Editor’s note: the following is an excerpt from the author’s latest book, Family Guide to Spiritual Warfare. This is the followup to last week’s article, “Temptation: The Ordinary Ways the Devil Attacks Us.” Much of the following includes remarks from Fr. Francesco Bamonte, the president of the International Association of Exorcists, provided by the author.

According to exorcist Fr. Francesco Bamonte, “the extraordinary actions of the devil refer to his particular actions on matter. Important: it is far more interesting to demons to keep people enslaved to sin and to bring them ultimately to the greatest misfortune — eternal damnation — than it is to provoke a series of misfortunes.”

Infestation

Signs of diabolical infestation of a place, such as a home, include:

Sounds or blows to a house’s roof or inside of it on the floor, doors, windows, or furniture; sounds of someone or something stepping around the place but nothing is seen; loud sounds of chains or irons; voices, screams, laughter, yelling, shouting; the disappearance of objects which are either not found or are found in improbable areas of the house; sudden gusts of wind in environments that are completely without any other airflow; wind that snuffs out candles; sudden and intense odors of something burning, excrement, sulfur, rotten meat, or incense; doors and windows thrusting open and shut rapidly; windows break; plates, glasses, bottles shatter; pictures or paintings detach from the wall and fall down for no reason; clothes, sheets, blankets that levitate for no reason; spontaneous fog, smoke, fires; sudden increase or decrease of the tem­perature in a room; invasions of small animals or insects which the person is not able to rid the house or place of (bats, reptiles, owls, toads, cats — that quickly disappear into nothing); apparitions of various shadows, persons or monstrous beings; pets are suddenly terrified and run away without explanation.

In discerning the above manifestations of infestation of a place, the criterion is this: Everything that is outside of the laws of nature which does not come from God comes from Satan. There are no intermediate conditions. A rigorous investigation should be done to determine the cause of a manifestation upon a place. A natural causation should be ruled out.

Possible origins of diabolical infestation may include “curses against the place; séances were held in the dwelling; rituals or rites were performed by practitioners of magic who lived in the house; heinous crimes, suicides, abortions occurred there (intercessory prayer is required to heal this); rites of evocation or devotion to the devil have been performed there; or holy things or objects have been profaned there (in all these cases, reparation is also needed).”

Extraordinary Demonic Activity Exercised on a Person

Oppression, Obsession, Possession

According to Fr. Bamonte, “whenever the diabolical action is ex­ercised on or inside of a person’s body, one speaks of ‘vexation’ (sometimes referred to as oppression), ‘obsession,’ or ‘diabolical possession.’ Sometimes the boundaries between these forms of di­abolical action are not clearly defined.”

Fr. Bamonte taught about the following causes for some ex­traordinary actions of the devil upon persons:

  • Through our own fault: the sins of superstition and of the occult. Wide openings for demons are created by participa­tion in these activities.
  • Participating or being present at séances.
  • Consulting mediums or talismans, especially those given by a practitioner of magic who has performed rites of evo­cation on them.
  • Practice of certain techniques of Transcendental Medita­tion; Reiki; opening chakras (yoga); and association with the New Age movement.
  • Use of divination — for example, with a pendulum.
  • Undergoing sessions to receive potions or skin prepara­tions to prevent bad luck or the evil eye.
  • Possessing objects, such as souvenirs, that have been used in local magic rituals.
  • Practicing or being present at voodoo or macumba rituals.
  • Having participated in sects or associations in which eso­teric rites or occult practices were performed.
  • Having participated in satanic sects or even sporadically in Satanism (for example, making blood pacts with the devil, attending or participating in black masses, par­ticipating in ritual homicides, or profaning the Holy Eucharist).
  • Having listened for a long time to music that incites people to worship Satan or to commit acts of violence, blasphemy, homicide, or suicide. Individuals are even more susceptible to the influence of such music when the superstitious practices and forms of occultism described above are combined with addictive vices, such as drinking heavily, using drugs, performing sexually depraved acts, and blaspheming. Blasphemy in particular puts a person in harmony with the devil, who, by his nature, curses God with absolute hatred.
  • Being the recipient, even unknowingly, of a rite of malefice. For instance, a parent may consecrate a child to Satan. A person may have been cursed while in the womb, as well as later in life. In such cases, the subsequent malefice often reinforces the preceding one.

Demonic oppression.

Sometimes called diabolical vexation, op­pression refers to “physical aggressions of demons against a person which may manifest in burns, scratches, bites, beatings, and blows that leave bruises, swelling, bloody sores, or bone fractures. Some have experienced letters, words, or symbols appearing as incisions on their skin. These persist for a time and then disappear.”

Demonic obsession.

Fr. Bamonte explains demonic obsession in this way:

Demonic obsessions are cases of the devil’s aggression in which, although he does not block the intellectual faculty and the free will of the person during a crisis, he is able to communicate obsessive thoughts or images that are at times rationally absurd to the victim’s mind (i.e. the imagination and the memory) but which they are not able to ward off. In these cases the person feels tormented by a fixed idea or an image that seems to really be his own. The obsessions can be of different forms and of different graces and intensities and reach a point at which they completely dominate a person’s mind.

They may take up all of the attention of the person and are insistent, despite determined and well-imposed resistance, which may be necessarily heroic. Only abandoning oneself to God helps the afflicted to not succumb to this submersion, and exorcism is sometimes necessary to liberate a person from the exterior or interior violence.

Diabolical obsession is different than personal obsessions such as excess handwashing, or obsessive thoughts such as “Did I leave the stove on?” These are related to anxiety, not the diabolical. Exorcists rely on the medical advice of men­tal-health professionals to help them distinguish between human anxiety and diabolical attacks.

Discerning obsessions can be difficult because of the absence of physical signs or manifestations that usually accompany oppression and possession. . . . Like physicians who study the efficacy or inefficacy of a medical treatment to arrive at a correct diagnosis, priests may apply the same idea in evaluating diabolical obsessions.

Fr. Bamonte also offered the following example of a case of diabolical obsession:

A girl who had one exam left to complete to graduate was no longer able to study; as soon as she opened her books, her mind immediately became filled with images from a romance novel that she had read a few years before, which were incredibly vivid, colorful, and intense. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. Despite great effort, she could not block these images from coming into her mind. Her parents, who were oblivious to everything, were not able to understand what was happening to their daughter. Immediately after the exorcist prayed mentally, saying, “In the name of Jesus, I break every malefic tie with the romance novel that is present in you . . . and with the two protagonists of the romance novel, N. and N.,” the girl felt relieved of a weight, and when she returned home, she was finally able to take up her studies again, and she happily graduated.

Demonic possession. Diabolical possession is relatively rare, al­though exorcists have been reporting an increase in cases. A brief overview will suffice for a general idea of this most severe diaboli­cal condition. Possession markers include the following:

  • superhuman strength and unnatural physical contortions; whites of eyes showing
  • knowledge of languages the person has never studied
  • knowledge of secrets the person could not have obtained by normal human means (for example, in one case, a demon revealed, “If you are not directly under my power, it is because your mother has been praying for you, and she has put up a wall of prayer!”)
  • strong aversion to the sacred, such as churches, Holy Com­munion, prayer, holy water, rosaries, relics of saints, or the Bible

Demonic Subjugation

When an individual or group of people voluntarily submit them­selves to Satan, this is called demonic subjugation. People fall into this form of relationship with Satan by volunteering to make a blood pact with the devil or to consecrate themselves to Satan.

“Who must be afraid, us or the devil?”

—Fr. Gabriel

Diabolical attacks can go only as far as the Lord allows for our good — for purification, tests of faith, and growth in holiness. Providence allows what is necessary for the salvation of a soul and always gives us necessary graces in our trials.

✠

Editor’s note: Fr. Francesco Bamonte’s quotations are from the author’s personal unpublished notes from his presentations at the International Association of Exorcists course “Exorcism and Prayers of Lib­eration,” Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum, Rome, May 2017.

This article is adapted from a chapter in Kathleen Beckman’s latest book, Family Guide to Spiritual Warfare: Strategies for Deliverance and Healing. It is available from your favorite bookstore or online through Sophia Institute Press.

image: illuminated manuscript of Bishop expelling a devil from BL Royal 10 E IV, f. 242 (circa 1275-1324) / British Library (Public Domain)