Demons
The idea of a demon isn't Christian. It comes from our remote past.
It isn't only the Christian priest, who performs exorcisms,
And shamans from various cultures practiced it.
It's a lot like curing the evil eye, or witchcraft.
The idea here, though, being that a malevolent spirit
is responsible. But how did it get to be a different
designation than an unappeased ancestor, or a returning
spirit, like a vampire? How did it get a higher status?
In the beginning, in creation myths, there was always a deceiver,
A Satan, or Mara in the Buddhist canons, and there were
gods of places, rivers, forests, etc, some of which could be
malevolent, and is it possible that the idea was that when
a god went out of fashion, it had its revenge by becoming demonic?
That's not unlike the concept of the Fallen Angel
from the Book of Enoch.
These are ancient gods, who don't want to be forgotten,
and are prepared to torment and persecute those
who neglected them.
It's interesting from a psychological point of view that,
in Christian terms, anyway, to learn the name
of the demon gives you the power to expel them.
Why should that be?
I watched the exorcism scene in A Haunting's episode "Possessed"
(Series 3) last night.
That always strikes me as odd. if the demon knows
that it can be expelled, why does it give its name,
when that's demanded of it?
I'm hunting for some good possession cases to relate here.
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