So I was watching insidious and began to think about the conjuring with the nun, they say it was Valak. The 62nd demon in the goetia. Turned out to not be actually a part of the story just added for movie trivia.
But to the point,
Many religious groups believe forced possession is real and thats why they have exorcists. They also obviously have a level of proof as well.
But it seems off to me, deamon means something along the lines of a spirit that helps (I’m botching it). What do y’all think of these incidents that many religions recognize as real threats.
Personally there mostly thought forms and negative spirits that the people they came to could easily cross the veil and didn’t know how to protect themselves this is just IMO and exorcists and how they do things actually end up hurting the person more then If they just did a banishing
I think ghosts have more reason to force a possession than a demon would. Think about it. The ghosts who want to be alive again and want to inhabit a human body would jump at the chance to hop inside the driver seat. And catholic excorcisms probably wouldn’t get rid of them, as the rites of the Church target demons. I think demons do attack people and maybe very rarely force a possession, but it’s probably thoughtforms and lower spirits 99.9% of the time.
I’ve just heard from demons that they’ve possessed to teach a lesson, mess around or prank. Not possess someone and make them go on a murder spree and especially not children.
It seems to be a misreport by christians. Someone clairaudient can hear the demons and then mention it to someone. Then everyone just freaks out and assumes that person is possessed. They do an exorcism when the person is not actually possessed and the person thinks their psychic gifts are evil and never uses them again.
It has been referenced in the modern demonolatry and S. Connolly questioned it. Free on her site to download. It was during the witch trails.
In my opinion Demonic Possession could happen for a reason like @Sophia444 says, but when you look at the evangelic prietst on youtube then everybody is possessed and exorcised. And the person always tells how great heaven is and how bad hell and demons are. So very doubtful.
Ok, I can see thoughtforms being a good reason why it happened. Especially considering the majority of possessed in those cases are religious or formerly had been. So they used the names they learned of some big baddie to create it.
I can see how it could also be pissed off human spirits.
But then you have to help but wonder if these are unintentional egregores, how is it in some cases these people can speak in different languages and accomplish bizarre physical feats.
I would think if it was an accidental thoughtforms, how we could harness an intentional form to possess and educate us with their knowledge, so to speak. Unless in those cases it truly is just a human spirit.
In my opinion, I don’t think possession against the will is possible. However, to me,“forced” possession simply means the person possessed wasn’t consciously aware that they had invited the force/demon/ghost/Chihuahua/Pop Tart into themselves.
The human mind is a funny thing. There are many drives and desires lurking just below the surface, and it is quite easy to desire something subconsciously and suppress it consciously to the point that you are unaware of it. Repressed sexual desires are a big one for this, and the nuns “possessed” by Asmodeus mentioned by @Laith_wavey is a prime example. Being possessed let them act out their repressed sexual urges without the guilt of breaking their vows.
Most people are not aware of what is happening below the surface of their conscious mind, and that gives an opening for any kind of possession. For an exorcism to work, even a Christian one, the possessed individual has to want it to be successful. Otherwise, the demon/force/chihuahua/pop tart will just return, and even the Church recognizes this.
To anyone interested, Hostage to the Devil by Malachi Martin (readily found online) is a detailed and descriptive account of four to five possession cases Martin dealt with as a Roman Catholic exorcist. IMO, there are certainly entities out there that do not always have our best interest at heart. I don’t necessarily agree with the Roman Catholic perspective on this, nor do I think their methods of exorcism are always effective, but to blame all these cases on mere thoughtforms or subconscious desires misses the mark quite a bit.
I do think, though, that initial consent (at whatever level) is required for possession to occur. However, the problems that pop up that we see in these possession cases are probably due more so to the consent not being complete; part of the individual is fighting against the invading entity and this struggle is what gives rise to the resulting chaotic phenomena surrounding the afflicted person.
From the entity “Smiler” in the exorcism case of Marianne:
Also though to my original thought I find interesting has not been addressed yet, is the case of entities giving new knowledge of language, physical prowess, and mental capabilities. Anyone have any thought?
From my point of view concerning The Goetia, The Shemhamephorash, and the 72 Djinn Tayaliq are different tribes or “pools” of intelligent messengers or geniuses. The thing with the Goetic Demons is that it wouldn’t be one of the demons who will personally possess you but they dispatch their legions of spirits for these purposes as well as other purposes of the greater work, so in other words if you go to a demon and get something from them it was a spirit in their legions who did that for you as a representative of that demon, it like all other tribal societies is honor based.
Also, this is what EA has to say on the topic from Evoking Eternity:
To me this shows either that these entities are not just personal thoughtforms or that our subconscious has access to more information than we do through our conscious mind. It’s a bit tricky to ascertain which is the case.
“It’s all in your head, you just have no idea how big your head really is.”
–Lon Milo Duquette
It has been medically documented that people have been able to access previously unknown languages and even physical skills they didn’t originally possess when their brain has been damaged in some way, and such phenomena has also been documented in regards to recipients of organ transplants taking on traits of the person whose organ they received. Medical science and biology have no explanation for such things, and they are such rarities (they happen in something like 1% of cases) that they are just considered to be outliers, or coincidences.
There is so much about the human mind and brain that we just don’t know. Unlike other organs, we can’t study the brain outside of a living person to ascertain its functions so, while we know much about the physical structure of it, we really have no idea at all about its full capabilities. We do know the brain houses the personality (mainly because damage causes change to character traits. The Gage case is the most well documented) but the mind itself permeates the entire body and can cause real verifiable physical changes to it, self healing being the most obvious.
In his book Inner Alchemy, Taylor Ellwood talks about taking conscious control of autonomic functions, and talks about how he and a friend learned to take control of their adrenal system so they could access “super strength” at will.
As @Nyxifer said, it is hard to say whether spirits exist outside of us or not, but if you believe in Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious, then it would make logical sense that the part of our mind that we call the subconscious can access the knowledge and possible skills available through it. If someone in the past did it, then it is possible for anyone to do it.
The demon is part of you and the universe your own obsession and negative attitude are what cause the demon to have a negative effect in your life or possession. The demon is only doing what you the operator is telling it to with your negativity.
The demon sees your fear anxiety and such and says, "oh, you want to be full of fear and anxiety…ok, then let’s do that… "
Oh I had this happen to a friend of mine and it did serious damage to her mind; it was as if they’d tortured her until her mind fractured.
I always say don’t trust exorcists, there have been cases of them “accidently” killing children.
I like to think forced possession is a thing, but in the case of spirits, their reasons for doing so may either be they intend to punish the possessed and/or those around them for being massively disrespectful, or they genuinely do not have the individual’s best interests in mind. Not every spirit wants to be our friend, after all.
Hollywood also tends to embellish the subject, as they do with stuff like action movies.
From my experience you can’t get forcefully possessed meaning, demons and ghosts can’t just jump right into you when they want, you’ll have to let them for it to “work”, in short: sure thing you can someone or something to attempt to posess a person but it’s necessairly going to go smoothly as a human will instintively fight the intrusion. A spirit tried to posess me once I had to fight but it couldn’t really force itself into me without me “allowing” it to.
If you want a rundown of the stages of demonic posession this is a place to start:
This video is a small sample of the Mastering Evocation course which deals with this particular topic.
And like what’s been said before demons esepcially those like the nine gatekeepers, planetary intelligences, etc, - with the exception of some nasty spirits of the dead; don’t usually possess people because they want to subjugate you, most of them like like what has been said by:
