Exorcism is the ritual casting out of a possessing spirit, best known in the West from the Roman Catholic Church, where the spirit is understood as a demon and is commanded to leave. De-possession is the shamanic name for removing whatever has taken a person over. In Therapeutic Shamanism it differs from exorcism in what is thought to be possessing people, in first asking whether the ‘demon’ is real at all, in treating most possessing beings with compassion, in leaving the work to the Guides, and in the healing that follows, because possession grows out of soul lossSoul-loss. The sending-away of parts of the self in order to survive: through shock or trauma, or (the chief modern cause) exiling our own parts to fit in. With Power-loss, one of the two root causes of shamanic illness. Read the full answer and Power-lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer.
What is an exorcism? #
The shamanic teacher and writer Christina Pratt defines exorcism as the extractionExtraction. Drawing a foreign body (an intrusion) out of a person and packing the hole with something healthy. The iron rule: only ever foreign bodies, never a part of the self: extracting a genuine part of self creates soul-loss. More about this of a spirit intrusionIntrusion. Something lodged in us that should not be there, having entered through the holes soul-loss and Power-loss leave. Four broad types: unhelpful thought-forms, introjects, foreign-body energetic intrusions, and entity possessions. More about this from a person, place or thing, and notes that exorcisms follow a basic form that is consistent across cultures, although the way each part is carried out varies. The possessing spirit is called forth, asked who it is and what it wants, asked to leave and, if it is reluctant, commanded to go; when it has gone, the person is brought back into the community. In many traditions the spirit is promised what it wants. In the Catholic Church, where the possessing spirit is considered a demon, no such promises are made, but otherwise, in her view, the process is virtually the same.1
Pratt also points out that the Catholic Church has priest exorcists who follow a procedure set out in the Rituale Romanum of 1614, and that the ability to cast out malevolent spirits does not on its own make someone a shaman.2 She uses ‘de-possession’ and ‘exorcism’ as two names for the same healing.3 See What is possession, and what is de-possession?
What is thought to be possessing the person? #
The picture most people have of possession comes from exorcism stories: an evil spirit, fits of screaming or weeping, a ‘demonic’ language, contortions, superhuman strength, the stench of sulphur. Possessions like that are very uncommon. Everyday possessions are very common indeed, by addictions, ideologies, other people and the unquiet deadUnquiet dead. The middle-world self become ghost: the ego that, having no body left to anchor it, lingers among the living instead of moving on to the Land of the Dead. Unhealthy for the living, and moved on by psychopomping. More about this, and only occasionally by a malevolent spirit, whether people call it a devil, a demon, a jinn or something else.4 See Is addiction a kind of possession? and Who are the unquiet dead, and are ghosts real?
Could the ‘demons’ be part of the person? #
Sometimes, and this is one of the sharpest differences. In hunter-gatherer times a shaman rarely had to wonder whether someone’s demons were real beings or parts of their own psyche. Since domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and the Fall, repression has created a vast under-worldUnder-world. The realm of our repressed and disowned psychic energies, personal and collective: Jung’s Shadow and the unconscious, mapped shamanically. A part of the middle-world, created by the Fall, not the Lower-World, and psychotherapy’s proper territory rather than shamanism’s. Read the full answer of disowned parts that can feel like demons with a life of their own. So, when someone believes they are possessed, either could be true, or both. If the demons are independent beings, a therapist who treats them as parts to be dialogued with and integrated could help them possess the person further. If they are disowned parts, a practitioner who declares them real demons to be banished could greatly compound the person’s distress, because inner ‘demons’ need facing, embracing and integrating, not further demonising.5
The old traditional assumption that the demons are always real is no longer safe, and acting on it can cause great harm.5 The Guides can be asked whether someone’s demons are real, but only if the question occurs to us in the first place.6 See What is the under-world, and how is it different from the Lower-World?
How is the possessing being treated? #
According to what it is, and with compassion wherever possible. De-possession is safest done in the Lower-World or Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer, and the safest course is to let the Guides do it. Many possessing beings are not malevolent at all. Spirits such as Tobacco or Alcohol do not want to possess anyone, and are apologised to, thanked and asked to leave; an ideology that once served a purpose can be thanked and told to go. Many of the unquiet dead can be reasoned with and persuaded to leave, which was also the principal method of Edith Fiore, the psychologist who popularised the phrase ‘the unquiet dead’. Force is used only if a spirit refuses. What then happens to it is for the Guides to decide: the harmless are released, the dead are given healing and escorted, compassionately but firmly, to the Land of the Dead, and some malevolent spirits are destroyed.7 See What is psychopomping?
Pratt’s outline of exorcism also asks before it commands. The difference lies less in the order of things than in who does the de-possession and in what most possessing beings are taken to be. Here the Guides do it, and much of what they find is owed courtesy, persuasion or help on its way rather than banishment.
What happens to the person afterwards? #
They receive whatever healing they need, and usually some protection whilst they recover.8 The reason is that the underlying causes of possession are soul loss and Power-loss, which leave holes and a weakened energy body that something else can get into.9 De-possession on a living person also needs their own explicit consent, as any shamanic healing does.10 See What is soul loss? and What does consent mean in shamanic work?
Why is possession so common now? #
Because possession is a mark of a particular kind of culture. The anthropologist Michael Winkelman found that hunter-gatherer societies generally do not experience possession, and the anthropologists Erika Bourguignon and Thomas L. Evascu that possession experiences are generally found only in agricultural societies characterised by social stratification and hierarchy. Possession describes a relationship of inequality, power-over and ownership; it emerges with agriculture and the idea of owning things, and dealing with it then became central to shamanic work.11 Therapeutic Shamanism removes possessing beings when they are there, whilst treating the possession epidemic itself as one of the wounds of the Fall. See What are pre-Fallen, Fallen and post-Fallen shamanism?
