Exorcism

views updated

EXORCISM

EXORCISM . The English word exorcism derives from the Greek exorkizein, a compound of ex (out) plus horkizein (to cause to swear, or to bind by an oath). Whereas in Greek the word sometimes is used simply as a more intensive form of the root, meaning "to adjure," English derivatives usually designate a "swearing out" of invasive spiritual forces from the body in a formal rite of expulsion. Thus exorcism cannot fully be understood without reference to the concept of spirit possession, the state that it redresses.

The spirits to be exorcised most commonly are conceived either as demons or as restless ghosts. These evil spirits penetrate into the bodies of their victims and completely control, or at least strongly influence, their actions. Possessing spirits may also cause physical illness by interfering with the body's normal physiological processes or mental illness by affecting the will, intellect, and emotions. Yet in many cultures, spirit possession is diagnosed only retrospectively. That is, the victim often must display abnormal behavior for some time before friends and family diagnose her as possessed by a spirit. Both cross-culturally and transhistorically, spirit possession afflicts women more often than men. This pattern has been the subject of much discussion among specialists who study the phenomenon.

The forms and prevalence of exorcism within a given culture are intimately related to the question of how the invading spirits are conceived. In certain contexts, possession by neutral or beneficent spirits is highly valued, and in these settings exorcisms are unlikely to be an important constituent of the local culture. Within other religious contexts, however, spirit possession is understood as the work of evil spirits or demons dedicated to the downfall of humanity, and exorcism thus is viewed as a vitally important form of healing. Lastly, many cultures, both historically and worldwide, consider possessing spirits to be the ghosts of the dead. Responses to possession in these cases may involve ambivalent attitudes toward the invading spirit. Communities invariably wish to heal the victim through exorcism but also may feel compassion toward the dead spirit that has invaded the living. Moreover witnesses to exorcisms of ghosts frequently use the occasion to interrogate the spirit about the details of the afterlife.

Exorcisms vary widely. Whereas some rites are purely verbal formulae, many employ objects, gestures, and actions thought to be of particular power against invasive spirits. In some contexts, exorcism may be accomplished simply through the charismatic power of a particularly powerful or righteous individual. Many cultures use dance and music as essential elements of exorcism rituals. In this article, the word exorcism may refer either to the procedure itself or to its end result, the liberation from spirits that it accomplishes.

Christian Exorcism

From its origins, Christianity has included a strong belief in spirit possession by demons, understood as primordial forces of evil and followers of the devil. Thus exorcism has a long history within Christianity, particularly (though not exclusively) among Catholics. These traditions continue to the modern day.

In the New Testament

The Greek verb exorkizein appears only once in the New Testament, in Matthew 26:63, where the high priest "adjures" Jesus to reveal whether he is the Christ. Yet the action of expelling demons frequently does appear in the New Testament canon. Exorcism is among Jesus' favorite miracles in the Synoptic tradition, comprised of the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, yet no exorcisms appear in the latest gospel, John. The Acts of the Apostles, by the same author as the Gospel of Luke, also recounts exorcisms by Jesus' followers after his death and employs the noun exorkistes to refer to some Jews who attempt to cast out demons using Jesus' name (Lk. 19:13). Indeed in respect to exorcism, the emerging Jesus Movement was much in accord with developments in other Jewish sects of the period, many of which had begun to place a greater emphasis upon exorcisms and charismatic forms of healing than had been the case in earlier Jewish tradition.

In the earliest gospel, Mark, an exorcism is Jesus' first miracle:

And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent and come out of him!" And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. (Mk. 1:23–26)

Mark subsequently presents Jesus as famed for his exorcism ability, pairing this miracle with Jesus' eloquence in preaching as his two main sources of appeal throughout his travels in Galilee (Mk. 1:39). Mark's gospel thus uses exorcism as a way of demonstrating Jesus' uncanny power as a complement to his teaching: Jesus is shown as battling against malign spiritual forces both physically and pedagogically.

The most complete account of exorcism is that of the Gerasene demoniac, recounted in all three synoptic gospels (Mk. 5:1–20; Mt. 8:28–34; Lk. 8:26–39). The tale concerns Jesus' encounter with a man possessed by a multitude of evil spirits. The man was living in the cemetery on the edge of a city—among the tombs of the dead—because his disordered state of mind and superhuman strength rendered him unfit for the society of the living. Jesus interviews the spirits inside the man, which speak through his mouth, and elicits their collective name, Legion. Jesus then commands the spirits to depart from the man but gives them permission to enter into a herd of pigs foraging nearby. The possessed pigs then plunge themselves into the sea and drown, prompting the local herdsmen to flee and tell the story throughout the city. A group of people then come out to Jesus and ask him to leave. The passage reveals much about conceptions of possession and exorcism in this time period, including the disruption of identity and of bodily control characteristic of demoniacs; the importance of learning the demons' names in order to gain power over them; and Jesus' charismatic use of a simple verbal command to accomplish the expulsion. However, the conclusion of the tale suggests that Jesus' action is regarded with considerable fear and ambivalence by the local community.

The Synoptic Gospels report that during his lifetime Jesus empowered his disciples to cast out demons as well. Yet upon occasion this power failed them, as in the case of a dumb and deaf spirit that had entered a child, tormenting him with convulsions. After the disciples proved unable to heal the boy, Jesus successfully completed the task through prayer and fasting (Mt. 9:17; Mt. 16; Lk. 9:40). Jesus' followers continued to perform exorcisms after his death. The Acts of the Apostles describes several cases accomplished through a noteworthy diversity of means. Paul exorcises a slave girl through a verbal rebuke similar to those used by Jesus (Acts 16:18), but Peter heals the possessed simply by having them gather in his shadow (Acts 5:16). Paul also exorcises spirits through handkerchiefs impregnated with his power of supernatural healing (Acts 19:11–12). Simply invoking the name of Jesus was considered a powerful method of exorcism, one even employed by non-Christians, according to Acts. Chapter nineteen describes some Jews in Ephesus who attempt to cast out demons in Jesus' name, though without success.

Late antiquity and the Middle Ages

As in Jesus' own early career, exorcism was an important element in winning new converts for the early generations of the Jesus Movement. The second-century Christian apologist Justin Martyr characterized exorcism as a particularly impressive gift among Christians, noting that any demon, no matter how powerful, became submissive when conjured in Jesus' name. Indeed exorcism became a competitive arena in which Roman Christians claimed triumph over Jewish and pagan rivals, suggesting that their conjurations of demons were more efficacious than any other form of healing. Peter Brown has shown in "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity" (1982) that the essential mark of the early Christian holy person was his or her charismatic ability to exorcise, and Christian saints became closely associated with this activity. Thus when a little girl in fourth-century Syria wished to parody a monk in order to entertain her companions, she did so by pretending to exorcise them with all due solemnity.

With the Christian community growing in numbers, the church began to require the exorcism both of adult converts and of infants at baptism. The earliest Catholic baptismal liturgy incorporated exorcisms; one function of godparents, in cases of infant baptism, was to answer for the child when the exorcist asked, "Do you renounce the devil and all his works?" In consequence of this development, by the third century a designated exorcist was required in every Christian community. Documents from this time period make note of a formal order of exorcists that constituted a lowly step on the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The Fourth Council of Carthage in 398 ce is the first surviving text to prescribe the rite of ordination for an exorcist: "When an Exorcist is Ordained: Let him accept from the hand of the priest the little book in which the exorcisms are written, and let the priest say to him, 'Take this and memorize it, and may you have the power of laying on hands upon an energumen, whether baptized or a catechumen'" (Caciola, 2003, p. 229).

As Christianity spread into northern Europe and became a dominant institution in the medieval west, exorcism practices continued to evolve. Whereas the order of exorcists slowly declined in importance and eventually disappeared from view, descriptions of exorcisms performed by saints vastly increased. Medieval hagiographies frequently mention exorcisms performed during their subjects' lifetimes as well as postmortem exorcisms accomplished by the saints' relics or tombs. This development accelerated after the twelfth century, when accounts of demonic possession saw an exponential increase in hagiographical texts. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153 ce), for example, was credited with many personal exorcisms, whereas Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179 ce) provided detailed advice on how to exorcise a possessed woman in one of her letters. Some of the best surviving accounts of exorcisms during this time period are set at saints' tombs, and certain shrines became known as centers of exorcistic healing. The arm relic of John Gualbert of Florence (999–1073 ce), for example, was famed for its exorcistic properties, and the miracle accounts recorded at his shrine in the later Middle Ages include a number of healings of the possessed. In some cases, families traveled considerable distances for an exorcism of a relative, vowing particular devotion to the saint if he or she provided aid to the possessed at the end of the pilgrimage.

Exorcisms by living saints or their relics were not the only means of casting out demons, however. Medieval people also employed a number of other techniques, often in a somewhat improvisational manner. Friends, family, and religious professionals might try to cast out the demon through prayer and fasting; by showing the demoniac religious paintings; by placing relics or books of Scripture on the victim's head or body; through anointing with holy water, holy oil, or blessed salt; or by giving the demoniac a consecrated Eucharistic wafer.

Medieval popular culture included its own notions of spirit possession and of appropriate remedies as well. Many contemporary texts attest to the northern European belief that demons could invade dead bodies, animate them, and use them for nefarious purposes. In such cases, the preferred solution to the problem was to destroy the corpse as fully as possible. In Mediterranean regions, the spirits that possessed the living were often identified as ghosts rather than as demons. As for cures, the possessed sometimes were immersed in a running body of water as a form of cure. In some areas local men made names for themselves as secular exorcists and healers, each with his own unique formula, rhyming jingles, and other procedures. Thus medieval cultures held diverse notions of spirit possession and exorcism in addition to purely ecclesiastical definitions.

The emergence of a liturgical rite in the fifteenth century

The fifteenth century marked an important turning point in the history of exorcism within the Catholic Church. At this time, as Caciola (2003) has shown, the church began to use formal scripted, liturgical exorcisms, numerous examples of which are preserved in manuscripts. The change likely stemmed from a desire on the part of the Catholic hierarchy to standardize practices of exorcism at a time when the number of reported possessions remained high. In so doing the church also arrogated control over the process of exorcism to the ecclesiastical hierarchy rather than allowing decentralized and improvised practices of exorcism to persist.

Liturgical exorcisms are a species of clamor, a family of ritual forms that cry out to God for aid against oppressors. Other examples of this kind of ritual include excommunications, humiliations, and maledictions. These exorcisms also are intimately related to the baptismal liturgy, repeating verbal formulations from the baptismal rite as well as other elements, such as the blessing of salt and water. A third textual precedent for these rites is Jewish conjurations, particularly the inclusion of exhaustive compendia of the names of God. Indeed liturgical exorcisms are rife with lists of all kinds: those that recount events from the life of Jesus; that call upon the aid of all the saints and the hierarchy of angels; that cast the demon forth from each body part; and that imagine vivid apocalyptic scenarios of demonic defeat and eternal torment. Several manuscripts of exorcism suggest the use of demonic language in order to gain control over the possessing spirit, incorporating brief spells composed of unintelligible words that are said to have been personally composed by the devil. After conjuring the demon in its own language, the exorcist may then proceed to inquire into its precise status, its reason for invading the victim, and its requirements for a successful expulsion. The following quotation from a manuscript held in Munich gives a sense of how a typical liturgical exorcism begins:

Take the head of the possessed person in your left hand and place your right thumb in the possessed person's mouth, saying the following words in both ears: ABRE MONTE ABRYA ABREMONTE CONSACRAMENTARIA SYPAR YPAR YTUMBA OPOTE ALACENT ALAPHIE. Then hold him firmly and say these conjurations: I conjure you, evil spirits, by the terrible name of God Agla.… I also conjure you by the great name Pneumaton and by the name Ysiton, that you ascend to the tongue and give me a laugh. If they do not respond, then know that they are mute spirits. The exorcist should diligently discover and require whether it is incubi, or succubi, or even dragons that possesses the obsessed person; whether they are attendants of Pluto, or servants of Satan, or disciples of Astaroth; if they are from the east or the west; from noonday or evening; from the air, earth, water, fire, or whatever kind of spirit. (Caciola, pp. 248–249)

It was believed that once the demon was made to answer questions about itself (either through use of the demonic language or through some other constraint) it would be easier to exorcise.

The liturgy continues with insults to the demon, commands for it to depart, and prayers for divine aid, as well as Bible readings interspersed with lists of body parts, saints, angels, and the names of God. Throughout the rite, the exorcist is frequently directed to make the sign of the cross over the victim or to sprinkle him or her with holy water. The rite usually concludes with a prayer of thanksgiving and a plea for future protection against similar attacks. This basic template was to persist as the basis for the liturgy of exorcism for centuries.

The Reformation and beyond

The Reformation period saw a notable increase in demonological phenomena, most notably the witch hunts that came to a peak in this time period. Whereas the reformers accepted the possibility of demonic possession, they nevertheless opened a vigorous debate over the efficacy of liturgical exorcism as a remedy. Protestant texts satirized the splashing of holy water and frequent crossing of demoniacs performed by Catholic exorcists, deriding them alternately as "superstition," "empty rituals," or "magic." Yet beneath this general atmosphere of rejection lay a diversity of attitudes toward exorcism. Some reformers, like John Calvin (1509–1564) and Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), rejected all ritual exorcism; others, however, were less radical in their approaches. Martin Luther (1483–1546), for example, defended the use of traditional rites of exorcism during infant baptisms, deeming them a kind of prayer on behalf of the infant for divine protection. Most Protestant groups eschewed liturgies of exorcism for adults but did not reject simpler forms of exorcism through prayer and fasting, viewing them as acceptable pleas for divine aid against possessing demons.

Among Catholics, belief in the benefits of ritual exorcism continued to flourish unabated. Many elements of the liturgy that was formulated in the fifteenth century were codified in 1614 in the official Roman Ritual. Also during this time period, plural possessions and group exorcisms became a common Catholic form of the phenomenon, usually in a convent setting. The most famous case is the 1634 account of possessed nuns of Loudon studied by Michel de Certeau in The Possession at Loudon (1996), but plural possessions also occurred in Spain, Italy, the Low Countries, and France from the mid–sixteenth century through the early seventeenth century.

Some possession cases became closely bound up with the witchcraft persecutions; demonological literature taught that witches could send demons to possess their enemies. The priest of Loudon, Urbain Grandier (1590?–1634), ultimately was convicted of having bewitched the nuns. For this crime, he paid with his life. Likewise the eighteenth-century Puritan witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts, originated with charges that the witches had caused their young accusers to be possessed.

A significant aspect of exorcism in this time period is the degree to which spectacular cases of possession and exorcism entered into public discourse and became causes célèbres. Due to the spread of print technology, for the first time such events could be widely known about and discussed. The publicity provided by pamphlets and broadsides, combined with the fractious confessional politics of the day, made exorcism a vehicle of Catholic polemic against Protestants and Jews. This dynamic was first noted by Daniel Pickering Walker in Unclean Spirits (1981). Thus Nicole Obry, a young Catholic woman who became possessed in 1565 and was publicly exorcised in the city of Laon, regaled the vast crowds attending the event in the voice of her possessing demon, which confessed that it was close friends with the Huguenots (preferring them even to the Jews) and that it sustained the greatest torment when young Nicole was given the Eucharist. Here insults to other religious traditions were combined with an endorsement of the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.

Nicole's case was widely copied, most notably in the subsequent generation by the famous demoniac Marthe Brossier (1573–16??). Protestant groups were unable to engage in widespread counterpropaganda, however, because they rejected exorcism for the most part. In England, the Protestant minister John Darrell became famed in the 1590s for exorcisms achieved through prayer and fasting, but the accounts of these cases lack the explicitly propagandistic elements of the Catholic cases. In a slightly different polemical vein, a sixteenth-century Catholic exorcist conjured the demons afflicting a group of young Roman girls who had been converted from Judaism. These demons explained their presence as the result of a curse laid upon the girls by their fathers who, angry at the loss of their children, summoned forth demons to possess them.

Exorcism declined in Europe during the eighteenth century, though it never entirely disappeared. Indeed professional exorcists like German Johann Joseph Gassner (1727–1779) continued to appear. Among the educated classes, however, symptoms that traditionally had led to a diagnosis of demonic possession increasingly came to be regarded as indicators of natural pathologies like hysteria, epilepsy, or melancholia. Although naturalistic diagnoses for "possessed behaviors" had been available since the twelfth century, the eighteenth century saw a more definitive shift in favor of medical epistemologies. In consequence exorcism was less frequently indicated as a cure.

The contemporary Christian Churches

Perhaps the best-known modern image of the rite of exorcism derives from the 1973 film The Exorcist, based on the 1971 novel of the same title by William Peter Blatty (b. 1928). Though the account is fictionalized, Blatty's story of a demonically possessed little girl was based upon a 1949 case of prolonged exorcism of a young Lutheran boy by a Catholic priest. The film spurred a revival of interest in exorcism in the United States, and Catholic bishops began receiving more and more requests for the procedure. Only a small proportion of such requests were granted because twentieth-century Catholic officials regard genuine demonic possession as an extremely rare phenomenon that is easily confounded with natural mental disturbances. In recognition of this stance, the Vatican in 1999 updated the ritual of exorcism for the first time since 1614, advising consultation with doctors and psychologists in order to rule out organic pathologies; however, the twenty-seven-page exorcism ritual was left largely intact.

Whereas the Catholic hierarchy preaches restraint in regard to exorcism, certain Catholic communities reject this stance along with many other features of the modern church. The most active Catholic exorcists of the late twentieth century belonged to conservative groups that rejected the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), especially the abandonment of the Latin Tridentine Mass. These exorcists contended that the new Mass left the faithful unprotected against demonic attack and believed that as a result of Vatican II, the number of possessions had increased exponentially.

Some modern American Protestant groups have become interested in possession and exorcism as well. The beginnings of modern Pentecostalism in the early twentieth century fostered a broad, interdenominational movement of Christian charismatics who placed direct spiritual interventions at the center of their theology. Some modern charismatics practice exorcism or "deliverance," as documented by Michael Cuneo in American Exorcism. Although deliverances can take many different forms according to the individual practitioner, the majority are simple prayer sessions for the victim's relief. The most extensive deliverances include a clairvoyant discernment of spirits, in which a specialist intuits what type of demon is afflicting the individual: a demon of lust, stubbornness, greed, or other sin. In rare cases, the demon may be identified as an entity of "intergenerational evil," an inherited demon dedicated to afflicting a particular bloodline; such a diagnosis is particularly likely when the individual requesting deliverance has a family history involving violence or mental illness. More formal rites of deliverance often begin with a binding of the devil, in which the indwelling demon is adjured, in the name of Jesus, to remain calm and desist from thrashing about inside the victim. Next is the prayer phase, which may be accompanied by fasting and a laying on of hands. As with Catholic traditionalists who practice exorcism, Protestant charismatics interested in deliverance tend to be social conservatives opposed to the increasing theological liberalism of the mainline churches.

Judaism

Judaism does not have a strongly attested focus on spirit possession and exorcism before the middle of the sixteenth century. At that time belief in possession by reincarnate spirits of the dead began to emerge in the Sephardic Jewish community of Safed in the Galilee. These ideas eventually were disseminated to eastern European Jewish communities, becoming particularly vigorous among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hasidic groups. The most familiar term for the possessing spirit, dybbuk, came into use only in the late seventeenth century, but it is employed by scholars of Judaism to refer to possession by a ghost even in earlier epochs.

Early history

The earliest account of an exorcism in Jewish tradition is 1 Samuel 16:14–23. The text recounts how after the spirit of YHWH departed from King Saul, an evil spirit began to torment him. Saul's counselors suggest that music may be able to soothe his affliction, and David is brought to him to play the lyre. The sweet strains of the music succeed in exorcising the spirit from Saul whenever he feels invaded by its presence.

This is the sole account of spirit possession and exorcism in the Hebrew Bible. By the Second Temple period, however, the invasions of demons and forms of spiritual healing had become more prominent within Judaism. These phenomena were central features of the career of Jesus, for instance, as he traveled through the Jewish communities of first-century Palestine. The Qumran texts likewise place significant emphasis upon demonic attacks and human counterattacks, often in the form of protective spells, whereas scattered tales in rabbinic literature recount exorcisms by particularly righteous Jewish teachers.

Surviving bits of material culture testify to the contemporary interest in exorcism as well, particularly a number of bowls inscribed with Aramaic exorcisms that utilize a legalistic language of divorcing the spirit. Josephus (37–c. 100 ce) provides a story about contemporary Jewish exorcism techniques that he ascribes to traditions originating with King Solomon. According to this author, an exorcist named Eleazar gained fame for the efficacy of his cures and even was called upon to demonstrate his prowess before the emperor Vespasian (9–79 ce) along with all his court and army. Eleazar's secret was to draw the demons out from the possessed person's body by employing a certain root, discovered by Solomon, which was encased in a ring. By holding the ring to a demoniac's nose, he allowed that person to inhale the scent of the root, then he extracted the demon from the victim's body through the nostrils.

Accounts of exorcism are rare in medieval Jewish sources, although—as attested in the articles collected by Matt Goldish in Spirit Possession in Judaism (2003)—many scholars believe that the practice itself persisted. Medieval Catholic exorcisms include elements drawn from Jewish tradition, such as the use of lists of the names of God and the acronym AGLA (for Atah Gibbor Le-ʿolam Adonai, "You are mighty forever, my Lord"). This interreligious borrowing may suggest that Jewish exorcism traditions remained in common use. An early-sixteenth-century compilation of Jewish magical and exorcism texts, the Shoshan Yesod ha-ʿOlam, testifies to a vigorous tradition of spiritual healing; the book likely incorporates many older traditions that are not attested in surviving earlier literature. The exorcisms here are liturgical in character, involving verbal conjurations of demons and commands to depart. One formula adjures the demon, by the seventy-two names of God, to reveal its own name and parentage, then requires it to depart from the human body and enter into a flask that the exorcist is directed to have handy.

The emergence of dybbuk possession in the sixteenth century

In the sixteenth century spirit possession underwent a significant resurgence and evolution within Jewish thought. Beginning with the case of a young boy in the 1540s, the Galilean village of Safed became the epicenter of a new series of sensational possessions and exorcisms, several of which were associated with the circle of the qabbalist Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534–1572). Not only was possession suddenly a renewed topic of reportage, but the terms in which it was envisioned seem to have shifted. Whereas earlier Jewish attestations of exorcism usually refer to the possessing spirit as a demon, the cases in Safed (which in the early twenty-first century have received sustained treatment from Jeffrey H. Chajes in Between Worlds [2003]) constitute the first detailed descriptions of possessing spirits conceived as transmigratory souls of the dead.

Already in the late fourteenth century, Spanish qabbalistic literature had begun to explore the notion of ʿibbur, "pregnancy," as a form of spirit possession. The term was used to designate the invasion of a living human being by the transmigrating spirit of a deceased person, thus suggesting the coexistence of two souls within a single body. The sixteenth-century Safedian qabbalists expanded upon this tradition significantly. Although ʿibbur could involve either benign or maleficent dead spirits, the concern here is with the latter.

The qabbalists explained that the soul of a sinful person might not be permitted to enter into Gehenna directly upon death but instead would wander, disembodied and subject to beatings from angels of destruction. Seeking refuge from the angels, such a spirit would seek to enter into a physical body—either animal or human—for shelter; human bodies could be made vulnerable to such invasion through certain sins. Exorcism of the spirit should ideally be conducted in the presence of witnesses, a minyan of ten men. Because the ritual did not follow an invariant form, elements such as extensive suffumigation of the victim with strong incense, the blowing of the shofar (ram's horn) into the possessed's ear, and invocation of the names of God were used to force the dybbuk to reveal its own name and background. Once the identity of the spirit was established, the exorcist might converse with it, asking questions about its own former life and sins as well as seeking information about the afterlife. The dybbuk was often adjured to exit the victim by the big toe, lest the victim choke if it left via the throat. After the departure, the victim was to be given a protective amulet to wear to fend off further spiritual infestations. Texts recounting famous exorcisms served hagiographic functions, glorifying the rabbi who performed a successful expulsion. This is true not only of sixteenth-century Safed but of the later history of the dybbuk phenomenon as well.

It is notable that, in cases of dybbuk possession, the compassion of rabbinic exorcists was directed not only toward the possessed victim but also toward the possessing spirit. Because the latter was conceived as human, it too merited a degree of concern and healing. Thus even as the exorcist cast the demon out from the body it possessed, he often sought to discover how to help the dybbuk achieve tikkun, or rectification. If the spirit were permitted to enter Gehenna, it could then find rest and cease tormenting other living beings. This sympathetic feature of Jewish dybbuk exorcism could not find a counterpart in earlier Jewish traditions or in Christian traditions, which conceive of the possessing spirits as unredeemable and demonic.

Later developments

The ʿibbur form of possession appeared in 1575 in Ferrara, Italy, where the spirit possessing a Jewish woman claimed it was the ghost of a recently executed Christian. Scholars are divided as to whether this and subsequent Italian cases resulted from a dissemination of Lurianic notions of possession and exorcism or arose from other contingencies. In the seventeenth century the Italian rabbi Moses Zacuto (1625–1697) became well known as an exorcist, engaging the topic repeatedly in his correspondence.

By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries dybbuk possession had become common in eastern European Hasidic communities; the term dybbuk is first attested in a Yiddish pamphlet published around 1680 in Volhynia. Sholom Anski's (1863–1920) 1910s play The Dybbuk; or, Between Two Worlds, which is set in a Hasidic context, popularized and romanticized the notion of ghostly possession. Like Blatty's The Exorcist, the story ultimately may have influenced the course of the religious phenomenon on the ground. Cases of dybbuk possession reminiscent of Anski's narrative have been reported in modern Israel and have begun to be studied by modern folklorists and anthropologists.

Competing Exorcism Forms in Egypt

In modern Islamic Egypt, spirit possession may be managed by one of two means: through Qurʾanic healing or participation in a zār cult. Islamic demonology is extensive, and the choice of which form of healing to pursue is in part a reflection of how the inhabiting spirit is identified.

Zār

Zār, a relatively recent invention dating only to the 1870s, is a form of participatory ritual group healing found in several East African countries. Dominated by women, zār cults involve regular meetings at which participants dance to drumming with the goal of entering into individual trance states. Islamic authorities in Egypt often denounce zār as a vulgar superstition held by women too ignorant to realize that their actions are un-Islamic. Participants, however, regard the meetings as fully compatible with Islamic tradition.

Strictly speaking, the zār cult is not a complete form of exorcism but rather a recurrent form of pacification. The goal of the ceremony is to learn to coexist with the spirit, or zār master, by temporarily lessening the intensity of the spirit's hold upon the individual. As documented by Gerda Sengers in Women and Demons (2003), the beginning of involvement with zār is customarily a private initiation ceremony paid for by the possessed victim and attended by friends, family, and other women who are possessed. After an opening prayer drawn from the Qurʾān, several different drum bands perform in sequence; their purpose is to get the participants dancing and help spur the onset of a trance. The new "zār bride," dressed in a long white tunic, is led by the kudya, a zār specialist who has assisted in the diagnosis of the victim's illness and identification of her invading spirit, or zār master. These may be of several kinds, including (among others) Gado, master of the toilet; the atheist zār master known as the Red Sultan; the Sultan of the Sea, who affects the brains; and even Christian zār masters. (The latter are easily identified because they make their victims desire alcohol, which normally is forbidden to Muslims but allowed to those possessed by Christian zār masters at zār ceremonies.) Zār masters often have negative qualities and cause distress or illness, but they are distinct from the more purely evil Islamic demons and devils known as jinn and shayatin.

Participants in the zār dance not with one another but with their individual zār masters. Thus the action, while collective, is not truly communal. After the private zār ceremony—sponsored by the family of the new initiate—the initiate will likely join a regular public zār group or hadrah. The hadrah meets regularly, usually on a weekly basis, and each participant contributes funds to pay for the drummers and to support the kudra. The repetition of the dance ritual each week keeps the zār master quiet within the victim, allowing her to pursue her normal life in all other ways.

Qurʾanic healing

Qurʾanic healing is a true exorcism that definitively drives out the invasive spirits, which in this case are often jinn or shayatin, though they can be zār masters as well. The healing usually is conducted by a sheik who specializes in Qurʾanic exorcism on the grounds of a mosque, perhaps in an upstairs room or other chamber; as with zār ceremonies, these usually are group meetings with several possessed persons in attendance at once. Paticipants are segregated by sex, either by some form of barrier or by designating different days of the week for gatherings of men and of women. Nevertheless in Egypt—as in other parts of the world—spirit possession tends to afflict women more often than men. Qurʾanic healers consider themselves as a more orthodox alternative to the zār cult, which they tend to deride as superstitious, corrupt, and anti-Islamic.

The rite begins with a rapid sequence of prayers, recited either by the sheik himself, one of his assistants, or the whole group. As the prayers go on, some of the possessed are likely to become excited and to begin writhing and crying out. At this point the assistants direct their prayers more loudly and forcefully at that individual; they may strike her with a stick while repeatedly shouting at the jinn to get out immediately. Eventually the exorcist or his assistant conjures the demon, asking its name, other details of its identity, and its reasons for possessing the victim. One may be possessed by a jinn for a variety of offenses, including such sins as hitting a cat. If the demon turns out not to be Muslim, it is given the chance to convert. The spirit is then required to enter into the possessed person's finger and to indicate its presence there by lifting that digit. The exorcist then pricks that finger with a needle, drawing a drop of blood and forcing the spirit out with it. After the rite, the victim is often counseled to adopt a higher level of piety in everyday life by, for example, dressing more modestly or praying more often.

Regionalism on the Indian Subcontinent

The linguistic and cultural diversity of the Indian subcontinent is paralleled by a wide degree of variance in exorcism practices. Certain spirit possession beliefs are widespread in India, such as the frequency with which ghosts as well as demons possess the living; the predominance of women among the possessed; the belief that possession may sometimes be caused by another person's act of sorcery; and the retrospective diagnosis of the onset of possession as occurring at a moment when the victim was alone and felt a sudden fear. Regional variations in possession beliefs—and especially in exorcism techniques—however, are legion. Indeed even within a single locale there may be several different exorcism techniques in play.

North India: The Balaji temple

The North Indian town of Mehndipur, Rajasthan, is home to the Balaji temple, dedicated to the monkey god Hanumān. The latter deity is an apt choice for a divine exorcist, for he is a heroic figure drawn from the epic Rāmāyaṇa, which recounts his devoted service to Rāma during a protracted battle with the Sri Lankan demon Rāvaṇa. The Balaji temple is famed throughout Rajasthan and neighboring states for its successful exorcisms, attracting the possessed from as far away as Delhi. Indeed the Balaji temple has long been a popular pilgrimage destination: it invariably is filled with supplicants come to ask the monkey god for release from possessing spirits of the dead, from demons of the Hindu pantheon, and even sometimes from Muslim jinn.

Exorcisms performed at the temple are collective in character. Together caregivers and temple priests intone prayers to Hanumān, with the goal of initiating the victims into an altered state of consciousness or trance (peshi). Though the latter often involves convulsions, loud shrieking, and other extreme behaviors, peshi is held to be a prerequisite for healing. Victims may return to the temple for several successive days before achieving peshi, but once the catharsis of trance is achieved and then exited, the victim is likely to be considered on the road to complete healing. The process may be swift or slow, depending on the number and nature of the possessing spirits. After the exorcism, the newly healed individual may report having received from Hanumān a protective spirit, or dut, to help guard against future attacks.

South India

In South India, possession most frequently afflicts new, young brides; the spirit usually (though not invariably) is described as the ghost of a young man. Thus the possession state frequently has a sexual aspect that is explicitly articulated within the local understanding of these events. The ghosts or peys that afflict the victims often died unmarried; indeed a common reason for becoming this type of restless, possessing spirit is suicide because of unfulfilled love. These lonely ghosts of the untimely dead may become attracted to a lovely young bride with a still-fresh scent of sexual initiation about her and try to "catch" or possess her, often gaining entry through the woman's hair. Afterward the spirit becomes jealous and impels the woman to reject the sexual advances of her husband: this act often is the initiating event in a diagnosis of possession.

The exorcism ritual used to cure such afflictions usually involves a controlled, benign counterpossession. Here exorcists are specialists in dance techniques that enable them to enter into a state of trance, during which they incarnate a female deity like Kālī or Ankalaparamecuvari. The rite is known as "dancing the goddess." Because these deities are of superior power to the possessing ghost or demon, once the medium has become voluntarily possessed, the incarnate goddess is able to drive out the pey through a combination of supernatural threats and material sacrifices. The negotiation between the two possessed individuals may consume many hours, with the goddess-exorcist demanding that the pey leave and hurling insults at it and the ghost attempting to retain hold of the possessed woman and requiring various gifts or sacrifices before agreeing to exit. The exorcists who "dance the goddess" may resort to physical violence against the pey, beating the possessed or pulling her hair in order to convince the spirit inside that it must acquiesce and depart. This form of exorcism conceives of the struggle for healing as properly a battle between supernatural beings—the ghost versus the goddess—who nonetheless act through and on human bodies. The long hours of music, the dance, the confrontation between the two possessing personalities, and the ultimate triumph of the goddess-exorcist provides healing for the possessed victim as well as entertainment for the local village.

This counterpossession model of exorcism is supplemented by local practices with a more restricted geographic range. In the South Arcot District of Tamil Nadu, for instance, exorcisms sometimes are conducted by troupes of musicians known as pampaikkarar. The exorcism in this instance begins with a singer attempting to lure the possessed woman into a state of trance, after which the ghost who is possessing her may be interviewed. The details of its biography, death story, and the circumstances surrounding its possession of the victim are elicited; indeed the ghost is encouraged to explain its restlessness and its desires. As the music continues into the night, it is not uncommon for bystanders to dance the goddess, thus combining the better-known ritual with the more localized practice.

After the possessing spirit and its grievances have been identified, the musicians negotiate with it, promising a sacrifice in return for its pledge to depart. The spirit is asked to identify the specific lock of the victim's hair in which it resides; this tress is then tied into a knot over the protestations of the pey, which may complain that the action is painful. Afterward the sacrifice, a chicken, is offered, with its severed head being placed in the victim's mouth. This action shocks and frightens the pey and represents the beginnings of the actual expulsion. The possessed is then handed a large stone, said to represent "the weight of the pey's desire," and is herded toward the nearest tamarind tree. After the possessed person reaches the tree, the rock is laid at its roots, and the knotted lock of hair that contains the spirit is cut from the possessed woman's head and nailed to the trunk. Following this the exorcism is complete and the victim is considered healed. The culminating actions of the exorcism have been interpreted by Isabelle Nabokov in her article "Expel the Lover, Recover the Wife" (1997) as representing the final "divorce" of the lonely ghost from its victim and its "remarriage" to the tamarind tree, understood as a female entity in Tamil culture. When the pey's desire is given to the tamarind and the pey is severed from the woman and united with the tree, the affections of the lonely ghost are thereby redirected to a nonhuman object.

Scholarly Interpretations of Exorcism

Exorcism has long attracted attention from academics, thus becoming a category of scholarly analysis as well as of religious practice. The comments below identify some major strands in the interpretation of exorcism emanating from within the disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and history. Many of these analyses have tried to address the question of why women predominate in reports of possession and exorcism.

Anthropology

In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, the foundational literature of cultural anthropology gave prominent place to divergent cultural conceptualizations of spirits, their capabilities, and human responses to them. This focus was characteristic of the early anthropological approach to so-called "folk" religions, viewed as largely indistinguishable from culture, in contradistinction to "historical" religions, based on scriptural canons and textual precedents. Thus the anthropological literature on spirit possession and exorcism has a long and complex history within the discipline.

A well-known modern anthropological analysis of spirit possession and exorcism is I. M. Lewis's important 1971 work, Ecstatic Religion. Lewis was struck by the frequency with which socially marginal groups, particularly young women, were involuntarily overtaken by spirits, a phenomenon he termed "peripheral possession." He further noted that, while in a state of possession, the women often gained prestige and were able to act in more assertive ways than was the case in their regular daily lives. Thus they might openly critique their husbands or relatives, shirk household duties, or act in ways deemed immodest or inappropriate for their cultural settings. Lewis suggested that the reason for women's predominance among the spirit possessed in nearly all cultures is related to a covert desire for status enhancement. Women's possessing spirits allowed them to articulate resentments and desires that they normally would have had to suppress while simultaneously permitting them to disavow personal responsibility for their transgressive actions. This dynamic only reached its fullest expression, however, in the process of exorcism, which in many cultures takes the form of bargaining with the spirits to depart. The spirit may demand a series of concessions before agreeing to leave, often in the form of material gifts of direct benefit to the possessed woman: a feast, new clothes, or some other special treat.

Many scholars have suggested alternatives to Lewis's analysis or raised critiques to his approach. Bruce Kapferer, in his 1983 study of exorcism in Sri Lanka, A Celebration of Demons, argued that Lewis overvalued individual motivations and self-determination and undervalued broader cultural forces that symbolically align women with the sphere of the demonic and the unclean. Other scholars, including Janice Boddy in her review article "Spirit Possession Revisited" (1994), have called for a reframing of the question that moves "beyond instrumentality" to discuss broader notions of gender, body, and social organization that mitigate a narrowly functionalist view. Others, like Isabelle Nabokov (1997), have vigorously disputed the notion that exorcism acts to advance the interests of marginal groups, interpreting its symbolism as, rather, a means of asserting the hegemony of dominant cultural values. Nevertheless Lewis's "social deprivation analysis" remains a dominant influence in anthropological studies of exorcism. Lewis renewed his analysis in a follow-up study published in 1986, Religion in Context ; this work in turn was reissued in an expanded edition in 1996.

Psychology

The interest of psychologists in possession and exorcism originates with Sigmund Freud, who in the 1920s wrote about the seventeenth-century case of the painter Christopher Haizmann. (A translation of this work is in Brian Levack, Possession and Exorcism [1992].) Regarding accounts of Haizmann's possession as descriptions of a "demonological neurosis," Freud presented an elaborate interpretation centered on Haizmann's depression due to the death of a close relative, whom Freud assumes to be Haizmann's father. The devil, Freud writes, entered into a contract with Haizmann in which he agreed to serve as the painter's father figure for a term of nine years. Freud argues that the use of the number nine in relation to a span of time reveals Haizmann's adhesion to a feminine aspect in relation to his father, indeed "a long-repressed phantasy of pregnancy" (nine being the number of months of gestation), combined with a strong castration anxiety (Levack, 1992, p. 90). Haizmann's eventual release through exorcisms and a pilgrimage to a shrine to the Virgin Mary signal Haizmann's salutary turn toward another substitute parent, the mother. Through maternal intervention, Haizmann is sufficiently healed to enter into a religious order, thus finding a more appropriate father substitute in these "fathers of the church."

Nevertheless Freud's interest in these phenomena set the stage for further psychohistorical and ethnopsychological investigations into possession and exorcism. Understandings of spirit possession as a culturally constructed idiom for expressing repressed or illicit desires, as forms of wish fulfillment, as involving supernatural parent or lover substitutes, or as representative of sexual anxieties and identity disturbances are now a significant component of the scholarly literature. Once again the predominance of young women among the possessed has proven particularly provocative to scholars because the notion of physical penetration by a spirit, often conceived as male, lends itself both to a psychosexual analysis and also potentially to a diagnosis of disturbed gender identity.

Exorcisms have been regarded as having therapeutic value in part because they are couched in the same idiom as the patient's own expression of neurosis while nonetheless orchestrating the same kind of emotional buildup and catharsis that underlay Freud's early psychoanalyses. The emphasis upon social reintegration that is central to many exorcism rites has been seen as a cipher for the reintegration of the individual sufferer's psychic or sexual self: "the expulsion of the masculine and the resumption of an unfragmented conventional sexual identity," according to Lyndal Roper in Oedipus and the Devil (Roper, 1994, p. 191). Conversely, the psychological commonplace of "exorcising inner demons" forces a convergence between religious and psychoanalytic idioms. Exorcism and therapy are thereby defined as different terms for the same healing process.

History

Historians have turned their attention to spirit possession and exorcism relatively recently as part of the movement toward cultural history (sometimes called history of mentalities). Whereas the dominant anthropological and psychological interpretations of exorcism focus upon the victim's experiences and desires, the leading historians working on this problem emphasize the societal power relations deployed in the performance of exorcism. (Indeed Freud's psychoanalysis of Haizmann has been sharply criticized by Eric Midelfort in his article "Catholic and Lutheran Reactions to Demon Possession in the Late Seventeenth Century" [Levack, 1992] as anachronistic and individually overdetermined, with too little consideration given to the structure of the contextual society.) Thus the focus of historians has been less on the person who is the object of the exorcism and more on the ways practices of exorcism fuel larger social processes. It has been seen then as either a dynamic or a static social force, depending on the context.

An example of exorcism's potential to propel change is provided by the many scholars who have elucidated its value as a catalyst for conversion. These historians have pointed out how successful public exorcisms can be instrumental in recruiting new believers to the religion of the exorcising group. The rite often seems to have functioned in this way when practiced within a context of intense competition among rival religious systems. As a visible, materially enacted battle with supernatural referents, exorcism easily can become a testing ground for the power of one deity, doctrine, or practice over another. In other cases, however, exorcism may be used to reaffirm a potentially threatened continuity with the past. Thus as noted above the fifteenth-century rise of liturgical exorcism has been shown to be linked to a broader struggle on the part of the Catholic hierarchy to reaffirm its traditional authority at a moment of significant instability and stress. Here innovation in the performance of exorcism acted to reinforce the institutional prerogatives of the Catholic Church.

Perhaps the most elegant historical study of exorcism has been penned by the French social theorist Michel de Certeau. The author's article "Language Altered: The Sorceror's Speech" in The Writing of History (1988) focuses on the ways in which early modern exorcists reasserted the hegemony of written traditions by turning to them for neat categorizations of the untidy, real-life possession cases unfolding before them. Certeau begins by noting that a diagnosis of possession was usually applied to a woman soon after she manifested a "disturbance of discourse." No longer an individual, well-bounded subject, the possessed woman was viewed as displaced from herself. The invading spirit disrupted the continuity of the victim's selfhood by speaking through her mouth: her lips and tongue pronounced the spirit's sentiments and experiences. Thus for Certeau, the speech of the possessed woman was a logical paradox that existed outside normally comprehensible speech patterns. The speaking entity was both male and female, mortal and immortal, powerless and powerful, the victim and the Other.

The processes of exorcism and conjuration of the spirit, Certeau suggests, were a means of resolving this logical paradox by identifying the indwelling spirit. Thus the first goal of an exorcism always was to categorize the speech of the victim as the discourse of a specific, indwelling demon known in advance from exorcistic and demonological literature: Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Leviathan. Through this process, the exorcism transformed the garbled speech of the possessed woman into the recognizable voice of a well-known demon. Naming the demon in turn gave the exorcist power over it: the conjuration could then proceed as a series of conversations between the exorcist and the indwelling demon. Hence the exorcist only can gain mastery by identifying the speech of the victim with a specific demonic name, but in the process the possessed woman's identity is occluded. Exorcism is an assertion of power, Certeau suggests, insofar as it superimposes traditional categorizations over the creative potential of a paradox. It thus acts as a potent tool of social control.

Bibliography

Boddy, Janice. Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan. Madison, Wis., 1989. An exploration of the role of fertility and gender roles in Sudanese spirit possession and the zār cult.

Boddy, Janice. "Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality." Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994): 407–434. An excellent review essay of the major anthropological literature and interpretations.

Bourgignon, Erika, ed. Religion, Altered States of Consciousness, and Social Change. Columbus, Ohio, 1973. A classic collection of articles with an interdisciplinary perspective.

Brown, Peter. "Sorcery, Demons, and the Rise of Christianity." In Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, edited by Mary Douglas, pp. 17–45. London, 1970. The relationship between exorcism and the expansion of the early Christian Church.

Brown, Peter. "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity." In Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, pp. 103–152. Berkeley, Calif., and Los Angeles, 1982. How successful exorcisms functioned to cement the saintly reputations of holy men in late antiquity.

Brown, Peter. "Town Village and Holy Man: The Case of Syria." In Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, pp. 153–165. Berkeley, Calif., and Los Angeles, 1982. Expands upon the previous article with a more specific geographical focus.

Caciola, Nancy. "Wraiths, Revenants, and Ritual in Medieval Culture." Past and Present 152 (1996): 3–45. A study of the medieval popular-culture belief that demons can possess and move dead bodies.

Caciola, Nancy. "Spirits Seeking Bodies: Death, Possession, and Communal Memory in the Middle Ages." In The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall, pp. 66–86. Cambridge, U.K., 2000. An exploration of stories of possession by ghosts in medieval popular culture.

Caciola, Nancy. Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, N.Y., 2003. A study of medieval spirit possession, both benign and malign; chapter five explores the history of exorcism and gives detailed descriptions of the rite.

Certeau, Michel de. "Language Altered: The Sorcerer's Speech." In The Writing of History, translated by Tom Conley, pp. 244–268. New York, 1988. A close study of the process of categorizing spirit possession through the qualification of the possessed woman's speech as demonic.

Certeau, Michel de. "What Freud Makes of History: 'A Seventeenth-Century Demonological Neurosis.'" In The Writing of History, translated by Tom Conley, pp. 287–307. New York, 1988. A historian meditates on Freud's discussion of Haizmann.

Certeau, Michel de. The Possession at Loudon. Translated by Michael Smith. Chicago, 1996. Closely examines the famous case of plural possession among the nuns of Loudon in the seventeenth century.

Chajes, Jeffrey H. "Judgements Sweetened: Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern Jewish Culture." Journal of Early Modern History 1–2 (1997): 124–169. A general discussion of early modern Jewish belief in possession by ghosts.

Chajes, Jeffrey H. Between Worlds: Dybbuks, Exorcists, and Early Modern Judaism. Philadelphia, 2003. A detailed study of the history of Jewish possession and exorcism with emphasis on the shift toward dybbuk possession in the sixteenth century; chapter three presents Jewish technologies of exorcism.

Crapanzano, Vincent, and Vivian Garrison. Case Studies in Spirit Possession. New York, 1977. A classic collection of anthropological articles.

Csordas, Thomas. The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing. Berkeley, Calif., and Los Angeles, 1994. Discussion of Catholic Pentecostal faith healing.

Cuneo, Michael. American Exorcism: Expelling Demons in the Land of Plenty. New York, 2001. Investigation into the relationship between contemporary American popular culture images of exorcism and the rising demand for real-life exorcisms.

Dyer, Graham. The Divine and the Demonic: Supernatural Affliction and Its Treatment in North India. London, 2003. A general study of supernatural illness and healing in India with focus on the psychology of the emotions involved in these processes; discussion of the Balaji temple.

Goldish, Matt, ed. Spirit Possession in Judaism: Cases and Contexts from the Middle Ages to the Present. Detroit, Mich., 2003. This excellent collection brings together contributions from most of the modern scholars working on this topic.

Kakar, Sudhir. Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors. Delhi, India, 1981. A psychoanalytic approach to Indian religion with discussion of the Balaji temple.

Kapferer, Bruce. A Celebration of Demons: Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in Sri Lanka. Bloomington, Ind., 1983. Detailed exposition of exorcism ceremonies in Sri Lanka with attention to notions of gender and impurity in Sinhalese ideas about possession.

Levack, Brian, ed. Possession and Exorcism. New York, 1992. A wonderful sampling that includes Freud's study of Haizmann and a number of other foundational articles.

Levi, Giovanni. Inheriting Power: The Story of an Exorcist. Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane. Chicago, 1988. The story of an unlicensed, popular exorcist in early modern Italy.

Lewis, I. M. Ecstatic Religion: An Anthropoloigical Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism. Harmondsworth, U.K., 1971. A classic in the anthropological study of possession with particular attention to gender issues and "social deprivation" analysis.

Lewis, I. M. Religion in Context: Cults and Charisma. 2d ed. Cambridge, U.K., 1996. An extension of the positions advanced in the previous work with more range.

Mageo, Jeannette, and Alan Howard. Spirits in Culture, History, and Mind. New York and London, 1996. Focuses on possession in the cultures of various Pacific islands.

Midelfort, Eric. A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany. Palo Alto, Calif., 1999. Discusses early modern European concepts of madness, spirit possession, and folly.

Nabokov, Isabelle. "Expel the Lover, Recover the Wife: Symbolic Analysis of a South Indian Exorcism." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3, no. 2 (1997): 297–316. A fascinating case study of a local exorcism ritual.

Obeyesekere, Gananath. "The Idiom of Demonic Possession: A Case Study." Social Science and Medicine 4, no. 1 (1970): 97–111. A psychoanalytic approach to Indian spirit possession.

Patai, Raphael. "Exorcism and Xenoglossia among the Safed Kabbalists." Journal of American Folklore 91, no. 361 (1978): 823–833. Close reading of a case studies in early modern Jewish exorcism with particular focus on the process of verifying the possessing ghost's identity.

Roper, Lyndal. Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft, Sexuality, and Religion in Early Modern Europe. London, 1994. Covers a broad array of topics, including exorcism.

Sengers, Gerda. Women and Demons: Cult Healing in Islamic Egypt. Leiden, Netherlands, 2003. A detailed study of the zār cult and Qurʾanic healing based on fieldwork in Cairo, Egypt.

Sluhovsky, Moshe. "The Devil in the Convent." American Historical Review 107, no. 5 (2002): 1379–1411. A close study of plural possessions in early modern Europe.

Tambiah, Stanley. "The Magical Power of Words." In Culture, Thought, and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective. Cambridge, Mass., 1985. An important discussion of mantras and "demonic language" in Sri Lankan exorcisms.

Walker, Daniel Pickering. Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Philadelphia 1981. Focuses on the uses of public exorcisms for purposes of interreligious propaganda.

Wooley, Reginald. Exorcism and the Healing of the Sick. London, 1932. How possession relates to illness in the Christian tradition.

Nancy Caciola (2005)

Encyclopedia of Religion