The Spiritual World: On the Existence of Demons (1)

The Spiritual World: On the Existence of Bodiless Powers

Chapter Two: On the Existence of Demons

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

1. The Existence of Evil Spirits

Tradition has preserved in all nations the concept of evil spirits. Such, for example, is the teaching of the Persian religion about the evil principle – Ahriman and evil spirits; such is the teaching of the Greek religion about the Furies, etc. The Egyptians believed that at birth each person is given a guardian demon. The Chinese Buddhists also recognize evil spirits.

It goes without saying that all these beliefs, as not sanctified by Divine Revelation, are distorted; but the very existence of these beliefs among the nations shows that the existence of evil spirits does not contradict the principles of common sense, just as the existence of good spirits does not.

Indeed, firstly, if there are many different objects in the world visible to us, then why not admit that rational and moral beings are not limited to the human race? Secondly, if we notice a gradualness in creatures that proceeds from lower to higher forms, then a similar gradualness is assumed in moral creatures – in relation to God. That is why Plato the philosopher taught that "there are spirits intermediate between man and God, who withdraw from evil people and help the good; they cannot be visible, although they are present with us" (Plato's Dialogues: "Timaeus"). The actions of spirits are possible in themselves, just as there are actions of one person on another, the actions of a person's soul on his body. Therefore, only corrupt people deny good spirits, because they are far from them, and evil spirits, because, without noticing it, they are their slaves.

A Case of Exorcism Performed by Saint John Maximovitch

A father talks about the healing of his son from demonic possession:

My son was possessed, he hated everything holy, all holy icons and crosses, he split them into the thinnest sticks and was very happy about it. I took him to Vladyka John, and he put him on his knees, placing either a Cross or the Gospel on his head. My son was very sad after this, and sometimes ran away from the cathedral. But Vladyka told me not to despair. He said that he will continue to pray for him, and over time he will get better, but for now let him continue to be treated by doctors: “Don’t worry, the Lord is not without mercy.”

This went on for several years. One day he was reading the Gospel at home. His face was bright and joyful. And he told his father that he needed to go to Minhon (30-40 km from Shanghai), in a mental hospital, where he sometimes went: “I need to go there, there the Spirit of God will cleanse me from the spirit of evil and darkness, and I then I will go to the Lord,” he said. They brought him to Minhon. Two days later, his father came to visit him and saw that his son was restless, constantly moving on the bed, and suddenly began shouting: “Don’t, don’t come near me, I don’t want you!”

The Real Origins of Carnival (which has nothing to do with Ancient Paganism)

The Fight between Carnival and Lent, Pieter Bruegel, 1559

By John Bossy

Sin required penance from the individual, as Dante had expounded it; it also, as a stain on the community of Christians, required penance from the population at large, collective ascetic rituals of which the most important was the annual season of Lent. Though generally felt to be essential to individual salvation and public prosperity, penance remained a daunting prospect: the task of persuading people to enter upon it was likened by the Strassburg preacher John Geiler to getting a horse on to a small boat. The horse might pass more readily if its steps were guided by the formalities of a rite of passage. So by the sixteenth century the moment at which the population passed from its carnal into its penitential state had become a time for the vigorously cultivated rites of separation generally known as Carnival. These were, despite some appearances, Christian in character, and they were medieval in origin: although it has been widely supposed that they continued some kind of pre-Christian cult, there is in fact no evidence that they existed much before 1200. The Italian term carnevale derived from the dominica carnelevalis or Quadragesima Sunday, the feast which in the Roman and Milanese liturgies marked for the clergy the passage from the normal to the penitential regime, and signified the abolition of meat or flesh; those words in use in other vernaculars (antruejo/introitus, carême-entrant) referred to the entrance into Lent. As a period of time and a moral conception Carnival was one half of an entity of which the other half was Lent. The unity-in-opposition of the pair, which seems a notable instance of the structural anthropology practised by Claude Levi-Strauss, was the theme of the French and Spanish poems which diffused the conception in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and also of a line of pictorial representations memorably concluded in the middle of the sixteenth by The Fight between Carnival and Lent of Pieter Bruegel.

A Miracle of Saints Cyrus and John for Theopompos Who Was Demon Possessed

 

The Miracles of Saints Cyrus and John

Miracle 14

On Theopompos Who Was Demon Possessed

By St. Sophronios of Jerusalem

There was a certain Theopompos who was gravely possessed by a demon and there was nobody who would not cry looking at him. Generally people are more despondent about those who have this kind of malady of the soul; likely because it does not concern the body, which is subject to natural diseases and to corruption due to its origin of the tree of transgression in the paradise (to xylon tes parakoes eiso paradeisou). However, the malady of the soul which is against nature. For it is a kind of alteration of the soul's incorruptible nature created by the grace of God, and a suffering resulting from a demonic machination.

What the Spirit of His Dead Aunt Said to Saint Iakovos Tsalikes

Saint Iakovos Tsalikes said:

"Since I was a child, I go to the cemetery every day and think about death. All my relatives have died. Anyway, I commemorate an aunt of mine. I saw the aunt and she told me:

'Ah, my nephew Iakovos, thank you for what you are sending me. You send me a lot, but you know there are other people who are unfortunate and hungry and have no one in the world to think of them, to care for them.'

Feigning Demonic Possession For Profit

In Canon 60 of the Penthekte Synod in Constantinople which was held in 692, we read the following:

 

Since the Apostle exclaims that he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with Him, it is clear that he who is intimate with His enemy becomes one by his affinity with him. Therefore, those who pretend they are possessed by a devil and by their depravity of manners feign to manifest their form and appearance; it seems good by all means that they should be punished and that they should be subjected to afflictions and hardships of the same kind as those to which they who are truly demonically possessed are justly subjected with the intent of delivering them from the energies of the devil.

 

G.K. Chesterton's Defense of Scary Stories from a Christian Perspective

G.K. Chesterton was a mystery writer, literary critic, and revered Catholic theologian. On October 16th 1909, he wrote an article for The Daily News titled "The Nightmare", which is a work of literary criticism regarding why scary stories are so delightful, but also their potential dangers. Unlike later reactionary Christians, Chesterton is fully on board with the telling and enjoying of scary stories, so long as we remember that they are nothing more than "toys".

Many Christians believe scary stories are evil in themselves, because they associate anything scary with what they interpret as bad feelings as opposed to what they interpret is good, but there is no such thing as an evil story, unless the person hearing the story is evil and when hearing it abandons any sense of Christian hope that lies in his heart. A story changes perspective depending on one's beliefs and disposition, and when a true Christian hears a scary story it will always be with a Christian perspective, and as long as the temptation to judge it as merely evil or demonic is avoided, it can be beneficial if the story contains even a kernel of benefit, and usually scary stories do (for example, in scary stories evil is usually viewed as bad and the audience is usually encouraged to root for the good). It is the same as reading the Bible, where one's interpretation of it first and foremost depends on their personal beliefs and disposition - to some it can inspire piety and holiness while to others it could inspire unimaginable horrors, rebellion and even murder.

You can read "The Nightmare" here, though he does touch more on this subject in other writings of his as well. Below is an excerpt: