August 2, 2011 • 35 mins
Priests in horror flicks drive demons out of innocent victims. But what's really happening in these apparent showdowns between good and evil? Join Robert and Julie as they look at this exorcism through the lens of cognitive dissonance and personification.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
You know, the other day I was feeling, uh, feeling
kind of like a bundle of nerves, and so after
work I decided to to go to the local y
(00:25):
c A and had an exorcism done. I've heard about
this class. Yeah, yeah, you just go in as a priest.
They just retry it in, pull the demon out of you.
That's cos you know, you're angst and then wham, the
rest of the evening you're just you know, carefree, laid back.
Doesn't it end in laughter yoga? Well, laughter yoga's next door,
(00:46):
but it's why so you can hear it. And it's
kind of hard sometimes to figure out which classes which,
Yeah is it exorcism, is it the laughter yoga? Is
it the children's karate class? I don't know. It all
kind of mills together. Yeah, yeah, well that's the wife
for you. Yeah, but I jove exorcism. A lot of
people arguing it's not quite to the point yet where
you can go and take it at the y But
there are a lot of folks getting the devil yanked
(01:07):
out of him by various holy people. It's true. In
a two thousand and five gallop pole, they found that
of Americans believe that quote people on this earth are
sometimes possessed by the devil unquote. And they didn't necessarily
go and put this in their um straight up findings
as they normally do, because they couldn't quite construe what
(01:28):
that meant. The gallop pole was like, m do they
mean metaphorically possessed by the devil? Do they truly think this?
And yet there that figure stands. Yeah, I mean because
you can say, like, well, hey, that that guitarist, he
is a man possessed up there in the stage, But
it doesn't mean you actually think that the Lord of
Hell has inhabited his body to enable more creative guitar playing.
(01:51):
You know. Yes, Um, that's my own personal thing when
I'm when I'm exercising myself out to be as a bulb.
How do you exercise yourself? Do you like you have
like a prerecorded video mirror mirror? But then you can't
exercise yourself if you're possessed, Right, that's the devil exercising itself. Oh,
(02:15):
I don't know, Robert. It seems to me like there
are all sorts of rules here with this whole exorcism thing,
which we'll talk about in a little bit. But um,
but I think that's piqued our interests because it actually
has been on the rise exorcisms. Yeah, and you know,
we're at heart of science podcasts, so obviously we're not
going to be We're not asking the question are these
(02:36):
people really being possessed by demonic creatures from other planes
of existence? I'm just gonna go ahead and say, no,
that's not actually happening. But but that doesn't mean that
what's happening isn't real in in some senses, and isn't
really fascinating you to try and figure out, Yeah, why
someone would think they were possessed or another person would
(02:58):
tag that person is being in the same that we've
we've talked about alien abduction encounters, and you know, we're
pretty sure on the fact that and we definitely approached
the topic from the standpoint of no, they're not being
abducted by extraterrestrials and probed upon. But but what is
going on is interesting in terms of of their of
what's going on in their brain, how they're interpreting it,
(03:20):
how they're weaving it into their worldview. And there's some
similar stuff to discuss with exorcism. Yeah, and so we'll
be talking about that, We'll be talking about why it's
on the rise, We'll talk about what Mother Teresa has
to do with it, and why they can actually be really,
really dangerous. Yeah, and there's a as far as exorcism
goes again, ancient rights of exorcism exist in various cultures
(03:42):
throughout the world. It basically comes down to ideas that
there is an evil foreign force, spirit, a demon um
they're you know, various versions of this have inhabited somebody's
body and it needs to be removed, either sucked out
or banished um dependent by somebody who is holy. Now,
(04:04):
most people are pretty familiar with the with of course,
the movie The Exorcist or some of these more recent
exorcism movies that have made the rounds, and that's a
very you know, iconic vision of the the Catholic priest,
you know, climbing up the stairs, going in and encountering
a possessed child and uh and having all these uh
vomit and urine, which I call motherhood on a day
(04:27):
to day basis. That's right, that's just what I call it.
As male priests are freaking out, you guys are just
like Tuesday, right exactly. But yeah, I mean that is
the thing that I think most people refer to, and
it is a terrifying movie. Yeah, but not to get
on a whole discussion of horror movies thing, but I
actually think the most disturbing things in that movie are
(04:48):
not the oh my goodness, look what that child is
saying or doing. And I think there's some early like
the early moments where like the child is referring to
an imaginary friend or is making this little um I
forget if it's like a little clay statue and it
resembles the vaguely resembles this uh this ancient demon statue
reference earlier in the film. Like, I think it's a
(05:10):
great film, but I think the moments that work best
or not those iconic crazy moments. No, no, well, and
it is a good build up in the way it's
filmed is really interesting. But yeah, yeah, but this is
not a discussion Exorcist. Sorry, no, no, I mean, but
we have to talk about it. It's huge in in
our parlance when we talk about these types of things.
But then there are there are various other cultures. UM
(05:30):
will take uh to take Judaism for instance. UM in
two thousand nine, just to just to give you just
a taste of another world of exercism. Uh. In two
thousand nine, uh Uh, famed Israeli master of the Kabbala,
Rabbi uh Dovid Batsori, attempted to remove a debuck. Uh.
(05:53):
It's like d y b b uk, which is which
is another you know idea like I say, demons and
evil spirit, cetera. He attempted to remove it from a
Brazilian man via the internet, like via via Skype, which
I which I really love because because we were talking
about this yesterday when we were prepping for this, and
and I was like, well, you know, people do um
(06:15):
like hypnotherapy through Skype, So I wonder if people can
do UM or at least you know, an attempt to
do exorcism through Skype. It seems possible. And sure enough, yeah, yeah,
and then you have this. That's the story that also
mentioned the two fishmongers in a really orthodox orthodox suburb
(06:36):
suburb of New York. They found a carp that was
talking about the end of the world and it was
singing yeah. And then what was There's some quote that
said two men do not share the same dream, and
so they both claim to have heard the carp speaking
in another language saying the end is near. So that's
what caused the fur because everybody's like, well, if two
people witnessed this, then it must be true. Yeah one
(06:59):
man singing are talking, that's just too yeah. Um. But
but then you have various other cultures that are that
are far removed from this. For instance, then in Bedouin tribes,
there's this tradition of like that they're really big into
the whole idea of the evil eye, like like somebody
gives you that weird stare like a stranger. You know,
we just caused No, no, well that's more like, yeah,
(07:21):
because you have an evil stare. Um. But but that
wasn't But but no, you get this evil stare, the
evil eye, and suddenly it's like you know, and for
us it just might kind of mess up your morning,
like whoa, why was the dude on marta stare at
me like that? But but in in some in bed
Win tradition that means like you kind of got this curse,
You've got this evil eye, and and you've gotta have
it removed. And then a female healer would actually take
(07:43):
it out of you and bring it into her. But
she's got enough like holy protections going on and she
can handle it. Yeah, she's probably got some other rituals. Yeah,
so you mean they're very all these different purging rituals. Um.
You know, they're involving everything from like salt water too, uh,
into rolling people up and runs and kind of beating
them with sticks kind of a thing. Um, just about
any way you could possibly imagine trying to coax a
(08:06):
demon out of somebody it's been trying. The latter one
is the one that I said sounded like boor at. Yeah,
but you do. You find it in all different cultures
of religions um, Islam, Hinduism, but we mostly think of
it in the Roman Catholic Church. And they define um
a sort of possession to look like something like this,
where you're speaking in a language that the person has
(08:28):
never learned. Uh. There's an extraordinary show of strength, a
sudden aversion to spiritual things like holy water or the
name of God and severe sleeplessness, lack of appetite, and cutting,
scratching and biting the skin. Okay, so those are sort
of the hallmarks that that Roman Catholicism looks for in
terms of possession. Um. And of course, with Worth's worth
(08:50):
noting that none of those things are are super natural.
You know, it's like anybody, anybody could could could have
those symptoms if they just really wanted to do one
more of their suffering. Well. And then also then we'll
talk about this a little bit later, there's also the interpretation, right,
so you how are you looking at the situation? What
are you interpreting it as if someone is speaking in gobbledygook?
(09:12):
Is that suddenly a language? Um? So there's that uh.
And then there's the question of what does an exorcism
look like according to the Roman Catholic Church, and for them,
it's a twenty four page ritual based on prayers in
which the priest invokes the name of Jesus, uses holy water,
the cross, and can alter the prayer depending on the
reaction that he gets from a possessed person. So it's
(09:35):
kind of it's a manual of sorts, but it's also
one of those things like Okay, hey, if they're not
doing this, go to kin to three A and try
this one. Y, Yeah, skip this and go forward. Um. So,
in a person who claims to be possessed must be
evaluated by doctors to rule out a mental or physical illness,
(09:57):
according to Vatican guidelines issued in and Pope Benedict sixteen
has supported wider use of exorcism in the Catholic Church
as of late, like I believe the last five years
or so, and this sort of wholesale return of Roman Catholicism,
Catholicism back to its roots, so to speak. Okay, so
(10:17):
there you go. That's that's what we're going to focus
on today, is this sort of Roman Catholicism. Um. But
also why people are submitting themselves to this practice. Yeah,
that's the thing, um, I mean, really, the more you
look at it, you look at this, this ritual, this
encounter between the person who either believes they have a
(10:38):
demon in them or is told they have a demon
in them, and in doing so, I think in many
cases come to believe they have a demon in and
the person sent to cleanse them off it the and
generally we're talking about an authority figure of some kind
at least in a spiritual sense. Yeah, and this is
sort of a social role playing, right. You know, we
talked about this a little bit, and you have a
very interesting take on this, which is particularly in earlier years,
(11:02):
although it still happens now. If you are ashamed of
something about yourself, right, and you can't quite square with
the reality that you're living in, UM, then you might
look at this part of yourself as part of your
personality and think that it is part of this demonic
possession because it's an easy way to sort of just
(11:22):
sweep it away without having to actually deal with this
part of your personality. Right. And this is what behavioral
psychologists refer to as cognitive dissidents, which is termed originating
the n and it's basically refers to the feeling of
discomfort the results from holding to conflicting beliefs UM. And
I think like the the most easily UM discussed example
(11:46):
of this is in in some societies, you'll have somebody
who has homosexual desires, but they live in a culture
or a subculture that that tells them that this is
not something that you that this is something you choose.
You cannot naturally feel this way, so you're in a
situation where you feel something, and you feel something real
(12:08):
inside you, but the world around you is telling you
that it cannot be. It cannot be a natural part
of you. Know, So it's not a natural part of you.
You need some sort of story to explain. It's some
sort of some sort of way to to deal with
that cognitive dissonance. Yeah, And typically your brain is going
to deal with it in one of three ways. One,
you may try to change one or more of your
(12:29):
behaviors or beliefs, um. Two, you may try to acquire
new information or beliefs to increase the consonants, which will
lessen the overall dissonance. Right. So whatever part of the
part that's making you uncomfortable, it could perhaps lessen that. Again,
this is a good example of well that the double
made me do it, right Yeah. Um. Three, you could
(12:51):
forget or downplay the importance of the cognition that's butting
up against the contradictory cognition. So when we're talking about
this exercist and really sort of falls into that second category. So, okay,
if it's not if I can't explain this this sexual
preference that I have, which is really butting up against
this um religion that I subscribed to. Then it must
(13:14):
be this outside force acting on which is sort of interesting. Yeah,
and I guess it's the kind of thing kind of
takes uh. I mean just yeah, the the idea of
the devil, Uh, it kind of goes goes back to
that whole idea that like the devil getting made me
do it. You know, So suddenly there's something that's not
really cool with you, Like maybe it's you know, it
could be anything. It could be uh, you know, your
(13:35):
your preference to to go out and have a drink
every now and then, or or you know the fact
that you're kind of a jerk sometimes you know, you
can just explain it away and blame it on some
external force that's not you, and you're like, well, hey,
you know I And then you know, it takes the
heat off of you. It's like I can't really help it.
The devil actually made me do that, so right, and
then you've got the whole social role playing right and um,
(13:58):
as you've already noted that the extra this was completely
iconic movie, you already have sort of a game plan
here for how you're going to be possessed UM and
through folklore, you know, two movies, there has been some
sort of UM guidelines so to speak to how you're
supposed to act. Right. It's kind of like the first
time you're pulled over by a police officer. You know
(14:19):
how it's gonna go because you've seen it happen and
on TV shows and movies, magistration and license right exactly,
UM or UM job interviews like that's another like classic,
like you go in, you meet somebody and you go
through these various exchanges. It's kind of like an exorcism, right.
And then it's that you know, you encountering this figure,
certain business is going to take place, and everyone pretty
(14:40):
much knows how it goes. You're both playing a role, right.
And so then you've got this social contract that you've
entered into, right because you're trying to lessen the dissonance,
and you say, okay, this must be this outside force.
All right, now, I'm going to enter into this sort
of confirmation bias world. And when I say confirmation bias,
it basically means that you're gonna start to see patterns
where there may not be any patterns. Um. This is
(15:03):
from physicist Leonard Meledina's drunkards. Walk books quite interesting when
he talks about confirmation bias. He says, when we are
in the grasp of an illusion, or for that matter,
whenever we have a new idea, instead of searching for
ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to
prove them correct. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and
it presents a major impediment to our ability to break
(15:25):
free from the mist misinterpretation of randomness. So I bring
this up just because if if someone again has this
part of their their self that they might be ashamed of,
or they have a mental illness, or um, they just
might have something going on with themselves that they can't
quite understand or pin down, then they could start to say, well,
(15:48):
I have this feeling in myself and uh, you know,
and I'm acting out in rage at times, and there
are irregularities in my personality. This is starting to fit
into possession, right. So it's very easy for the person
to go down that road, and it's very easy for
the person who is acting on that person as an
(16:08):
exorcist to start to cobble together those details too. And
this is I think really important too. And understanding the
past and how exorcisms came to be because think about
prior to UM, to neuroscience, to gosh, even like the
nineteen seventies, if someone had a toddler, if they had
night terrors, a parent could say, oh my god, my
(16:31):
kid must be possessed because my kid is acting like
she doesn't know me. She's spitting, she's biting, she's vomiting.
You know, I don't know that vomiting actually happens with
night terrors, but she's really upset, and people could easily
misinterpret that for her being possessed. UM and she's seventeen
fifty nine night terror. Yeah. So we're going to continue
(16:55):
to discuss extitism, but first let's take this quick break.
This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow,
and we're back. It's it's worth it's worth stressing again though,
the power of the role playing aspect of all of this,
(17:16):
because I mean that encounter like it's such a I mean,
it's it's such an ego stroke. You know that at
a devil or the devil has inhabited me and it's
responsible for my problems. And now I'm gonna go to
somebody important and they're going to remove it from me,
and I'm gonna start fresh, um, and we're all going
(17:37):
to congratulate. Congratulate because the person who's doing it to
you has all the power, and then saying, oh, look
what I did, and you're saying, oh, thank you for vanquishing. Yeah.
I actually I wasn't present for an exorcism, but I
did like walk in on an exorcism once sort of
like an acknowledge it. And then I was like okay,
and then I walked in back into the next room.
(17:57):
I should probably back up and explain you should we
need Yeah. Uh So when I was in high school,
I had a brief period of light where I was
like really really into um into the church I was
going to at the time, which was a small Southern
Baptist church in in Tennessee. And uh well, I mean
it was a fair sized church for a small town,
but anyway, Southern Baptist church, and they would have this
(18:19):
thing for the youth on on weekend evenings, like maybe
it was like every Friday for a while or something.
But they would have a coffee shop, you know, kind
of like the old nineteen fifties Christian coffee shop. You know,
they have live acoustic music and kids would have cappuccinos
and stuff, and you know, and that's all well and good.
You know, I would you know, I might go to
something like that today. But but also we were like
(18:43):
a lot of teenagers that were really into this, uh,
this spirituality at the time and into what it into
what it might mean and uh. And you know, teenagers
think they're pretty important and they see the world they
want to fight the man or or stand up and
make a difference in the world. And so what better
way than like dealing with the devil head on, which
(19:04):
also plays into the whole angst, right, Yeah, the teenager's experience.
Not to mention naval gazinglin why am I here? Yeah exactly?
It like it, it plays into into all of that.
So so I remember like exploring something like I remember
going to a church we uh with a friend of mine.
We went down to check out this church and in Huntsville, Alabama,
and it was one of these where they would touch
(19:24):
people and they would fall down, not healed, but laughing hysterically.
Like everyone who was touched would fall down to laughing hysterically,
and and it was really something to behold because it
was you know, it was like this was the environment
everyone was acting, and this was the social contract of
this scenario where this man would would touch you and
(19:46):
heal you and like in a hysterical sense, and you
would you would fall down and then they'd come and
cover you with a blanket. And so if if that
is possible, then where you can where you can enter
a social contract where a man's touch will bring ing
out this you know, this total positive response in you,
then it makes perfect sense that that the that that
(20:07):
that you would have an exit, that the exorcism role
playing scenario would work as well. But but anyway, so
one night I was at the coffee shop and and
my my friend there came up and he said, he said, hey, uh,
you should come check out in the back room. We
have we have this this guy and he has the
devil in him. We're going to exercise him. And uh.
(20:28):
And I was like, all right, you know, I'll check I'll,
you know, i'll I'm interested in saying this. So I
walked back there and sure enough, there's this guy, this
other kid, you know, I don't know, he's like, you know,
thirteen fourteen something like that, and uh, and he's just
setting there kind of look looking kind of dejected, you know,
like he's got some some heavy stuff on his mind.
You know, he's not you know, strapped to a bed.
He's not cursing and spitting or anything crazy. You know,
(20:50):
he just looks like he's got some stuff he's dealing with.
And uh. And so I was kind of like, okay, cool,
I'll leave this to you guys. Um he took off.
You're like, I'm not saying around for the Well, yeah,
I don't know. I guess I felt like I probably
didn't have much to offer. My exorcism skills weren't very
good then and they haven't improved over the years. So um,
so I was not going to be much help. So
(21:11):
I just left them to carry it out. But it was,
you know, it was kind of like I can easily
imagine like a dude feeling like a teenager, feeling kind
of depressed, like a lot of teenagers do. And uh.
And you're in an environment where like, hey, this might
be the problem and we can fix it, you know,
why not why not engage in that situation? Well, and
that's what I think is interesting about that scenario because
(21:31):
it seems like a safe sort of scenario for a release, right,
because that's what we're really talking about, whether or not
you're being touched by someone and and made to laugh hysterically,
or if if the devil is being vanished from you.
It's sort of a metaphorical thing in these cases, right,
And neither one is really that far from like just
the the old fashioned come to Jesus, you know, thing
like walk forward and be saved kind of a deal
(21:54):
where you're calling on people like, hey, come try this out.
It'll change your life. And then ultimately it's kind of
well why not. All I have to do is walk
down there and if it doesn't work, I'm out, you know,
right right in this in this sense, it's really is
very safe. It's a I've heard it referred to as
like a proto psychotherapy session, you know. It's it's it's
a bit of psychotherapy. You can get it out of
(22:16):
your system, so to speak. Um, And I think again
with with kids, it's really interesting because you do sort
of you are dwelling in that that area of your
imagination at that time and trying to work out a
lot of the world's mysteries. At least I did, And
you know, I mentioned to you that Dark Forces was
a book series of my brother and I just consumed
when I was very little and very little eight or
(22:37):
ten or something, um, and was completely obsessed with with
the occult and and all these different things. So I
think it's a I think it's an interesting way to
go about it. I think where it gets dangerous and
problematic is when uh, exorcism is foisted upon people who
don't really have a voice for themselves, and that can
be kids and teenagers and certainly mentally folks. And they've
(23:02):
been deaths. I mean, there's been like I was, I
think I mentioned earlier how saltwater sometimes used. There have
been people who have died from saltwater poisoning due to
exorcisms people have I mean, it's you can do a
Google news search and you'll find some rather harrowing results.
Oh yeah, yeah, there's there's a laundry list of of
different ways that people have died, and unfortunately a lot
(23:22):
of kids too, with the hands usually of their parents. UM.
And of course the Catholic Church will tell you, okay,
well we screen, but again it's up for interpretation. And
in the earlier days, like in the seventies, I think
they were looking for people who had epilepsy and saying, oh,
well they must be epileptic. They don't worry there, you're
not possessed. But there wasn't really a good understanding of
(23:43):
mental illness or even something like Tourette Um. So you
know if you if you had Tourette syndrome and like
teen fifty you have, you know that you might be
an atmosphere where that cultural script said that you were possessed.
But I mean recently there have been deaths um. I
think one of the most famous ones is annalyse Michelle.
This is a twenty two year old German woman who
(24:04):
died from starvation and dehydration and underwent sixty seven exorcisms
over a year and a half period. Uh yeah, by
the church, um I should add. And then there were
Pentecostal ministers in San Francisco who pummeled a woman to
death in nine as they tried to drive out her demons. Uh.
In nineteen seventeen year old girl was suffocated by her
(24:28):
mom with a plastic bag in effort to destroy the
demon inside her. And most recently, a two year old
died um in Fort Wayne, Indiana this year from an
exorcism exorcism performed by his mother. And I won't go
into details because it's terribly depressing. Sorry, sorry, but you know,
(24:49):
I think it's important just to throw that out that, um,
there has been an uptick in exorcism. So it's that's
why I think you have to look at it as
a whole and say, Okay, here's the metaphorical part, not
not a problem. You know, kids working things out, um,
people working things out for themselves on a metaphorical level.
Here's the physical level where it can go way too far.
(25:11):
And this cognitive dissonance really becomes a problem if you
submit yourself to that level where you say, okay, I
submit my mind in my body to this act um.
And actually the uptaking exorcism is happening here in the
United States and Poland, in Mexico as well, and in
a November article in The New York Times called for
(25:32):
Catholics interest and exorcism is revived. UH says priests say
they're overwhelmed with requests for exorcisms in the US. Conferences
have been held to prepare more priests and bishops for exorcisms. UM.
A recent UH conference they had sixty six priests and
fifty six bishops turn out, and the goal was for
(25:52):
each diocese to have someone who could at least screen request.
So the Catholic Church will say, though, that the purposes
not necessarily to revive the practice, but to help Catholic
clergy members learn how to distinguish who really needs an
exorcism from who really needs a psychiatrist or pastoral care.
M okay, which I still think, Okay, well, all that's interesting,
(26:14):
and yet it does seem like a practice that is
should have maybe gone away within the age of horse
and buggies and uh. And then there's the whole point
that Pope Benedict sixteenth has been returning to more sort
of classical um, I guess ways of looking at the
(26:35):
church and um and caring for its church members. Yeah,
I guess I would. I would hope that most people
that would come in seeking an exorcism would be it
would would be advised to pursue various other treatments. It
just seems I just I do hate to think of
somebody with any kind of legitimate problem being referred to
(26:56):
the exorcist. Yeah. Yeah, and this this art coal it said, um,
this man by doctor Apple be a longtime observer of
the bishop said, what they're trying to do in restoring
exorcisms is to strengthen enhance what seems to be lost
in the church, which is the sense that the church
is not like any other institution. It's supernatural, and the
key players in that our heart are the hierarchy and
(27:18):
the priests who can be given the faculties of exorcism. So,
you know, the syneca me says that it's just it's
a it's a bit of a power thing. Yeah, I
don't know. I can't get too into hole into them.
I mean, I'm as discussing the past. I'm all open
for like the you know, the positive aspects of various religions,
you know, take take what you want and run with them.
But I don't know, when you start throwing devils into
(27:40):
the whole mix, it gets a little problematic in my opinion,
it does. It doesn't. Like I said, for the metaphorical part,
I'm all for that, this sort of like proto psychotherapy
of hey, let's let's work this out with this part amount. Uh,
But yeah, when it reaches the physical realm, it's a
bit problematic. Um. Mother Teresa, did you know that she
had an exorcism performed on her. This was late in life, right, yeah, yeah,
(28:04):
she underwent an exorcism after a bout of insomnia was
blamed on the devil, so says the Archbishop of Calcutta,
Henry Sebastian Disusa, who happened to be in the hospital
with her at the same time. And she would had
been admitted for heart problems before her death in September,
And so when doctors couldn't find a medical reason for
(28:27):
her sleeplessness, he thought that she was being attacked by
the devil and he wanted her to calm down, and
so he went to her and said, would you like
to have an exorcism performed on you? And she said, okay, sure.
Well I guess there are two ways of looking to seither.
This is outrageous because Mother Teresa was you know, great woman,
(28:47):
did all this work, Beacon of light, beacon of light,
you know, super holy. Why would she have to deal
with this especially right, you know, right, why would the
devil dog her now? But then also you could look
at it, well, she's super you know, um hooked into
all into the spiritual world. You know, she's like a
So she's kind of like a computer running without firewalls
(29:07):
or virus protection, and so if she gets one bad
email in it could it could mess up the whole system.
So yeah, yeah, and he claims that she she was
fine afterward, and um, the all they did was a
prayer of protection, So it wasn't like they were I
imagine I wasn't there. I haven't read any accounts, but
I would like to think that they were just sort
(29:29):
of saying the prayer and not um not like for
four hours screaming in her Yeah. Maybe maybe she got
an abbreviated version. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, someone was
standing over you for four hours screaming prayers in your face.
Do you think you get so upset that you would vomit? Maybe?
I mean I'm just saying like, this is when the
hallmarks too, right. I mean I get kind of auntie
(29:49):
if I have to set still for you know, over
a half hour. So yeah, I imagine it would be
pretty rough. Yeah. I'm just thinking about it because especially
if the expercis wouldn't let me like check my my iPhone,
and then I would be like, ah, this is the worst.
Maybe I am possessed by the devil. I'm just thinking that,
you know. I mean, it's certainly something that could get
(30:11):
a person riled up and start behaving unusually, if if
they didn't already have some sort of pre existing condition
that would exacerbate that. But anyway, did you know also
that the Pope has a chief exorcist? Oh? I bet
he does. Yes, of course he does. Um. And his
name is Father Kirila and Morth and he has carried
out more than seventy thousand exorcisms in a career spanning
(30:34):
twenty four years. Wow. Do you think there's ever like
a big Vatican like Christmas party? And because I'm just thinking, like, uh, um,
our friend guy, the Vatican astronomer and protector of that
does he is the guy who protects the meteorite collection.
I mean that maybe another dude, but all right, So
so imagine the Christmas party where uh, for a guy
(30:56):
walks up and then he runs into the the exercy.
It's like, hey, guy, I'm in charge of keeping an
eye on the cosmos for for for the Vatican, and
you know, and these are my science credentials. What do
you do? Well? I cast the devil out of people.
You know, those guys are not gonna sit probably next
to each other at the Christmas dinner. Like I can
(31:17):
tell you that they probably whoever was planning the event
was like, do not put these two together because this
opposite ends the where the Catholic churches in modern time. Yeah,
because they're like Father and MOR's going to start saying
that this thing again, this, this is actually quite from
We have cardinals who don't believe in Christ, bishops connected
with demons. Then we have these stories of pedophilia. You
(31:39):
can see the rot when we speak of Satan's smoke
in the Holy rooms of the Vatican. So he feels like,
I mean to him, like the Satan's around and this
is the reason for all the horrible things that have
happened to people in into the Roman Catholic Church. Yeah,
well it certainly takes the heat off of people. Yeah,
but definitely do not put consulmar me mis dude together. Yeah.
(32:03):
All right, Well well that let's let's exercise some listener
mail mail bag here, it's getting a little backed up.
Let's get a little coffee. Yeah, we have one here
from a listener by the name of Alicia and Alicia
Wrightson and says I used to work in my college bookstore.
One day we received some boxes with a funny word
(32:23):
on him. I didn't know what the word meant until
I opened a box and saw what was inside a
blood pressure cuff. The word was and we take a
shot at this vy gummm on the meter alright, like
I'm am on a meter. Yeah, it's just the side
of the word. Sent me into utter hysterics, and I
(32:44):
was useless for a good half hour. Then I said
it out loud, which got got the giggle started all
over again. To this day, it remains the funniest word
I've ever seen or said, and it can still make
me giggle. Um. Keep up the great work with the podcast,
and please check out my band The Wag at the
Wag get banned dot com. Some of your HSW mates
(33:04):
have our CD. There you go. Um, And then we
have and I did check out that link to make
sure it didn't like, actually go somewhere horrible. It does
go to an actual fans website. All right, good good.
I'm not just simply I'm not just gonna throw links
out here. Um. We also heard from a listener by
the name of Samuel Um and uh which Samuel. If
(33:29):
I'm just to get into the whole devil thing. Again,
Samuel means venom of God and it was like an
old demon name the old is this venom and not poison? Yeah,
poison of God, venom of God. I don't know anyway.
That's like again in high school is really into all
that stuff. So, but I don't have all the knowledge
with me anymore. Anyway, Samuel the human not a demon,
(33:49):
um wrote in had some very nice things to say,
and then added at the end, I just listened to
the podcast uh Religion in Space and Roberts saying something
along the line with him loving idea of religion being
carried into space in June really made me laugh, as
I thought it would be the worst nightmare of Dawkins
or someone like him. Also, I imagine that a religion
developed for existence in space could be like Julie joked
(34:12):
and revolve around checking valves and taking data the same
way old religions like Christianity and Islam condemn eating shellfish
and uh, and shellfish, which is a primitive lifestyle, can
easily cause a disease if verage wrong way. Um, So anyway,
that's interesting. Indeed, Yeah, there uh, there are a number
of people who would who would get in quite a
(34:33):
tizzy at the thought of of us taking religion in
space as we as we discussed. Indeed, yeah, I thought
the Dawkins part it was interesting as well. Um, yeah,
he certainly probably would flip. Yeah. Um, so hey, uh,
we would love to hear from you guys. Uh, your
thoughts about previous podcasts, but also about this whole exorcism thing.
(34:54):
What are your thoughts on it? Do you, like me,
have any strange encounters with exorcism or or just kind
of perplexing religious experience in the past. Uh, let us know.
I'd love to hear what you have to say. Um
and uh. And you can also find us on Facebook
and Twitter. We are blow the Mind on both of
those and we regularly update that with al sorts of
(35:14):
cool links, updates about what our latest podcasts are and
what we're planning to do in the future, and we
take requests. I believe I believe this one was, like
you said, it was requested by a few different people
before we decided who wanted to say, why in the
heck are there so many exorcisms? Yeah? What's up with
these actives going on? Where can I get one? You
can also email us at Blow the Mind at House
to Fooks dot com. Be sure to check out our
(35:41):
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
possibilities of tomorrow.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie.
You know, the other day I was feeling, uh, feeling
kind of like a bundle of nerves, and so after
work I decided to to go to the local y
(00:25):
c A and had an exorcism done. I've heard about
this class. Yeah, yeah, you just go in as a priest.
They just retry it in, pull the demon out of you.
That's cos you know, you're angst and then wham, the
rest of the evening you're just you know, carefree, laid back.
Doesn't it end in laughter yoga? Well, laughter yoga's next door,
(00:46):
but it's why so you can hear it. And it's
kind of hard sometimes to figure out which classes which,
Yeah is it exorcism, is it the laughter yoga? Is
it the children's karate class? I don't know. It all
kind of mills together. Yeah, yeah, well that's the wife
for you. Yeah, but I jove exorcism. A lot of
people arguing it's not quite to the point yet where
you can go and take it at the y But
there are a lot of folks getting the devil yanked
(01:07):
out of him by various holy people. It's true. In
a two thousand and five gallop pole, they found that
of Americans believe that quote people on this earth are
sometimes possessed by the devil unquote. And they didn't necessarily
go and put this in their um straight up findings
as they normally do, because they couldn't quite construe what
(01:28):
that meant. The gallop pole was like, m do they
mean metaphorically possessed by the devil? Do they truly think this?
And yet there that figure stands. Yeah, I mean because
you can say, like, well, hey, that that guitarist, he
is a man possessed up there in the stage, But
it doesn't mean you actually think that the Lord of
Hell has inhabited his body to enable more creative guitar playing.
(01:51):
You know. Yes, Um, that's my own personal thing when
I'm when I'm exercising myself out to be as a bulb.
How do you exercise yourself? Do you like you have
like a prerecorded video mirror mirror? But then you can't
exercise yourself if you're possessed, Right, that's the devil exercising itself. Oh,
(02:15):
I don't know, Robert. It seems to me like there
are all sorts of rules here with this whole exorcism thing,
which we'll talk about in a little bit. But um,
but I think that's piqued our interests because it actually
has been on the rise exorcisms. Yeah, and you know,
we're at heart of science podcasts, so obviously we're not
going to be We're not asking the question are these
(02:36):
people really being possessed by demonic creatures from other planes
of existence? I'm just gonna go ahead and say, no,
that's not actually happening. But but that doesn't mean that
what's happening isn't real in in some senses, and isn't
really fascinating you to try and figure out, Yeah, why
someone would think they were possessed or another person would
(02:58):
tag that person is being in the same that we've
we've talked about alien abduction encounters, and you know, we're
pretty sure on the fact that and we definitely approached
the topic from the standpoint of no, they're not being
abducted by extraterrestrials and probed upon. But but what is
going on is interesting in terms of of their of
what's going on in their brain, how they're interpreting it,
(03:20):
how they're weaving it into their worldview. And there's some
similar stuff to discuss with exorcism. Yeah, and so we'll
be talking about that, We'll be talking about why it's
on the rise, We'll talk about what Mother Teresa has
to do with it, and why they can actually be really,
really dangerous. Yeah, and there's a as far as exorcism
goes again, ancient rights of exorcism exist in various cultures
(03:42):
throughout the world. It basically comes down to ideas that
there is an evil foreign force, spirit, a demon um
they're you know, various versions of this have inhabited somebody's
body and it needs to be removed, either sucked out
or banished um dependent by somebody who is holy. Now,
(04:04):
most people are pretty familiar with the with of course,
the movie The Exorcist or some of these more recent
exorcism movies that have made the rounds, and that's a
very you know, iconic vision of the the Catholic priest,
you know, climbing up the stairs, going in and encountering
a possessed child and uh and having all these uh
vomit and urine, which I call motherhood on a day
(04:27):
to day basis. That's right, that's just what I call it.
As male priests are freaking out, you guys are just
like Tuesday, right exactly. But yeah, I mean that is
the thing that I think most people refer to, and
it is a terrifying movie. Yeah, but not to get
on a whole discussion of horror movies thing, but I
actually think the most disturbing things in that movie are
(04:48):
not the oh my goodness, look what that child is
saying or doing. And I think there's some early like
the early moments where like the child is referring to
an imaginary friend or is making this little um I
forget if it's like a little clay statue and it
resembles the vaguely resembles this uh this ancient demon statue
reference earlier in the film. Like, I think it's a
(05:10):
great film, but I think the moments that work best
or not those iconic crazy moments. No, no, well, and
it is a good build up in the way it's
filmed is really interesting. But yeah, yeah, but this is
not a discussion Exorcist. Sorry, no, no, I mean, but
we have to talk about it. It's huge in in
our parlance when we talk about these types of things.
But then there are there are various other cultures. UM
(05:30):
will take uh to take Judaism for instance. UM in
two thousand nine, just to just to give you just
a taste of another world of exercism. Uh. In two
thousand nine, uh Uh, famed Israeli master of the Kabbala,
Rabbi uh Dovid Batsori, attempted to remove a debuck. Uh.
(05:53):
It's like d y b b uk, which is which
is another you know idea like I say, demons and
evil spirit, cetera. He attempted to remove it from a
Brazilian man via the internet, like via via Skype, which
I which I really love because because we were talking
about this yesterday when we were prepping for this, and
and I was like, well, you know, people do um
(06:15):
like hypnotherapy through Skype, So I wonder if people can
do UM or at least you know, an attempt to
do exorcism through Skype. It seems possible. And sure enough, yeah, yeah,
and then you have this. That's the story that also
mentioned the two fishmongers in a really orthodox orthodox suburb
(06:36):
suburb of New York. They found a carp that was
talking about the end of the world and it was
singing yeah. And then what was There's some quote that
said two men do not share the same dream, and
so they both claim to have heard the carp speaking
in another language saying the end is near. So that's
what caused the fur because everybody's like, well, if two
people witnessed this, then it must be true. Yeah one
(06:59):
man singing are talking, that's just too yeah. Um. But
but then you have various other cultures that are that
are far removed from this. For instance, then in Bedouin tribes,
there's this tradition of like that they're really big into
the whole idea of the evil eye, like like somebody
gives you that weird stare like a stranger. You know,
we just caused No, no, well that's more like, yeah,
(07:21):
because you have an evil stare. Um. But but that
wasn't But but no, you get this evil stare, the
evil eye, and suddenly it's like you know, and for
us it just might kind of mess up your morning,
like whoa, why was the dude on marta stare at
me like that? But but in in some in bed
Win tradition that means like you kind of got this curse,
You've got this evil eye, and and you've gotta have
it removed. And then a female healer would actually take
(07:43):
it out of you and bring it into her. But
she's got enough like holy protections going on and she
can handle it. Yeah, she's probably got some other rituals. Yeah,
so you mean they're very all these different purging rituals. Um.
You know, they're involving everything from like salt water too, uh,
into rolling people up and runs and kind of beating
them with sticks kind of a thing. Um, just about
any way you could possibly imagine trying to coax a
(08:06):
demon out of somebody it's been trying. The latter one
is the one that I said sounded like boor at. Yeah,
but you do. You find it in all different cultures
of religions um, Islam, Hinduism, but we mostly think of
it in the Roman Catholic Church. And they define um
a sort of possession to look like something like this,
where you're speaking in a language that the person has
(08:28):
never learned. Uh. There's an extraordinary show of strength, a
sudden aversion to spiritual things like holy water or the
name of God and severe sleeplessness, lack of appetite, and cutting,
scratching and biting the skin. Okay, so those are sort
of the hallmarks that that Roman Catholicism looks for in
terms of possession. Um. And of course, with Worth's worth
(08:50):
noting that none of those things are are super natural.
You know, it's like anybody, anybody could could could have
those symptoms if they just really wanted to do one
more of their suffering. Well. And then also then we'll
talk about this a little bit later, there's also the interpretation, right,
so you how are you looking at the situation? What
are you interpreting it as if someone is speaking in gobbledygook?
(09:12):
Is that suddenly a language? Um? So there's that uh.
And then there's the question of what does an exorcism
look like according to the Roman Catholic Church, and for them,
it's a twenty four page ritual based on prayers in
which the priest invokes the name of Jesus, uses holy water,
the cross, and can alter the prayer depending on the
reaction that he gets from a possessed person. So it's
(09:35):
kind of it's a manual of sorts, but it's also
one of those things like Okay, hey, if they're not
doing this, go to kin to three A and try
this one. Y, Yeah, skip this and go forward. Um. So,
in a person who claims to be possessed must be
evaluated by doctors to rule out a mental or physical illness,
(09:57):
according to Vatican guidelines issued in and Pope Benedict sixteen
has supported wider use of exorcism in the Catholic Church
as of late, like I believe the last five years
or so, and this sort of wholesale return of Roman Catholicism,
Catholicism back to its roots, so to speak. Okay, so
(10:17):
there you go. That's that's what we're going to focus
on today, is this sort of Roman Catholicism. Um. But
also why people are submitting themselves to this practice. Yeah,
that's the thing, um, I mean, really, the more you
look at it, you look at this, this ritual, this
encounter between the person who either believes they have a
(10:38):
demon in them or is told they have a demon
in them, and in doing so, I think in many
cases come to believe they have a demon in and
the person sent to cleanse them off it the and
generally we're talking about an authority figure of some kind
at least in a spiritual sense. Yeah, and this is
sort of a social role playing, right. You know, we
talked about this a little bit, and you have a
very interesting take on this, which is particularly in earlier years,
(11:02):
although it still happens now. If you are ashamed of
something about yourself, right, and you can't quite square with
the reality that you're living in, UM, then you might
look at this part of yourself as part of your
personality and think that it is part of this demonic
possession because it's an easy way to sort of just
(11:22):
sweep it away without having to actually deal with this
part of your personality. Right. And this is what behavioral
psychologists refer to as cognitive dissidents, which is termed originating
the n and it's basically refers to the feeling of
discomfort the results from holding to conflicting beliefs UM. And
I think like the the most easily UM discussed example
(11:46):
of this is in in some societies, you'll have somebody
who has homosexual desires, but they live in a culture
or a subculture that that tells them that this is
not something that you that this is something you choose.
You cannot naturally feel this way, so you're in a
situation where you feel something, and you feel something real
(12:08):
inside you, but the world around you is telling you
that it cannot be. It cannot be a natural part
of you. Know, So it's not a natural part of you.
You need some sort of story to explain. It's some
sort of some sort of way to to deal with
that cognitive dissonance. Yeah, And typically your brain is going
to deal with it in one of three ways. One,
you may try to change one or more of your
(12:29):
behaviors or beliefs, um. Two, you may try to acquire
new information or beliefs to increase the consonants, which will
lessen the overall dissonance. Right. So whatever part of the
part that's making you uncomfortable, it could perhaps lessen that. Again,
this is a good example of well that the double
made me do it, right Yeah. Um. Three, you could
(12:51):
forget or downplay the importance of the cognition that's butting
up against the contradictory cognition. So when we're talking about
this exercist and really sort of falls into that second category. So, okay,
if it's not if I can't explain this this sexual
preference that I have, which is really butting up against
this um religion that I subscribed to. Then it must
(13:14):
be this outside force acting on which is sort of interesting. Yeah,
and I guess it's the kind of thing kind of
takes uh. I mean just yeah, the the idea of
the devil, Uh, it kind of goes goes back to
that whole idea that like the devil getting made me
do it. You know, So suddenly there's something that's not
really cool with you, Like maybe it's you know, it
could be anything. It could be uh, you know, your
(13:35):
your preference to to go out and have a drink
every now and then, or or you know the fact
that you're kind of a jerk sometimes you know, you
can just explain it away and blame it on some
external force that's not you, and you're like, well, hey,
you know I And then you know, it takes the
heat off of you. It's like I can't really help it.
The devil actually made me do that, so right, and
then you've got the whole social role playing right and um,
(13:58):
as you've already noted that the extra this was completely
iconic movie, you already have sort of a game plan
here for how you're going to be possessed UM and
through folklore, you know, two movies, there has been some
sort of UM guidelines so to speak to how you're
supposed to act. Right. It's kind of like the first
time you're pulled over by a police officer. You know
(14:19):
how it's gonna go because you've seen it happen and
on TV shows and movies, magistration and license right exactly,
UM or UM job interviews like that's another like classic,
like you go in, you meet somebody and you go
through these various exchanges. It's kind of like an exorcism, right.
And then it's that you know, you encountering this figure,
certain business is going to take place, and everyone pretty
(14:40):
much knows how it goes. You're both playing a role, right.
And so then you've got this social contract that you've
entered into, right because you're trying to lessen the dissonance,
and you say, okay, this must be this outside force.
All right, now, I'm going to enter into this sort
of confirmation bias world. And when I say confirmation bias,
it basically means that you're gonna start to see patterns
where there may not be any patterns. Um. This is
(15:03):
from physicist Leonard Meledina's drunkards. Walk books quite interesting when
he talks about confirmation bias. He says, when we are
in the grasp of an illusion, or for that matter,
whenever we have a new idea, instead of searching for
ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to
prove them correct. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and
it presents a major impediment to our ability to break
(15:25):
free from the mist misinterpretation of randomness. So I bring
this up just because if if someone again has this
part of their their self that they might be ashamed of,
or they have a mental illness, or um, they just
might have something going on with themselves that they can't
quite understand or pin down, then they could start to say, well,
(15:48):
I have this feeling in myself and uh, you know,
and I'm acting out in rage at times, and there
are irregularities in my personality. This is starting to fit
into possession, right. So it's very easy for the person
to go down that road, and it's very easy for
the person who is acting on that person as an
(16:08):
exorcist to start to cobble together those details too. And
this is I think really important too. And understanding the
past and how exorcisms came to be because think about
prior to UM, to neuroscience, to gosh, even like the
nineteen seventies, if someone had a toddler, if they had
night terrors, a parent could say, oh my god, my
(16:31):
kid must be possessed because my kid is acting like
she doesn't know me. She's spitting, she's biting, she's vomiting.
You know, I don't know that vomiting actually happens with
night terrors, but she's really upset, and people could easily
misinterpret that for her being possessed. UM and she's seventeen
fifty nine night terror. Yeah. So we're going to continue
(16:55):
to discuss extitism, but first let's take this quick break.
This presentation is brought to you by Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow,
and we're back. It's it's worth it's worth stressing again though,
the power of the role playing aspect of all of this,
(17:16):
because I mean that encounter like it's such a I mean,
it's it's such an ego stroke. You know that at
a devil or the devil has inhabited me and it's
responsible for my problems. And now I'm gonna go to
somebody important and they're going to remove it from me,
and I'm gonna start fresh, um, and we're all going
(17:37):
to congratulate. Congratulate because the person who's doing it to
you has all the power, and then saying, oh, look
what I did, and you're saying, oh, thank you for vanquishing. Yeah.
I actually I wasn't present for an exorcism, but I
did like walk in on an exorcism once sort of
like an acknowledge it. And then I was like okay,
and then I walked in back into the next room.
(17:57):
I should probably back up and explain you should we
need Yeah. Uh So when I was in high school,
I had a brief period of light where I was
like really really into um into the church I was
going to at the time, which was a small Southern
Baptist church in in Tennessee. And uh well, I mean
it was a fair sized church for a small town,
but anyway, Southern Baptist church, and they would have this
(18:19):
thing for the youth on on weekend evenings, like maybe
it was like every Friday for a while or something.
But they would have a coffee shop, you know, kind
of like the old nineteen fifties Christian coffee shop. You know,
they have live acoustic music and kids would have cappuccinos
and stuff, and you know, and that's all well and good.
You know, I would you know, I might go to
something like that today. But but also we were like
(18:43):
a lot of teenagers that were really into this, uh,
this spirituality at the time and into what it into
what it might mean and uh. And you know, teenagers
think they're pretty important and they see the world they
want to fight the man or or stand up and
make a difference in the world. And so what better
way than like dealing with the devil head on, which
(19:04):
also plays into the whole angst, right, Yeah, the teenager's experience.
Not to mention naval gazinglin why am I here? Yeah exactly?
It like it, it plays into into all of that.
So so I remember like exploring something like I remember
going to a church we uh with a friend of mine.
We went down to check out this church and in Huntsville, Alabama,
and it was one of these where they would touch
(19:24):
people and they would fall down, not healed, but laughing hysterically.
Like everyone who was touched would fall down to laughing hysterically,
and and it was really something to behold because it
was you know, it was like this was the environment
everyone was acting, and this was the social contract of
this scenario where this man would would touch you and
(19:46):
heal you and like in a hysterical sense, and you
would you would fall down and then they'd come and
cover you with a blanket. And so if if that
is possible, then where you can where you can enter
a social contract where a man's touch will bring ing
out this you know, this total positive response in you,
then it makes perfect sense that that the that that
(20:07):
that you would have an exit, that the exorcism role
playing scenario would work as well. But but anyway, so
one night I was at the coffee shop and and
my my friend there came up and he said, he said, hey, uh,
you should come check out in the back room. We
have we have this this guy and he has the
devil in him. We're going to exercise him. And uh.
(20:28):
And I was like, all right, you know, I'll check I'll,
you know, i'll I'm interested in saying this. So I
walked back there and sure enough, there's this guy, this
other kid, you know, I don't know, he's like, you know,
thirteen fourteen something like that, and uh, and he's just
setting there kind of look looking kind of dejected, you know,
like he's got some some heavy stuff on his mind.
You know, he's not you know, strapped to a bed.
He's not cursing and spitting or anything crazy. You know,
(20:50):
he just looks like he's got some stuff he's dealing with.
And uh. And so I was kind of like, okay, cool,
I'll leave this to you guys. Um he took off.
You're like, I'm not saying around for the Well, yeah,
I don't know. I guess I felt like I probably
didn't have much to offer. My exorcism skills weren't very
good then and they haven't improved over the years. So um,
so I was not going to be much help. So
(21:11):
I just left them to carry it out. But it was,
you know, it was kind of like I can easily
imagine like a dude feeling like a teenager, feeling kind
of depressed, like a lot of teenagers do. And uh.
And you're in an environment where like, hey, this might
be the problem and we can fix it, you know,
why not why not engage in that situation? Well, and
that's what I think is interesting about that scenario because
(21:31):
it seems like a safe sort of scenario for a release, right,
because that's what we're really talking about, whether or not
you're being touched by someone and and made to laugh hysterically,
or if if the devil is being vanished from you.
It's sort of a metaphorical thing in these cases, right,
And neither one is really that far from like just
the the old fashioned come to Jesus, you know, thing
like walk forward and be saved kind of a deal
(21:54):
where you're calling on people like, hey, come try this out.
It'll change your life. And then ultimately it's kind of
well why not. All I have to do is walk
down there and if it doesn't work, I'm out, you know,
right right in this in this sense, it's really is
very safe. It's a I've heard it referred to as
like a proto psychotherapy session, you know. It's it's it's
a bit of psychotherapy. You can get it out of
(22:16):
your system, so to speak. Um, And I think again
with with kids, it's really interesting because you do sort
of you are dwelling in that that area of your
imagination at that time and trying to work out a
lot of the world's mysteries. At least I did, And
you know, I mentioned to you that Dark Forces was
a book series of my brother and I just consumed
when I was very little and very little eight or
(22:37):
ten or something, um, and was completely obsessed with with
the occult and and all these different things. So I
think it's a I think it's an interesting way to
go about it. I think where it gets dangerous and
problematic is when uh, exorcism is foisted upon people who
don't really have a voice for themselves, and that can
be kids and teenagers and certainly mentally folks. And they've
(23:02):
been deaths. I mean, there's been like I was, I
think I mentioned earlier how saltwater sometimes used. There have
been people who have died from saltwater poisoning due to
exorcisms people have I mean, it's you can do a
Google news search and you'll find some rather harrowing results.
Oh yeah, yeah, there's there's a laundry list of of
different ways that people have died, and unfortunately a lot
(23:22):
of kids too, with the hands usually of their parents. UM.
And of course the Catholic Church will tell you, okay,
well we screen, but again it's up for interpretation. And
in the earlier days, like in the seventies, I think
they were looking for people who had epilepsy and saying, oh,
well they must be epileptic. They don't worry there, you're
not possessed. But there wasn't really a good understanding of
(23:43):
mental illness or even something like Tourette Um. So you
know if you if you had Tourette syndrome and like
teen fifty you have, you know that you might be
an atmosphere where that cultural script said that you were possessed.
But I mean recently there have been deaths um. I
think one of the most famous ones is annalyse Michelle.
This is a twenty two year old German woman who
(24:04):
died from starvation and dehydration and underwent sixty seven exorcisms
over a year and a half period. Uh yeah, by
the church, um I should add. And then there were
Pentecostal ministers in San Francisco who pummeled a woman to
death in nine as they tried to drive out her demons. Uh.
In nineteen seventeen year old girl was suffocated by her
(24:28):
mom with a plastic bag in effort to destroy the
demon inside her. And most recently, a two year old
died um in Fort Wayne, Indiana this year from an
exorcism exorcism performed by his mother. And I won't go
into details because it's terribly depressing. Sorry, sorry, but you know,
(24:49):
I think it's important just to throw that out that, um,
there has been an uptick in exorcism. So it's that's
why I think you have to look at it as
a whole and say, Okay, here's the metaphorical part, not
not a problem. You know, kids working things out, um,
people working things out for themselves on a metaphorical level.
Here's the physical level where it can go way too far.
(25:11):
And this cognitive dissonance really becomes a problem if you
submit yourself to that level where you say, okay, I
submit my mind in my body to this act um.
And actually the uptaking exorcism is happening here in the
United States and Poland, in Mexico as well, and in
a November article in The New York Times called for
(25:32):
Catholics interest and exorcism is revived. UH says priests say
they're overwhelmed with requests for exorcisms in the US. Conferences
have been held to prepare more priests and bishops for exorcisms. UM.
A recent UH conference they had sixty six priests and
fifty six bishops turn out, and the goal was for
(25:52):
each diocese to have someone who could at least screen request.
So the Catholic Church will say, though, that the purposes
not necessarily to revive the practice, but to help Catholic
clergy members learn how to distinguish who really needs an
exorcism from who really needs a psychiatrist or pastoral care.
M okay, which I still think, Okay, well, all that's interesting,
(26:14):
and yet it does seem like a practice that is
should have maybe gone away within the age of horse
and buggies and uh. And then there's the whole point
that Pope Benedict sixteenth has been returning to more sort
of classical um, I guess ways of looking at the
(26:35):
church and um and caring for its church members. Yeah,
I guess I would. I would hope that most people
that would come in seeking an exorcism would be it
would would be advised to pursue various other treatments. It
just seems I just I do hate to think of
somebody with any kind of legitimate problem being referred to
(26:56):
the exorcist. Yeah. Yeah, and this this art coal it said, um,
this man by doctor Apple be a longtime observer of
the bishop said, what they're trying to do in restoring
exorcisms is to strengthen enhance what seems to be lost
in the church, which is the sense that the church
is not like any other institution. It's supernatural, and the
key players in that our heart are the hierarchy and
(27:18):
the priests who can be given the faculties of exorcism. So,
you know, the syneca me says that it's just it's
a it's a bit of a power thing. Yeah, I
don't know. I can't get too into hole into them.
I mean, I'm as discussing the past. I'm all open
for like the you know, the positive aspects of various religions,
you know, take take what you want and run with them.
But I don't know, when you start throwing devils into
(27:40):
the whole mix, it gets a little problematic in my opinion,
it does. It doesn't. Like I said, for the metaphorical part,
I'm all for that, this sort of like proto psychotherapy
of hey, let's let's work this out with this part amount. Uh,
But yeah, when it reaches the physical realm, it's a
bit problematic. Um. Mother Teresa, did you know that she
had an exorcism performed on her. This was late in life, right, yeah, yeah,
(28:04):
she underwent an exorcism after a bout of insomnia was
blamed on the devil, so says the Archbishop of Calcutta,
Henry Sebastian Disusa, who happened to be in the hospital
with her at the same time. And she would had
been admitted for heart problems before her death in September,
And so when doctors couldn't find a medical reason for
(28:27):
her sleeplessness, he thought that she was being attacked by
the devil and he wanted her to calm down, and
so he went to her and said, would you like
to have an exorcism performed on you? And she said, okay, sure.
Well I guess there are two ways of looking to seither.
This is outrageous because Mother Teresa was you know, great woman,
(28:47):
did all this work, Beacon of light, beacon of light,
you know, super holy. Why would she have to deal
with this especially right, you know, right, why would the
devil dog her now? But then also you could look
at it, well, she's super you know, um hooked into
all into the spiritual world. You know, she's like a
So she's kind of like a computer running without firewalls
(29:07):
or virus protection, and so if she gets one bad
email in it could it could mess up the whole system.
So yeah, yeah, and he claims that she she was
fine afterward, and um, the all they did was a
prayer of protection, So it wasn't like they were I
imagine I wasn't there. I haven't read any accounts, but
I would like to think that they were just sort
(29:29):
of saying the prayer and not um not like for
four hours screaming in her Yeah. Maybe maybe she got
an abbreviated version. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, someone was
standing over you for four hours screaming prayers in your face.
Do you think you get so upset that you would vomit? Maybe?
I mean I'm just saying like, this is when the
hallmarks too, right. I mean I get kind of auntie
(29:49):
if I have to set still for you know, over
a half hour. So yeah, I imagine it would be
pretty rough. Yeah. I'm just thinking about it because especially
if the expercis wouldn't let me like check my my iPhone,
and then I would be like, ah, this is the worst.
Maybe I am possessed by the devil. I'm just thinking that,
you know. I mean, it's certainly something that could get
(30:11):
a person riled up and start behaving unusually, if if
they didn't already have some sort of pre existing condition
that would exacerbate that. But anyway, did you know also
that the Pope has a chief exorcist? Oh? I bet
he does. Yes, of course he does. Um. And his
name is Father Kirila and Morth and he has carried
out more than seventy thousand exorcisms in a career spanning
(30:34):
twenty four years. Wow. Do you think there's ever like
a big Vatican like Christmas party? And because I'm just thinking, like, uh, um,
our friend guy, the Vatican astronomer and protector of that
does he is the guy who protects the meteorite collection.
I mean that maybe another dude, but all right, So
so imagine the Christmas party where uh, for a guy
(30:56):
walks up and then he runs into the the exercy.
It's like, hey, guy, I'm in charge of keeping an
eye on the cosmos for for for the Vatican, and
you know, and these are my science credentials. What do
you do? Well? I cast the devil out of people.
You know, those guys are not gonna sit probably next
to each other at the Christmas dinner. Like I can
(31:17):
tell you that they probably whoever was planning the event
was like, do not put these two together because this
opposite ends the where the Catholic churches in modern time. Yeah,
because they're like Father and MOR's going to start saying
that this thing again, this, this is actually quite from
We have cardinals who don't believe in Christ, bishops connected
with demons. Then we have these stories of pedophilia. You
(31:39):
can see the rot when we speak of Satan's smoke
in the Holy rooms of the Vatican. So he feels like,
I mean to him, like the Satan's around and this
is the reason for all the horrible things that have
happened to people in into the Roman Catholic Church. Yeah,
well it certainly takes the heat off of people. Yeah,
but definitely do not put consulmar me mis dude together. Yeah.
(32:03):
All right, Well well that let's let's exercise some listener
mail mail bag here, it's getting a little backed up.
Let's get a little coffee. Yeah, we have one here
from a listener by the name of Alicia and Alicia
Wrightson and says I used to work in my college bookstore.
One day we received some boxes with a funny word
(32:23):
on him. I didn't know what the word meant until
I opened a box and saw what was inside a
blood pressure cuff. The word was and we take a
shot at this vy gummm on the meter alright, like
I'm am on a meter. Yeah, it's just the side
of the word. Sent me into utter hysterics, and I
(32:44):
was useless for a good half hour. Then I said
it out loud, which got got the giggle started all
over again. To this day, it remains the funniest word
I've ever seen or said, and it can still make
me giggle. Um. Keep up the great work with the podcast,
and please check out my band The Wag at the
Wag get banned dot com. Some of your HSW mates
(33:04):
have our CD. There you go. Um, And then we
have and I did check out that link to make
sure it didn't like, actually go somewhere horrible. It does
go to an actual fans website. All right, good good.
I'm not just simply I'm not just gonna throw links
out here. Um. We also heard from a listener by
the name of Samuel Um and uh which Samuel. If
(33:29):
I'm just to get into the whole devil thing. Again,
Samuel means venom of God and it was like an
old demon name the old is this venom and not poison? Yeah,
poison of God, venom of God. I don't know anyway.
That's like again in high school is really into all
that stuff. So, but I don't have all the knowledge
with me anymore. Anyway, Samuel the human not a demon,
(33:49):
um wrote in had some very nice things to say,
and then added at the end, I just listened to
the podcast uh Religion in Space and Roberts saying something
along the line with him loving idea of religion being
carried into space in June really made me laugh, as
I thought it would be the worst nightmare of Dawkins
or someone like him. Also, I imagine that a religion
developed for existence in space could be like Julie joked
(34:12):
and revolve around checking valves and taking data the same
way old religions like Christianity and Islam condemn eating shellfish
and uh, and shellfish, which is a primitive lifestyle, can
easily cause a disease if verage wrong way. Um, So anyway,
that's interesting. Indeed, Yeah, there uh, there are a number
of people who would who would get in quite a
(34:33):
tizzy at the thought of of us taking religion in
space as we as we discussed. Indeed, yeah, I thought
the Dawkins part it was interesting as well. Um, yeah,
he certainly probably would flip. Yeah. Um, so hey, uh,
we would love to hear from you guys. Uh, your
thoughts about previous podcasts, but also about this whole exorcism thing.
(34:54):
What are your thoughts on it? Do you, like me,
have any strange encounters with exorcism or or just kind
of perplexing religious experience in the past. Uh, let us know.
I'd love to hear what you have to say. Um
and uh. And you can also find us on Facebook
and Twitter. We are blow the Mind on both of
those and we regularly update that with al sorts of
(35:14):
cool links, updates about what our latest podcasts are and
what we're planning to do in the future, and we
take requests. I believe I believe this one was, like
you said, it was requested by a few different people
before we decided who wanted to say, why in the
heck are there so many exorcisms? Yeah? What's up with
these actives going on? Where can I get one? You
can also email us at Blow the Mind at House
to Fooks dot com. Be sure to check out our
(35:41):
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
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