A Brief Handbook of Exorcism.pdf

The following is Part One of an excerpt entitled

"A Brief Handbook of Exorcism".

It is taken from Malachi Martin's 1976 classic work on

the subject of possession and exorcism called,

"Hostage To The Devil".

Among other things, the 477 p. book also contains an

in depth analysis on the recent possessions of 5

"ordinary" Americans.

For further information on the subject, the reader is

invited to consult the book. It is published by Perrenial

Library of New York.

Note: Italicized words are represented through

use of 'single' quotation marks.

" A Brief Handbook of Exorcism " - (1)

____________________________________

The recent vast publicity about Exorcism has

highlighted the plight of the possessed as a fresh

genre of horror film. The essence of evil is lost

in the cinematographic effects. And the exorcist,

who risks more than anyone else in an exorcism,

flits across the screen as necessary but, in the

end, not so interesting as the sound effects.

The truth is that all three - the possessed,

the possessing spirit, and the exorcist - bear a

close relation to the reality of life and to its

meaning as all of us experience it each and every day.

Possession is not a process of magic. Spirit

is real; in fact, spirit is the basis of all reality

reality. "Reality" would not only be boring without

spirit; it would have no meaning whatsoever. No horror

film can begin to capture the horror of such a vision:

a world without spirit.

Evil Spirit is personal, and it is intelligent. It

is preternatural, in the sense that it is not 'of' this

material world, but it is 'in' this material world. And

Evil Spirit as well as good advances along the lines of

our daily lives. In very normal ways spirit uses and

influences our daily thoughts, actions, and customs and,

indeed, all the strands that make up the fabric of life

in whatever time or place. Contemporary life is no

exception.

To compare spirit with the elements of our lives and

material world, which it can and sometimes does manipulate

for its own ends, is a fatal mistake, but one that is

very often made. Eerie sounds can be produced by spirit

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-but spirit is not the eerie sound. Objects can be made

to fly across the room, but telekinesis is no more spirit

than the material object that was made to move. One man

whose story is told in this book made the mistake of

thinking otherwise, and he nearly paid with his life when

he had to confront the error he had made.

The exorcist is the centerpiece of every exorcism.

On him depends everything. He has nothing personal to gain.

But in each exorcism he risks literally everything that he

values. Every exorcist must engage in a one-to-one

confrontation, personal and bitter, with pure evil. Once

engaged, the exorcism cannot be called off. There will and

must always be a victor and a vanquished. And no matter

what the outcome, the contact is in part fatal for the

exorcist. He must consent to a dreadful and irreparable

pillage of his deepest self. Something dies in him. Some

part of his humanness will wither from such close contact

with the opposite of all humanness - the essence of evil;

and it is rarely if ever revitalized. No return will be

made to him for his loss.

This is the minimum price an exorcist pays. If he

loses in the fight with Evil Spirit, he has an added

penalty. He may or may not ever again perform the rite of

Exorcism, but he must finally confront and vanquish the

evil spirit that repulsed him.

The investigation that may lead to Exorcism usually

begins because a man or woman -occasionally a child -is

brought to the notice of Church authorities by family or

friends. Only rarely does a possessed person come forward

spontaneously.

The stories that are told on these occasions are

dramatic and painful: strange physical ailments in the

possessed; marked mental derangement; obvious repugnance

to all signs, symbols, mention, and sight of religious

objects, places, people, ceremonies.

Often, the family or friends report, the presence of

the person in question is marked by so-called psychical

phenomena: objects fly around the room; wallpaper peels

off the walls; furniture cracks; crockery breaks; there

are strange rumblings, hissess, and other noises with no

apparent source. Often the temperature in the room where

the possessed happens to be will drop dramatically. Even

more often an acrid and distinctive stench accompanies

the person.

Violent physical transformations seem sometimes to

make the lives of the possessed a kind of hell on earth.

Their normal processes of secretion and elimination are

saturated with inexplicable wrackings and exaggeration.

Their consciousness seems completely colored by the

violent sepia of revulsion. Reflexes sometimes become

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sporadic or abnormal, sometimes disappear for a time.

Breathing can cease for extended periods. Heartbeats are

hard to detect. The face is strangely distorted,

sometimes also abnormally tight and smooth without the

slightest line or furrow.

When such a case is brought to their attention, the

first and central problem that must always be addressed

by the Church authorities is: Is the person really

possessed?

Henri Geslaud, a French priest and exorcist who works

today in Paris, stated in 1974 that, out of 3,000

consultations since 1968, "there have been only four

cases of what I believe to be demonic possession." T.K.

Osterreich, on the other hand, states that "possession

has been an extremely common phenomena, cases of which

abound in the history of religion." The truth is that

official or scholarly census of possession cases has

never been made.

Certainly, many who claim to be possessed or whom

others so describe are merely the victims of some mental

or physical disease. In reading records from times when

medical and psychological science did not exist or were

quite undeveloped, it is clear that grave mistakes were

made. A victim of disseminated sclerosis, for example,

was taken to be possessed because of his spastic jerkings

and slidings and the shocking agony in spinal column and

joints. Until quite recently, the victim of Tourette's

syndrome was the perfect target for the accusation of

"Possessed!" : torrents of profanities and obscenities,

grunts, barks, curses, yelps, snorts, sniffs, tics, foot

stomping, facial contortions all appear suddenly and just

as suddenly cease in the subject. Nowadays, Tourette's

syndrome responds to drug treatment, and it seems to be

a neurological disease involving a chemical abnormality

in the brain. Many people suffering from illnesses and

diseases well known to us today such as paranoia,

Huntington's chorea, dyslexia, Parkinson's disease, or

even mere skin diseases (psoriasis, herpes I, for

instance), were treated as people "possessed" or at least

as "touched" by the Devil.

Nowadays, competent Church authorities always insist

on thorough examinations of the person brought to them

for Exorcism, an examination conducted by qualified

medical doctors and psychiatrists.

When a case of possession is reported by a priest to

the diocesan authorities, the exorcist of the diocese is

brought in. If there is no diocesan exorcist, a man is

appointed or brought from outside the diocese.

Sometimes the priest reporting the exorcism will have

had some preliminary medical and psychiatric tests run

beforehand in order to allay the cautious skepticism he

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is likely to meet at the chancery when he introduces his

problem. When the official exorcist enters the case, he

will usually have his own very thorough examinations run

by experts he knows and whose judgment he is sure he

can trust.

In earlier times, one priest was usually assigned

the function of exorcist in each diocese of the Church.

In modern times, this practice has fallen into abeyance

in some dioceses, mainly because the incidence of reported

possession has decreased over the last hundred years. But

in most major dioceses, there is still one priest entrusted

with this function -even though he may rarely or never use

it. In some dioceses, there is a private arrangement

between the bishop and one of his priests whom he knows

and trusts.

There is no official public appointment of exorcists.

In some dioceses, "the bishop knows little about it and

wants to know less" -as in one of the cases recorded in

this book. But however he comes to his position, the

exorcist must have official Church sanction, for he is

acting in an official capacity, and any power he has over

Evil Spirit can only come from those officials who belong

to the substance of Jesus' Church, whether they be in the

Roman Catholic, the Eastern Orthodox, or the Protestant

Communions. Sometimes a diocesan priest will take on an

exorcism himself without asking his bishop, but all such

cases known to me have failed.

It is recognized both in the pre-exorcism examinations

and during the actual exorcism that there is usually no

one physical or psychical aberration or abnormality in

the possessed person that we cannot explain by a known or

possible physical cause. And, apart from normal medical

and psychological tests, there are other possible sources

for diagnosis. However rickety and tentative the findings

of parapsychology, for example, one can possibly seek in

its theories of telepathy and telekinesis an explanation

of some of the signs of possession. Suggestion and

suggestibility, as modern psychotherapists speak of them,

can account for many more.

Still, with the diagnoses and opinions of doctors and

psychologists in hand, it is often discovered there are

wide margins of fluctuation. Competent psychiatrists will

differ violently among themselves; and in psychology and

medecine, ignorance of causes is often obscured by

technical names and jargon that are nothing more than

descriptive terms.

Nevertheless, the combined medical and psychological

reports are carefully evaluated and usually weigh heavily

in the final judgment to proceed or not with an exorcism.

If according to those reports there is a definite disease

or illness which adequately accounts for the behaviour

and symptoms of the subject, Exorcism is usually ruled

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out, or at least delayed to allow a course of medical or

psychiatric treatment.

But finally, reports in hand, all evidence in, Church

authorities judge the situation from another, special

point of view, formed by their own professional outlook.

They believe that there is an invisible power, a

spirit of evil; that this spirit can for obscure reasons

take possession of a human being; that the evil spirit

can and must be expelled - exorcised - from the person

possessed; and that this exorcism can be done only in the

name and by the authority and power of Jesus of Nazareth.

The testing from the Church's viewpoint is as rigorous in

its search as any medical or psychological examination.

In the records of Christian Exorcism from as far back

as the lifetime of Jesus himself, a peculiar revulsion to

symbols and truths of religion is always and without

exception a mark of the possessed person. In the

verification of a case of possession by Church

authorities, this "symptom" of revulsion is triangulated

with other physical phenomena frequently associated with

possession -the inexplicable stench; freezing temperature

; telepathic power about purely religious and moral

matters; a peculiarly unlined or completely smooth or

stretched skin, or unusual distortion of the face, or

other physical and behavioural transformations;

"possessed gravity" (the possessed person becomes

physically immovable, or those around the possessed are

weighted down with a suffocating pressure); levitation

(the possessed rises and floats off the ground, chair,

or bed; there is no physically traceable support);

violent smashing of furniture, constant opening and

slamming of doors, tearing of fabric in the vicinity of

the possessed, without a hand laid on them; and so on.

When this triangulation is made of the varied

symptoms that may occur in any given case, and medical

and psychiatric diagnoses are inadequate to cover the

full situation, the decision will usually be to proceed

and try Exorcism.

There has never been, to my knowledge, an official

listing of exorcist together with their biographies and

characteristics, so we cannot satisfy our modern

craving for a profile of, say, "the typical exorcist."

We can, however, give a fairly clear definition of the

type of man who is entrusted with the exorcism of a

possessed person. Usually he is engaged in the active

ministry of parishes. Rarely is he a scholarly type

engaged in teaching or research. Rarely is he a recently

ordained priest. If there is any median age for

exorcists, it is probably between the ages of fifty and

sixty-five . Sound and robust physical health is not a

characteristic of exorcists, nor is proven intellectual

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