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The Exorcism Thread

Nancy Pelosi reportedly summons priests to exorcise home of evil spirits​


Former House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi summoned priests to rid her luxe San Francisco home of evil spirits after a man allegedly attacked her hubby there with a hammer.

“I think that weighed really heavy on her soul. I think she felt really guilty,” said Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra, the New York Times reported Saturday.

“I think that really broke her. Over Thanksgiving, she had priests coming, trying to have an exorcism of the house and having prayer services,” she added.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/21/nancy-pelosi-summons-priests-to-exercise-home-of-evil-spirits/

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:

Nancy Pelosi reportedly summons priests to exorcise home of evil spirits​


Former House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi summoned priests to rid her luxe San Francisco home of evil spirits after a man allegedly attacked her hubby there with a hammer.

“I think that weighed really heavy on her soul. I think she felt really guilty,” said Pelosi’s daughter Alexandra, the New York Times reported Saturday.

“I think that really broke her. Over Thanksgiving, she had priests coming, trying to have an exorcism of the house and having prayer services,” she added.

https://nypost.com/2023/01/21/nancy-pelosi-summons-priests-to-exercise-home-of-evil-spirits/

maximus otter
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As a Catholic my bet is that this was just a "house blessing" where the priest says some prayers, distributes holy water and says a blessing. It's nothing unusual in some Catholic circles. New home owners do it too.
My bet would be that some culturally unaware journalist interpreted it as an exorcism.
 
uair01 said:
As a Catholic my bet is that this was just a "house blessing" where the priest says some prayers, distributes holy water and says a blessing. It's nothing unusual in some Catholic circles. New home owners do it too.
My bet would be that some culturally unaware journalist interpreted it as an exorcism.
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Yep. Still happens occasionally when new shops/cafes open when they are run by pious Roman Catholics.
 
naitaka said:
Exorcism death

LONDON ,ONTARIO-- During the three days it took Walter Zepeda to die, neighbours heard "many" voices chanting and praying in his family's apartment.

Now police want to know how many people were inside to see the 19 year old strapped to a bed with neckties in what may have been a faith healing or exorcism gone horribly wrong.

http://canada.com/national/story.asp?id={3C68948E-C995-413C-9051-444D71011C53}
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Just popped in and found that this link is dead. I did find another source for the story:
https://lfpress.com/news/local-news...wcm/3c8bb4a3-8b03-47c4-8874-429d043502ff/amp/
 
A novel use for exorcisms.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has removed the national police director who had talked about using exorcisms to catch fugitives.

Neither Mr Petro nor the Defence Ministry elaborated on reasons for the dismissal of General Henry Sanabria, a staunch Catholic who was appointed by the president in August last year, but Gen Sanabria was under an internal investigation by the ministry over whether he had inappropriately allowed his religious beliefs to infringe on his duties.

The general had sparked a debate about the impact of his faith on the police after his statements in an interview last month including that police had used exorcisms to catch drug kingpins and guerrilla leaders. ...

https://www.independent.ie/world-ne...ms-were-used-to-catch-fugitives-42430244.html
 
Thought I'd post this here. I recently found a podcast The Exorcist Files. It is quite interesting. It involves Father Carlos Martins who has been an exorcist and his experiences. He talks of his philosophy and the Catholic church's catechisms around exorcisms. This is in conjunction with dramatizations of some of his cases.

The production is good.
 
This thread has reminded me of a somewhat inconsequential but still quite mystifying thing that happened to me back in the mid noughties.

I was staying with a friend in Leyton, east London. His flat was typical of many areas of London - the ground floor of a long terrace of fairly solid two storey homes, many split into flats. The front room opened on to a narrow hallway - which led to the front door, just a very few feet separating the two.

I was working with this friend at the time, and we took turns cooking at the end of the day. We were late this night, and had poured a whisky each and plonked ourselves down in front of the TV as soon as we got in. There was a programme about exorcism in Italy, and just at the point we turned on they were documenting the contemporary case of a teenage girl. We hadn't made much of a decision to watch it, I think it was just what was on, and we were too exhausted to care otherwise - but I was kind of interested, because at the point we'd tuned in they were in Siena, and I have relatives there.

Anyway – when said teenage girl starts gnashing her teeth and groaning in Aramaic (or whatever), I haul myself out of the sofa to go to the shops for the makings of a late dinner. I step into the hallway, put my hand on the front door handle, and pause to call out a question. As I do, there’s a hammering on the door – which, as I’m standing right by it, with my hand on the handle, I open instantly.

No one there.

After a moment’s silence.

My friend: Who’s that?

Me: Ummmm. There’s no-one here.

My friend: What?

Me: There’s no-one at the door.

Pause

My friend: Must be George again.

Me: Yup.

Pause

My friend: Shall we watch something else?

Me: Yup.

(For an explanation of the ‘George’ reference – see here, on the Eerie East London thread, at post #12.)
 
Exorcising capuchin monk.
Tile 1650.
20230415_192511.jpg
 

Ex-NYPD cop-turned-demonologist and his wife try to rid Brooklyn home of 'evil spirit plaguing frightened child'​


A former NYPD cop-turned-exorcist and his wife have been filmed trying to clear a New York home of an 'evil spirit' its occupants claimed was tormenting a child.

Chris DeFlorio and wife Harmony raced to the property in Brooklyn on being told that a seven year-old called Javier had endured multiple terrifying encounters at the hands of the entity.

A promo for a film about the incident, called 'It's Coming,' sees Javier shiver: 'The person has long legs ... he is black.

'I think what what he wants to do to me is kill me ... because it never leaves... I think I am going to die.'

...filmmaker Shannon Alexander, whose movie about their exorcism efforts will premiere at the Hot Doc's Toronto Film Festival on April 29.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11973769/Meet-real-life-exorcist-demonologist-Brooklyn.html

maximus otter
 
I don't know if its just a thing I have picked up from horror films, but I've always wondered why demonic spirits should be so scared of people (usually priests) chanting in Latin. Latin has nothing to do with the origins of Christianity so should have no more spiritual gravitas than chanting in Nowegian, Gaelic or Swahili.
Just a thought....
 
eziofan said:
I don't know if its just a thing I have picked up from horror films, but I've always wondered why demonic spirits should be so scared of people (usually priests) chanting in Latin. Latin has nothing to do with the origins of Christianity so should have no more spiritual gravitas than chanting in Nowegian, Gaelic or Swahili.
Just a thought....
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Indeed! Of late a lot of Exorcists in films also use English especially the phrase: In The Power Of Christ I Compel Thee: Begone!
 
eziofan said:
I don't know if its just a thing I have picked up from horror films, but I've always wondered why demonic spirits should be so scared of people (usually priests) chanting in Latin. Latin has nothing to do with the origins of Christianity so should have no more spiritual gravitas than chanting in Nowegian, Gaelic or Swahili.
Just a thought....
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I guess it's because Latin remained the official ritual language of the catholic church until fairly recently (1965, I think). It was the "Lingua Franca" of the catholic priests, whatever their native language was.

There are some catholic "traditionalist" subgroups who actually claim that the new mass, celebrated in local dialects, is a kind of heresy and the "beginning of the end". They are a minority (and in the Middle Ages, would have been promptly dispatched for rebelling against the Pope), but they are also very much fond of apocalyptic theories and demonology. So it should not come as a surprise to see latin remain a weapon of choice against demonic hosts in their view. It's the incarnation of "tradition" as opposed to decadent modernism.

A skeptic would add that whatever the religion, a specialist speaking in strange tongues is far more impressive than your neighbour speaking ordinary words. He may not impress ghosts and demons, but the learned priest will certainly impress his flock.

We can relate this phenomenon to the Taoist priest writing talismans with unknown ideograms or Buddhist lamas chanting apparently meaningless mantras in Sanskrit (the East Asian equivalent of Latin : a purely ritual dead language).
 
A rather odd exorcism which didn't work too well.

CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp mistakenly thinks all the evil swirling around the conservative organization's Virginia offices is from another realm. And so last year, he called in a priest to perform an exorcism.

From Daily Beast:

CPAC employees at their offices in Alexandria, Virginia—about eight miles from the fabled staircase featured in the 1973 horror classic The Exorcist—found themselves suddenly in the presence of a Catholic priest. The priest, sources said, sprinkled holy water around the CPAC premises and blessed all the staff, regardless of their faith. As part of the rite, according to these people, the priest placed a medallion above doors in the offices and explained that it would help ward off evil spirits.
According to the St. Benedict Center, "The medal is a prayer of exorcism against Satan, a prayer for strength in time of temptation, a prayer for peace among ourselves and among the nations of the world," and "a prayer of firm rejection of all that is evil."
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One source told the Beast that the ritual was "the weirdest thing I'd seen," while another said, "I had no idea what was going on."

https://boingboing.net/2023/09/01/e...sm-on-virginia-offices-but-it-didnt-work.html
 
ramonmercado said:
Indeed! Of late a lot of Exorcists in films also use English especially the phrase: In The Power Of Christ I Compel Thee: Begone!
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When I was young, our Roman Catholic Church gave masses in Latin and English, not sure when they discontinued the Latin Mass, but they eventually did. Probably from lack of interest.
Latin was also one of the languages one could learn in school, also French. Things have changed from those days.
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
When I was young, our Roman Catholic Church gave masses in Latin and English, not sure when they discontinued the Latin Mass, but they eventually did. Probably from lack of interest.
Latin was also one of the languages one could learn in school, also French. Things have changed from those days.
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That certainly isn't the case for the Old Catholics. And I still tutor in Latin.

My understanding of the Roman Catholic Church position is that the Latin Mass in the Tridentine edition was taken up with enthusiasm by some sections of the church. And enjoyed and appreciated by many others. As this became a rallying point for the politics surrounding Vatican II (some people do not accept it) Pope Francis reined in the growth of this alternative form of the Mass. This took me about a minute of surfing mind you, so don't take it as TRUTH until one of the RCs here comments.

TLDR: actually it was the opposite of your proposed situation @Ronnie Jersey . The Latin version grew in popularity and has now been reined in.
 
I can still chant lots of series of suffixes and so on. It's now how it's taught nowadays though - it's gone all listen to it and you'll understand and start speaking it.

I find myself going back to the Old Ways with people who are rather at sea and not at all certain what cases are. They write their own mnemonics and we sit there singing

N!
V!
ACC!
GEN!
DAT!
ABL!
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for example. Like this, the firefighters from Trumpton!

 
I wonder if the Demons were waiting for him?

October 3, 2023 – Fr Smiljan Kožul was the most famous Croatian exorcist, a profession he practiced daily for years. He passed away on Monday, aged 81. He was an assistant to Don Gabriel Amorth, the leading exorcist in Rome, and for eight years held the position of exorcist in the Archdiocese of Zagreb.

As Index found out from his close associates in 2015, he stopped practicing exorcism around 2000. Their source shared that he did not have the bishop’s permission to practice. Once a month, though, he would lead spiritual retreats.

“Thousands of Croats are captured by black magic,” Kožul said in 2011. In another interview, he said that out of the hundreds of people who contact him, only “10 percent of them are possessed by the devil, while the rest are mentally ill.”

The Croatian exorcist claimed that he performed hundreds of exorcisms himself, and on one occasion, according to him, they brought him a possessed eight-month-old baby who did not sleep for more than 20 minutes at a time. After his ceremony, the baby fell asleep in his arms.

LIFE AND WORK OF FR SMILJAN KOŽUL​

As 24Sata writes, Fr Smiljan Kožul (81) died on Monday after a long illness. Other than his most famous title, he was a professor, doctor of ecclesiastical legal sciences, ecclesiastical judge, charismatic, and founder of Radio Maria and the Croatian Movement of the Rosary for Conversion and Peace.

https://total-croatia-news.com/news/famous-croatian-exorcist-dies-aged-81/
 
I've no idea what to make of the story I was told tonight by the organiser of a course I'm on. To be frank, I don't believe in demons, exorcisms and the like and so this story perplexed me to say the least:

He's friends with a Catholic priest who's, apparently, a progressive type. In this open-minded spirit the priest had reached out to an English, 'unofficial' group of Christians. In time he and a colleague had been asked to visit a family whose daughter was supposedly possessed. This family's home was in Ireland, by the way. Anyway, upon the door being opened, the priest and company saw the daughter 'furiously' cartwheel towards them. She then attempted to climb the house's walls. I don't think an exorcism was performed (perhaps merely a blessing of some kind?)

A few weeks later, the family contacted the priest, telling him that an eye had appeared on a bedroom wall and was apparently watching the residents. He went back to the house and, to his amazement, saw the eye. The organiser vouches for the priest's honesty.
 
I should've stressed that as well as being perplexed I find the story above ridiculous as well as mystifying. 'Trouble is, the organiser seems a very honest person who clearly trusted in the honesty of his friend the priest. The organiser was fittingly bewildered himself.
 
On Monday, I posted a story told to me & a group regarding an (apparently) possessed person. Given the seriousness of the guy who told me about it, I'm really puzzled by such real-life stories; in short, I cannot believe in demons and the like, and find it perplexing that others evidently do believe. And yesterday, after being invited to a talk given by a deacon concerning his 'journey to faith', the same subject came up again. The deacon - an Italian former police officer - once sat behind a young woman in church, and this woman was said to be possessed. According to him, she freaked out and lifted up the 10-foot-long bench she sat upon. Also, her head turned in a similar way, I imagine, to the head-turning in The Exorcist film(!) Clearly, he totally believed that this happened; and, in fact, this story was merely a tiny and incidental part of his talk. He then mentioned famous Church figures who'd experienced 'the presence of Satan' in their lives...

I just can't understand how people believe in this stuff - demons, I mean - and it's striking to me that these stories I've recently heard feature young women; this, to me, is actually more suggestive of poltergeist behaviour, if anything. The deacon even mentioned incidents of stones being thrown at the church, with the matter-of-fact explanation that "but it was just the Devil, so I ignored him". Suspicious or not, that response strongly reminded me of Martin Luther's famously blasé reaction to such events. And yet to me it's obvious that both tellers of these anecdotes are honest and, actually, worldly men for all their religious beliefs. Neither of these tales were meant to entertain or enthrall, and indeed were only mentioned in passing.

How can grown-up people take this supposedly demonic element seriously? Or am I wrong, or uninformed, and there really is a case for such things genuine occurring/existing?
 
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Steven said:
On Monday, I posted a story told to me & a group regarding an (apparently) possessed person. Given the seriousness of the guy who told me about it, I'm really puzzled by such real-life stories; in short, I cannot believe in demons and the like, and find it perplexing that others evidently do believe. And yesterday, after being invited to a talk given by a deacon concerning his 'journey to faith', the same subject came up again. The deacon - an Italian former police officer - once sat behind a young woman in church, and this woman was said to be possessed. According to him, she freaked out and lifted up the 10-foot-long bench she sat upon. Also, her head turned in a similar way, I imagine, to the head-turning in The Exorcist film(!) Clearly, he totally believed that this happened; and, in fact, this story was merely a tiny and incidental part of his talk. He then mentioned famous Church figures who'd experienced 'the presence of Satan' in their lives...

I just can't understand how people believe in this stuff - demons, I mean - and it's striking to me that these stories I've recently heard feature young women; this, to me, is actually more suggestive of poltergeist behaviour, if anything. The deacon even mentioned incidents of stones being thrown at the church, with the matter-of-fact explanation that "but it was just the Devil, so I ignored him". Suspicious or not, that response strongly reminded me of Martin Luther's famously blasé reaction to such events. And yet to me it's obvious that both tellers of these anecdotes are honest and, actually, worldly men for all their religious beliefs. Neither of these tales were meant to entertain or enthrall, and indeed were only mentioned in passing.

How can grown-up people take this supposedly demonic element seriously? Or am I wrong, or uninformed, and there really is a case for such things genuine occurring/existing?
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Belief in demonic (or divine) possession is one of the oldest human beliefs and might be related to chamanistic practices, where the shaman leaves his body for ecstatic journeys in the spirit world, meeting all sorts of spiritual friends and foes.

In cultures other than Christian, possession by a wandering spirit was often seen as the cause of a misunderstood illness. If my memory is correct, the famed babylonian "demon" Pazzuzzu was directly related to this kind of belief.

The same can be found in ancient Chinese medecine, where acupoints were specifically designed to expell the demons responsible for a patient's illness. These acupoints are still called the "ghost (gui) points".

In chamanistic practice, it also not rarely heard of the chaman going into a trance in order to bring back the soul of an ill person as a means to cure him, implying his soul had been stolen somehow, or mesmerized by a spirit.

In Celtic lore, the concept of changelings may also follow the same pattern.

So I would say that for a long long time, possession or demonic agression was a convenient way to explain otherwise inexplicable illnesses. That's a first explanation.

A second thing to consider is that under altered states of consciousness, the human body is able to accomplish seemingly impossible physical feats, maybe because the mechanisms of pain are then ignored by the brain. So a tiny girl in a trance can rise heavy weights and take weird postures, which requires some form of explanation in the eyes of the beholder. Possession is then a convenient one ...

For an example, check the feats of Chinese spirit mediums who claim to be possessed by gods (and even often by fictitious characters from the littérature such as Sun Wukong).

*** edit : sources ***

For more on Pazuzu : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazuzu

For more on the Chinese Ghost Acupoints, browse for "13 ghost points" or "13 ghost points of Sun Simiao" (but be prepared to find some new age / alternative medecine & pseudo taoist websites.

On exorcism, you might be interested by "The Devil and Father Amorth", a documentary by William Friedkin. It isn't unforgettable, but if my memory is correct, at the end, there are some interesting exchanges with professional psychiatrists who say that the symptoms of possession remind them of the symptoms of known psychiatric illnesses.

***

On how Chinese culture explains "possessions", I would say there are 3 main causes, according to what I have heard and read on the topic :
- Jealousy
- Fear
- Vampirism

- Jealously : According to Chinese Buddhism (and taoism borrowed the concept), the human condition is the best for spiritual realization. Hence, in the spirit world, lots of "spirits" crave for a human rebirth. In some cases, they try to hasten the process by hijacking a human body.

- Fear : Some spirits fear the humans for their spiritual potential and power and therefore try to mislead them. Although possession is not the main way to achieve this goal, some do use it so.

- Vampirism : Some spirits feed on "qi" (energy) and possessing a victim is one of the ways to drain her of her "qi". There are plenty of reported cases of vampirism in the Chinese folklore. The ones involving possession are often caused by the so called "fox spirits.

Otherwise, mediumnic possessions help some "evil" spirits to set up "unorthodox" cults in their honour, so they can get sacrifices, which is another kind of indirect vampirism.
 
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People's beliefs (often religious) are what influence whether they think someone is possessed or if demons exist.

There are many cultures that believe in different types of possessions.

Voodon religion, or other African religions have either loas or orishas which they call upon for help. Often a human can be "possessed" by the loa or orisha in ceremony. These are a different type of possession from the familiar Catholic type possession referenced or familiar to western world.

This article describes some of the voodoo loas:

https://www.learnreligions.com/voodoo-gods-4771674
 
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