Before I begin this section, it is important to emphasize that a large number of mediums and psychics may work their entire careers without ever encountering a demon or even an evil human spirit. Other mediums actually specialize in them. It was this dichotomy that ultimately led me to write this book. I cover this subject because everyone has a right to understand both sides of the issue.
Even among mystics who deal with demons and evil human spirits, many, both ancient and modern, deny that the demon we call Satan and his underlings are actually primordial angels. Their view is that even the most evil of inhabitants of Hell are simply ancient human spirits who have abandoned all semblance of goodness and the light of God. As a result, they have created the Hellish environments in which they exist. From our point of view, however, it makes little difference whether the devil and his minions are actually evil angels or simply extremely evil but powerful human spirits. Either way, the result is the same. Evil is evil, no matter its origins.
Demonologist Ed Warren was one of seven American demonologists consulted by Catholic, protestant, Jewish and other religious authorities to investigate virtually thousands of possible demonic possessions. He, and his wife, psychic Loraine Warren had been doing this job since the late 1940’s. Ed was the only non-clergy demonologist in the US at that time. He reported that between 1970 and 1980 there were over 600 major exorcisms carried out in North America alone. That comes out to more than one major exorcism every week. There is no estimate of how many major exorcisms are performed today, but there is no doubt that the number is a great deal higher! Every major religion has its own ritual of exorcism. This is not just a superstition left over from medieval times. It’s an everyday necessity.
Therefore, all major religions employ specialist clergy to perform exorcisms. By the time Ed Warren died, the Catholic Church employed at least 10 official exorcists around the United States, and judging by news reports, there are probably many more in recent years. According to newspaper reports, the Vatican recently had to put on a dedicated exorcist training convention to keep up with demand.
In the Jewish faith, exorcism is conducted by a rabbi functioning as an exorcist reading from the Holy Torah while customarily being assisted by a minyan of ten pious men from the temple. Native Americans have shamans who specialize in exorcising evil spirits. Although the Catholic church is slowly dying under the weight of its ancient politics and the severe consequences of the priest sexual scandal, large numbers of other Christian organizations have stepped up to offer exorcism services. There are at least five or six hundred evangelical exorcism ministries in operation today, and possibly many times that number.
Out of the thousands of exorcisms carried out by various organizations today, it is impossible to say how many of them actually involve real demonic entities and how many are due to suggestion or mental illness. Secularists and atheists argue that they are all due to hysteria and suggestion, but exorcists who have had years of experience say that they can tell the difference within a few hours. They know by the victim’s violent reaction to hidden sacred objects, paranormal phenomena, visual, aural and olfactory cues and plain common sense if they are dealing with a demon or with a hysteric. Even so, the Catholic Church spends a great deal of time vetting their cases before committing an exorcist. They usually require a psychiatric evaluation or at least authorization of a church approved demonologist before consenting to assign an official exorcist.
There is certainly enough overt evidence to suggest that demons exist as primordial entities. Angels are more subtle. They seldom make obvious appearances in our world, although they do make overt appearances during the more violent exorcisms.
For the believers, God is the ultimate consumer of the output of the spiritual factory, and He has a number of mechanisms to propel the evolving souls of human beings along. Demons act as “rods” to prod (or beat) souls in the right direction. The Angels act as “staffs” to pull them along. The angels tend to remain in the background while the demons are more likely to make stark appearances in our world because of their narcissistic and violent natures.
While the spirits of evil human beings get all of their energy from a combination of individual living psychic agents and environmental sources, demons appear to obtain the energy they need to manifest in the earth environment through the demonic hierarchy, which in turn gets its energy en masse from the more evil and depraved sectors of the human race. It is unfortunate that there is a never-ending supply.
Sidenote: This dichotomy of source accounts for the difference in the energy displayed by demons versus ghosts. Earthbound human spirits, even those of enormously evil people, must source their energy from the local environment and from individual human sources. Thus the violence of their psychokinetic antics is limited to the throwing of small stones, moving small objects or the movement of tables during seances. Demonic entities, on the other hand, source their energy through the demonic hierarchy which gets its energy from the accumulation of all the evil people currently living on earth. Thus the violence they can wreak in one of their hauntings is magnitudes greater than that seen in ordinary ghost hauntings.
Catholic demonology presents what appears to be a fairly accurate description of the demonic hierarchy. Note that Catholic demonology is not scriptural in nature, but is a separate compilation of knowledge about the dark world of the Devil gained over centuries of experience. The structure of the demonic world looks like a dark and backwards mirror image of the heavenly hierarchy.