How About Demons?: Possession and Exorcism in the Modern World

HOW ABOUT DEMONS?

EOLKLORE TODAY

Linda Dégh, General Editor

HOW ABOUT DEMONS?

Possession

and Exorcism

in the Modern World

Felicitas D. Goodman

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Bloomington and Indianapolis

© 1988 by Felicitas D. Goodman

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Goodman, Felicitas D.

How about demons?

(Folklore today)

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Demoniac possession.    2. Exorcism. I. Title.

II. Series.

BF1555.G66 1988    291.2′16    87-45403

ISBN 0-253-32856-X

ISBN 0-253-20467-4 (pbk.)

4 5 6 7 99 98 97

To my grandchildren

Charles Andrew

Eleanor Amy      

Sarah Daniels     

Andrew Murphy 

Jason Ananda    

Seth Joshu          

CONTENTS

FOREWORD BY Linda Dégh

PREFACE

Chapter 1   Possession’s Many Faces

Chapter 2   Spiritualism

Chapter 3   Healing in Umbanda

Chapter 4   Pentecostalism: A New Force in Christendom

Chapter 5   The Dangerous Spirits of Japan

Chapter 6   The Multiple Personality Experience and Demonic Possession

Chapter 7   The Ghosts That Kill

Chapter 8   A Legion of Demons

Chapter 9   Two Recent Cases of Demonic Possession

Conclusion How about Demons—and Other Spirits?

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Foreword

Every time we acquire knowledge we enlarge the world, the world of man, by something that is not yet incorporated in the object of the knowledge we hold, and in this sense a comprehensive knowledge of man must appear impossible.

—Michael Polanyi, The Study of Man

Folklore Today, the title of this new series, is more meaningful than it would seem at first glance. It not only implies the reportage of current trends in the discipline of folklore, information on the latest findings and thoughts of scholars, but, more important, it addresses the presentation of new, or old but earlier unrecognized, folkloric phenomena and the research methods and theories that resulted from their discovery and investigation.

Folklore, as a constituent segment of culture, is a dynamic force in any permanent or temporary population group of modern complex societies. It appears as an endless continuum, relating the past with the present and aiming at the future. Thus, it emerges as a historical process in which tradition and innovation play equally important roles, although they do not always appear in equal measure. The folklore corpus of a given social group is an intricate complex of old, new, and restored personal and communal elements in diverse stages of integration and disintegration. Tradition accommodates, shapes, adjusts, and at the same time promotes new ideas following the dictum of actual needs. The interdependence of the two results in both the solidification of universal formulas and the creation of innumerable local-temporal variables. Hence, no new creation can be understood without familiarity with the previous stages, or indeed the total process. But if folklore is a process to be viewed diachronically, it is also a product of existing social conditions to be examined empirically in the context of the cultural, economic, technological, and ideological present responsible for its actual formulations. The dialectic relation of these two characteristics of folklore calls for an interdisciplinary extension of approaches, essentially historical, sociological, and anthropological. The books in this series will demonstrate the benefits of placing the science of folklore between the social sciences and the humanities.

European and American schools of folklore became increasingly more aware of the need of this extension, particularly prompted by the radical and speedy transformation of folk culture after the end of the Second World War. A new generation of scholars took issue with the premises that called folklore into existence in the nineteenth century and that had dominated its trends up to the first four decades of the twentieth. Research goals of this discipline were subjected to national interests and maintained an essentially ethnocentric-romantic bias, preventing scholars from developing an objective scientific inquiry. The folk was understood as the lowest layer of society, which in its underprivileged condition unconsciously preserved the genius of nations expressed by the great poets of a distant golden age. Consequently, the lore of the folk gained national prominence, and its research (serving the practical goal of indoctrination in order to restore and strengthen national cultural unity on the basis of historic values) was celebrated as an ideological discipline. Folklore as heritage: primitive or naive aesthetics was regarded as a model for artists to create an original national art; folklore as ideological weapon was to set the patterns of a distinctive national identity whereby independence and political power would be achieved. Restoration, revitalization, and broad public application of carefully selected archaic folklore under the guidance of professional folklorists grew into a mass movement nationally as well as internationally. As a result of the interaction of the folk, the folklorist, the applier, and the consuming public, we experience the boundless dissemination of folkloric phenomena. The academic, the applied, and the recreational mass use and manipulation of accessible, indigenous, as well as relocated folklore materials, taken from various sources, ensure the flow of folklore from the folk through several hands back to the folk for screening, regeneration, and perpetuation.

The recognition that folk and folklore exceeds earlier narrow confines and that folkloric and nonfolkloric phases cannot be separated from each other within the processes of transmission, spread, and transformation in society prompted modern folklorists to divert their interest from the past to the present. Following a critical evaluation of the history of the discipline, the so-called new folkloristics focuses on the ethnographic present and the folklore emerging from the observable complex interplay of folk, mass, and everyday culture. Switch from the past to the present, noted Bernd Jürgen Warneken, considerably strengthened the methodological sophistication of folkloristics and catapulted it from the last row of disciplinary development into the very front.¹

The idea of breaking away from historic reconstruction of an eclipsed folk culture from its rudiments and turning to the current life of people in the country and in the city was launched already in the early thirties.² A more systematic step toward establishing Gegenwartsvolkskunde (present-day folklore), however, was made only following World War II. As a consequence of the war events and conditions of the immediate aftermath, political and socioeconomic changes led to the transformation of labor relations, lifestyle, ideology, and forms of recreation. The relaxation of the rigid social hierarchy also resulted in migration and resettlement, and opened the door to upward mobility with increased choices of careers. The traditional (peasant) folk experienced the greatest change through mechanization and commercialization of farmwork. While peasantries lost their folk hallmark, they traded in their traditional values, bringing about a so-called peasantization of general society as it was noted by ethnographers. This means that with the industrialization of the rural folk, old folklore forms did not vanish, but in adequately applied form they became the shared property of social groups within nations. New present-oriented research is committed to tackle such specific social constellations and emergent cultural forms on the basis of empirical observation.³

It seems evident that folkloristics had to give up its original claims to fulfill its mission in the modern world, which, in addition to the transformation of the agricultural masses, has experienced never-before-anticipated cultural consequences of population explosion, and the homogenizing effect of mass information and consumer service through advanced electronic technology. Modern sophisticated tools are needed to investigate folk society and culture, framing creative processes of the contemporary folk. The creative fantasy of the folklorist, so much in action during the romantic era, does not work anymore to help the interpretation of folklore. We have to ask the folk about the realities of the world.

This suggestion was already made eighty years ago. Lajos Kálmány (1852–1919), village parson and pioneer collector of oral literature, was on good terms with his parishioners. He was a jolly peasant priest who helped with the harvesting and gave a hand when the pigs had to be neutered. His Sunday school was fun for the children. Instead of listening to religious exhortations, they wrote their jingles and stories into a copybook. In an era of search for the mythopoetic age, Kálmány devoted his time to individual storytellers and singers. Recording repertoires, he did not discriminate the genuinely oral text from materials of literary origin. He studied the process of folklorization of foreign elements. In doing so, he came to the understanding that the folk poet’s perspective departs from the present reality of his world and that the messages contained in poetic utterances are existentially relevant. In his scattered notes and unfinished essays, Kálmány carefully documented this observation:

Those who are experienced by doing long-term fieldwork must have noticed that the folk is the poet of the present. The folk does not look back, does not attempt to recall historic events of past centuries for poetic inspiration like professional authors do. The folk is profoundly concerned with its own fate and uses only the materials that address its problems. This is the reason why the folk is selective and would maintain materials from its ancestral heritage only if they are adaptable and filled with meaning in its own world.⁴

Regrettably, the recognition that folk societies in subsequent historic epochs created their own folkloric expressions on the basis of their social reality comes too late to remedy the scantiness of our knowledge about the processes of tradition. However, case studies of new, conspicuous forms of folklore as they evolve before our eyes in response to current social events not only may tell us more than ever of the nature of folklore transmission, but also may open a new era for folkloristics, proving its usefulness as a most sensitive parameter of the dimensions of human creativity.

In this series, then, we will introduce new folkloric phenomena, as well as new approaches and theories that were developed in the course of their study. It is in the nature of folklore that its student is, either by birthright or by vocation, an active participant in the creative process with all ambiguities of the involved eyewitness. Subjectivity and commitment of the observer, however, do not mean weakness but rather strength, the ability to distinguish between one’s own heritage and one’s target of study.

We are fortunate to open the series with the study of a universal belief concept that is basic to individual expression of awe and to systems of religious institutions. From shamanistic rites to medieval mystic cults, authoritative practices of modern western Catholicism, fundamental Protestant sectarianism, and configurations of Third World Christian churches incorporating native religions down to non-institutional, nonreligious beliefs, all contain the element of spirit possession. Felicitas Goodman’s book How about Demons? is about possession and exorcism: belief and ritual in the modern world. But is this belief and practice relevant to our reality, and if so, why? Average enlightened people would normally view exorcism as a Catholic church ceremony of long ago, irrelevant to concerns of today. But the fact is that despite (or because of?) advanced technological sophistication, affluence, and the improvement of the quality of life, irrational belief is proportionately growing in the modern Western world—fear from demonic possession, in particular, as it became clear after fictionalized versions for the shock-hungry, bored, blasé reading and moviegoing audience became overnight bestsellers. The symptomatic proliferation of possession belief with or without Christian overtones, however, is not confined to members of religious sects. The press is the most dependable indicator that possession became a household ill in the eye of the public and exorcism a credible method of healing. No sensationalization but succint and dry factual reportage is characteristic of such news items in the daily papers:

The criminal court in Danbury, Connecticut, held hearings on a stabbing murder case attributed to devil possession (New York Times, 1981); a woman sued TWA for physical injuries suffered by her when her twin sister died in a crash (UPI, 1983); Jesuit Karl Patzelt successfully exorcised a young couple and their two-year-old son in San Francisco (Der Spiegel, 1974); a high-school teacher routinely exorcises her pupils in Fallbrook, California (Louisville Courier Journal, 1974); a possessed three-year-old girl keeps her family in anguish in Gillingham, England (Winnipeg Free Press, 1985); twelve-year-old Annette Hasler in a small Swiss village was beaten to death when a priest and her parents exorcised her (Time, 1973); a twenty-month-old boy died when his mother put him into a hot oven in New York during an exorcism rite (UPI); seventy-four-year-old Madame Esnaut in Normandy, regarded by some as a saint, by others as a witch, was convicted because she injured a man tormented by evil spirits during exorcism (General Anzeiger, 1977, Bonn).

It seems the underlying belief in evil spirit possession is nolensvolens, confirmed by the authoritative practice of the Catholic church and the Church of England. Chief Exorcist Bishop Neil Smith of the Church of England reported more than one thousand cases of possession annually, while the Catholic Rituale Romanum is performed routinely by appointed regional exorcists—Father Jean Bosco was recently named as exorcist for the diocese of the Swiss Kanton Wallis (Aargauer Tagblatt, 29 March 1986). After all, in Christian culture norms of good and evil are established and taken for granted. One does not have to be a religious zealot, not even an occasional churchgoer, to accept the underlying mythology that if God exists, his antagonist, Satan, must also exist, and that the struggle between the two concerns our well-being.

The case study of Dr. Goodman is an eye opener to the fact that the nature, life, and function of modern folklore phenomena cannot be understood by extricating them from their social base. The basic idea appears in variable forms, in folkloric and nonfolkloric situations. Canonic belief, philosophy, psychology, and scientific inquiry are as much a part of it as personal experience, fear, and cultural tradition. The ethnographic observer is limited in many ways to go beyond description and assumptions. He can open a window to inspect the universe of human expressions, but the horizon is restricted by the size of the window, and the glass is often blurred. Raising questions on the basis of so far acquired knowledge, even if the answers are not fully satisfactory, leads to clarification of issues and more knowledge.

LINDA DÉGH

NOTES

Foreword

1. Utz Jeggle, Gottfried Korff, Martin Scharfe, and Bernd Jürgen Warneken, Volkskultur in der Moderne (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1986), p. 15.

2. Max Rumpf, Vergangenheits- und Gegenwartsvolkskunde, Kölner Vierteljahresschrift für Soziologie, vol. 9, pp. 407–429.

3. Hermann Strobach, Literatur zur volkskundlichen Gegenwartsforschung (a bibliographical overview), Deutsches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 11 (1965), vol. 2, pp. 343–86.

4. Történeti énekek és katonadalok, collected by Lajos Kálmány (Budapest: Közoktatási Kiadóvállalat Budapest, 1952), p. 92.

Preface

To many viewers of the film The Exorcist, which ran for months in American movie theaters a few years ago, the story was merely a horror tale. The audience could sit back and enjoy it because such things could not possibly happen. However, in the summer of 1976, just a few years after the release of the film, a case of exorcism made headlines around the world. According to the reports in the mass media, a Catholic German university student by the name of Anneliese Michel contended that she was possessed by demons. When treatment by the family physician and various psychiatrists brought her no relief, the bishop of her diocese gave permission to two priests to carry out the ritual of exorcism. Despite their efforts, however, she was not cured, and several months after the attempt at exorcizing her was abandoned, she died. A German court of law charged her parents and the two priests with negligent homicide for not forcing her to accept more medical treatment and sentenced all three of them to suspended jail sentences.¹

The German popular press had a field day, sensationalizing the supposed horrors of the exorcistic ritual and the attendant belief system as hopelessly outdated, medieval superstitions. Only in the backwoods of Bavaria, was the battle cry. However, the ritual of exorcism is by no means confined to provincial Catholic congregations. It is well known around the world, not only in Christian but also in many non-Christian, non-Western religious communities as a treatment for extreme psychological and physical discomfort involving in severe cases life-threatening depression, loss of appetite, and frenzied rage. In a religious ambient it is thought to result from some malevolent spiritual entity penetrating into the individual. The experience in question is termed possession, and in fact, exorcism cannot be properly understood without first describing the condition it is designed to cure, namely, possession.

Both possession and exorcism are important features of modern life literally around the world, and the subject has been treated extensively in the literature. The present volume does not presume to give a comprehensive presentation, which would require a much more voluminous work. Its goal is instead to provide an overview of a topic that has for many years excited the imaginations of people from all walks of life. As such, it is an undertaking of modest scope, and by no means all sources could be discussed or, even less, quoted. Although I tried to select those that are considered important and authoritative, my personal preferences could not entirely be suppressed. So to those who may find their favorite author slighted, I extend my apologies. I also beg the indulgence of those who may become impatient with me for spending so much time in the first chapter on the physiological processes, the bodily changes, that persons undergo during a religious experience. However, much of that is new, and attractive just for that reason. Also, I admit to being partial to this topic, because some of it concerns my own research. But quite aside from this fact, I am honestly convinced that it is important to the understanding of possession and exorcism, as for that matter of any religious experience, to realize that humans react as total beings, body and soul, and not as some disembodied spirit floating in a vacuum. Some theologians of my acquaintance are deeply committed to the latter view, most certainly because they never had a religious experience to speak of. But the evidence speaks against them. For what we see instead is that changes in the body and perceived experience are inseparable aspects in possession, as in any other bona fide religious experience. The cross-cultural agreement in physiological changes marks us as members of a single species. The significant differences in perceived experience illustrate how strong we are shaped by our respective cultures, our belief systems. Contemplating possession and exorcism in a holistic manner by paying attention to both these aspects will underline its reality and help us to restore dignity to a topic that has too long languished in the bonds of superstition in the public view. To this goal the present volume is fervently dedicated.

I owe a debt of gratitude to many colleagues and friends: to Erika Bourguignon, once a