Beyond Exorcism -
New Approaches to Entity Handling
by Christine Norstrand
Introduction
. . . and no two days are the same and no two voices are the
same and one is a loose structure of many beings-- James Hillman
It's safe to come out from under the bed now. It's all been very
hush-hush, this talk about spirits. It's been denounced as superstition
and at the same time been the common thread that has held together
such secret societies as the Order of the Golden Dawn. Let's take
a look at what we already know about spirits and what can, and
especially what should, be done about them.
Definition
I remember my first recognition of such things; Frank Zappa sang
"Jelly Roll Gum Drop" in my head for an entire afternoon.
Nothing could drive it away or replace it. Song circuits that
play repeatedly are a common form of entity. What do we mean by
entity? For the purposes of this article, I use entity to mean
any mental or spiritual phenomena that seems to have a consciousness,
a life of its own.
Nature of Entities
But what is it really? That's viewpoint-dependent. It may be a
neural-synaptic misfire, a food allergy, a neurotransmitter or
hormonal imbalance. Each analysis suggests a different method
of address. From the muses who-inspired the ancients to the aborigines
of Australia, every culture bears a rich legacy of myth and tales
about fairies and magical creatures. Perhaps these are merely
airy explanations where no empirical evidence suggests an explanation.
Then again, so may be such phenomena as quarks. I have no evidence
that the definition of entity used here is anything more than
hypothetical, without empirical verification, yet it is one which
I believe you will find incredibly workable.
Why Address Entities
In this article, I make use of the term viewing to talk about
that activity that defines a session. I prefer the term viewing
to traditional terms because it serves as a reminder that the
person in front of us is causatively involved in a transformational
process, not a subject upon whom we create intended effects. That
process is independent of us yet we can, by directing the person's
attention or by asking the correct question at the correct time,
facilitate the person's transformation. I also value the term
because it validates the viewer's power to responsibly examine
and change her considerations about her current situation, and
by so doing change her life and the world we live in.
The best reason to take up the subject of entities in viewing
is that your viewer brings it up, often half-apologetically, as
if she anticipates pushing the limits of your credulity. It certainly
wouldn't be my entrance point in session discussions unless she
brought it up. Suppose what's bothering your viewer is not resolving
any other way? If your viewer complains about thoughts that don't
seem to be her own, case manifestations that aren't hers, session
agenda items resolve for her but seem to come back out of nowhere,
and those scary creatures that just won't be ignored in the middle
of the night, well, it might be time to take a closer look. However,
the road isn't smooth. Our culture pathologizes experience whisper
entity and a dissociative disorder lurks around the corner. Moreover,
the accessibility of information and the dissemination of various
sacred scriptures across the internet may have your viewer in
a state of electrification on the subject.
She may have been told that she must first complete some predetermined
agenda that is not her own it won't alleviate the problem and
may effectively bypass her area of interest. If her area of interest
is bypassed, she becomes less a causative participant in the session
and more the effect of your decisions, which is not your intention.
Moreover, you would have stirred up, by coming close to but not
taking up, a hot subject.
So what will you do?
Resolving immediate upsets, worries, and transgressions may prove
a workable first action but the question of whether the upset
or worry being looked at belongs to the person or an entity is
sure to come up. It may seem, as an overwhelmed viewer once told
me, that everyone is yelling at once. In such a circumstance,
unblocking procedures are likely to stir up more of what you're
trying to calm down. Then there's the matter of botched prior
handlings, both in and out of session. In fact, entities that
have been previously addressed in an adversarial fashion or who
have been invalidated and ignored are most likely to give your
viewer trouble.
Specifically, entities can be wanted or unwanted. The traditional
focus has been on unwanted entities and has assumed that all entities
are unwanted and detrimental. Before we look at ways to resolve
difficulties with unwanted entities, let's consider times when
entities might be beneficial.
Too often, we take these benefits for granted. In his essay On
the Prejudices of Philosophers, Nietzsche points out that I shall
never tire of underlining a concise little fact which these superstitious
people are loath to admit namely, that a thought comes when 'it'
wants, not when 'I' want. The ancient Greeks believed that such
inspirations came from muses, and sought to foster such relationships.
Magicians through the centuries have invoked the spirits, sometimes
to do their bidding and sometimes to serve as inner guides to
help them. The fairy godmother and guardian angel figures permeate
the mythologies of many cultures. Again, whether or not this guide
is merely an encysted phenomena (a case manifestation that has
taken on a life of its own with its own boundaries of consciousness),
for our purposes it exists as a separate entity or being. At the
heart of many initiation rituals is the idea of getting in touch
with one's spirit guide, who often makes itself known in some
animal or natural form.
Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross all underwent
lifechanging experiences which included the manifestation of entities
in the forms of angels and demons. What is the difference between
a religious experience and what is traditionally considered a
schizophrenic episode? Both are major departures from common reality,
are literal interpretations of a metaphysical reality that can't
be verified or disproved. Saints and mystics have experienced
angels and demons alike, and their experiences are central to
many religions in many cultures. The experience has its own image,
angel or demon; it takes on a form, a persona, and this we consider
an entity. Such mystical experiences may be desirable.
However, it is unwanted entities or, more exactly, symptoms brought
about by mishandled entities that are more likely to find their
way to your door. By mishandled, I mean a consciousness has been
falsely threatened as a lifeless object, a non-thing. This constitutes
the greatest invalidation possible to any living thing. Case manifestations
you may encounter include premonitions of impending and inevitable
doom. Often this occurs because an antagonistic entity stirs up
something in your viewer's personal history. Do difficulties appear
to resolve and then reappear unresolved despite extensive work
on her considerations and real world circumstances? Something
is continuing to put the difficulties there there and it's not
because your viewer's great aunt Lucy won't talk to her.
Entrance Points
There are two possible entrance points. Either your viewer needs
cooling off handling herself, which does not address entities
or sessions will consist of you coaching her to communicate and
handle the entities of which she is aware. It is helpful to work
with a good technical director when handling entities as it allows
one to keep one's case assessment and facilitation tasks separate,
avoiding the traditional pitfalls of projection and misidentification.
When you first meet the viewer, she may be continually talking
about beings and spirits and such. Whether she is a high-level
case or overwhelmed by her current environment, your initial steps
will be the same: A monitored sequence of steps to alleviate physical
body stresses that includes regular exercise, good food and supplements,
even nutritional consultation, a thorough intake assessment of
her current environment and relationships, and actions to resolve
any threatening factors in her environment outlined and embarked
upon. You know the drill. But then what?
Here your case assessment skills must be up to snuff. You assess
her state of case of looking at how she is doing in real life.
She may have taken on some big games, but how is she doing at
it?
The first possibility to consider is that she is overwhelmed,
always in a state of being stirred up, in which case you use everything
in your bag of tricks to get her calmed down and oriented in her
current environment. The theory and methods of that are the subject
of a different article, but all of my experience as a facilitator
and technical director points to look for the biggest thing in
her environment that is keeping her stirred up unrealized chronic
pain, dangerous threat in her surroundings, or drugs. It's never
something small. It is always on the magnitude of an elephant
in the living room. If entities are a hot item with her, look
for that person in her environment who invalidates her reality
and tells her there's no such thing.
The most important thing initially, no matter what her case condition,
is that you do not interpret her reality for her. In this you
differ from the most loyal friend and the most compassionate therapist,
both of whom will question her assessment of reality and suggest
other possible realities to her. A process is underway and your
purpose is to facilitate that process. You suggest no other reality
as more valid than hers. If you do not state, or even imply, that
what she's telling you is unreal, she may stop asserting it long
enough to change her mind. Changing her mind is what freedom is
all about.
Methods
Exorcism A Limited Theory
Let's take another look at our working definition of entity any
mental or spiritual phenomena that seems to have a consciousness,
a life of its own. The difficulty immediately suggests itself:
Exorcism tends to treat a consciousness as a thing, an object,
without life. Yes, religious and therapeutic exorcisms are possible
but they often occur by the power of force, for which we rightly
anticipate an equal and opposite reaction. The consequences of
that equal and opposite reaction can be devastating to the body.
A particular entity may be so antagonistic to the viewer that
an exorcism approach may appear to be the only one possible in
her current state. She may be seriously ill, sleepless, in pain.
Even so, care for the body, good food, and light communication
and orientation processes should be the first steps taken. Then,
with the viewer somewhat shored up, you can establish communication
with the entity. If earlier failed session actions have your viewer
in a state of denial about entities, you can still lightly unburden
the traumatic mishandling through exploring methods that ask for
thoughts, feelings, and considerations. As always, only take up
mental phenomena that are real to your viewer, no matter how real
they are to you.
Integration Assets and Liabilities
You take in the daimonic which would possess you if you didn't. The one way to get over daimonic possession is to possess it, by frankly confronting it, coming to terms with it, integrating it into the self-system. The process yields several benefits. It strengthens the self because it brings in which has been left out. It overcomes the "split" which has consisted of the paralyzing ambivalence in the self. And it renders the person more "human" by breaking down the self-righteousness and aloof detachment that are the usual defenses of the human being who denies the daimonic. (Rollo May, Psychotherapy and the Daimonic)
A more common method than exorcism is to try to integrate the
entity, to dissolve the entity in the personality of the individual.
Although such a Gestalt-esque approach has some workability,
it shares with exorcism a tendency to treat the entity as a thing
and presupposes a single acceptable configuration of personality:
One personality, one body, one experience of reality. Aspects
of the entity that are similar to those disowned by the viewer
are examined. She may recognize or seek to develop those aspects
in herself, if they are traits she wishes to cultivate. Or she
may buy into a weakness or inability, misidentifying with character
traits that may be aberrations.
End Points
Both the exorcism and integration method share this as the chief
pitfall: When is the entity handlingcomplete? As one layer of
the onion is peeled away, a new one is exposed until that moment
of nothing is attained. But in life, you cannot walk down the
street, engage in communication or relationship with anything
or anyone without life taking a new form, a new consciousness
in front of you be it a new country, a new company, the newborn
babe next door, or an entity of the sort we are discussing here.
Perhaps it possible to unravel the woof and warp of existence
itself but such a metaphysic is certainly outside the scope of
this article. On a smaller scale, your viewer will neither spend
her life under a Bodhi tree nor dissolve into the oneness of the
universe. Both the integration and exorcism approaches are workable,
but limited. In my opinion, they are inherently flawed. Happily
there is another approach.
Handling the Entity in Front of You
One outcome of a technological society, and its centers for religious
technology, is the willingness to see other people and the world
as things whose purpose is to satisfy one's own needs. Both the
exorcism and integration approaches, carried to extremes, tend
to reflect this world view. So too, does the propitiation of divine
or natural forces to serve one's own purpose.
I would like to suggest another way: To treat each other being,
including entities, as the sacred manifestations of life that
they are. Not as the object of a method or a procedure but because
they are worthy of respect for their own sakes. If exorcism is
what that entity needs to freely live the life he desires, then
that the method your viewer works with. The entity may just be
starved for a little acknowledgement, a need that can be easily
satisfied with a simple Thank you or even some flowers on the
table. If the entity asks for integration, then that's the approach.
But it may be neither. How do you know? You communicate; you ask
it. The answer might appear as an idea that pops into your viewer's
head, a dream, or a hunch. Whatever it is, listen to it.
A close friend claims he is part of a conscious matrix of beings
that freely choose to co-act together. This is an unconventional
approach but I see that the concept works for him and that he
is free from much of the alienation and anxiety that plagues so
many. It seems to me preferable to the annihilation of entities
that bear no ill will.
Unresolved Issues
While I discourage entity handling as a routine point of case
entrance, entity handling may resolve issues that resolve no other
way. In such a case, it is essential to consult with the viewer
physically present in front of you. She acts as co-facilitator
in handling the entity with whom she has a relationship, even
an unwanted relationship, as there are points of agreement that
link the viewer to the entity. In fact, it is unnecessary to mention
entities as such. Unresolved or recurring feelings that are unresponsive
to traditional methods can be addressed by checking if the feeling
or condition seems to be located to a particular part of the body
and if so, having your viewer ask the questions of the body part.
Communication
Conscious communication with entities has much to recommend it.
I hold that entities of the sort we are discussing here are connected
to us by a harmonic of our own spiritual considerations and deepseated
beliefs. If the entity is antagonistic or grief-stricken, might
one not coach the viewer to find out its upset and communicate
until it is resolved? It occasionally may be necessary to command
an entity to depart against its will, overwhelming it with force.
But as a general policy? Or to force another to subsume its identity
in our own? When we've been involved in relationships where our
identities were overwhelmed, did it work for us?
If our viewer favors communication and coexistence with her entities,
how are we to go about it? The methods are many and as varied
and unique as your viewer. Having her listen to her entities and
acknowledge them is simple and yet may be the most effective thing
you can do. Often there will be no need for more elaborate techniques
or sophisticated approaches. Where more is required, an individual
program of session actions can be tailored for the handling of
each entity or class of entities. The usual end point of that
program would be that the viewer and the entity reach an understanding.
When that understanding is attained, the entity may leave on his
own, agree to be integrated into the viewer's personality, or
to take his place at the summit where his voice can be heard when
your viewer makes her life decisions. His wisdom, experience,
and viewpoint are available for the asking. The result is a true
community of interest, where each voice is heard and respected.
At best, in the words of Dr. Jonathan Young, the whole choir of
my favorite entities agrees.
Suggested readings & other references:
Campbell, Joseph. .
Campbell, Joseph. .
Eliade, Mircea. .
Gerbode, Frank.
.
Hannah, Barbara.
.
Hillman, James. .
Hillman, James. .
Hillman, James. .
Johnson, Robert. .
Jung, Carl G. (ed.). .
Tillich, Paul. .
Young, Jonathan. personal communication.
Young, Jonathan (ed.). .
(published in International Viewpoints, Fall 1996)