my favorite carols is The Holly and the Ivy, which as a lot about Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ, but invokes the symbols of the gods of the waxing and waning year in Celtic pagan tradition. My mother, a sometime Elder of our Presbyterian church, said, yeah, it is, but so what? (Mom was what I call a cultural Calvinist -- she didn't really believe in predestination, didn't approve of burning Servitius at the stake for denying the Trinity, and got along fine with our Catholic neighbors and their veneration of the Virgin Mary. But mom kept a tight budget.) There are parallels between the Resurrection and that Eleusinian Mysteries. Was one an incomplete forerunner of the other, a glimpse in pagan minds of the Truth? Was one an appropriation of the other by early Christian writers? Does it really matter? Do they point in the same direction?
The Catholic and Orthodox view has always been that the whole world had been dreaming about Him for a long time, such that prefigurations of Christ can be found everywhere before He actually showed up here. (And that's exactly what we'd expect, given that He is the Logos who created all that is.) So there's nothing at all wrong with "baptizing" all such legends and traditions and integrating them into the faith. This is also what Tolkien and CS Lewis meant with the classic formula that Christianity is the one myth that's true.
"The timing of Christmas in the calendar was an attempt to take over the Roman Saturnalia, evicting the pagans while appropriating the mass desire to still have a good celebration. "
Actually Dec. 25 is the Feast of the Unconquerable Sun. It's the first day the days grow longer.
I haven't read the Martins book, but I did read one of Amorth's. And I thought he talked of possession as being very rare and difficult to attain for a demon. Based on Martins's list it would appear the possessed are everywhere.
I think the much simpler and less sensationalist gloss here would just be: “Sin makes us more susceptible to demonic influence.”
I’m scratching my head about RPG’s. I play D&D with church friends and we keep it clean. Not sure how playing that would open you up to demonic possession.
Seems like a classic satanic panic thing, sort of like how some folk thought Harry Potter is evil because it involves (gasp!) magic.
Also, the inclusion of “white magic” on the list is ironic because, technically considered, Christian prayer *is* white magic.
Agree. We are told "You shall know them by their fruits" Christ himself was accused of demonic powers because of his miracles. He made very short and perfectly logical hash out of the accusation.
And what is technology but a form of magic, a manipulation of Nature, that actually works?
Sin attracts demons. Works of mercy do not.
Not really. Magic is intended to give control. It's all about power. Prayer is not. (Although I'm sure some people try to misuse it in that way.)
Fr. Amorth did condemn Harry Potter. He may have been influenced in that verdict by the badly distorted anti-Potter writings of Gabrielle Kuby. In the 90s, lots of conservative Catholic commentators denounced the books, usually arguing from misreadings of the text. (ex: Voldemort's evil statements were represented as the books' values, the same sort of critique that has been made of To Kill A Mockingbird: the villain is racist so the book/play is racist.)
It would not. That list is nonsense. It would capture almost every human being on earth.
Precisely. Also, I am glad that Rod received a blessing, but I doubt he was afflicted with, what, a downwardly mobile demon? A demon who had been frustrated in thriving?A faildemon?
I am with you - that is why I was why I said "some extreme form?" and put a question mark. I did not think regular D and D would do that and I don't know of an extreme form. I do know I was warned over and over as a teen to stay away, but I never heard what was so bad - so I was really just asking if there was an extreme form of that, or actually, of any other RPG (I suspect there is of other RPGs).
I think you can take into dark places if you really get into character and are a chaotic evil necromancer or something like that.
There is also material out there where they use the names of demons and there are actual demons in the game with the names of demons in real life. So I would avoid that stuff obviously.
Which is why, as a rule, as a GM, I never allow players to play evil characters or have evil-oriented campaigns. I'm not interested in such games or such attempts at roleplaying, which more often than not, players do not use as an exercise in exploratory storytelling, but an excuse for mayhem. Even if running a Vampire/WoD chronicle, though the players are playing "monsters," this is a world of consequences, and stupid/thoughtless/irresponsible players end up with the world against them. Vampire, for example, a traditional chronicle is built around the Masquerade, the idea that it is a very good ideas for vampires to keep their existence secret from mortals. And to break the Masquerade intentionally not only can expose you to unwanted attention from various mortal authorities, but various vampire authorities will also not be pleased with you. So yes, the vampires do need blood for their immortal existence. But they do not have to kill to obtain it, and Camarilla vampires mostly seek to avoid that. Other vampires of the more evil variety might not be so careful, but I would not run that kind of campaign. Again, the idea would be to explore issues of morality and consequence, not indulge in ugly carnage.
Riding the magic carpets made of steel
"The sons of poor men porters and the sons of engineers ride their father's magic carpets made of steel."
Talk about mental blocks - as the daughter of a mechanical engineer I first thought those types of engineers were meant when I initially heard the song - only thought of the guy steering the train later. But the point: though there were only a few riders in a dying way of U. S. transport into a sunset, something that seemed magic, but something we creative humans did - they were in it together regardless of background, which is good.
And maybe we will be gone (through) 500 years, 1607 to 2107, when our day is done.
Pullman porters :)
No!!!! Another song lyric misunderstood by me. Honest, I did not misremember, I heard it that way.
Well, at least I did not fall for "I believe the heart does go on", which is sometimes thought to be "I believe that the hot dogs go on."
Creedence Clearwater Revival: "There's a bathroom on the right".
"You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille, with four hundred children..."
There's a funny one in German from a song called "Pflaster". The line is " Es tobt der Hass da vor meinem Fenster" (The hate rages there, just outside my window) but "der Hass da" sounds exactly like "der Hamster", leaving everyone to wonder what in the world the hamster was doing there in the first place. 🤣 https://youtu.be/DwjF9TMG8z4?si=kGauwZrWTCgSyr-0
I think it might be that vulnerable people are drawn to RPGs as an escape.
Maybe I missed it, but missing from that list seems to be use of mind altering drugs, including alcohol.
Some of the things on that list genuinely are dangerous, but the list so expansive as to include most people.
Yeah—and even if we grant that a desire for escapism is a risk factor, there isn’t anything uniquely escapist about RPGs. On the other hand, the bit about avoiding sadistic, possibly vicariously traumatizing content makes sense.
Heck, reading fiction or watching drama are forms of escapism.
Well, depends, right? Reading a Dostoevsky novel or watching a Shakespeare play is more like a dive into a deeper reality. But yes, if we're gonna take aim at escapism, that's a pretty broad scope.
Reading is more passive, RPGs would be more akin to acting.
Avoiding sadistic entertainment might make sense for purely secular reasons having nothing to do with demons. I don’t need to, for example, watch torture porn like “Saw,” just for my own well-being.
For the same reason, I avoid hallucinogenic drugs. Not because they invite demons into my life, but because screwing with my brain seems like a bad idea.
It baffles me how anyone is able to stomach torture porn; that suggests something disturbing about their empathy response (or lack thereof).
Especially considering Scripture specifically warns against and sanctions that sort of thing.
Agreed. I think addiction creates the sort of weakness that is easily exploited by the demonic.
When Dungeons and Dragons was popular, I found the concept esthetically interesting, but I just never had time to play. On the other hand, I heard of a woman who went into deep depression and nearly committed literal suicide when her character died, and she had nothing else to live for.
Damn.
I would also say Father Martins isn't here to explain himself, so it may be that these are things which he's seen as recurrent trends.
Yes to this. Rod wrote that "demons cannot attach themselves to you without your consent," which clearly makes his earlier claim that I can be oppressed/possessed if somebody cursed my great-grandfather untenable.
Maybe the distinction is that demons can attach themselves to a place and remain for years? Hence the "haunted house" phenomenon.
In Japan new buildings are often exorcised, by Buddhist and Shinto rite, just in case something sneaked in.
I think ghosts are real, in the sense of psychic-electrical energy forms that weren't able to properly depart. So haunted houses wouldn't need to involve demons.
The list also included contraceptives, which the orthodox allow in non abotofacint ways or so says some their official websites.
The list seems to cite every and any major sin as defined by Rome.
Yeah if birth control leads to demons about 99% of Americans are in trouble.
I read that list with the same jaundiced eye that I look on claims that this, that or some other things may cause cancer as it seems almost everything is linked to cancer. I get the concept that sin attracts demons. But since possession is rare something more than just the common sins of humankind is involved.
I'm a "gamer" from around the early 70s (1970s, I ain't that old!). I'm also a mathematician, and statistical analysis was my primary craft in my working career.
D and D was a ground breaker game. It successfully bridged the gap between fiction/fantasy and direct interaction with one's friends. I never got into it myself, too damn much dice rolling, but the creativity of the dungeon master and the creative collaboration between the DM and the players was awesome. By the way, the main cognitive disconnect I have over including RPGs in the "list" is that the very first ones were directly based on Tolkien's works. To this day the vast majority of the games have halflings, dwarves, elves, trolls, orcs and human warriors and magic users. They also have healing magic and potions. They encompass epic quests, and players engage in the best of the duality of story telling: personal level engagement, epic level participation.
It also seems just strange strategy on the demons' part to possess people in such a way that the victims would be inspired to seek exorcism and become Christian.
Well, demons are generally known to overplay their hand, so that part would track. A lot of people run into demons before they go seek God; I'd even say that was how my path got started.
The Crucifixion was the ultimate "overplaying of the hand" by the Devil.
Yes, but their considerable intellects and wills are corrupted by their Fall. They can't help but push things too far as evil contains the seeds of its own destruction in the moral universe God constructed. God sets them up for humiliations and failure as well for as punishment for their pride.
I'd guess the role-playing game element goes back to the 1970s Dungeons & Dragons "Monster Manual" which listed some demons and devils as monsters that players could fight alongside orcs, giant frogs, giants and all the rest. Perhaps a slippery slope/gateway argument of introducing 'dark' themes. I don't see it myself. More like Tolkien fantasy stuff than anything else.
Back in high school, friends played space-opera themed RPGs with no preternatural element that I recall. Space marines fighting alien flying critters. Stuff like that. I don't see the evil influence vector there. Unless the argument is preferring make-believe past times to reality as inherently poor conditioning of the imagination and will.
The latter point, though, could easily turn into a puritanical condemnation of art as such.
Increasingly, I see that formation of the moral imagination is important and has ripple effects through life. I don't pretend to know how to best do that other than avoiding the extremes and trying to introduce people to the 'best' of what's been written, said or done. But that just moves the goal posts. What's 'best'?
In re: Puritanism. It seems inevitable that such a brittle system was bound to eventually crack up with the result of liberality flooding its compromised dikes e.g. Unitarians replacing the American Pilgrims, the Restoration court of Charles II following Cromwell's Protectorate or modern day Netherlands.
The RPG and video game thing stuck out to me too. I think its a matter of use and intent. For instance, if I can play Skyrim or D&D with my friends and it's just that, probably ok. But as someone who struggles a bit with daydreams and fantasy/escapism, I can easily see someone going down the road of obsession with it where it starts to become more important and interesting to them than actual reality. Especially these days when the "real" world seems so devoid of enchantment and meaningful struggle, especially for a single man (I write as one). Contrast that to something like the world of Skyrim, with gods, magic, and a narrative you are involved in in a meaningful (to the game world) way. There was a discussion had at a parish visit to a monastery earlier this year where we talked about how the reality we inhabit is lovingly given to us by God for our spiritual development, and so rejecting it is also rejecting God. I'm a big fan of using fitness metaphors to describe spiritual warfare... The world is like a spiritual gym, and we have the perfect personal trainer giving us exactly the workout we need to get stronger. If only we would follow it.
So am I going to get possessed because I play Skyrim on the weekends? Probably not. But if the game world consumes me and I try to escape into it, turning away from the real in a significant way, I could see it being used as a pathway.
Agreed: I think that the real problem is the abuse of the imagination and the withdrawal into a solipsistic realm of phantasms, whether any games are involved or not.
I wouldn't say RPGs per se are dangerous (you'd be amazed at the number of Orthodox who enjoy the genre, including my own priest), but because they do open the imagination they can be a vehicle if you're part of an ill-formed group. My own DnD group is over-represented by Orthodox (and 1 Methodist), and our own group avoids the salacious entirely - we're out to solve mysteries, defeat evil, and save the village (we've actually just moved to Battletech, which trades magic for giant fighting robots).
But I've heard plenty about groups where you get a player or two (or the DM himself) who delights in morally compromised scenarios and tries to get the other players to follow him. This can include anything from sex to actual demonic invocations, including even trying to get other players to say particular things aloud, instead of just letting the players say "my character summons X". And if you push back, they respond with "Hey, it's just a game, right?" In these cases, the game is a vehicle.
It sounds like it really has nothing much to do with the game per se, then. It's just people using their imaginations for better or for worse, depending on who they are.
Right, it's not the game itself, but the game can be a badly misused tool.
Or to put it another way, the game can be turned into a sort of mental pornography.
I had another thought regarding games - I had a friend who sank his life into World of Warcraft for several years to escape the pain of a marriage on the rocks due to a drug-addicted wife (it's all in the past now, Thank God!). The only things that could pry him out of that space were biological and the need to go to work. In a way, the game possessed him.
It just seems bizarre to say “Games can provoke demonic oppression” as opposed to the more obvious claim of “Despair and a desire for escape can weaken your spiritual fiber”.
My concern with games is that many of them are very adult in nature and yet we hand them to children. The ones designed for children are simply preparing them for the adult version. Children live in a much more enchanted world than adults do.
For RPG games, I sure hope he doesn't mean Diablo--Musk and I are in deep trouble!
I agree it was an overly broad list.
Diablo? You mean a game literally called Hell?! . . .
Yes. But we’re the Nephilim.
Interesting. I've encountered spirit possession cults in Asia, where the relationship is between the Gods and the community, though of course individuals have their own specific dealings with the spirit world. That's very ancient, and very much culturally-specific and -bounded. Lots of food for thought in that.
Following that - apologies, stream of consciousness here - it would seem, per Rod's other articles, that the Christian/Biblical spiritual world seems to have brought with it as defined adversaries a set of spirit names inherited from ancient Mesopotamia: Middle Eastern entities stripped of their original cultural context - though we know that their ceremonies and sacrifices were cruel by our terms. Other systems, including the Chinese with which I'm familiar, aren't. Still, it seems that each tribe and nation had its own relationship with its own pantheon of spirits, something we know to have been the case from histories of the Celts... which leads us to Tom Holland's proposition that Christianity was different, and original, in its universalism. Could it even have become established without the 'universal' Roman Empire? Hmmm.
What think you of Psalm 82 (81) and the like? Of the Prince of Persia, said to be a fallen angel, mentioned in Daniel who hindered Daniel's prayers until Michael did battle? Many Christians believe that God had a heavenly council, of "gods" - small g - or powerful created beings (angels, a term which means messenger, is perhaps the term, or perhaps not). There are a lot of verses in scripture about small g "gods". Many believe they were assigned to different parts of the earth but fell. Dr. Michael Heiser is my source on most of this. Interesting stuff.
Could Wodan have been the prince of the power of the northlands? I don't know. I do know that while there were forced conversions, many in the north wanted to convert away from the cruelty of their religion.
This reminds me of both Tolkien and Lewis whose fiction posited resident angelic spirits in this world, who could however fall (e.g., Sauron, Saruman) though many remain faithful.
Based on my understanding from the Lord of Spirits podcast, this idea is generally correct. Angels (or small g gods) were assigned to the different nations but "fell" by accepting worship instead of passing on worship to the big g God.
Exorcists claim the same thing. One that stood out to me was after an exorcist had gained control of a demon it confessed that it's assignment was to be among the cohort of angels who appeared to the shepherds in Bethlehem.
Thanks for this: I hadn't heard of Heisner; a quick look at his Wikipedia entry led to the also-new-to-me idea of the Divine Council. Very interesting, and a very useful pointer for further reading.
A universal Roman Empire and a cosmopolitan Hellenic culture.
Yes; and I've always thought it strange and puzzling that Christianity made so relatively headway in the Parthian Empire before its fall in 227. The Parthians seem to have been by all accounts religiously tolerant, unlike their zealously Zoroastrian Sassanid successors.
This makes me wonder about the crossover between serious mental illness and possession, or how to really tell when one begins and the other ends. Obviously, the church tries to sort out which is which, but if the various “negative” feelings that often arise from mental illness are also factors that can invite demonic activity, then it would seem prudent for there to be extra outreach to those with mental illness on the part of the church. I have noticed that prayers for those suffering with mental illness are very common at Mass lately, so maybe there is more awareness than there has been in the past (although, in fairness, it has only been in the last few decades that better research and diagnosis around mental illness has established a purely biological basis for it, not “think positive and you’ll be cured” garbage).
An exorcist told me once that he walked through a mental asylum, some (but not most) of the patients there called out to him in very strange ways, indicating that possession was part of their condition.
I guarantee you if asylums incorporated spirit-filled clergy and exorcists, many of the problems in those places would be cleared up or relieved. Would help with prisons, too.
When I worked weekends as the mental health nurse at the state prison we had six suicide watch beds. The inmates were checked every fifteen minutes. If psychotic they were given Haldol injections for three days. Most responded well. A few did not and were labeled Anti-Social Personality Disorder. These men were dangerously scary, mean, and potentially could hurt others. Could they have been possessed? I often thought about this.
I've heard priests say similar things about visiting certain prisons too.
Having grown up with exorcist parents I must confess that I find much of this stuff problematic, especially as it veers into the category of superstition. One gets to the point where you're doing some "Christian" equivalent of throwing salt over your shoulder, avoiding black cats and not walking under ladders. I can't speak to Catholic versions of this spiritual kitsch, but in my upbringing some of the examples were ludicrous, and what came out of it were people who were supposed to be masters of spiritual warfare but in fact were afraid of pictures of owls, melancholic music, and Dirt Devil vacuums.
Christians need to be very careful about replacing one sort of superstition with another.
Exactly. I think that one shouldn’t be so zealous in the pursuit of enchantment as to take critical thinking offline and toss common sense out the window, since then there is indeed no guard left against rank superstition.
For Rod, that ship has sailed and is now halfway around the world. I wouldn’t put it past him to claim that Dirt Devil vacuums invite demons to attack.
Agreed. Which is why I'm ok with Halloween and can't join in with those, however well-meaning they are, who freak out about it. Again, those who cannot keep their fantasy separate from reality, such things can do harm. But it is not the fault of those things themselves, those things don't create or are the source of those problems.
Also, Halloween is the Eve of All Saints’ Day, which is a Catholic feast.
And there is that.
I like Halloween because it’s the only day of the year that entire neighborhoods act like neighborhoods.
That's why commercialized Christmas doesn't bother me, Laura. And it goes beyond the communal, which, I am convinced, is an atavistic memory of the Christian festal year. If one kid in a hundred listens to Frosty the Snowman on the all Christmas music station and is brought by whatever roundabout way to think of the baby Jesus, it's all good.
For me, it’s John Denver and the Muppets. I can’t listen to it without tears. Also, ‘ACharlie Brown Christmas.’
I watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" every year. I remember when it first came out. But I tend to avoid a great deal in the way of Christmas movies and music that are about "Look at me having a good time at Christmas" rather than what Christmas is about. I'm not a rabid "Jesus is the reason for the season" fanatic -- I never use those words. But even if its a pagan motif, we are celebrating something. Movies about who made up and fell in love with their ex all over again and it happened at Christmas leave me cold. So does "Home for the holidays." (I'm already at home, and that's where I generally spend Christmas.)
I've a few go-tos, most especially Alistair Sim in Scrooge.
When the CBS execs were looking at the final cut of A Charlie Brown Christmas, one of them bridled at the scene in which Linus reads from Luke.
"Why does that have to be part of it?"
They had to explain it to him.
I like spooky stories and atmosphere. It is fun. Same with a well written scary story or a good horror movie (not a fan of horror movies in general. I hate body horror and splatter. I prefer stories that are atmospheric, otherworldly, or psychological.)
A family in our neighborhood were hanging out on their porch giving out gift bags that in addition to candy had some friendly literature and asking the families trick or treating if they could pray with them. I thought that it was a very sweet approach.
Perfectly fine.
Halloween is the favorite holiday of the wealthy whites of Washington DC. Bigger than Christmas.
It would be nice if there were more costumes for women that don't look like they belong on a drunk sorority girl.
Your comment made me think of this classic clip from the Simpsons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0Mkrv340y8
I thought the book and podcast would be sensationalist but they’re not. They are solid Catholic teaching, very level headed and not at all superstitious.
No Catholic is going to have exorcist parents as Catholicism famously limits the practice to a very small subset of priests, so we don't grow up with that. On to your larger points.
To the extent I see 'spiritual kitsch' in Catholicism it's usually some ridiculous folk custom (not a part of the Faith) like burying a St Joseph statue upside down in a yard to see the house. Some people swear it works, but I'd like to dunk the real estate agent who dreamed that up in a baptismal font. Or that subset that gets hung up on unapproved apparitions and pious myths to the neglect of what is the Faith, like Scripture, the Sacraments and prayer.
You are correct that one should not use holy water, relics, a blessed St Benedict medal or other sacramentals in a superstitious way. However, I find it's far more common to consider them empty pious symbols rather than 'magic items' or magic's opposite, a means of communicating God's grace.
The bigger problem in my Catholic perspective is how few Catholics take spiritual warfare seriously or are even aware that its supposed to be a daily battle other than in the vague theoretical sense that, yeah, one should watch cholesterol levels or floss teeth, but if you don't you'll probably be fine this week, month, year.
The two generations before me made the mistake of thinking that there was an eighth sacrament of Holy Osmosis, that simply attending Mass, praying before meals was enough for raising their kids to withstand modernity.
It took eight months for my Delaware house to sell. My Catholic realtor kept saying she was going to bury a Joseph statue in my yard. Of course we have some pious customs in Orthodoxy that might need to be looked at with a critical eye too.
For the most part our spiritual warfare involves not exorcism but resistance to temptation and besetting sins. In the list of things above which are said to invite demons it appears that any and every sin is indicated. Which sounds about right. Sin may be demon catnip.
I know a prominent Catholic layman h buried a St. Joseph statue and his house did sell quickly after sitting on the market a while. The custom resembles a medieval practice known as the "degradation of saints" where monks would physically beat the statue of the saint who hadn't answered their request or impose other kinds of dishonor.
Don't care what tradition it appears in -- if your interest in the demonic results in superstitious fear and worry, it's wrongheaded.
Agreed
That is true. It is obvious, from Scriptural instruction and leading, that we are not to fear. Fear is a natural emotion and has its place. But it is something God does not want us to allow to run the show.
"Spiritual kitsch" in Catholicism:
1) Greeting your fellow Mass attendees before the priest enters
2) The music of the St. Louis Jesuits
3) The guitar as an ecclesiastical instrument
4) Adlibbing the liturgy, especially at the Consecration (ok'd by Bugnini)
5) Corita banners (vieux jeu, but you can still find them)
You want theological kitsch, just wait until the deportations start and Father Martin gets to hurl himself before the jackbooted bullyboys.
Re: The guitar as an ecclesiastical instrument
We Orthodox get around that part by not having instrumental liturgical music at all. Contrary to some claims we have updated our hymnody over the centuries. The tones you will hear in most Orthodox churches now are nothing like what you would hear if you could travel back to the heyday of Byzantium. The change to Russian musical traditions was one of the things the Old Believers objected to.
Black cats are awesome.
Yes, they are. I inherited a couple when I took over my parents' house.
I have one,
As do we. She’s long hair and has the most beautiful tail.
I don't like Dirt Devils either - they suck.
(I'll see myself out...)
I know someone who believes he is demonicaĺly oppressed if not possessed. He has suffered mental illness and has followed all medical orders but has not received received complete relief. He hears/thinks a voice in his head, which sometimes speaks from his mouth. He has spasmodic and destructive movements when attempting exercise or chores. He cannot work. He is devout Catholic, and believes he knows how a demon gained power over him.
And his diocese does not want to deal with possession, doesn't have an exorcist, does not investigate to rule out his belief. They assume he is mentally ill only. Which might be the case. But they won't investigate.
So where does he go?
Tourettes's has been ruled out
Write me privately, and I'll forward the info to Father Carlos. roddreher -- at -- substack -- dot -- com
I listen to the podcast and have been debating whether or not to get this book. I typically don’t read religion books outside of the Orthodox tradition, but you’ve sealed the deal for me. I’ve ordered it and I’m looking forward to it.
Hopefully I get a chance to read it before the Biden administration starts World War Three.
Good. Father Carlos and Father Nectarios are very close. Father Nectarios read early version of the manuscript and commented on them, I am told.
Stock up on iodine.
As a lifelong player of rpgs (roleplaying games), I take issue with that broad brush, which hobbyists have been dealing with in the entirety of the existence of the pastime. In fact, it is important to keep that line of hard demarcation between fantasy/folklore and occult practices in the real world. Not remotely the same thing, though that's where some well-meaning Christians get tripped up (seen it happen) as well as gamers, whose grip on reality is precarious and whose vulnerability to spiritual deception is high (seen that happen as well.)
I don't know what Father Carlos meant there, precisely. I played D&D for a couple of years, around age 13 to 15. I didn't get remotely into anything occult there, as far as I knew; it was just Lord of the Rings type stuff. That said, I remember being startled on day when I realized that my high school life was so unhappy that I spent more time fantasizing about the adventures my half-man/half-elf character was having in the game than I did thinking about my actual miserable life. That struck me as ... not healthy.
That's not the fault of the game. That's being a lonely kid whose natural personality and inclinations throw you out of sync with most of your peers. That was my childhood as well. Now, in my youth, I did deal with something that much later, I have come to believe was actually demonic in nature, and through the work of prayer warriors, I was delivered while in my youth. And at the time, I did not have the maturity as a Christian to grasp what was going on. But that's a separate issue. As you say, Dungeons and Dragons is just LOtR stuff, fun for imaginative youth.
In general, living a fantasy life instead of a real life is not spiritually or mentally healthy—think Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, or *The Secret Life of Walter Mitty*. But that ultimately has to do with an abuse of the imagination, which is supposed to creatively engage with God’s world and not solipsistically turn inward and generate its own spectral world. Any object at all could serve as an occasion for a person with such a tendency.
Very much agreed. Those would be those I described as having a "precarious grip on reality."
There is an aspect of not-being oneself in RPGs. D&D was a gateway to trans for some trans kids. Or perhaps it attracts kids in search of an identity. Trans seems to be very linked to the demonic.
The psychiatric term is "dissociation". It doesn't have to be D&D. It can be memorizing batting averages, movie dialogue, or song lyrics.
That's the great thing about poetry (taken broadly to include imaginative prose). A lonely kid who starts to read is going to encounter not a fantasy world but Reality. At least that's what I.A. Richards thought, and I agree with him. The word he used, btw, was Truth.
All roleplaying games are, are collective storytelling, with some acting, and some math, mapreading, etc. The issues some people come with can be exaserbated by roleplaying. But that is not the fault of the games. Those are issues those people are dealing with.
That 'aspect of not-being-oneself'. I've wondered whether that drives some very talented, albeit troubled, actors/actresses. In particular, Peter Sellers seemed to be a man without a core, who desired to lose himself in being anybody else.
i think that was true of James Dean also. Harlan Ellison wrote a creepy story whose title I can't remember about an actor who becomes so immersed in his roles that he winds up as a murderer without a face. Not that Harlan believed in either the Devil or God.
Rod, welcome in my city Prague 🙋
Rod—you wrote the following:
‘To me, the most fascinating aspect of this phenomenon is the legalistic one. Every experienced exorcist will tell you that the demons are extremely effective lawyers.”
Now I’m not well versed in Orthodox teaching but it’s my understanding that Orthodoxy dismisses the legal/judicial aspect of Christ’s Atonement. I’m not sure what the RCC view is about this but the Protestant branch of Christianity maintains a legal element. Maybe this is an item that Orthodoxy needs to reconsider since the demons seem to recognize there is a legal claim in the sacrifice of Jesus.
The Orthodox maintain the legal element, but we don't make it primary. The notion that the Atonement was mainly a legal/"federal" transaction is foreign to the Church Fathers.
Thank you for your thoughts on this. As to further clarification, Protestantism never reduces the Atonement to just a “legal/federal transaction”. The doctrine of the Atonement is rich, complex and multi-faceted and there are several ways to examine it with theosis being just one element. My point is, that if the demons see the legal claim to be very important, perhaps, we too should have a deeper consideration of that doctrine.
The Orthodox atonement doctrine specifically includes the Devil's role: it is him to whom Christ paid that ransom, only for Hell to discover that it had taken a body and found God (see the Paschal sermon of John Chrysostom). Our Paschal verses are mildly sarcastic about this. The Devil is parsing out pettifoggery only to find that God has checkmated him.
Well put.
The idea that the "ransom" was paid to Satan is not universal in Orthodoxy -- it's one opinion but not a binding or necessarily characteristic one.
Jon, St Gregory the Theologian said "Fie!" to such an idea, also to the ransom being paid to the Father. When it's examined in St Gregory and in the Liturgy for Pascha, what one gets down to is that the ransom was paid to humanity in its condition of Death. That just about took my breath away completely when an Eastern Catholic priest put it that way to me.
Yes, Hell was hoodwinked - but that's not the same thing, if I understand correctly.
Dana
Dante thought that the Incarnation and the Atonement had to wait for the Roman Empire so our Lord could be condemned by a universal monarchy.
Well, I've never experienced any "legal doctrine," in these matters as a lifelong Protestant. Protestants in general seem to not address this topic, except in the most general of terms, though that has been changing in recent years, mostly for the good.
Less "legal" and more "permissions." Those beings clearly have a wide range of abilities. But they cannot just use them on a whim. So clearly something is holding them back. And if you go to Scripture, it is clear they require clearances/permissions to use their abilities/act in certain ways beyond a certain line. And the things that God forbids, especially those He sets aside as "abomination", can open up particular vulnerabilities to demonic interaction/interference.
I am very surprised that list does not include drugs (including alcohol), and also hypnosis. Those are two known ways that evil forces can seep into one's body.
I have seen drug abuse and hypnosis listed by other Catholic exorcists as vectors, by the way.
That jumped out for me too. Drugs and alcohol create huge vulnerability.
The Exorcist Files (podcast and book) are not sensationalist at all. There’s so much Catholic teaching provided by Fr Martins, and thankfully he doesn’t dwell at all on scary side of the stories. Fr Martins’s goal is to get everyone closer to Jesus and to encourage people to live holy lives.
I listened to Father Malachi Martin's discussion of exorcism from the early 1990s and he was very convincing. Some people become possessed by evil, perhaps by Satan. But I wonder what the difference is between someone possessed by evil and a schizophrenic. I have never known anyone possessed by demons but I have known schizophrenics. One attended my church for many years until she died of Covid in a nursing home. Are schizophrenics possessed by evil spirits or are they just plain crazy?
Little bit of column A, more of column B.
For God's sake, no. Schizophrenia is an entirely physical disease, as significant spiritually as Type I. diabetes.
I know it's more complex than this, but schizophrenics have a fewer number of dopamine receptors than the rest of us. What is for us an ordinary, necessary release of the neurotransmitter, dopamine, becomes for them a ruinous overdose, and it causes the hallucinations and delusions.
I had a cousin, twenty years dead now, who was a schizophrenic. He had smoked marijuana with PCP in 1973 and never was the same mentally.
Rod wrote: "Demons cannot attach themselves to you without your consent."
That should have been written "Demons cannot attach themselves to you without consent". Yes, the deletion of the world 'yours' matters.
Victims of generational curses do not knowingly or unknowingly consent, but somebody who did have authority over them (typically a parent or direct-line ancestor) consented to evil. Usually something like consecrating their blood line or child to evil. Authority, and its abuse, matters in the spiritual world. Catholic exorcists are pretty clear on this.
Original Sin passed down through Adam is, after all, the ultimate generation curse, affecting us all.
I think that Orthodoxy would dispute the notion that original sin is a juridical generational curse.
Indeed.
When you think about the fact that we participate with God in creation, the idea of a generational curse, seems more "just". We bear some responsibility to our progeny and our "stamp" is on them in a sense.
when I was in high school I went to a party where the kids got out an Ouija board. I was a born again Christian at that time and when they broke it out I had this intense feeling of dread come over me. I told everyone to stop and felt the need to pray. We all prayed and put the board away. Serious stuff the Ouija board is.
Rod is my friend, my brother in all but blood, and he knows that I do not and will not second guess him. His sharing of personal experience and detail is to be celebrated, not criticized. Please keep that in mind while reading my comments here.
I am a modern Pagan. I have spiritual and religious beliefs which are cherry-picked in Father Carlos' lists, which have only one connection to his logic and his practice: the one ubiquitous commonality all humans share, ego.
Father Carlos: 4) He must lead the victim to conversion. (Scripture warns in Matthew 12:30 that no one can be “kingdom neutral.” One either belongs to Christ, or one is against Him.)
This is the primary reason why so many non-Christians view Christians as enemies, why some nations prohibit entry to them by any Christian, but especially missionaries.
I do not belong to Christ, nor am I against Him. This is the ego-justification for persecuting non-Christians, to branding them without ever even meeting one.
Father Carlos: So, what are some of the common ways they come to possess or otherwise attach themselves to a person? Father writes[...]
His list is a litany of every non-Christian practice. I'm actually shocked that he didn't make direct reference to the "cousin" religions of Judaism and Islam. It seems to me that there is just not enough room on our planet for non-Christians, and it grieves me to say that this is exactly why in some places Christians are persecuted, why in some places their reign resulted in terrible consequences, and was exactly why the Founders of our nation wrote the religion clauses of the First Amendment. I can and will praise Christians for their works. I can and will deny them any level of authority over my life.
Christians name it Satan. In my beliefs, I call it The Adversary. In my social/religious commentary writing, I name it Lucifer. It has a name in every major religion. Spiritual evil is a reality, and absent the very rare "demonic" incidents, it has a name and a face: people. My encounters with it (thank all the gods, very few) are my standard. I don't put an abstract, anthropomorphic visage to it, because people can be evil, and they don't do it because they are possessed. They do it because they want to do it. Ego.
I'd say that as a logical matter, there's alignment and harmony with the Logos versus not: those are the two poles, and since life's always in motion, we're always either tending toward the Logos or away from Him. But it's also by no means obvious that all nominal Christians are tending toward the Logos (Matthew 7:21). And likewise, it's also not obvious that all nominal heathens (such as yourself) are tending away from the Logos. The realities of the spirit are more enigmatic than that.
I totally agree with you here, and perhaps ironically there are few Pagans who would join me in that agreement. The binary structure insisted upon by Christians is equally insisted upon by many of my siblings in faith, and very many non-Christians around the world.
I guess humans just need an enemy or two to justify their egos. I wish I could be sarcastic here, but all I have are silent tears.
My favorite Talmudic source (introduced to me by the son of a Pentecostal minister) teaches that Satan in the Jewish tradition is God's tester, not his enemy, which is why he was welcome among the Sons of God as described in Job, and why he was permitted to test Jon's faith. It also shows up in Jesus's temptation in the desert -- one could read that as God was testing this fleshly son of a human mother to see if he was fully up to being the Word made flesh. As to Lucifer, the same source says that Lucifer Son of the Morning is a reference to a king of Babylon, not to a demonic being. Christian gentile converts just didn't have the basis to understand what they were reading, and connected the dots wrongly. Is this true? I don't know. I'm content to find out when we all get to the other side. But, I'm open to the possibility. It makes some sense.