When I say people are possessed, I don't mean in the traditionally
understood way of a demon actually taking over and inhabiting a person's body.
That is an extreme case and probably rare. But there are other forms of
possession including that of thought. On the plane of ideas demons can
influence the mind, and when an individual mind inclines towards the
distortions of reality that the demons have concocted, often with enough
elements of truth incorporated to make them plausible to the unwise, then that
mind does become possessed to an extent. It's like an infection by a parasite,
and if you are not properly inoculated against this infection (by a sound
religious doctrine, for example, though a pure heart would also serve the
purpose), then you become infected. You effectively become possessed. Sometimes
this is even noticeable when you talk to a person afflicted in this manner. He
or she might be impervious to reason, aggressive, argumentative, with eyes
showing an underlying hatred. Not everyone infected is by any means that bad
but some are as can be seen most noticeably perhaps in public demonstrations by
leftist agitators.
The demons can only infect us to the degree that we let them do
so. We have to have something in us that corresponds to the poison they wish to
spread to become their victims. Hence there are no innocent victims in this
regard. The social justice warriors are examples of people animated by hatred
and the desire for power, and this is why they are such suitable victims for
the demons who obviously inspire them in their behaviour. But even milder
people who wouldn't dream of behaving in this bullying, aggressive manner have
been infected by the current plague. And it is a spiritual plague that is
sweeping through the world and contaminating thought. Only those who have
developed the protection of a valid spiritual practice and faith are properly
placed to resist it.
The left is demonic. This might seem to be a classic case of a
prejudiced individual demonising (literally) his enemies. However I do not say
that leftists are demons but that demons are behind the left and influencing
its advocates. What is the left actually based on? Stripped back to its
fundamentals, it is based on hatred of the good and resentment of the superior.
That is why leftists will ally themselves with anyone who is an opponent of the
Christian West. It is the Christian West that the demons behind the left wish
to destroy, and you have to admit that they are doing an excellent job. Their
long-term strategy has been most professional. They have used lesser truths to
attack greater ones, for instance putting material improvements above spiritual
priorities and then using the excuse of love and freedom to justify constant
attacks on the natural order. They have moved in small incremental steps but
always in the direction of greater corruption, more undermining of the truth
and subversion of the idea of what is good. They have taken the idea of unity
and used that to attack quality, the idea of better and worse, which inevitably
brings the better down to the level of the worse.
Even people whose minds are not possessed by the leftist parasites
directly are not immune. When society's intellectuals and the media are largely
on the side of the demons (not knowingly in most cases but they are) then
everyone else will find it harder to hold out against the infection. It will be
in the air they breathe, and their exposure to it will be constant. Their
resistance to the infection is weakened and they will succumb unless they have
some powerful medicine to fortify them. That medicine will have to be religious
in nature to be strong enough to effect a cure. Secular resistance will hold
out for a while but is unlikely to stave off eventual submission, especially in
the case of those who have grown up in a world of materialistic leftism. Older
people with connections to the past may survive but they will increasingly be
prone to despair unless they have recourse to spiritual help.
We must exorcise these demons from the human mind. That is what
this blog is about, and this exorcism is a prerequisite for any true awakening.
The first step is to acknowledge God but it is crucial that this
acknowledgement be a spiritual one by which I mean that it must, it absolutely
must, be made in the context of spiritual not worldly good. That means that it
must see humanity in the light of its spiritual purpose and destiny and not as creatures of this world.
Well said. The enemy is not of earthly origin.
ReplyDeleteExorcism is only effective for dealing with possession.
ReplyDeleteYou are talking about influence, not possession.
The difference is that in a demonic possession, the demon interferes directly with the autonomous will of a specific individual. The possessed person, whether or not they ever voluntarily yielded to demonic influence, no longer wills their possession.
Then the ordinance of exorcism is necessary to restore the divinely ordained rule of that individual's will over their body.
But as Jesus said, "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first."
The counter to demonic influence is not exorcism but constant faith, demonstrated by continual fidelity to divine commandments. This requires ongoing repentance.
We cannot directly impart faith to the faithless, we can only cry repentance.
I do use the word influence as well in the post but where's the dividing line between influence and possession? It's not a full scale possession, as I say, but in many cases the situation has gone beyond mere influence to something that does approach a possession on the plane of thought and ideas. People everywhere in the West have succumbed to a corrupt and distorted ideology that simple common sense should see through but somehow doesn't.
ReplyDeleteI may be using emotive words to drive home the scale of the problem. But it is an enormous problem that is becoming worse as I see in my own acquaintances.
But the point of the post is that our current situation has been engineered by evil supernatural beings and their influence/possession, call it what you will, is increasing. As you quite rightly say, the only cure is repentance for it is only repentance that can drive out evil.
Or demonic oppression. Possession refers to a completely taking over the will of an individual, such that he is really not even acting on his own (that may or may not be apparent, and it is extremely rare, if for no other reason the demons seem to be doing a bang up job without it and full possession might actually call attention to them and possibly defeat the ultimate goal).
ReplyDeleteOppression, on the other hand, allows the person to maintain their will, but clouds the judgment, making acting in accordance with the good more difficult than normal. Like a constant headache or nagging pain, it sours the soul. It is not unlike someone suffering from depression which makes them choose things they would otherwise not.
The ultimate goal of demonic oppression is to convince you to despair and just "give in to the zeitgeist." Chiu is right, the counter to that is faith, repentance and recourse to the sacraments. Possession would require the spiritual MOAB that is exorcism.
ReplyDeleteI do say it's not a full scale possession. It's much subtler than that which is probably only interesting to low level demons or earthbound spirits. But the big boys don't care about that. What they want is to so effect our minds that we actively choose evil ourselves.
ReplyDeleteSo long as humans refuse to bring under control their pride, envy, anger, greed, lust, gluttony and sloth there will be some degree of effective demonic influence. Demons exert their efforts most successfully by inflaming these seven and bending thought and conviction around them in order to produce the desired result of a person firmly committed to his or her own damnation. This takes time but in the absence of religious training the process can be remarkably quick and effective. Take away religion and you effectively render a person helpless in the face of subtle, continuous and relentless promotion of sin as virtue.
ReplyDeleteThis is a radical topic, but then again this blog is actually very radical.. More radical than anything else because of the implications. I think it is important to expose these things in a written manner, while also being careful. The words "god", "devil and "demons should be uttered carefully, not just as mere everyday notions. I feel generally one should not speak about them. I thank you for being sincere enough to actually write about this seriously, and I know it is energy consuming (as is exorcism). That's why it can be dangerous (even seductive), while the task is to make it real in a world that has made it appear unreal. Out there in the world I don't believe its useful to use this kind of language, but inside we know that this is what it really comes down to. Out there we can ultimately only battle it by love and good deeds. Because demons do not like to be exposed, which makes them contract and become more aggressive. They always try to hide and that's why humans fear to face their own soul. I know that I'm personally influenced by demons too, and I'm often afflicted with impure thoughts and bad reactions - but I am very conscious of them. I can sense that they work in me, and I know that I can only beat it back by rising above my lower self. What they want is permanent alienation, which means collectively unconscious robotization. But I'll leave it there.
ReplyDeleteYes, very true. They have enough skill to present sins as virtues to those who wish to see them as such or who deny the very idea of sin. We are all sinners and without the sense of God cannot really recognise this let alone overcome it.
ReplyDeleteThank you William - you bring up a matter of great importance.
ReplyDeleteIt has been said that the possessions today are different from those described in the Gospels. In those still largely tribal times of "We" culture the incorporation of the human ego, the "I" was at a relatively early stage and as such was vulnerable to displacement by evil spirits. Indeed part of Christ's mission as the "I Am the I Am" was to offer strength to that tender and embryonic aspect of humanity.
Today our "I"s are very much more firmly embedded! And yet the atheist materialist trend, exemplified by public intellectuals such as Sam Harris is to deny ones own Self, to describe it as mere illusion, along with the idea of free will itself.
This divine spark of Selfhood - our most precious aspect is now openly discarded, thrown by the wayside. Such rich pickings must seem like unbelievable good fortune to those non-physical beings who work against the divine order and who are offered a free "entry point" to directly operate in the world.
We are in the early stages of the "Bifurcation of Humanity". It is significant that the last petition of the Lords Prayer ends in the simple "Deliver us from Evil. Ultimately the choice will be narrowed to a binary - Christ or Possession.
You're right Eric. I don't speak like this to people around me. As things currently stand it would be self-defeating. Only to those who already know the truth, or at least suspect it, can you speak it. Then I think one should speak plainly.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing to fear from the demons as long as one sincerely tries to put one's house in order and opens one's heart to the purifying influence of Jesus.
Dostoyevsky foresaw all this in his novel. 'The Possessed' (aka 'The Devils' or 'Demoms'). Writing in the 1870s, Dostoyevsky foresaw both the Russian Revolution and the moral, intellectual and spirititual chaos of our world today. The book shows where liberalism leads - to an eruption of the demonic into the warp and woof of everyday life.
ReplyDeleteYes Moonsphere, I think you are right. Possession in the old sense has been largely superseded by something that takes place on a more intellectual level in line with our more intellectual way of being.
ReplyDeleteProbably you are also right in what the choice finally comes down to though the possession aspect won't be presented as such by the tempter. It will no doubt come in a pretty package.
And yes, John, Dostoyevsky was a prophet who saw where the abandonment of Christianity would eventually take us.
William, it seems that we live in times when Humanity is collectively crossing a spiritual threshold which involves the confrontation with our "Ahrimanic Double" as Rudolf Steiner would call it. This "Lesser Guardian" holds a true mirror up to our souls - a veritable "Picture of Dorian Gray". A true meeting with Christ lies beyond this threshold. The virtue of humility is required for this challenge.
ReplyDeleteWe either accept our guilt and pray for strength and forgiveness or we look away and instead project our sins out onto perceived enemies in the world. This rejection of personal guilt, of judgement, of self (itself) - is an "entry point". Especially in the academic spheres - as you say - on the level of the intellect - many are seized by a new form of self-regard, openly contemptuous of all religious belief and revelation.
The Left it would seem were the least well equipped for this challenge. Their spiritual failure has spilled out into the wider world forming a conduit for the demons that now bring error, sickness and conflict to all areas of human life.
Moonsphere, your last paragraph sums it all up.
ReplyDeleteI wonder where this demonic conquest of minds will lead. I've often wondered about the 'abomination of desolation' mentioned by Our Lord in the Gospels. I've always seen this as pointing to a symbolic enthronement of Satan, which the faithful should take for a sign that the enemy's power has reached its peak (though he thinks it's only beginning) and that the dawn is not far off. Being a Catholic, my mind tends to gravitate towards Roman themes, and I sometimes imagine some kind of idol erected in St. Peter's Square, or a parade perhaps. Ten years ago such speculations would have been laughed out of court. Not so much now, I fear!
ReplyDeleteI remembered your column when, just now, looking at this review of a book by the very prominent scholar Stephen Greenblatt. What's going on in the man's mind?
ReplyDeletehttps://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-stephen-greenblatt-is-wrong-and-why-it-matters/#!
Dale Nelson
In his novel 'The Oblate' JK Huysmans wrote something to the effect that the devil has no direct power over the will, only a little power over the intellect and an unlimited power over the imagination. Hence the importance of popular culture, disseminated via the mass media, in spreading the contagion. Perhaps a corollary of this is that any cultural resistance should target the imaginative faculty?
ReplyDeleteJohn, that is certainly a possibility. We have been so softened up that it is by no means unlikely that something like that could happen, obviously presented as a celebration of humanity.
ReplyDeleteWurmbrand, that's a good article. People like Greenblatt are so wedded to their self that they cannot abide the restriction that a God would seemingly place on that. It's egotism pure and simple.
Alex, that's why Tolkien was perhaps the greatest man of the 20th century or one of them certainly. LOTR is truth telling of a sort that gets past all the barriers against it that modernism has set up.
It's an interesting question whether outright possession is actually more rare in our day or we have simply lost the cultural background to identify it.
ReplyDeleteThe flip side of the coin is that a culture more ready to accept demonic possession as a real possibility will more often yield false positives, the context of the scripture quoted above is a good example, as on that occasion there were some present who accused Jesus of being possessed.
That said, our 'secular humanist' culture doesn't exactly seem shy about producing similarly obtuse false positive accusations against those who speak the word of God. Since these kinds of willfully false accusations are not honestly believed even by the accusers, the cultural priming seems to make little difference.
But I think that outright demonic possession serves less purpose for evil in a society that has, after all, promoted a general outlook to will that God should not exist. What is more desirable, an unwilling slave in constant rebellion or a servant that really agrees with your agenda and works wholeheartedly to bring it to pass? Even if the defenses of moderns against outright possession is very low, the gain from possessing or even oppressing rather than merely tempting is rendered quite marginal.
They are The Mind Parasites.
ReplyDeleteColin Wilson wrote some inspired work in his book, The Mind Parasites, and his cure was a special kind of focussed mind.
Not unusual to take pagan symbols and "baptize" them - Christmas trees come to mind. The obelisk was originally brought from Egypt to Rome around 37 AD (near the time of Christ's crucifixion, coincidentally?). Was moved to St. Peter's around 1585, and contains a relic of the cross, inscriptions for exorcism and ""Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat. Christus ab omni malo plebem suam defendat."
ReplyDeleteAnd the opposite may also occur: Christian symbols may be demonised. It could, in principle, be the case that the obelsik is *now* demonic. Many demonically aligned people currently wear a cross, either with distortions or just co-oting the symbolism.
ReplyDeleteBecause symbols are secondary to motivation - in-and-of-themselves they are meaningless; only by interaction with consciousness do symbols become effectual.
It is like social institutions more generally: any specific self-identified 'Christian' church may *actually* be Christian, non-Christian, or actively anti-Christian. The hollowing-out and re-purposing of institutions is indeed the main strategy of the post-60s New Left (eg schools, universities, health services, the police, military, the legal system...).