
Exorcisms Are Gaining Popularity in the U.S. - prossercj
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/catholic-exorcisms-on-the-rise/573943/
======
Afforess
This is one of the symptoms of the decline of religion. As the moderates
abandon their faith, only the more radical members and fundamental adherents
are left. Radicals who were previously moderated by the more centrist members
now find their hands freed of any of checks and balances and only see fellow
radicals in their social circle. There's no social shame or doubt left and
they are free to test these abusive ideas.

See also:
[https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporativ...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ZQG9cwKbct2LtmL3p/evaporative-
cooling-of-group-beliefs)

~~~
eksemplar
Then why aren’t they on the increase in Scandinavia?

~~~
krageon
Scandinavia doesn't have a strong religious impulse, whereas the USA is
Christian in the most fundamentalist way from top to bottom.

~~~
chmielewski
Fundamentalism is a recent branch of Protestantism. TFA is about exorcism as a
rite and only mentions Catholicism. Scandinavia has always* been traditionally
Lutheran rather than Catholic or Protestant. Lutheran and Orthodox (and
maaaaybe Anglican) have exorcism rites, otherwise it's going to be a preacher
doing an exorcism he invented after the DSM was created.

(* not "ALWAYS" but you know what I mean)

------
torgian
It’s so stupid. My parents got more and more into this bullshit as I grew
older. All of a sudden I was a demon possessed teenager who, god forbid, had a
mind of his own.

You don’t know the level of mental abuse kids deal with in families like this.

~~~
kenning
i do appreciate the comments here from people who actually have firsthand
experience with this. i think a lot of people on HN find this story
interesting because it's so far from their experience, but feel like
commenting anyway.

and it's valuable because the writers at the atlantic can't say "boy this sure
is stupid, it's obviously X or Y." they have to write in this awkward tone as
if they genuinely can't tell if these people are really possessed or not.

~~~
torgian
Thanks, I think? Haha :)

I didn’t finish reading the article. One, because it’s long (normally not a
problem for me) but two: because it pisses me off how churches are taking
advantage of this.

I had anger problems after leaving my family. I never sought counseling, but I
probably should have. I did break down during work one day (in the military no
less!) and yeah...

Point is, when kids grow up in families like this, it’s a real shitty
situation. The fact that people can’t, or won’t, try to seek real help for
their loved ones when they “act out”, and the fact that religion preys and
even profits from this, just really grinds my gears.

And why are these people having issues? Probably because of their family, or
medical condition. Although I’m convinced most of it stems from families that
are super-religious, fanatics, or radicals.

My family is self-proclaimed as “radical “ Christians. Everything , literally
everything is not from god and is demonic.

I mean, shit. And people wonder why I’m agnostic.

------
mg794613
"Polls conducted in recent decades by Gallup and the data firm YouGov suggest
that roughly half of Americans believe demonic possession is real. The
percentage who believe in the devil is even higher, and in fact has been
growing: Gallup polls show that the number rose from 55 percent in 1990 to 70
percent in 2007." Wow that is scary. Intelligence is in strong decline.

------
NoPicklez
I wonder if it's partly due to the growing use of "alternate/traditional
medicine" pathways people are taking in opposition of modern medicine.

Whereby the use of exorcisms is now less of a religious driver, but that of a
way to cure disease or behavior outside of traditional medicine.

I'm looking at you anti-vaxers...

------
remarkEon
Interesting article, I suppose.

This seems to parallel a resurgence of TLM that I've noticed over the last
couple years.

~~~
antognini
TLM = Traditional Latin Mass, for the unfamiliar. It's the mass that was used
pre-Vatican II, all in Latin and with the priest facing away from the
congregation.

------
anon2775
Cults and other extreme forms of magical thinking take root whenever survival
seems difficult. Chris Hedges' latest book delves into paths to anomie, self-
destruction and insanity that are more likely as a civilization crumbles and
slowly cannibalizes itself into oblivion.

------
hnuser355
My (I would consider) fairly deranged father was astounded that repeated
beatings, threats to kill or abandon me, encouragements to commit suicide etc.
caused 12 year old me to have anxiety and develop odd social behaviors and
diagnosed me with having a demon. He brought someone from his church (who
later went to jail for pedophilia) to examine me for demons, and took my
instant dislike of the guy as more evidence for them. My friend who immigrated
from India at a young age was astounded that people believe in these things in
America when I told him the story. I suppose he associated it only with less
educated / developed parts of the world.

~~~
smackay
There is some underlying reason for this however. The Economist had an article
(can't remember when) about children being accused of being possessed by
demons in Africa and either thrown out of the family or village and sometimes
being killed. On examination of these incidents by researchers, it was thought
that the likely reason was economics and that the parents simply could not
feed all the children they had and were dramatically forced to reduce their
number. The incantation of evil spirits was simply the rationalisation the
parents made to justify their actions.

On two occasions I have seen something similar in the USA. First was in the
airport at Atlanta where a early teen girl was having difficulties dealing
with the noise and stress of airplane travel. The two women she was with were
having an equally hard time dealing with her and were trying to persuade her
that the reason she was behaving badly was because The Devil was making her do
it. The second occasion was again with an early teen boy but this time at the
top of Hart's Pass on the Pacific Crest Trail in the north Cascades. The kid
clearly did not want to be there and again the women in charge were dealing
with the situation by accusing him of being possessed.

In both cases the kids were stressed out enough to be on the verge of hysteria
and the protestations of the adults were only making it worse. It seemed
pretty obvious to me at the time that the solution was simply to get everyone
to calm down. Doubly so, since becoming a parent I discovered that stress and
anxiety are extremely contagious.

So the appeal of demons, for me, is simply a coping mechanism by parents to
deal with children they cannot cope with or understand, albeit a a pretty
drastic one.

~~~
hnuser355
Frankly I don’t understand how people with access to the rituals, writings,
scripture etc of such a complex religion end up with a worldview of “Thing I
like - God. Thing I don’t like - devil”. A typical toddler or infant will
probably arrive at a similar morality unaided by such powerful structures I
would think.

------
randoinetdude11
Long time reader, first time commenter.

I witnessed something very similar to what this article describes in my mother
when I was only 14.

It was absolutely horrifying, being a 14-year-old kid in Texas with Bible-
thumping white-trash parents, and seeing this. I now understand it to be
mental illness and I can point to many health-related commonalities that
underlie thousands of such cases, but as a 14-year-old kid? Shit, I was
terrified.

Unusual voices? Check. "Come to kill her"? Check. Odd facial expressions and
totally different demeanor? Check. Exorcism? Check.

It was so bad I still, now in my 30's, have nightmares about it from time to
time. I'll probably have one tonight after drumming all this up, but screw it
- people need to know the damage this kind of stuff can cause kids, families
and of course those who suffer.

It went for about 3 days. Early February, 1997. It was a 3-day school weekend
for some reason and I was to go back to school the next day. I lied awake in
my bed trying to fall asleep when I heard screams coming from the living room.
"Eh, mom will be fine," I thought, "Dad's in there with her. They're watching
TBN." (TBN = "Trinity Broadcasting Network", a religious TV network, Bible-
thumping 24/7.)

My dad was the stereotype of a cowboy living in modern times. You know the
voice of Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2? It shook me pretty hard
because he sounds exactly like my dad did. Same accent, looked the same given
the mustache, and even had a nearly identical voice. He was the kind of guy,
just like that character, that if he was MISSING A LIMB, blood spurting all
over the place, he'd shrug it off and go about his business.

So hearing that fear in his voice was almost as frightening as what followed.

The screams kept coming. After a while I got out of bed to see what was going
on. I found my mother sitting in a chair shaking violently and screaming
bloody murder. "Dad, what the hell is this?!" I asked. With a fear and
desperation I'd never seen before, and never again even in death just last
year, he said, "PRAY."

"But Dad," I went on, "what-"

He smacked me up-side the head. Not to hurt me, but to get my attention.
"PRAY!" he said, louder and with greater fear this time.

I began to do what I was taught - pray in tongues. After a couple hours of
this, she seemed OK, and my dad immediately started looking for "doorways". We
gathered up all the VHS tapes we rented from Blockbuster and my mom and dad
went to take them back - early. I went back to bed thinking "well that was
weird."

By the time they made it back, she was shaking again. Screaming, too. I heard
them come back in and my dad told me to start praying again. After a few
minutes, he left the room to make a phone call. He'd called a friend of the
family with the same beliefs and woke them and their two kids up to take my
mother to their house for prayer.

On the way over, in the car, "the demon" began to speak. NEVER had I heard
such force and volume in a human voice as when my dad told it/her, "SHUT UP!".
The windows in the car shook from the sound waves. "It" complied.

We got to our family-friend's house, a much nicer suburban home than our
crappy little apartment. My dad's friend and his wife, along with their two
kids and me, prayed over my mother for hours. Thankfully some one was thinking
about the kids, and the eldest of us, Amber, who was in high school with a
paper route conscripted myself and her younger brother, my friend who
committed suicide only two years later, to help. That got my mind off it for a
little while and when we got back from delivering newspapers, my parents and I
left and went home.

Things seemed calm until sunrise, roughly, when the behavior started again. As
I prayed over my mother to keep her calm and from hurting herself or us, my
dad stepped away to call the school and tell them I'd be "out sick". I mean,
good luck explaining what was really going on, amirite?

Not being Catholic, my dad next called a local Christian TV station that only
broadcast in the west Texas area, and asked to speak with one of the preachers
that had a regularly aired program. Later that day, that preacher and his wife
showed up to conduct an ad-hoc exorcism over my mother. It wasn't inscribed in
ritual like the Catholic church version mentioned in the article, but featured
a lot of the same ideas like getting rid of "doorways" and commanding the
demon "in the name of Jesus".

The part that scared me the most was when I was in the living room with
everyone praying over my mother. Ever since I was a very young kid, I always
had this ULTIMATE fear of my mother dying. It was literally the worst thing I
could imagine; it gave me frequent nightmares and when I was younger than at
this point in time, she couldn't leave the house because I was so afraid she'd
never come back.

Well, there I was with four adults in the living room of our tiny apartment
participating in an exorcism over my mother. The preacher commanded the demon
to tell us why it was there.

> "I have come to KILL HER!" "it" said violently in a deep voice.

I don't remember what happened next; I think I yelled at it with equal
violence. But the next part I remember scared me just as much.

I had been dismissed to my room and told "you can watch TBN on your TV - no
video games, no books, NOTHING ELSE." So I went to room and turned on the TV.
I was so bored and frankly freaking out over the religious stuff that I
channel surfed and found a basketball game. "Eh this can't hurt anything," I
thought, so I watched it.

While the San Antonio Spurs were sinking baskets, more "demonic talk" and
"pleading the blood of Jesus" stuff was going on less than 3 feet behind me,
through the wall.

Then the preacher commanded the demon: "I the name of Jesus, you will TELL ME
YOUR NAME."

I quickly put my hands over my ears and made a little noise to drown out the
ambient volume. I was so frightened I didn't want to know.

Overall bizarre behavior went on for 3 days straight. By the end, I myself was
having auditory hallucinations. My dad told me this was "insight into the
sprit realm" and a sign that "we were winning." In hindsight, that's a much
better explanation to give a 14-year-old than "you're going fucking crazy,"
which was what was really happening.

Now, nearly 22 years removed from this and having renounced religion all
together, I recognize this for what it was: dissociative identity disorder
brought on by a combination of menopause and extreme stress.

You see my mother's father had died just six months before this happened. She
was going through menopause, and although they tried to hide it, my parents
marriage was going through some serious trouble while we didn't have enough
money to make ends meet. I later learned that she'd also been having extremely
graphic, horrifying dreams where she was watching her husband (my dad) and me
both being crucified simultaneously AND having our skin flayed off our bodies.
Very graphic stuff.

When deeply immersed in religious dogma as we were in our home (thanks to my
dad), all these things combined to make my mother somehow "snap". Her mind
created an alternative personality that thought it was a "demon" because of
all the religious stuff she'd been subjected to, including notions of demonic
possession, the "power of Christ", the mythological story of post-crucifixion
conquering of hell (what Jesus supposedly did for 3 days after he died before
rising again), all that. My parents were hardcore into what the non-
denominational Christians often call "spiritual warfare".

All these factors combined, it's easy to see how a person could lose it and
how something like this could manifest.

I also want to point something else out. From what I've seen (although it's
hard to get real/good stats), most demonic possession victims ("patients"?)
appear to be _female_. In my mother's case, she was going through menopause.
In this article, the main subject had incidents after major health issues - a
C-section, a bout with e-coli, a second birth. I wonder if hormonal imbalance
could somehow make a person more susceptible to triggers?

And speaking of triggers, did you notice how in this article they use things
like crucifixes, holy water, reciting prayers, etc. "judge" if the person may
be possessed? Well, if it's psychological in nature, putting these triggers in
front of somebody is just going to make the situation WORSE!

Finally, I hate to say this, but the use of exorcism rituals may actually be
the only immediate (in the moment, non-chemical) treatment for a while until
we figure out what's going on here, because they play into the same psychology
that causes the problem. Anyone who believes they are possessed by an evil
demon almost always also believes in the power of a good "god" over said evil.
Performing exorcisms (or allowing them to be performed), while not a treatment
or cure, can help via psychosomatic effect.

~~~
kenning
Nice read, thank you. Glad you got out of there

------
chmielewski
"[...] in the form of people seeking salvation from demons through the
Catholic faith’s most mystical ritual."

Funny that they used the word "salvation" in that sentence, given that
exorcism is NOT on the list of the Catholic faith's four "most mystical
rituals".

~~~
giancarlostoro
Other Christians just call it deliverance, not salvation. You seek deliverance
from demons, or demonic strongholds.

~~~
chmielewski
My point is that the "most mystical rituals" are centered around what the
Catholic church calls "salvation".

------
kgwxd
What parts of the U.S.? I understand all the states are supposed to be united,
but that's not so true in practice.

~~~
UnpossibleJim
Their example is in Tacoma, WA. If I had to guess it would be in the south
west U.S. and up the west coast where Catholicism has the highest population
numbers because of Latino populations. Maybe up into the north eastern U.S.
where it held sway with Italian and Irish populations traditionally, but I
thought it had been on the decline. Maybe not.

------
golem14
cf. "the princess of darkness" on "disenchanted", netflix

------
bigcloud1299
we go through exorcism ritual with our code once a week. still it isn't cured
of the devil defects. :)

------
kough
Can we ban the Atlantic for being total clickbait?

~~~
dang
The Atlantic, while a mixed bag like any major media, is the source of
intellectually interesting submissions to HN:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=theatlantic.com%20points%3E10&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=theatlantic.com%20points%3E10&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0).
So we won't ban it.

I don't see clickbait in this case. We did change the title to something a bit
more neutral.

------
mteggplant
Interesting.. but why is this on HN ?

~~~
dang
Just because it's interesting. That's the point! See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

------
jonjonBoy
It's not BS. That's for sure. Coming from someone who used to think it's all
BS also.

Yes there's cases where they're due to mental illness, or other reasons that
could be explained scientifically. But don't let that make you think that
these sort of cases don't happen neither.

If you stay away from the doorways that the article mentioned, you should be
good. Believe whatever you want to believe on how the world works. But the
rabbit hole goes deep.

To be honest I much rather think that these sort of things don't exist also
but I've known the truth.

~~~
ionised
That's a lot of words to basically tell us that you believe in demonic
possession.

------
shams93
There's a politics to exorcism and in the whole accusation of witchcraft,
especially in less developed countries where accusation of witchcraft is a
social safety mechanism to enable parents to eject extra children they can't
afford without carrying a burden of guilt for their action. However there is
also a real phenomena of trance states and people going into trance and
seemingly being "taken over" by an external entity. However this doesn't come
from outside the person it springs from what Jung called the "collective
unconscious." In the context of a religion like Vodoun the people being
"possessed" have a long period of physical and mental preparation such that
when they do experience this its in a controlled and ritualized setting. The
other thing is because they have syncretized the original Yoruba religion with
Catholicism, a catholic vodouist will have far different expectations and
assumptions than a normal catholic. For a vodouist they are not being "ridden"
by a demon but rather a saint. For the ordinary catholic because every
spiritual experience outside the control of the repressive patriarchy is
considered evil and demonic any catholic who has a spontaneous experience of
an atavistic eruption of the collective unconscious will interpret the
experience as evil and negative. Ultimately in the trance state its just an
energy that over takes the person, how they interpret and accept or reject the
experience is colored by the politics inherent in their religion. The glaring
hypocrisy in the catholic church where it gives itself a free hand to abuse
the most vulnerable while placing itself as a gatekeeper for all that is moral
and good, sets itself up to have more of these kind of atavistic eruptions as
the harder the mind tries to ignore these kind of basic contradictions the
more the mind is being setup for any spontaneous trance experience to be
interpreted as "being taken over by an evil spirit." This creates a feedback
loop for the church where the deeper they drive their contradictions the more
people have these experiences but because they are mentally trapped in their
religion they put themselves at the mercy of the very people driving them into
psychosis, when these experiences could be interpreted as harmless and
inconsequential in which case people would simply shrug these experiences off.

