Demonic Banishing, Step By Step

And here we have the other side of the coin. The kinder, brighter side. The heads to our tails. 

Let's make it clear; the demons in my tales are metaphors. Very brute force ones, I might say. The commentary on both sides of our societal coin should be obvious. 

We know what good and evil are. We should stop acting like we don't. 

Transcript

Look, you’ve lost your way. All of us have at some point or another.

And no, I don’t mean that you are possessed by a demon. That might be true, or it might not. In fact, it’s more likely than anything that you are not. There’s not that many demons wandering around, and there’s a whole lot of people. Demons take time to work their malicious magic, so much so that at best they might directly touch one percent of the population. Do you feel that you’re so special that you are part of that one percent? Well, you might feel that way, but whether your feelings have any root in reality, well…

Well, you’re almost certainly not. See, my words don’t often reach the sort of people that the demons like to corrupt. Demons like to host in influential people, for obvious reasons. A local magnate or politician leaves a great ripple in their pool when they move, for good or for ill. The little minnows? Why, even the other minnows can hardly see them, their imprint is so small. 

That is what you almost certainly are. A minnow. A being whose only importance to hell is as a soul which may be mined for suffering. Granted, I might be wrong. You might be one of those few great people who have fallen off the popular bandwagon and gotten obsessed with the occult. Maybe. Maybe maybe. But it’s best we don’t operate off of really obscure chances, now isn’t it?

And don’t look down on yourself for it. Conspiracy theories have always preyed on the weak and the vulnerable. Nothing is more cathartic than a directed anger. If you otherwise understood that the majority of the ills in your life come from poor government policy, human greed, and institutionalized shortsightedness, then what would you be angry at? What could you direct those emotions towards? You would have nowhere but the ether, and its so much less satisfying to go screaming at the void. You were brought here, most likely, by obvious chance and oppression. So don’t beat yourself up. Or anyone else.

Of course, I don’t disagree with you. Demons are real. Exceptionally real. More real than angels or their other divine kin, it seems. Unfortunate, that. But I know firsthand that the world has been infiltrated (and has been for longer than history has been recorded) by sleek, hardshelled beasts from the fires below. I know. And even if you didn’t know, even if you just believed, you lucked out in that the conspiracies you follow accidentally directed you down the right path. 

But let’s set some groundwork first. Don’t race ahead. Each and every one of my words is measured against your psyche, or, at least, the psyche of my anticipated reader. We must remember at all times that if demons are real, then the soul is real, as well as an afterlife of some description. If all those things are true, then there is some amount of good and evil that a person can do in their life that is measured and stuck to them eternally. We must think about that first before we act, for what is it to us if we act blindly in the shadow of terrible revelations? What are we if, in our war against forces which are demonic not just in moral fiber, but in actual, stark definition… what if we strike too hard, too fast, destroy that which we seek to protect?

I know, I know. I’m being melodramatic. But you know that I’m right in being cautious. All of history’s worst villains thought they were doing what was right. Sure, there’s plenty of evil folks out there who do cruel things for the sake of being cruel, but they don’t leave as much of a footprint in the sand. Think about it. Let’s leap to the end. Hitler. Genocidal maniac? Warmonger? But what did the Nazis tell each other that they were doing? They were building a strong, healthy state for their children. Even as they destroyed, they thought they were creating. The Nazis were people. Demons may or may not have been mixed in, but, from what I know about them, they probably weren’t. At least, not more than they’re mixed in any population. It’s not like demons really care about the race or nationality of the souls they steal. Demons are just racist towards us as a species, just as we are naturally suspicious of them. Could you tell me the difference between a Moloch and an Asura? A Primordial and an Elemental? What if those distinctions that I just said don’t even exist? 

We must always think of ourselves, no matter how close we draw to the truth, as lost. We do not know everything. We do not know the best way for things to be. We do not know, and yet we will try to know. And we will actually try. In that struggle of knowing we can shed a little bit of the ancient hatred swirling in our guts, the kind that makes parents beat their children because they’re ‘possessed,’ or burn ‘witches’ at the stake. 

But if I still haven’t persuaded you, consider this; the grave sinner, the butcher of butchers, the one who spills the blood of their fellow humanity; it doesn’t matter if there were demons in those dead or not. They are still murderers. Murder is, by our observations, a truly mortal sin. No matter how many demonic plots you stop in your life, if your soul is tarnished beyond recognition by bloodshed, you will go to hell. Nobody but the angels will be able to stop the harvest, and, again, by all our observations, they will not care.

I hope by this point you have grown skeptical enough to be skeptical of our skepticism. After all, I have lectured and belittled you enough. You know what I’ve said is right. Even if the stuff I mentioned about demons and angels isn’t, well, the bits about human history and psychology are. We just all don’t like to think about that stuff being applied to us, so, when it’s suggested to us that it does, we get angry in reaction. There’s nothing too complex about that. We understand that. You probably do, too. Even to the enlightened soul that knows something about the spiritual dynamics of existence, the same rules as always apply. 

But how do we know about demons? Are demons real, or did I just do that entire ramble above as a way to coax truths lurking at the back of your head to the forefront?

Well…

Well…

No. It wasn’t a trick. The entire thing was earnest, of course. I’ve seen demons. Real, actual demons with my real, actual eyes. You know, the ones in my very own head.

And now I sound like the crazy one. Look, for years upon years I’ve had to deal with the doubts surrounding my memories. After all, I was the only one who saw the fiend, and it was back in a time when cameras weren’t so ubiquitous, so, well…

And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because demons (the skilled ones at least) have a habit of disappearing from any and all film, anyways. But I was young. Real young. I was a bit of a spunky kid, so I spent as much time outdoors as I physically could just running into and investigating everything. Again, this was a different time. Far away, now. I would remember it fondly, if not…

See, we had a neighbor. I guess that’s not all that helpful of a statement. Most everyone has neighbors unless they live on a farm. But we had a specific neighbor. This guy called Francis Cartwright. He’d lived a rough life. Real, real rough. Had a hard hand since day one, at least if his stories were to be believed. But he’d trudged on for the most part, working down at the local sawmill for real long hours. It was enough to pay his bills, and fund his addictions. 

Mom always told me to avoid his place. He never really seemed like a belligerent guy, I mean, he wouldn’t be the one to start any fights downtown. Again, very different time. Fights used to happen more frequently, too. 

But I was told to avoid his place because, well… it was a mess. He was a mess. My parents would talk in harsh whispers over dinner about the prospect of moving to the other side of town, just so they wouldn’t have to neighbor the guy. They dump he lived in had made their initial purchase of the home cheap, so I later learned. 

But he… 

But he. 

He killed them. Well, he didn’t kill them, kill them. But he did bargain away his soul to get someone else to do it for him. 

Why? 

Greed. Jealousy. A rot that he’d put into his brain. That life had put into his brain. I dunno. I’m still trying to forgive, even now. Even now, long after his flesh has been eaten by the worms. 

I saw the demon he summoned. It was a real lanky thing on five spindly legs, somewhere in between a goat, a praying mantis, and a man. Its flesh bubbled and smoked at the joints, and its eye saw all. Its eye saw me. I gasped. I ran away. I hid crying in my bed, unable to tell my parents what I saw. 

I woke up the following morning to silence. Usually dad was making coffee.

Did the demon forget about me? Or was I simply not part of its contract? I don’t know. I don’t care. I don’t…

I went through hell up here. The cops found Francis squatting in my house. It was a clear and shut case. Kind of. The actual killer was never brought to justice.

But then he was the real killer. I don’t…

Look, it hurts to think about. But I’ve seen them, don’t worry. The descriptions I’ve heard from other people have met that first experience. Then the second. Then the third. And all the way up to the twenty-fourth. Most of those, thankfully, have been by choice.

Exorcism does not pay much. Not in terms of money, anyways. So I don’t care if you cut into my business. We are all better off when they’re gone, when silly, stupid, brutal, LOATHSOME people can’t sell their near damned souls to their true masters so that, so that… 

But enough about me. Honestly, I’m not sure if this was more for you or for me at this point. Either way, I think it’s nice for us to listen to each other, for once. We are mad, but sometimes madness is right. Not usually, but sometimes.

THE ACTUAL GUIDE.

The best thing about demons, from our perspective, is that they aren’t all that complex. They may adopt a myriad of forms while they walk around the earth, but at the core, they are still the same thing. They are beasts born of pure hatred, whose primary desire is to capture the souls of humanity for whatever schemes they carry out otherwise. Honestly, I’m not too clear on why they wish to corrupt and torment souls in the first place; my observations of demons, and what I have learned in conversations with my colleagues, has lead me to believe the demons that exist in our world are not those sketched out to us by any religion, at least, none that I’ve ever been able to find. This gives us the double-whammy of both not having evidence that would lead us to the ‘true’ faith, but also that we can’t really drive demons out with religious symbols. Not really.

But what about the exorcisms of Mantua? Or the scourging of Baghdad? Well, you probably haven’t heard of either of those, but they’re well known vessels of historical debate within the community. Long story short, in both cases religious symbols and rituals were heavily used to drive out demonic infestation, you know, Bibles, Qurans, crosses, etc. The exorcists of the time drove out a staggering amount of demons. Five hundred apiece at least, I think. So both were a success, right? They were cornerstones that the exorcist community built its practice on, right? 

Wrong. Well, right, at first. At first, religious exorcism proved to work. At least until the entire community had adopted it as its weapon, and had descended into zealotry and narrowmindedness. Then the demons revealed it all to be nothing but a trick. A ploy. A crucifix that banished an afrit one day would send an imp laughing the next. All of a sudden, all exorcisms began to fail, and not for lack of faith. The demons were banishing themselves, just so that we wouldn’t learn what made them tick. And that’s when the Black Death rolled around. All those dead folks who weren’t exorcised? They wound up in hell. And the the stupid idea that religion has anything to do with exorcism has persisted to this very day, making our domain the one of whack-jobs and religious freaks who couldn’t properly banish an asura if they wanted to. 

So how do you banish a demon? Demons live off of sin. That much hasn’t been revealed to be a trick. Yet. What is sin? Well, what do you think it is? Sin is hurting yourself and other people. Sin is destroying the world. Sin is… well, it’ll differ from culture to culture, I guess, but we all have some of the same basic ideas. Sin is cheating, stealing, murder, and lies. The more a person engages in those four and many, many others, the more likely they are to be snatched by demons when they die.

Demons live off of sin. I already said that, didn’t I? But humans live off of water. Without out, we perish. Without sin, the demon dies. Or gets bored. I’m not sure which one it is, because they’ve always made a show of it. Honestly, that makes me think it’s the second one. Anyways. The way to rid yourself, or anyone around you of demonic possession is…

Become their therapist. 

Kind of. 

Look. I know. It stinks. We all go into this thinking we’re going to be some holy warrior of God or whatever. We are the divine vengeance of millions of souls who have suffered but were never allowed to scream. That kind of thing. Don’t deny it. It’s just simply not how that works.

Think about it. What good things in life arise from violent confrontation? Very few of them. Most good things, honestly, depend on long dedication, diligence, love, and, well, boredom. Or if not boredom, at the very least the lack of excitement. 

You cannot bring a gun to an exorcism and think that you’re getting the best of the exchange. For one, the demon in question is likely to protect their charge, and they are, to my knowledge, much more powerful than the weapons available to mankind. So that includes the little pistol you’ve got locked in a box under your bed. Come on, what does that thing do? It makes a tiny, tiny explosion that propels a little bitty chunk of metal. We are talking about a being from another sphere entirely. That won’t cut it. Probably.

If you seek to end a soul exchange immediately by murdering the person, you’ll only succeed because the demon has allowed you to succeed, essentially. Now why would they do that? Well, we go back to the start. Demons want souls. They want the soul of the bargainer, and… they want yours. So if the bargainer dies, maybe they figured that your execution was just barbaric enough to send you to hell a couple decades in the future. Did you think about that? No. You just assumed divine providence was what led you to victory. Or you could have been wrong entirely, eh? That shadow you saw in your neighbor’s window could have been a trick of the light, that and nothing more. So you committed murder, plain and simple. 

So if religious jabbering and violence don’t work, what is left? There you go. Therapy. Inclusion. Love. Terrible, terrible things to give a stranger, right? Or even someone you’ve known for a long while, right? It would be just so much easier if you could destroy, if you could banish, if you could…

Is the demon really attached to someone else? I’m serious, here. Did you ever consider that maybe, just maybe, the demon is there to tempt you? If your thoughts, like those of so many others in this world are to treat anything they see a demon around as corrupt beyond all redemption, then they think they’ve won. They think that you’ll be stupid, that you’ll let the fire burning in your heart loose on the rest of the world, so that all might consumed in flames. And then where will you be, eh? Down there. With them. 

No matter what angle we look at it, we come to the same conclusion. You don’t have much time. Be assertive. Be sympathetic. If you know the person a little bit this is a whole lot easier. Honestly, the longer you’ve been around each other, the less awkward this gets, so it’s a good idea if you actually want to be a member of the exorcism community to establish a rapport among your neighbors. I mean, you should be doing that anyway, but it’s even more important if you want to stop any soul exchanges. Comment with kindness in your voice. Let them know that you’re there for them, all that sort of thing. Sometimes this earns you an actual burden, or an actual friend. Most of the time this gets you nothing, at least, that is how it seems. They’ll thank you for your concern as the social script tells them to. Then nothing else is said.

Sometimes that alone is enough. Demons do not search for the souls of psychopaths; their ending in concrete, certain. They will be cast into the flames one way or the other. They search for the vulnerable, the weak, the ravaged; those folks who would like just a little bit of power in order in to turn their wretched lives around. Those are people whose fates are undecided, but, in the act of seeking demonic assistance, those fates become sealed. That is what they are looking for. That is what they attack, and that is what we attack, too. 

There are plenty of people out there who feel completely left out of society, even as they interact with it day to day. Remind them that they are not separate from us. Remind them that they are being watched, always, and that they are loved, sometimes. 

Bake them a plate of cookies. Or brownies. Hang out with them. Be genuinely present in their lives. You know, that kind of stuff.

This’ll honestly work on most people. And the people on whom it doesn’t… well, most of the time they’re sociopaths, and you’ve just gotten your case wrong. Contrary to popular belief, demons don’t really hunt the souls of sociopaths; as beings for whom morality does not really exist, a sociopath’s soul is worth far less to demonkind than the soul of somebody who can make meaningful choices. 

And that’s it, really. If the person in question doesn’t dismiss the demon out of their own will, there’s not actually much we can do past that. Charms, rites, rituals, icons… none of these really work on demons. At all. Well, that’s not completely true; as demons on earth are so bound to their host’s psychology, if their host is religious or superstitious, then sometimes acting out the demon slaying of their mythology will trick them into banishing the demon by proxy. So, a formerly devout Christian might lose their demonic compact upon the brandishing of a cross, etc. That’s more a last resort kind of thing, because usually demonic hosts don’t really understand the dynamic of host/parasite either, so… so it’s much less reliable than just trying to redeem their soul.

It is then, and only then, after you’ve tried empathy, and theater… only then may you try violence. But I don’t recommend it. After all, if you hurt someone, if you commit a sin in front of a demon’s face… why, they were never really attracted to the host in particular, now were they? You could be their next candidate. Demons love irony. This I know from intercepting their correspondence. 

Did I say that I intercept demonic correspondence? Yes. And I’m not elaborating on it. Nor will I elaborate on how I know most of what I do. Let’s just say that the methods I’ve engaged in are too dangerous for me to encourage others to follow me. Just trust me. And honestly, what’s the worst that can happen? Sure, you can die. But by the simple technique of redemption, there’s utterly no chance you lose your soul, and, given that the soul is infinite and your life is inevitably finite, what you should be worrying about is clear.

Thank you dearly for your time,

Bailey Ransom, a whisper in a sea of madness.