A much needed Exorcism!
By: Geo (April 29th, 2008)Ghaziabad, April 26, 2008:
In a grotesque incident, three educated sons of a UP Power Corporation engineer, along with a cousin, punched, kicked and beat their mother to death with a rod late in the night believing that she had been possessed by the spirit of a dead relative.
The violence didn’t end there. The foursome then tried to ‘‘sacrifice’’ a sister-in-law in an attempt to bring their dead mother back to life. They also beat up and injured their sister, her husband, the husband’s father and two sisters, when they tried to intervene. All except their brother-in-law, Rohit Kumar, had to be hospitalized. The gruesome drama lasted for a hour and half.
The bizarre exorcism drama ended when neighbours and the police broke into their flat and stopped the violence.
It’s 2008, and a photograph related with the incident has the title, “Medieval Act”. However, to some of you, such incidents are common place. But to many of you, it’s shocking. However, you wouldn’t have to travel that too far in the past to associate with this incident. If you’ve seen the 1973 movie “The Exorcist,” you atleast have some idea of what exorcism is about. It has to do with ridding a human being of diabolic possession. If the movie is any indication, it’s very, very scary. The movie showed a teenage girl whose head spun around, her body in convulsions, her voice that of a demon spewing curses and obscenities while the battered priest of “The Exorcist” fought the devil to save her soul!
This Hollywood version of an exorcism is supposedly based on a real-life exorcism performed on a Maryland boy in 1949 and Exorcisms happen even today.
The movie “The Exorcist”, perhaps reveals (seemingly) the christian or rather the catholic view on spirits and exorcism. Jewish folklore and Kabbalah teachings also tell of a malevolent spirit called a dybbuk. This spirit supposedly is the soul of a dead person that has come back to address unfinished business, and it inhabits the body of a living person in order to carry out its goals. The dybbuk can be expelled through a rite of exorcism and leaves the body through the toe. Islamic belief tells of a jinn - an evil spirit and servant of Satan - that can invade the human body and cause illness, pain, torment and evil thoughts. This jinn can be expelled by the possessed person by reciting particular passages of the Qur’an. In Hinduism, the Vedas scriptures tell of an evil spirit that can not only harm humans, but can also stand in the way of the will of the gods! A traditional Hindu exorcism includes such rituals as burning pig excrement, reciting prayers and offering sweets to the Gods. Atharva Veda (one of the vedic texts) supposedly contains more details on incantations and mantrams and specific instructions on how to go about this ritual!
Is exorcism real, or are the subject and the exorcist unconsciously acting out roles based on their blind beliefs and superstitions or just plainly and sadly just playing roles from a movie?! Are there other explanations for what some people call “possession”?
If you do a Google search for the word “exorcism,” you’ll find ads for exorcists. Wanda Pratnicka, for example, has “30 years experience with 25,000 successfully performed exorcisms.” This makes demonic possession seem like a pretty common occurrence. Telltale signs of demonic possession include speaking or understanding languages which the person has never learned, Knowing (and revealing) things the person has no earthly way of knowing, Physical strength beyond the person’s natural physical makeup, a violent aversion to God, and even sometimes symptoms similar to those exhibited by schizophrenics.
So the belief about the spirit world is not just deep rooted, its wide spread too. So it seems exorcisms and occurences related with it will continue to be reported!
It’s easy to write these incidences off as medieval and product of uneducated and un-enlightened minds but will that approach stop the incidents?? Real life incidents and situations and experiences are forcing many of people to become exorcists or seek the help of exorcists. Numerologists, Astrologists, Palmists, Parapsychologists et cetera are the front faces of this spooky field, though they do claim it as some sort of science! Science it is, to an extent, because it does involve observation, identification, and description but suddenly it takes a spin-off with regards to experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation.
Perhaps there still are things that our reasoning minds can’t reason into, things that our logical minds can’t deduce or induce. Paranormal activities do happen all around us, and if they are purely coincidences, then they are happening much too frequently for us to sit with closed eyes.
However, what the boys did to their mother makes us sit up and think, who was the subject of the possession, was it the mother or her boys.
Spirit possession is perhaps a reality and maybe a nuisance, a peace-killer, a concern, and perhaps even dangerous for individuals but the kind of spirit that rules the life of this woman’s sons is surely a danger to the society at large and surely there needs to be a system to exorcise such kind of evil.
But the problem is, that the latter kind exhibit no telltale signs. They are very normal people and are even liked by many till the time when something does take over them and they end up doing things that makes a town talk about it for days and weeks.
It is such behavioral tendencies and the reasons and influences behind it that need to be addressed, earlier than later.
Who will do it? Does anyone care? Is there an institution that will rise up to this challenge? It is a challenge that faces the civilised society.
We sure need an exorcism for the latter kind of possession. We surely do need instructions, guidelines and methodologies for this, if not incantations and mantrams! Maybe we do need some outside help too!
April 29th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Excellent Blog. I’ve been reading along and just wanted to say hi. I will be reading more of your posts in the future.
- Jason.