DEMONIACAL, MANIFESTATIONS. - Given the existence of the devil, the question arises whether, beyond the indirect or moral operations of which he is undoubtedly capable in his work of tempting and instigating to evil, Satan has the power and the freedom to intrude, and in fact does intrude, into the order of nature with physical and biological manifestations, including those proper to psychic life.
I. THE FACTS
Now, on this point no reasonable doubt can be admitted, as is seen from several arguments, for example, from historical testimony and from the scientific examination of the facts.
Historically it emerges that in all ages many phenomena were attributed to the devil, or, more generally, to evil spirits. Even making a generous allowance for these claims — that is, attributing a great number of them to ignorance, suggestion, or error — we cannot, however, simply extend the indictment to everything and always: for these are attestations not only of crude people, gathered in epochs of scientific darkness, but often, on the contrary, testimonies given by eminent persons, by scientists of clear fame, even in our own times. Moreover, it cannot be admitted that an attestation so vast in time and space is devoid of serious foundation, without thereby contradicting the very and most certain foundations of scientific historical research.
Furthermore, and still in the field of history, the testimony of Sacred Scripture intervenes: from the Gospels, in fact, it is gathered that Jesus healed many possessed persons, and declared them such, clearly distinguishing them from ordinary sick people (Mk. 1:23-28; Mt. 8:28-34; 9:32-34; 12:22; 15:22-28; Lk. 6:18-19; 7:21; 9:37-44; 13:12-17; etc.). This affirmation has an enormous value: it is irrefragable for Christians, inasmuch as for them the word of Christ is the very word of God; but it is also absolutely certain for anyone, taking into account that the Gospels constitute a body of authentic documents, whose truth is therefore unimpeachable.
The other element of proof arises from the intrinsic examination, scientifically conducted, of the certain facts, that is, of the "experimental material," both past and present. To the question whether from such an investigation the evident demonstration of diabolical action could be drawn, one must answer affirmatively, referring to the bibliography as regards the authentic narration of the scientific examinations carried out on the matter and the results obtained.
Having demonstrated in general the reality of diabolical action, it remains to examine the technical terminology in use as regards the activity of the devil in the physical, biological, and psychic-life order. It can be classified as follows: a) local diabolical infestation, that is, action of the devil on physical and lower organized nature (plants and animals); b) personal diabolical infestation (in French: obsession): it consists in a series of temptations more violent and more continuous than ordinary temptations. It is external if it acts on the external senses of the subject (for example, with real apparitions, understood namely as a real modification of the environment external to the subject, or as the real introduction into the external environment of an objective "form"). It is internal when it operates on the internal senses (for example, the imagination), producing internal impressions. In the same subject it can be simultaneously twofold: external and internal; c) diabolical obsession (in French: possession): "it is constituted by two elements: by the presence of the devil in the body of the possessed person and by the dominion that he exercises over this body and, through it, over the soul. This last point needs to be explained. The devil is not united to the body as the soul is united to it; with respect to the soul he is only an external mover, and, if he operates on it, he does so only by means of the body in which he dwells. He can operate directly on the members of the body, making it perform every sort of movement; and he operates indirectly on the faculties insofar as in their operation they depend on the body" (A. Tanqueray, Compendio di teologia ascetica e mistica, 7th ed., Rome-Tournai-Paris 1928, p. 940).
As regards local diabolical infestation, the Synoptic Gospels describe, for example, the episode of the swine possessed by the devil (Mt. 17:14-17; Mk. 5:2-13; Lk. 8:27-33). Moreover, we find many cases in the lives of certain saints (St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John Bosco, the Curé d'Ars, etc.).
With regard to personal infestation and diabolical obsession, the Synoptics tell us of Jesus' repeated encounters with the possessed, of their liberation at the divine command (Mt. 8:16; 12:22; 15:22; 17:14-17; Mk. 1:23-26; 5:2-13; 9:16; Lk. 4:33-35; 6:18; 7:21; 8:2, 27-33; 9:30, 43; etc.); the Acts of the Apostles (5:16; 8:7; 16:16-18) attest to us the persistence of the phenomenon of obsession even after the Ascension of Jesus.
On the basis of the criteria of investigation, suited to identifying, when it is present, the action of the devil, and of which we shall speak below, it is undoubted that many among the so-called "mediumistic" and more generally "metapsychic" phenomena have as their cause the direct action of Satan (v. METAPSICHICA; SPIRITISMO).
On the basis, then, of the facts, and above all on the example of the Divine Master, the Church, from apostolic times, has continued to admit the possibility of diabolical infestation and obsession, attending to the liberation of the possessed by spiritual means, in particular by exorcisms. Guided, however, by profound wisdom, she admits the possibility of mistake, namely that manifestations of the purely natural order — as are, for example, nervous or psychic illnesses — may be mistaken for manifestations of the devil; while, on the contrary, cases of authentic diabolical vexation may be confused with the aforementioned illnesses. The admonitions of the Roman Ritual (De exorcizandis a daemonio, nos. 3-7), which sets forth the criteria of distinction and inculcates in the exorcist: in primis ne facile credat aliquem a daemonio obsessum esse, bear witness to this prudence.
II. DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA
First of all, and in every case, in order for the action of the demon to be admitted, the phenomena must manifest themselves with such manifestations as to exclude any other possible cause. Such a judgment, when it can be made, although it is negative, given its character of exclusivity, is certainly sufficient for a rigorous diagnosis. However, the exclusion of causes other than the demon is not simple; indeed, it requires the utmost caution and depth of doctrine. For this reason the references given here can only be summary. God, therefore, will be excluded whenever the manifestations, whether by their purpose and their intrinsic content (immoral, impious), or by the circumstances in which they occur (spiritist séances, etc.), are incompatible with the attributes of God (infinite wisdom, majesty, etc.). Analogous criteria hold for the pure spirits, but good ones (angels), and for the souls of the dead, even the damned, if one holds, as Revelation teaches, that any action of theirs upon the living and upon the other earthly creatures cannot occur without a positive intervention of God. Likewise, the action of the living cannot be admitted when the phenomena reveal a material and intellectual content superior to the possibilities of the living being himself: such, for example, is certainly the case with "xenoglossy," all the more so if it occurs in children who, by reason of age, are still incapable of speech. Certainly the application of these negative criteria cannot be made without the aid of positive norms capable of resolving errors, inasmuch as they determine, for individual phenomena, on the basis of science, what exceeds, or does not exceed, the possibilities of human nature.
In the light of modern investigations, for example, manifestations explainable by the exercise of particular psychic activities, even though not common to every individual, such as telepathy, psychometry, etc. (v. CHIAROVEGGENZA), cannot be considered preternatural, nor can very many of the facts of a physical order (telekinesis) that are found in mediumistic casuistry. Such phenomena, which indeed have something of the marvelous about them, are at present considered to be of a natural character, or with great probability due to natural causes (v. C. Boyer, Cursus philosophiae, 2nd ed., Rome 1944, p. 220).
For these reasons, in the present state of our knowledge, it does not seem that the criteria of a physical and psychological order enumerated in the Roman Ritual can be accepted wholesale, that is, without discrimination: "...signa autem obsidentis daemonis sunt: ignota lingua loqui pluribus verbis, vel loquentem intelligere; distantia et occulta patefacere; vires supra aetatis seu conditionis naturam ostendere... et alia id genus, quae cum plurima occurrant, maiora sunt indicia." Nowadays... "les progrès de la métapsychique ne nous permettent plus d'utiliser les critères de la possession comme on le faisait au XVIIᵉ siècle... Nous sommes obligés d'être plus réservés" (R. Dahliez, in Etudes carmélitaines, 23 [1938, II], p. 229).
This caution is all the more to be recommended if one bears in mind how, through the progress of the medical sciences, facts that yesterday were suspected of being diabolical are today definitely established as natural. It will therefore be necessary for the exorcist, in order to avoid pernicious misunderstandings, to have recourse to upright physicians, deeply versed in the science of nervous and mental diseases. With regard to these illnesses it must be said that their symptomatology, particularly in the eyes of a layman, can take on such characteristics of extraordinariness and inexplicability as to assume the appearance of the preternatural. Thus, illusions and hallucinations can be mistaken for apparitions, nightmares, demonic commands, threats; delusions can follow one another and be linked together in an apparently logical and plausible construction, which can accompany the course of the individual's life without disturbance of his normal daily activity, so that his life preserves a certain semblance of normality: this particularly in lucid systematized delusions, proper to the picture of paranoia. "Demonomania" belongs to these forms, which can be exchanged for diabolical obsession and possession: forms in which confusion is easy because of the calm, circumstantial, coherent and repeated affirmations of the subject, who appears to the layman all the more normal the more absent from his symptomatology are violent rages, convulsive attacks, episodes of suspension of consciousness ("trance"), commonly believed to be presumed attributes of the declared madman.
The neuro-psychasthenic forms (v. NEVRASTENIA) can give rise to morbid pictures interpretable as m. d., particularly in the form of personal diabolical infestation. The obsessive idea (v. PSICOSI OSSESSIVA) that forcefully wedges itself into the individual's consciousness, most painful and invincible, to which is added in phobia the anguished fear that it may come true; the obsessive impulses, which seem to drive the subject irresistibly, and in spite of every contrary will, to perform a detested action or to prevent him from carrying out what he would strongly desire, can be held to be vexatious actions of the demon. In particular, the producer of pseudo-diabolical pictures is hysteria, to which it may be said, without exaggeration, that the great majority of cases of false obsession and infestation must be attributed: it is a good rule, in every case of presumed diabolical action, to look in the individual for the possible signs of the aforementioned neurosis. The characteristic tendency to imitation and suggestion ("pitiatism"), to systematized lying (v. MITOMANIA), to doublings of consciousness, to curious disturbances of sensibility, to convulsive crises, are the elementary stones with which hysteria builds the pictures of false m. d., often characterized by a theatrical and exhibitionistic form. Another illness capable of generating misunderstandings is epilepsy, of which one must bear in mind not only the grand convulsive crises, but the forms of "petit mal," the "absences," the episodic impulses of violence, the demented states.
The fundamental criteria capable of guiding the diagnosis of m. d. have been indicated in broad outline: yet, having reached this point, it must be added that in not a few cases it is impossible to institute a differential investigation capable of attaining certainty, since there can indeed exist pictures that present an identity of external manifestations, with only the determining cause varying, the one preternatural, the other natural. The study of two cases, externally similar, cured by Jesus, is enough to convince one of this: the blind man of Bethsaida (Mk. 8:22-26) and the blind and mute demoniac (Mt. 12:22); while in the first he obtains the cure by miraculously healing, in the second the effect is obtained by freeing the sick man from diabolical infestation. What, however, was so easy for the searching wisdom of Jesus can even be impossible for the exorcist. In such an eventuality, the truly wise rule to follow is that of presuming, in the first place, that the facts are of a natural order, applying thereby the "principle of economy," by which recourse is to be had to the preternatural explanation, and to the consequent therapy, only when the natural one proves fully insufficient.
In doubt, therefore, when the means of cure suggested by medicine have failed — which cannot have the value of absolute proof, given the limited means of the medical art — the exorcist will act cautiously, graduating the exorcisms as the natural cures prove ineffective, and always avoiding those externally suggestive and impressive forms that could harmfully influence the psychic equilibrium of the afflicted person, should he be nothing but a neuropath.
III. THE VARIOUS MODES OF DEMONIACAL M
One habitually discerns a violent overexcitation of the nervous system, both in its vegetative activity and in the life of relation, with a greater or lesser intensification — at times truly extraordinary — of the sensitive, intellective and volitional functions, and often an inexplicable development of the subject's physical energy, capable of manifesting an agility, a strength, a suddenness of action that is more than beast-like. Not rarely all this is framed within the lines of a clearly recognizable natural illness, as, moreover, one gathers from the Gospel, in the case of the lunatic epileptic demoniac (Mt. 4:24; 17:14); in the different forms of localized paralysis and contractures (Lk. 13:11-16), of blindness, deafness, mutism (Mt. 9:32; 12:22; Mk. 7:32; 9:24) and of the one struck by crises of manic agitation (Mk. 1:26; 9:17-21; Lk. 9:39).
To these pseudo-natural forms there are often associated prodigious phenomena, such as the strangest and most unthought-of aspects of clairvoyance, xenoglossy, the levitation of one's own body, etc.