Modern psychics, who see the spirits as mutated forms of human beings, treat the exorcism like a therapy or intervention session, attempting to help out the disturbed bundle of energy. Catholicism pretty much keeps its view of exorcism narrow and concise: it's a demon or the devil, send him back to hell and praise God. So it comes down to whether or not you want to help the invading spirit or just send him back to wherever he came from. Basically, you kick them out without worrying about solving their problems. He offers a Prayer of Progression that will help lost or troubled ghosts "progress" to the next life. In the spirit of the individual as emphasized by the modern psychics, Stinton proclaims that an individual can conduct an exorcism without the help of a priest. An exorcism more in line with the psychic's trains of thought is described by Drew Stinton, owner of Melbourne, Australia's The Haunted Bookshop and generally considered an expert in these things. Obviously, the desire of Cowan, Northrop, and Edwards to achieve a sense of understanding with the spirit is pretty much nonexistent in the Catholic Church's rites of exorcism. Or the studly young priest jumps out the window. The method employed in "The Exorcist" really isn't that far off. The next step is to order the demon to leave, the whole time interspersing Gospel readings: John 1:1-12, Mark 16:15-18 and Luke 10:17-20, and psalms: numbers 3, 12, and 91, while yelling assorted mantras and throwing holy water. The first step is to implore the demon to leave the possessed. In brief, an exorcism must be performed by an ordained priest who has been granted permission to perform the exorcism by his Bishop. Those changes basically consist of an acknowledgment of the existence of mental illness and the need for consultation with a physician to ensure that something like schizophrenia isn't mistaken for demonic possession the rest of the ritual remains largely intact. The Vatican recently reevaluated its rules of exorcism and released an 84-page book detailing the changes. Hopefully, the removal of that weight from the haunt's spiritual shoulders will be sufficient to encourage it to get on with its afterlife.īut for those of us more used to the whole head spinning, soup spitting, dubiously utilized crucifix bit, you can always count on the Catholic Church. Once the spirit is contacted, the medium can attempt to discern what is plaguing the spirit, often it is an unfinished task, and then alleviate the spirit of that burden. Cowan stresses that most haunting spirits are more scared than malicious and prescribes the same basic setup that is utilized in regular seances. Seances are not solely for contacting and having a nice chat with the dead they can also be used to exorcise unwanted spirits. Read on in the first of our new how-to guides to learn everything you need to throw a modern-day séance. So, if you're looking to speak to your dead grandmother, the spirit of Jim Morrison, or even your cat that "ran away" when you were eight, there are myriads of options. Many books wrestle with the ways to achieve this goal, and most of them focus largely on the internal self, ignoring any proposed need for a professional psychic. The modern goal of seances and channeling is to form a connection between the self and the spirit world. The new emphasis has more in common with yoga and tai chi than with any Victorian group clustered around an old fortune-teller. If seances and channeling conjure up images of floating apparitions, aristocrats sitting pensively around a crystal ball in a dark circus tent, or the next stop for Nancy Reagan after the astrologer, you're in for a surprise. While I'm sitting at Border's reading "The Idiot's Guide to Being Psychic," the guy who brings me an order of hummus says: "Don't read this, just eat a lot of acid." Although this isn't exactly what I had in mind as far as discovering the ins and outs of channeling (communicating with spirits), it does illustrate something of the new theory behind speaking with the dead and other beings in the spirit world.
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