The Rite of Exorcism

{2 large mp3s below the fold}

Now that the dreaded date of 6/6/06 has passed seemingly without incident, will the apocalyptic religious hysteria (and the mockery thereof) cease?  Heavens, no!  Not if Beware of The Blog has anything to say about it.  And where would the God franchise be anyway without its archenemy and eternal whipping boy—Lucifer, the Bringer of Light?  Are we all so confident that "nothing happened" on June 6?  How could we possibly be?  Babies were born, to be sure—so we'll see, I guess.

If, in the coming weeks, you find yourself speaking in unfamiliar, ancient tongues, exhibiting Tourette's-like symptoms, or contorting your body in new, unusual ways (without the benefit of a Yoga class), you may in fact be in need of a ritual demonectomy—an exorcism—one of the oldest and most hushed ceremonies of the Christian church.

So again I ask, how sure are you that NO DARK FORCE crossed your path last Tuesday?  (I do recall having an exceptionally shitty day at work, but it's likely that this was not a manifestation of Lucifer, who I generally consider to be ON MY SIDE.)

My wife's friend Sylvie believes that all great and small aberrations of mind and behavior are caused by demonic possession.  Syl deeply believes this, and has for many years befriended an exorcist (an ex-priest, if I'm not mistaken), apparently also attending a few of his ritual ceremonies.  Sylvie is far from alone in this belief.  To quote the sub-header of this article from Beliefnet.com, "Knowing when to exorcise and when to refer for psychiatric treatment is a nagging problem for priests."  Wow.  And you thought the priesthood was a cakewalk.  It's actually not a laughing matter, as every once in a while some poor person dies during a botched and perhaps misguided exorcism attempt.  There have also been several reports over the years of child abuse and even death during attempted exorcisms.

This staggering transcript [download pdf] from the UCCF says that, "Depression is the most common symptom and amnesia is considered the pathogenic sign of MPD [Multiple Personality Disorder]. In almost all cases there is a history of physical or sexual abuse in childhood, 50% being through Satanic abuse."  I'd love to see the research that led to that jaw-dropping statistic.  For a much more scholarly faith-based discussion on the issue of mental illness as demon possession, see this article from Meta-Religion.com.

A few years ago, I read an interesting book about exorcism.  For the life of me (heh heh), I can't recall the title, but it was a serious, un-sensationalized, case-by-case, chapter-by-chapter discussion of a handful of 20th century, "real-live" cases of demonic possession.  What made the greatest impression on me were the lives of these men, the exorcists—quiet, humble men, deeply devout but also ready and willing at times to question their faith.  Ambitious, sycophantic clergy members with their eye on the Monsignor's chair do not become exorcists.  For the most part, these men were initially asked to respond to a specific case by their superiors, their selection based on certain known qualities in their character (they are usually studious loners of few words); a case or two later, “exorcist” can become a career, and after a while, the rest of the church will hardly even admit that you exist.

Wish I could remember the title of that book—I gave it away or sold it once finished.  Like my old Ouija board, it didn’t strike me as the kind of thing I should hang onto.  Regardless, my point is that these men, the exorcists themselves, were more interesting and multi-layered than the afflicted, the so-called possessed.  Maybe I’ve just known too many people that did creepy stuff to be truly impressed by the symptoms of demonic possession.

As someone who freely admits to having behaved outside acceptable societal norms (extreme episodic anger; severe depression; substance abuse) I can still only guess at the complex roots of mental illness in myself, much less in humankind as a whole.  As a natural skeptic, I'm not inclined to accept the possession explanation, though people like Sylvie (far from being an ignorant Bible-thumper, she is highly informed and intelligent) do get me thinking.  Perhaps "possession" and "madness" are just divergent semantic interpretations of the same basic phenomena.

Nonetheless, this is all leading up to the free recording provided below, The Rite of Exorcism, a classic flea market record, an audio dramatization of an "actual and authentic" exorcism—albeit framed in some groovy psychedelic rock music.  Weird and disturbing at times, mostly laughable—someone took the time to produce this recording, the release (Crunch Records, 1974) clearly designed to capitalize on the popularity of William Friedkin's film version of The Exorcist.  The overall scare-o-meter is still closer to the Spider-Man Rockomic album than any randomly selected Shirley Collins ballad.  The sleeve alone is still worth whatever I paid for it—though I may have even stolen it—thereby serving Lucifer’s evil design.

The Rite of Exorcism - Side One {mp3, 27.3MB}
The Rite of Exorcism - Side Two {mp3, 20.4MB}

Comments

[j dretzka]

I believe the book you are talking about is this one...
Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Contemporary Americans
The author being Malachi Martin.
Maybe I'm too cynical but I think books like this are written to scare people into becoming devout Catholics. That's just my gut talking. Or it could just be the demon in my gut talking.
Not that I can explain the phenomena of demon possesion, or anything.

[Brian Turner]

There's also a bunch of A.A. Allen exorcisms from the 2 CDs WFMU's library has, you can hear 'em in our archives played on assorted shows if you go to the search engine on the homepage.

[Secret Rapture]

My inaugural address at the Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead, after I have raptured out billions!
Read My Inaugural Address
My Site=http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman
Your jaw will drop!

[Richard C. August]

Having listened to these mp3 files, I can agree with the author that this album is definitely a flea market/garage sale classic that likely should have stayed in the garage. Though the album does invoke the Tri-Une Name of God (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit), and does glorify God by showing that God is a healing and creative force, the album is a farce for three reasons:

1. The ritual used may be based on the Rite of Exorcism, but it is not based on the current Rites; first of all, two priests must be present to serve the Exorcism Mass, while others present are praying. This way, if one priest is spiritually or emotionally weakening, the other priest is present and can take over. Only one actual ordained priest is stated in the recording. The Litany of the Saints is also recited at the beginning of the Exorcism; it is averted here. However, the Gospel readings are preserved here in very modern English, though the "Our Father" is mistranslated for poetic license.

2. The recording is clearly staged and is not a real exorcism at all. It is clearly a studio engineered recording, as a real exorcism normally involves far more spontaneous activity from the victim, including vomiting, violent attacks on the priests and their furniture, blood issues, intense heat followed by intense sudden cold, and other unpleasant supernatural events.

3. Two of the sections of music used during the priest's invocation are from Gustav Holst's The Planets, where Holst writes the music to characterize the Greek mythological characters who are the planets' namesakes. The first was from "Mars, the Bringer of War," and the second was from "Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age." The music then switches to that of J. S. Bach, who was very decidedly a Christian and made no issue about that -- as a matter of fact, he wrote the Latin phrase "Soli Deo Gloria" ("Glory to God Alone")on manuscripts of all of his music.

This was very clearly issued by the Famous Music Corporation of New York City, under its now defunct CRUNCH label whose name was taken up by a third party in the United Kingdom some 30 years later, to capitalize on William Peter Blatty's "The Exorcist" movie craze.

By the way, speaking of EXORCISMS, Max von Sydow, who portrayed the elder priest in "Exorcist," has the distinction of being the only actor to portray Jesus Christ ("The Greatest Story Ever Told"), a priest ("Exorcist"), and Satan ("Needful Things.").

Cheesiness aside, this record is about as frightening as Bobby Pickett's "The Original Monster Mash," but at least it piques people's interest in the subject of something extremely real, being spiritual warfare.

(Eph 6:12) For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, and against the worldly gouernours, the princes of the darkenesse of this worlde, against spirituall wickednesses, which are in ye hie places.

The Geneva Bible, Ephesians 6:12.

Note well that this album was released at a time when Christian book publishers had been publishing anti-occult and exorcism literature in droves in response to Blatty and the film, and the album cover quotes from a priest who is still serving the Mass but is generally considered to be a fringe element.