Prof. Laycock (Coast to Coast, 9/7/20); Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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| The Penguin Book of Exorcisms |
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Joseph P. Laycock at Texas State University discusses the beliefs and practices surrounding exorcism from across cultures, religions, scientific papers, clergy letters, and treatises by physicians and theologians.
In the Pentecostal, charismatic, and Catholic traditions, demons (yakshas, rakshasas, asuras) often go after very holy people, he explained.
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| The phenomenon occurs in Eastern religions. |
In contrast, among evangelical groups a person may become susceptible to demons after dabbling with a Ouija board or the occult. Some people, Prof. Laycock continues, have no memory of their exorcism and parts of their possession, while others have vivid recall, including a woman who wrote a letter to her exorcist in the persona of the demon who was inhabiting her.
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| The world's largest religion, Catholicism, loves it. |
The number of exorcisms around the world is on the rise, he reports, and the day before Easter Sunday 2020, Italian Catholic Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano called on his fellow clergy to perform a "mass exorcism" on Holy Saturday to quell Satan's "frenzy" during the coronavirus pandemic.
For the Catholic Church to approve an exorcism on any individual, it looks for specific signs of possession, including speaking in languages unknown to the person, limited clairvoyance or knowing things they couldn't possibly know, superhuman strength, and blasphemous rage against holy things.
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| What gets into this guy, hissing like a snake? |
Some exorcism attempts can go on for years, Prof. Laycock details, such as a 1928 case in Iowa. He recounts the fascinating possession of an entire convent of Ursuline nuns in the French town of Loudun in 1634.
The nuns were said to have vomited up nails and a contract signed by demons with an accused Lothario priest (who may have seduced them and who was eventually burned at the stake for witchcraft). More + AUDIO
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