“BOTH DEMONS BELIEVE AND TRAMBLE”
(James 2:19).
When I was young, I sang in the church choir and tried to keep all the commandments of Christ and the statutes of the Church. By blessing, I did not eat meat or anything meaty, did not drink wine, and avoided contact with women. During confession, he even revealed to the priest his involuntary thoughts, which are more difficult to avoid than sin in deed and word. I fulfilled my prayer rule, knew the morning and evening prayers by heart, and remembered hundreds of people, living and deceased. I practiced the unceasing Jesus prayer, and sometimes it itself acted in me at night. In addition to Wednesday and Friday, I also fasted on Monday. I ate my first meal at 3 pm, not earlier. So I performed the singing and reading services in the church on an empty stomach. Many of our singers did the same (except for the artists who also sang in our church, in another choir, but did not follow the church rules). We took prosphora and blessed water before meals.
I’m not saying all this to praise you. yourself but as a warning. For I considered and consider myself an Orthodox Christian, belonging to the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, which truly confesses the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, which lives according to the Gospel of Jesus, Christ and observes the rules of the holy apostles, ecumenical and local councils and the holy fathers. And all the others (the so-called confessions, more precisely, false confessions), Catholic and Protestant, non-Orthodox churches, churches, houses of worship, talk, sects, departments are heresies and chimeras (not to mention Judaism, Islam, paganism and other spiritual darkness).
One evening I lay down to rest after church service and home prayer. The room was semi-dark. A lamp was burning in front of the icon.
appeared unexpectedly demon In what form? Demons do not always appear in image. Demons are ugly and it is more common for them to appear without an image. However, they can take on any image or appearance of an image. Appeared demon said to me: “You are a believer, and I am a believer.”
I thought: “What kind of believer is he?!” After all, he is against God. Although... the Gospel says that demons believe in God, “And the demons believe and tremble” (James 2:19). But this faith does not save.”
I crossed myself and prayed to the Lord my God Jesus Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit for deliverance from temptation. I knew that demons attack both saints and sinners, both themselves and through people. I wasn't scared. They had annoyed me before, but God always drove them away through prayer. But this demon was different from the others; He said:
I know what you're thinking. You think that I am not a believer like you. You are mistaken: - You read from the holy fathers and heard from the priests you know that demons, due to their darkness, cannot read the thoughts in a person. We can see thoughts and feelings. Because we ourselves inspire these thoughts and feelings, we build images, especially in those who like to fantasize.
You are Orthodox, and I am Orthodox.
“What kind of Orthodox is he? - I thought. - After all, demons do not profess the Orthodox creed, do not like prayers and spiritual chants, especially “Our Father” and “He who lives in the help of the Most High”, cannot tolerate the singing of “Like the Cherubim” and run out of the temple at the same time. And the Orthodox osmic-pointed cross scorches them like fire.”
No, you’re mistaken,” the demon continued. - Do you want me to sing you “Our Father” and the symbol of faith?
I didn't express any desire. But demon He sang the entire “Our Father” prayer to me, as they sing it in church during the liturgy. He sang in a bass voice, beautiful, but slightly hoarse (the voice of the demon was similar to the voice of the obscene singer, artist Vysotsky). Then he sang the creed.
“Well, he won’t be able to sing “Like the Cherubim,” I thought, continuing to mentally say a prayer to Jesus Christ, “after all, the Church Fathers wrote that demons cannot sing this or even hear it.”
Do you think I can’t sing the Cherub song? - continued the unclean one. - But we always sing it in church, our artists sing there on the right choir.
It is necessary to explain that we had two choirs: the left one, where the believers sang, including myself; and the right one, where hired artists sang, non-church people whom our rector loved, but who did not follow church rules (smoked, lived in fornication, out of wedlock, did not observe fasts, etc.).
And the demon sang “Like the Cherubim” from beginning to end, without faltering anywhere or making a mistake. Sang the entire Liturgy of the Faithful. Moreover, he read all my evening prayers by heart, without a single mistake. I admit, I was internally surprised, I never expected this. During this phenomenon, I tried not to communicate with the demon, not to participate in the conversation, but he read all my thoughts, as if in a book.
I thought:
“Well, he can pronounce or sing someone else’s text, - after all, every actor speaks someone else’s text in a voice that is not his own; but he cannot depict a cross, the sign of the cross. The Fathers say that the cross scorches demons.”
Do you think I can’t make the sign of the cross? - asked the evil one. - Look!
And he depicted in the air, with light lines, an Orthodox octagonal cross, one of the greatest shrines of the Orthodox faith.
I don’t know, then or after singing “Like the Cherubim,” I thought: “Isn’t this an angel of God, isn’t this a pure spirit who is only pretending to be a demon? After all, he showed so much Orthodoxy...”
“No, I’m not an angel of God,” the demon answered, hearing my thoughts and swore badly as proof.
Then he said that “there are Orthodox demons, Catholic demons, sectarian demons, pagan demons (depending on the place of work).”
Of course, demons cannot be truly Orthodox, but they can do everything Orthodox that people do. After all, actors portray saints, monks, priests, apostles, the Mother of God, Jesus Christ. Everyone who watched these films about Christ and the Mother of God must understand that they saw the work of demons, demons in the flesh. Actors smoke, swear, fornicate, commit adultery, have abortions and at the same time pretend to be Christ or the Mother of God - this is blasphemy, a desecration of faith, Satan’s mockery of God. So the Antichrist, a Jew from the tribe of Dan, will be mistaken for Christ. The change has already taken place.
It was not in vain that the holy fathers established the rule (it is in the Nomocanon and in the writings of John Chrysostom): if a sorcerer, or sorcerer, that is, a magician, or a charmer (a psychic, in modern terms, or a hypnotist) uses the names of holy martyrs in witchcraft, or The Mother of God, or the name of the Holy Trinity, or the sign of the cross suggests, then one must flee from such and turn away. The servants of Satan can use the shrine, but it does not save them, but destroys them.
The shrine does not sanctify the thief who stole it, but he will be judged and condemned.
Every now and then we hear, we constantly read about spiritual beings who are completely different from us humans, but who, like us, have consciousness and free will. About the highest beings standing before the Creator, shining with His reflected light and serving Him; and about lower, fallen creatures, tirelessly doing evil, pursuing a single goal: to enslave the world to their father, Satan. And Satan was once the most beautiful of the Angels...
But what do we know about both, and most importantly, what do we need to know about them? This is our next conversation with the editor-in-chief of our magazine, Abbot Nektariy (Morozov).
- What is the basis of Christians’ faith in Angels and demons? Why is it impossible to be an Orthodox Christian while denying their existence?
Belief in Angels and demons is not an entirely correct formulation of the question. We believe in God, and everything else is not an object of faith, but the reality that we encounter. We simply acknowledge that it is there. It cannot be said that our belief in the reality of precipitation is based on the fact that it falls periodically. Both the Old and New Testaments contain many references to both the angelic and demonic worlds. We cannot help but believe God, whose voice is heard on the pages of Holy Scripture. In addition, ascetics of piety constantly tell us about the presence of both light and dark forces; many of them saw both Angels and demons with their spiritual eyes. We have no reason not to believe these people, they lived according to the truth and according to the righteousness of God, which is why we honor them as saints. Finally, in our daily lives we inevitably encounter the action of angelic and demonic forces: either beneficial and saving, or destructive and destructive.
- How do we deal with them?
Spiritual life for a person who has not even begun it is an extremely mysterious area, and often a person does not understand why at some point, for example, the passion of anger flares up in him with terrible force. Why does the passion for fornication, which until now was hidden and did not manifest itself under the same stimuli, suddenly turns into a stormy stream, sweeping away all the dams? Why suddenly, under the same circumstances under which a person was previously healthy, vigorous and efficient, does he plunge - not even just into despondency, but into some kind of hopeless despair? If a person lives a spiritual life consciously, he tries to join the experience of spiritual life that is preserved in the Tradition of the Church. Getting acquainted with the works of devotees of piety, he begins to understand who is influencing him and why.
- Does it influence from the outside? But why should we assume this in such cases? After all, each of us in and of ourselves is a sinful being.
- Sinful passion in a person is like a smoldering coal. In order for this ember to flare up into a fire, it needs someone to intentionally fan it. Passions are something that belongs to us; they are a consequence of the corruption of human nature by sin. But it is the enemy who can fan this ember; it is in his interests. And when we experience some kind of extraordinary uprising of passions, we must understand that somewhere nearby there is an enemy, perhaps more than one.
- Why is this so important to know?
We very often sin precisely because we believe that what attracts us to sin is ours; It is difficult for a person to fight with himself, to resist himself. But it’s much easier to fight if we know: here, next to us, is the one who wants us dead. It is he who attracts us to what we ourselves really want. The enemy is truly a deceiver. He looks like a swindler who offers us something incredibly tempting, for example, fabulous enrichment without any labor costs, like the notorious builders of financial pyramids; but in reality this only entails huge losses. And if we look at this person and see that he is just a swindler and has already ruined more than one investor like this, then we, of course, will not agree to his offers, no matter how seductive they may be for us. It’s the same in spiritual life; we must know: here stands an enemy, a liar and a murderer from time immemorial. Nothing good can happen where he is. Understanding this, we will not allow what he wants.
The Monk John Climacus in his “Ladder” spoke about what he saw with spiritual eyes during the common prayer of the brethren of the monastery. Some demons hang on the monks' shoulders, others weigh down their eyelids, others make them yawn... Any person who lived in a monastery will confirm this. Why does it happen that during a service a person feels terribly sleepy, his legs and back hurt? But then the service ended, the man went out into the street, and everything was fine with him: he didn’t want to sleep, and his back didn’t hurt. The same thing often happens during home prayer. Why? Because the demon does not need a person to pray. And if a person knows that it is the demon that is acting, and not his own nature, then he will not succumb to self-pity, will not say: “No, I seem to be too tired, why should I be so overtired, I’ll go to bed.”
- So, we need to study the experience of the Fathers of the Church; it is this that is useful for us in this case?
Of course, it is useful, as in all other cases. There is a saying: forewarned is forearmed, and demons are well armed, they have been fighting against humans for thousands of years, they have been studying both humanity as a whole and each of us individually literally from birth. But we don’t study them, we don’t have such opportunities. Thus, we are not on an equal footing with them. But when we read the holy ascetic fathers, we can correlate what we learn from their works with our own experience and distinguish: this is me, but this is not me, this is someone else, and react accordingly. Elder Ephraim of Katunak sometimes met the enemy with laughter: sensing the approach of temptation, sensing, for example, a vain thought, he laughed: “What, again?” Because the demon brought it to him a hundred times, because the demon brings the same thing every time. And each time it turned into shame and ridicule for the demon. And if the elder had assumed that vain thoughts came only from himself, it would have been much more difficult for him to laugh at them.
It is no coincidence that the only prayer accepted by contemporaries directly from the Savior contains a petition for deliverance from the evil one...
- Yes, but the word “deliverance” in this case should not be taken literally. As long as this world exists, until the life of the next century begins, we will not completely get rid of the evil one, he will remain a companion of our life, every day, every hour, a companion who desires one thing - our destruction. But at the same time - no longer by his own desire, but by the Providence of God - contributing to our salvation. How? Here we must remember the words of St. Mark the Ascetic: evil promotes good with evil intentions. When the enemy tempts us, when he wants us to fall, he involuntarily “trains” us, tempers us, makes us stronger. War is a difficult time, but it is also a time for winning crowns. Of course, only if we fight. Our task is to prove to the demons that we are not theirs. That we are not with them, that we are breaking with them the union that we conclude through sin. And we ask God that He would not allow us, through our weakness, cowardice, and infirmity, to become the prey of the evil one. Deliver us from authorities the evil one - this is precisely the meaning of the petition from the Lord's Prayer.
 |
-What is demonic possession? Maybe we are all obsessed with them to one degree or another?
No, possession is a special state when a person finds himself in the grip of a terrible black spirit; so in power that the manifestations of this state resemble the dance of a puppet - to such an extent a person does not control himself. However, if this person is examined by psychiatrists, they can say that he is completely healthy. They may, however, say something else. Loss of mental health may be a consequence of demonic possession, which, of course, has a destructive effect on the psyche; and, on the other hand, mentally ill people are much more susceptible to demonic influence than healthy people.
- But not every psychiatrist’s patient is possessed by a demon...
Not everyone, of course, there are any number of mentally ill people who do not have any demonic possession. But it’s much easier for the demon to play with a sick person, and here’s why. We have protective barriers against our enemies. Firstly, our rough “leather garments,” our carnal structure, which deprives us of the opportunity to directly perceive the spiritual world. This is good for us, because, as the holy fathers say, if we had been left with the ability of primordial man to communicate with the spiritual world, we in our fallen, sinful state would have been much more capable of communicating with fallen spirits than with Angels. The second protective barrier is the mind. Of course, the mind can be arrogant, it can be primitive or, on the contrary, sophisticated, perverted, but if a person has at least minimal sobriety, he, based on common sense alone, will not do some of the things that the enemy suggests to him. Of course, the most reliable barrier in the path of the enemy is piety and the fear of God. A mentally ill person lacks these protective barriers. He cannot think soberly, he cannot be pious and God-fearing, and, worst of all, some of his bodily components become thinner, he becomes much more capable of perceiving the spiritual world. And, being in such a painful aggravated state, again, he does not enter into communication with Angels.
- In this case, how to distinguish mental illness from obsession? A modern doctor, reading in the Gospel about a possessed youth or a Gadarene madman, can say that the first suffered from epilepsy, and the second from schizophrenia.
Indeed, sometimes you cannot say that this is a mental disorder caused by somatic factors - for example, traumatic brain injury - or obsession. There are obvious cases: when an absolutely healthy person, sitting on a chair, suddenly begins to bounce on it like a ball, but does not lose clarity of consciousness. Or - when a two-year-old girl suddenly begins to speak in a man's bass voice, and things that she could not hear anywhere. I remember how I once expected confession from Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov). There were many of us, everyone was concentrated, everyone was preparing for their confession, and suddenly he brought us all out of this state... not a scream, not a cry, not a groan, but a sound that has no name on earth, it is impossible to define it, there is nothing to compare it with . It was something chilling. This sound was made by a man kneeling in front of Father Kirill. Everyone had a feeling of extreme horror. Because none of us have ever heard anything like this.
Elder Paisiy Svyatogorets used this way to distinguish a possessed person from a mentally ill person: he put a particle of relics in the water and then gave the person this water to drink. If nothing special happened to a person, then he was just a sick person. The possessed person began to fight, scream, and swear.
But in general, I repeat once again: just as obsession destroys the psyche, so a mentally ill person is more susceptible to demonic influence than a healthy person. Mental illness still has a spiritual basis. Yes, some psychiatrist will say that the reason is biochemical changes in the cerebral cortex, but he is unlikely to answer the question of why these changes occurred. Meanwhile, it can be noted that proud people are primarily susceptible to mental disorders. A humble person can endure any shock and not get sick, because he is ready, he understands where it came from. And a proud man breaks down. Madness is one of the strangest, most terrible, but still - ways of human self-preservation. A person cannot cope with something and runs away into madness. Madness gives him the opportunity to exist in this world, as if huddled, closed.
- Does a person fall into demonic possession through his own fault?
In general, it does not happen that we are not to blame for what happened to us: as the holy fathers say, the cross of each of us is made from a tree that grew from the soil of our heart. If we talk about children, they always pay for the sins of adults. More precisely, these sins affect them, just as the illness experienced by their parents or exposure to radiation affects them.
Why are we urged to be very careful about the so-called reprimands of the possessed? Is there no consensus about them in the Church? I have heard that most of the people who come to lectures are either selfish malingerers who have entered into a role, or psychopaths who need to attract attention to themselves at any cost and who begin to unconsciously compete in this.
There is just one consensus. With the blessing of the ruling bishop, a good priest of righteous life is appointed to read certain prayers over those tormented by unclean spirits. And in those cases where the action of spirits of evil is really present, these people, through the prayer of the Church, are given help. The lives of saints and patericons are full of such cases when demons left a person through the prayers of a saint. Regarding people who are simply unhealthy, this is why unauthorized reprimands carried out without blessing by priests who do not have spiritual rights and authority are terrible, because the demon deceives people through these priests. They come to him simply sick, and sometimes leave already possessed. The actions of these priests are reminiscent of the seven sons of the Jewish high priest Sceva, who tried to cast out an evil spirit by exorcising it Jesus Whom Paul Preaches. The evil spirit then answered them: I know Jesus, and I know Paul, but who are you?(Acts 19 , 13, 15), and they suffered a lot from the one possessed by him...
The lives of saints, especially desert monks, contain stories about their struggles with demons. The Holy Fathers saw them. Why can't we see? Because our life is not like that of saints, our prayer is not like that, we do not pose such a danger to demons, we do not pose such a challenge to Satan as saints?
We do not see demons, because the Lord, fortunately for us, does not allow us to see them. If we had seen them, it is unknown whether we would have survived it or not. Demon, demon - there are many synonyms, but one of these synonyms is the spirit of evil. The demon is evil personified. Archimandrite John (Krestyankin) in one of his sermons said that a symphony of evil is being performed in the world. Its author is hiding, but he exists, and this symphony is brilliant in its own way. We know how terrible evil is on earth, we see what people have been doing to each other for centuries; Now imagine how terrible the one who produces all this is. That is why the Lord does not allow us to see him - because we are not at all ready for this.
- Still about the nature of demons and the nature of Angels. Demons are, after all, the same angels who fell with Dennitsa, with Satan?
- Yes, that's them. And since we cannot say anything about what the Cherubim and Seraphim are like who stand before God, then we also cannot say anything about what the fallen Angels are like. According to John of Damascus, Angels are the second intelligent lights, borrowing their light from the First and Beginning Light. An angel is a messenger, a messenger who comes to communicate the will of God or to fulfill it in relation to us. The angel brings us light from the Source, from the One Who is the Light. The Angel's Light is reflected, it can be compared to a mirror reflecting a sunbeam.
Angels have free will, however, according to the word of St. Basil the Great, they are not reluctant to sin - unlike us - because they directly contemplate God and all things in him. But some of them could have once fallen and turned into their complete opposite...
Regarding the possibility of the fall of an Angel, there is no consensus among the teachers of the Church; we can, following St. Basil, believe that they are just inflexible to sin, or, following other fathers, that it is generally impossible for an Angel to fall. The temptation that befell the angelic world was short-lived, but colossal. It divided the Angels into two worlds: the world of those who remained faithful to God, and the world of the fallen angels, the demonic world, and this division is forever. We have no reason to believe that an Angel, like a sinful man, can fall and rise again. And there is no reason to believe that the demon can suddenly repent.
The fact is that man - a spiritual, but also a physical being - has justification in his mortal flesh, the holy fathers wrote about this. Fear of illness, fear of misfortune, loss, death - all this makes us unfaithful out of cowardice. Why should a demon be afraid? Or Angel? They do not have our infirmity and weakness. The choice of the spirit is a free and irrevocable choice.
- How to understand the words of Christ: Do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven(Matt. 18:10)? Are we talking about Guardian Angels, each of which is assigned to one of the people?
These words speak primarily of the high dignity of man. We people tend to neglect a person if he seems small and insignificant to us, if he is poor, crippled, beggar... But this person has an Angel who cares about him and who stands before the Face of God. This is God's care for this man.
We are not obliged to believe that a personal Angel is assigned to each of us or that a personal demon is assigned to tempt us. It is possible that this is exactly the case; we find indications of this in the lives and works of some saints, but it may be otherwise. What can we know about what is happening in the spiritual world? It is enough for us to know that Angels protect us, and demons are looking for how to destroy us. And the desire to put this into some kind of intelligible system is caused by a person’s pride, the thought that this is possible for him.
- How are the possible influence of the Guardian Angel and our free will combined on us?
How do we combine our will and the presence of good, smart friends whom we listen to, from whom we expect advice and support in difficult times? There is, however, a very important difference in the influence of demons on us and in the influence of Angels. A demon cannot know a person's thoughts. He can act based on what he knows about us as a great psychologist and a great analyst. Watching us, he guesses what is happening in us. The Angel acts by the Holy Spirit and in the Holy Spirit, and we are transparent to the Angel.
The lives of saints contain many stories about the appearance of Angels. Most often they are seen in the form of beautiful husbands or young men in luminous clothes. So they do have a visible appearance?
It is important to understand that the saints saw Angels not with physical eyes, but with spiritual eyes - with intelligent, unimaginable vision. It is difficult for us to imagine this: we, earthly people, think in images, behind each of our thoughts a material image appears. But the saints, when the Holy Spirit, the blessing of God, descended on them, saw the phenomena of another world, saw heavenly bliss. Not in images, but as it is. It is very difficult for us to understand that in that other life there will no longer be the images we are familiar with, that this life will be completely different. When a person is overcome by spiritual joy, he cannot say what he actually rejoices about; there are no words for it. The Apostle Paul was a very eloquent man, he could express in words everything that he needed to express, but he could not talk about what he saw when he was caught up to the third heaven, because it cannot be expressed in human language, these are completely different areas . He heard there unspeakable words that a person cannot retell(2 Cor. 12 , 4). Saints have had such visions. But there are other visions - when we, like small children, are shown something in images accessible to us. A demon with black membranous wings, with terrible horns, fangs - this is a very suitable image for this demon to appear to a person, but it is a mistake to think that the demon really has such wings and horns. As for the Angel, his essence is best reflected, probably, not by this traditional image - a beautiful young man, but by our understanding that since God is love, then His servant is also love. The presence of an Angel always means peace, deep heartfelt tranquility and the feeling that you are warmed by love.
A demon is considered an evil spirit. Christianity also identifies him with the devil, a terrible devil or an insidious demon. This image was created on the basis of the interpretations provided by the traditions of the church.
About the term
In the 11th century, one can hear for the first time that there is a special image in Christianity - a demon. Who is this? One could learn about this by reading the lines of “The Tale of Law and Grace” or in the epic telling about the campaign of Prince Igor and his regiment, written in the 12th century. Moreover, Christianity can be learned from many other works.
In fact, this was the name given to all images that had anything to do with paganism. The great Veles did not escape this nickname either. A demon (Christianity) is any entity whose existence contradicts the supremacy of God in the spiritual world. If you look at a 19th century Bible translation, you will also notice this term. In English, as well as in German, this word is perceived as a synonym for the word “devil”. The Slavs borrowed it from the inhabitants of the Indo-European territories, for whom it meant “fear.” The Greeks called the monkey that way.
According to the pagan Slavs, winter is the time of the reign of demons who send cold. They are also associated with the dark time of day. In a word, these creatures were credited with involvement in all natural phenomena that disturbed human peace and comfort.
From the church's point of view
According to the concept of Christianity, demons are spirits of evil, about whose habits you can learn a lot from stories or descriptions of the lives of saints. Also, when exploring this issue, it is worth paying attention to demons, gods of pagans and idols, which were classified in the same category. They were called the collective term "demon." Christianity in many stories presented him as the tempter of saints or those who went into the desert.
Of course, many stories end with the victory of good over these manifestations of evil forces. A demon can send illnesses, tempt a sinner, or plunge a soul into vice. Christianity claims that it is he who pushes a person from the righteous path. So the devil is very close to this image, who is also a malicious character who spoils people’s quiet lives.
Different views on the issue
There are widespread ideas that a person has not one body, but several: physical, astral, ethereal. It is believed that the world in which we live is just one level of everything that exists. There are lower circles in which for the most part these creatures and their victims live.
You can get there by abusing drugs or alcohol. When it comes to the so-called squirrel, which is different from a cute fluffy creature, we can say that a person destroys the barrier between worlds and is thrown into the arms of dark entities that feed on the negative emotions of their donor.
How to get rid of it?
A demon enters the soul and helps it to decompose. Christianity, as a cure for such an infection, offers to take the righteous path and live in accordance with the texts of the commandments. After all, there is nothing in the world that cannot be corrected, including this.
If an individual chooses to behave correctly, over time he will feel relief and purity. The main thing is to recognize your actions as unworthy, repent, and trust in the Spirit of God. To instill light or anger in the soul is everyone’s personal choice.
A demon is truly like an addiction to alcohol or tobacco. He can enslave the consciousness and change it, but if the personality turns out to be stronger and decides to throw off these shackles, everything is subject to it. It is believed that saints, martyrs, and also saints went through struggles with these creatures.
From antiquity to the present day
The presence of these creatures has been felt at all times. Even now, when people are no longer so superstitious, they continue to use the terms “enraged,” “possessed,” and the like. Exorcism, which included prayers and a list of rituals characteristic of a particular religion, was considered an effective procedure for expelling harmful entities.
Such actions began to be carried out in hoary antiquity, when they were an integral part of beliefs, as well as cults. Today obsession is equated with mental disorders. Many are simply trying to attract attention by creating the impression that they are possessed by a demon. The healing that occurred after the exorcism procedure was more like a placebo or ordinary suggestion than a direct result of the actions of the priest.
The Bible and what came before it
Even before Christianity arose, one could become acquainted with demons by studying shamanism. It was already there that it was explained in detail who they were and how to expel them. Although in the Christian tradition, of course, this is not recognized and they claim that Christ was the first to engage in exorcism. After all, it was he who somehow healed a man enslaved by a demon, freeing his soul.
Dark entities forced the victim to live in a coffin. One phrase was enough for Jesus to command the dark spirits to fly away and fly into the pigs. According to Christians, God endowed individual apostles and other saints with a special gift of expelling evil spirits. Nowadays, there are many lovers of mysticism looking for it on the pages of books and movie screens. There are many films on this topic.
Scientific approach
Medicine has its own opinion on this matter. It is believed that this is due to mental illness. Those who are usually considered possessed show all the signs of hysteria, mania, psychotic state, epilepsy, schizoid disorders, even
By the way, regarding the latter, it is curious that 29% of those who “took root” in the souls of such patients are demons. They can also be associated with monomania or paranoia.
From a point of view of faith
Much about exorcism can be gleaned from the Gospel. It is believed that after leaving a person, the spirit goes to wander in those places where there is no water. His goal is to find peace, which he fails to achieve. After this, he still returns to his home, which is the human soul.
In order for the painful procedure not to be repeated in a new circle, it is necessary that after expelling a demon, a person not only leaves a gaping hole in his soul, but fills it with light and goodness, which can be gleaned from prayer and thoughts about God.
In addition, in the scriptures one can find evidence that not only Jesus and the apostles practiced exorcism, but also Jewish exorcists. The Gospel describes a case when Jewish healers cast out a demon who forced its victim to suffer from sleepwalking. The main tools in this case are prayer and fasting.
In addition, this art was also conquered by ordinary people who were filled with faith. They used the name of the Lord. Also associated with demons and devils are bad thoughts, doubts and other side effects of distorted mental activity. Peace of mind is an integral component of happiness, the acquisition of which was also sometimes called
Do demons read human thoughts?
– The Monk John Cassian the Roman writes about this. Demons do not know a person’s thoughts, but they certainly know the thoughts that they themselves inspired in that person. Again, they cannot know whether we accepted these thoughts or not, but they guess this from our actions.
Let's say they instilled in a person a lustful thought, and he began to look at a person of the opposite sex: yeah, that means he accepted it. They instilled a thought of anger, the man became flushed, began waving his fists (I’m exaggerating, of course), which means he accepted it again. After all, if we, looking at our interlocutor, can guess whether he agrees with us or not, then even more so can demons guess this.
As for thoughts from God or some natural ones, they can guess about them from our behavior, but they cannot know them exactly.
When I am at prayer alone and in the dark, I am very scared: it seems that someone is standing behind me or that in my peripheral vision I see some kind of movement near me. How to deal with this obsession?
“This comes from cowardice and lack of faith.” When a person is in solitude, praying or reading spiritual literature, demons naturally hate this and try to confuse and distract him from prayer. And he must try to behave completely freely, boldly, and despise any suggestions. When it seems like you are seeing something out of the corner of your eye, don’t attach any importance to it. If you give in to these suggestions of the enemy, then he will press you more and more. And don’t look with peripheral vision: oh, it seems like someone is standing behind my left shoulder! And just turn there and see that in fact there is no one there.
The ascetics despised demons, even when they appeared to them in person, in some form. For example, the Monk Filaret Glinsky told about himself: one day, when he was standing in his cell rule, some kind of cat suddenly appeared and climbed up his mantle onto his shoulder. He did not pay attention to her, continued to pray, and she disappeared.
And to us, as we are weak, no one will appear, we will only waste our strength on empty experiences. It’s scary - cross yourself, and that’s it, nothing more. If you are afraid, avoid all dark corners, then the fear will increase, increase and master you to such an extent that you will sneeze and shudder in horror.
In addition, we must always remember that without God’s permission nothing can happen to us, and the Lord will never allow temptations beyond our strength. You need to be afraid of demons, but in what sense? Be afraid so as not to succumb to their suggestions, not to fulfill their will and not to turn out to be enemies of God with them. And if we try to live according to the Gospel, if we are devoted to the Lord with all our souls, then no one is afraid of us. As the Apostle Paul says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Devil- a being that God created good, kind, light-bearing (the Greek word “Eosphoros” and the Latin “Lucifer” mean “light-bringer”). As a result of resistance to God, the divine will and divine Providence, the light-bearer fell away from God. Since the fall of the light-bearer and some of the angels from God, evil has appeared in the world. It was not created by God, but was introduced by the free will of the devil and demons.
People often ask: why did God allow evil? Isn't it at least indirectly God's fault that evil was brought into the world? It is difficult to answer this question. The Church offers us a teaching that we must accept on faith, but which the human mind is not able to comprehend. The only thing that can be said to explain this teaching is that let us look at ourselves and judge by ourselves. Each of us is a being created in the image and likeness of God. We are aware of this, and we are also aware of what our religious calling is. And yet, we often find ourselves not on the side of God, but on the side of the devil, and we make our choice not in favor of good, but in favor of evil. Something similar happened with the devil himself: created good and luminous, he voluntarily chose evil and became the enemy of God.
Having fallen away from God, the devil and demons became carriers of evil. Does this mean that the connection between them and God has been broken? No. There has been a personal relationship between God and the devil, which continues to this day. We can see this from the opening pages of the Book of Job, where it is said that the devil appeared before God along with the angels, among other “sons of God,” and the Lord said to him: “Have you paid your attention to My servant Job?” (Job 1:8). If I can put it this way, with this question God provokes the devil to take certain actions towards Job. And Satan says: “Yes, indeed Job is righteous, faithful to You, but this is because You created such conditions for him; change these conditions, and he will fall as other people fall.” To this the Lord answered him that he would give him Job’s body, but forbid him to touch his soul. Some understand this story as a parable, others as a real story, but the essence of the matter is that, according to the Bible, the devil, firstly, is dependent on God and is not free in his actions, and secondly, he acts only in within the limits in which God allows him to do so.
What should be the attitude of a Christian towards the devil?
Today we see two extremes. On the one hand, among modern Christians there are many who do not believe in the reality of the devil at all, who do not believe in his ability to influence their lives. Some people think that the devil is a mythical creature in which world evil is personified. On the other hand, there are many people who attach an exaggerated importance to the devil, who are convinced that the devil influences all aspects of a person’s life, and see his presence everywhere. Such believers are constantly afraid that the forces of the devil will somehow affect them.
On this basis, there are many superstitions, from which even church people are not free. Many “folk remedies” have been invented that would prevent Satan from penetrating a person. For example, some people, when yawning, cross their mouth so that the devil does not enter through it. Others manage to cross their mouth three times in one yawn. I have heard conversations about how an angel sits on our right shoulder and a demon on our left: making the sign of the cross, we cross ourselves from right to left, throwing the angel from our right shoulder to our left, so that he can fight the demon and defeat him (Accordingly, Catholics who cross themselves from left to right transfer the demon to the angel). This may seem funny and absurd to some, but there are people who believe in it. And, unfortunately, these are not jokes, but real conversations that can be heard in some monasteries, seminaries, and parishes. People who think this way live in the belief that their whole life is permeated by the devil’s presence. I once heard a hieromonk, a graduate of a theological academy, teach believers: when you get up in the morning, before you put your feet into your slippers, cross your slippers, because there is a demon in each of them. With such an attitude, the whole life turns into torture, because it is all permeated with fear, the constant fear that a person will be “spoilt”, jinxed, that evil spirits will be brought upon him, etc. All this has nothing in common with the Christian attitude towards the devil .
To understand what a truly Christian attitude towards the devil should be, we must turn, firstly, to our worship, to the sacraments, and, secondly, to the teaching of the Holy Fathers. The sacrament of Baptism begins with spells addressed to the devil: the meaning of these spells is to drive out the devil nesting in the heart of a person. Then the newly baptized person, together with the priest and his followers, turns to the west. The priest asks: “Do you renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his army, and all his pride?” He answers three times: “I renounce.” The priest says: “Blow and spit on it.” This is a symbol that contains a very deep meaning. “Blow and spit on him” means “treat the devil with contempt, do not pay attention to him, he deserves nothing more.”
In patristic, and in particular monastic, literature, the attitude towards the devil and demons is characterized by calm fearlessness - sometimes even with a touch of humor. You can recall the story of Saint John of Novgorod, who saddled a demon and forced him to take him to Jerusalem. I also remember a story from the life of Anthony the Great. Travelers came to him after walking for a long time through the desert, and on the way their donkey died of thirst. They come to Anthony, and he says to them: “Why didn’t you save the donkey?” They ask in surprise: “Abba, how do you know?”, to which he calmly replies: “The demons told me.” All these stories reflect a truly Christian attitude towards the devil: on the one hand, we recognize that the devil is a real being, the bearer of evil, but, on the other hand, we understand that the devil acts only within the framework established by God and will never be able to transgress these boundaries; Moreover, a person can take control of the devil and control him.
In the prayers of the Church, in liturgical texts and in the works of the Holy Fathers, it is emphasized that the power of the devil is illusory. In the devil’s arsenal there are, of course, various means and methods with which he can influence a person, he has vast experience in all kinds of actions aimed at harming a person, but he can only use it if the person allows him to do so . It is important to remember that the devil cannot do anything to us unless we ourselves open an entrance for him - a door, a window, or at least a crack through which he will enter.
Let me give you an example of an incident that happened ten years ago. An elderly woman, a literature teacher, approached me. In some newspaper she read that with the help of a needle, a sheet of paper and special spells, you can summon the spirits of the dead and talk with them. She decided to summon the spirit of Chekhov. And, imagine, “Chekhov” appeared to her. At first everything was very interesting, she even invited guests and organized “literary evenings” in her apartment. But then “Chekhov” began to appear without an invitation, damaging furniture, breaking dishes; returning home, the woman discovered that everything was turned upside down, the wallpaper was torn, etc. The whole family was in panic. The husband and children were afraid to return to their apartment. Life turned into hell, they were on the verge of suicide. Fortunately, the woman realized in time that she herself could not get rid of him now. The whole family came to church. The first thing I told them was: “You have to stop being afraid.” Arriving at their place, I blessed the apartment, then they confessed and received communion. “Chekhov” was blown away by the wind.
This is one of the examples confirming that if a person opens the door to the devil through some actions such as witchcraft, treatment by psychics, or through drug addiction, alcoholism and other forms of addiction, through grave sins that he commits consciously, the person becomes influenced dark forces. If he firmly stands guard over his mind and heart, his morality, if he goes to church, confesses and receives communion, wears the holy cross, then he is not afraid of any demonic insurance.
The devil is well aware of his weakness and powerlessness. He understands that he has no real power to influence people. That is why he tries to persuade them to cooperate and assist. Having found a weak point in a person, he tries to influence it in one way or another, and often he succeeds. First of all, the devil wants us to fear him, thinking that he has real power. And if a person falls for this bait, he becomes vulnerable and subject to “demonic shooting,” that is, those arrows that the devil and demons shoot into a person’s soul.
Let me give you another example. One day a woman came to me with her daughter, a girl about eight years old. Some demonic creatures constantly appeared to the girl, frightened her, she saw them day and night. The girl confessed and received communion, nothing changed. It all started with the fact that in some monastery they bought a book about the devil. In this book it was said that if the devil attacks a person, he will never leave him alone, and there are no means of getting rid of him, except perhaps “chastising”, but this does not always help. They, of course, were in shock from everything they experienced. I talked to the girl and asked her: “Are you afraid of them”? - "Afraid". - “And you can next time, as soon as they appear to you, tell them: “I’m not afraid of you, I don’t pay attention to you, I have my own life, you have yours, get out.” And live as if they don’t exist at all.” About a week later, the mother and daughter came again and said: “They disappeared.” This means that the only means that Satan had in this case was fear. He wanted to intimidate the child and make him his victim.
We have to regret that books and brochures in which the role of the devil is exaggerated in every possible way are published and sold in church shops. This comes from ignorance, from spiritual insensitivity, from ignorance of the teachings of the Holy Fathers. The Orthodox teaching about the devil is expressed by St. John of Damascus in thirty lines. And our home-grown theologians write book after book about the devil and demons, intimidate the people of God, ruin people's lives.
The entrance to the devil into a person’s soul is opened, as I have already said, by magic, sorcery, and treatment by psychics and sorcerers. I do not claim that all psychics and so-called “traditional healers” act solely under the influence of demonic forces. But in the overwhelming majority, these are people in whose hands forces and energies are concentrated, the nature of which they themselves do not know. Often, while healing one thing, they damage another. There were cases when a person got rid of headaches with their help, but at the same time became mentally ill. And the worst thing is that these “healers” make a person dependent on themselves, and any form of dependence is the very door through which the devil can penetrate. Drug, alcohol, sexual, mental and other forms of addiction pose a huge spiritual danger. Christians must take every possible care not to be dependent on anything in this life, in order to be as free as possible spiritually and physically. A person who controls his mind, his heart, his actions can always resist Satan. Anyone who finds himself a slave to any passion or vice becomes unable to repel the onslaught of the devil.
You may ask: how much is the devil able to influence our thoughts? How much does he even know what is going on in our thoughts and in our hearts? How competent is he in matters of spiritual life? I have formed the conviction - partly under the influence of what I read from the Holy Fathers, partly on the basis of personal observations - that the devil does not have direct knowledge of our internal processes. At the same time, being very experienced - after all, throughout history he has dealt with billions of people and “worked” with each individual individually - he uses these skills and recognizes by external signs what is happening inside a person. And looks for the most vulnerable places. For example, when a person is despondent, it is very easy for the devil to influence him. But the only thing the devil is capable of is to give a person some sinful thought, for example, the thought of suicide. And he does this not because the inner world of a person, his heart, is open to him, but only focusing on external signs. Having instilled some thoughts in a person, the devil is not able to control what will happen to them next. And if a person knows how to distinguish which thought came from God, which from his own human nature, and which from the devil, and reject sinful thoughts at their very appearance, the devil will not be able to do anything. The devil becomes stronger as a sinful or passionate thought penetrates the human mind.
The Holy Fathers have a teaching about the gradual and step-by-step penetration of sinful thoughts into the human soul. You can become familiar with this teaching by reading the Philokalia or the Ladder of St. John of Sinai. The essence of this teaching is that a sinful or passionate thought initially appears only somewhere on the horizon of the human mind. And if a person, as the Fathers of the Church say, “stands guard over his mind,” he can reject this thought, “blow and spit” on it, and it will disappear. If a person becomes interested in a thought, begins to examine it, talk with it, it conquers more and more new territories in the person’s mind - until it covers his entire nature - soul, heart, body - and induces him to commit sin. .
The path to the devil and demons to the soul and heart of a person is opened by various kinds of superstitions. I would like to emphasize: faith is the exact opposite of superstition. The Church has always waged a tough fight against superstitions, precisely because superstition is a surrogate, a substitute for true faith. A true believer realizes that there is God, but there are also dark forces; he builds his life intelligently and consciously, is not afraid of anything, placing all his hope in God. A superstitious person - out of weakness, or stupidity, or under the influence of some people or circumstances - replaces faith with a set of beliefs, signs, fears, which make up some kind of mosaic, which he takes for religious faith. We Christians must abhor superstitions in every possible way. We must treat every superstition with the same contempt with which we treat the devil: “Blow and spit on him.”
The devil’s entrance into a person’s soul also opens through sins. Of course we all sin. But sin is different. There are human weaknesses that we struggle with - what we call minor sins and try to overcome. But there are sins that, even if committed once, open the door through which the devil penetrates the human mind. Any conscious violation of the moral norms of Christianity can lead to this. If a person systematically violates, for example, the norms of married life, he loses spiritual vigilance, loses sobriety, chastity, that is, holistic wisdom that protects him from the attacks of the devil.
Moreover, any duality is dangerous. When a person, like Judas, begins, in addition to the basic value that forms the religious core of life, to cleave to other values, and his conscience, his mind and heart become divided, the person becomes very vulnerable to the actions of the devil.
I have already mentioned the so-called “reporting”. I would like to dwell in some detail on this phenomenon, which has deep historical roots. In the Ancient Church, as you know, there were exorcists - people whom the Church instructed to cast out demons from the possessed. The Church has never perceived demonic possession as a mental illness. We know from the Gospel many cases when a demon, several demons, or even a whole legion took up residence in a person, and the Lord, by His power, drove them out. Then the work of expelling demons was continued by the apostles, and later by the very exorcists to whom the Church entrusted this mission. In subsequent centuries, the ministry of exorcists as a special ministry within the Church practically disappeared, but still there were (and still are) people who are engaged in driving out demons from the possessed, either on behalf of the Church or on their own initiative.
You need to know that, on the one hand, the possessed are a reality that the Church encounters in everyday life. Indeed, there are people in whom a demon lives, which has penetrated into them, as a rule, through their fault - because in one way or another they have opened access for it inside themselves. And there are people who, through prayer and special spells, similar to those that the priest reads before performing the sacrament of Baptism, cast out demons. But there are many abuses based on “reporting”. For example, I saw two young hieromonks who, on their own initiative, were engaged in casting out demons from the possessed. Sometimes they provided this service to each other - one scolded the other for two hours. There was no visible benefit from this.
There are cases when priests arbitrarily take on the role of exorcists, begin to attract demoniacs and create entire communities around themselves. I have no doubt that there are clergy who possess divine healing powers and are truly capable of casting out demons from people. But such clergy must have the official sanction of the Church. If a person undertakes such a mission on his own initiative, this is fraught with great dangers.
Once, in a private conversation, one fairly well-known exorcist, an Orthodox clergyman, around whom crowds of people gather, admitted: “I don’t know how this happens.” He told one of the visitors: “If you are not sure that you are really possessed, it is better not to come there, otherwise the demon can leave another person and enter you.” As we see, even this well-known and respected exorcist did not fully understand the processes that occur on the basis of “reading,” and did not fully understand the “mechanics” of expelling demons from one person and their entry into another.
Often people with certain problems - mental or simply in life - come to the priest and ask if they can go to such and such an elder for a lecture. A woman once approached me: “My fifteen-year-old son doesn’t listen to me, I want to take him to school.” Just because your son is disobedient, I answered, does not mean that he has a demon. To some extent, disobedience is even natural for teenagers - through this they grow up and assert themselves. A lecture is not a panacea for life’s difficulties.
It also happens that a person shows signs of mental illness, and loved ones see this as the influence of demons. Of course, a mentally ill person is more vulnerable to the action of demons than a spiritually and mentally healthy person, but this does not mean that he needs to be told off. A psychiatrist, not a priest, is needed to treat the mentally ill. But it is very important that the priest be able to distinguish between phenomena of a spiritual and mental order, so that he does not mistake mental illness for demonic possession. If he tries to heal mental defects by scolding, the result may be the opposite, exactly the opposite of what was expected. A person with an unbalanced psyche, finding himself in a situation where people are screaming, screaming, etc., can cause irreparable harm to his spiritual, mental and mental health.
In conclusion, I would like to say that the action, power and strength of the devil are temporary. For some time, the devil conquered from God a certain spiritual territory, a certain space in which he acts as if he were the master there. At the very least, he tries to create the illusion that there is an area in the spiritual world where he rules. Believers consider hell to be such a place, where people find themselves mired in sins, who have not repented, who have not taken the path of spiritual improvement, and who have not found God. On Holy Saturday we will hear wonderful and very deep words that “hell reigns, but does not reign forever over the human race,” and that Christ, by His redemptive feat, His death on the cross and descent into hell, has already won victory over the devil - the very victory that will become final after His Second Coming. And hell, and death, and evil continue to exist, as they existed before Christ, but they have already signed a death sentence, the devil knows that his days are numbered (I’m not talking about his days as a living being, but about the power that he temporarily disposes).
“Hell reigns, but does not reign over the human race forever.” This means that humanity will not always be in the position it is in now. And even those who find themselves in the kingdom of the devil, in hell, are not deprived of God’s love, because God is present in hell. The Monk Isaac the Syrian called the opinion that sinners in hell are deprived of God's love blasphemous. The love of God is present everywhere, but it acts in two ways: for those who are in the Kingdom of Heaven, it acts as a source of bliss, joy, inspiration, but for those who are in the kingdom of Satan, it is a scourge, a source of torment.
We must also remember what is said in the Revelation of St. John the Theologian: the final victory of Christ over the Antichrist, good over evil, God over the devil, will be won. In the Liturgy of Basil the Great, we hear that Christ descended into hell by the Cross in order to destroy the kingdom of the devil and bring all people to God, that is, with His presence and thanks to His death on the cross, He permeated with Himself everything that we subjectively perceive as the kingdom of the devil. And in the stichera dedicated to the Cross of Christ, we hear: “Lord, You have given us Your Cross as a weapon against the devil”; It also says that the Cross is “the glory of angels and the plague of demons,” it is an instrument before which demons tremble, and the devil “trembles and shakes.”
This means that we are not defenseless before the devil. On the contrary, God does everything to protect us as much as possible from the influence of Satan; He gives us His Cross, Church, sacraments, Gospel, Christian moral teaching, and the opportunity for constant spiritual improvement. He gives us periods such as Lent when we can pay special attention to spiritual life. And in this spiritual struggle of ours, in the struggle for ourselves, for our spiritual survival, God Himself is next to us, and He will be with us all the days until the end of the age.
Today people have a very poor idea of who demons are. Where did they come from, what qualities do they have? For people who are not inclined to read religious literature, fiction becomes almost the only source of knowledge about demons. And here, with some bewilderment, we have to admit that even in the works of the classics, the description of unclean spirits is very contradictory, ambiguous and, rather, confuses the reader than helps to understand the essence of the matter.
Writers have created a whole gallery of different images that are very different from each other. On one flank in this row are folklore images of the demon in the works of N.V. Gogol and A.S. Pushkin. In this version, the demon is presented as a rather absurd and stupid creature with a nasty appearance and such low intelligence that even a simple village blacksmith easily subjugates it, using it as a vehicle. Or, armed with a piece of rope and a couple of simple fraudulent tricks, the evil spirit is easily fooled by the famous Pushkin character with the eloquent name Balda.
On the opposite flank of the gallery of literary demons is Bulgakov’s Woland. This is almost the omnipotent arbiter of human destinies, the focus of intelligence, nobility, justice and other positive qualities. It is pointless for a person to fight him, since, according to Bulgakov, he is practically invincible, one can only obey him with reverence - like the Master and Margarita, or die - like Berlioz, or, at best, be damaged by reason, like the poet Ivan Bezdomny.
These two extremes in the literary depiction of demons, naturally, form in readers the same extremes in relation to what is depicted. From complete disdain for Pushkin’s idiotic idiots as absolutely fairy-tale characters to complete confidence in the real existence of Woland the Satan, superstitious horror of his power, and sometimes direct worship of the spirits of darkness.
There is nothing surprising here; the power of a work of art lies in the fact that the literary hero begins to be perceived by us as real. In London, for example, there is a very real museum dedicated to the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, and in the Soviet Union real city streets were named after the fiery revolutionary Pavka Korchagin, despite his 100% literary origins.
But in the case of the artistic image of demons, we have a completely different situation. The fact is that even in the space of a literary work, the spiritual world does not exist within the framework of human history, but as if in parallel to it - its inhabitants do not age, do not die and are not affected by time, they are always nearby. And if we assume that the fictional characters of the same Mikhail Bulgakov have real prototypes in the spiritual world, then we must admit that the reader’s admiration and admiration for Woland clearly goes beyond the scope of literary issues. Here much more serious questions arise - for example, to what extent does the image of a demon created by the writer’s artistic imagination correspond to spiritual reality? Or - how safe is the attitude towards demons, formed by their literary images, for a person? It is obvious that literary criticism can no longer answer these questions. And, since the demon migrated to European literature from the Christian religious tradition, it would be reasonable to find out what Christianity says about this creature?
Contrary to popular misconception, Satan is not at all the eternal antipode of God, and demons are not the antipodes of angels. And the idea of the spiritual world as a kind of chessboard, where black pieces play against white pieces on equal terms, fundamentally contradicts the teaching of the Church about fallen spirits.
In the Christian tradition, there is an understanding of a clear boundary between God the Creator and His creation. And in this sense, absolutely all the inhabitants of the spiritual world equally belong to the category of God’s creations. Moreover, the very nature of demons is initially exactly the same as that of angels, and even Satan is not some special “dark god” equal in power to the Creator. This is just an angel who was once the most beautiful and powerful creation of God in the created world. But the name itself - Lucifer (“luminiferous”) - is not entirely correct to use in relation to Satan, since this name does not belong to him, but to that same bright and kind angel that Satan once was.
Church tradition says that the spiritual world of angels was created by God even before the creation of the material world. The catastrophe, as a result of which a third of the angels, led by Satan, fell away from their Creator: he carried away a third of the stars from heaven and threw them to earth (Rev. 12:4) belongs to this, in every sense, prehistoric period.
The reason for this falling away was Lucifer’s inadequate assessment of his perfection and power. God placed him above all the other angels, giving him powers and properties that no one else had; Lucifer turned out to be the most perfect being in the created universe. These gifts corresponded to his high calling - to fulfill the will of God, ruling over the spiritual world.
But the angels were not like automatons, hard-coded to obey. God created them with love, and the fulfillment of His will should have become a reciprocal manifestation of love for their Creator among the angels. And love is possible only as the realization of freedom of choice - to love or not to love. And the Lord gave the angels this opportunity to choose - to be with God or to be without God...
It is impossible to say with certainty how exactly their falling away occurred, but its general meaning was as follows. Lucifer-Dennitsa considered that the power he received made him equal to God, and decided to leave his Creator. Together with him, a third of all the angels made this fatal decision for them. Between the rebellious and faithful spirits (who were led by the Archangel Michael) a conflict arose, described in the Holy Scriptures as follows: And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought against them, but they did not stand, and there was already a place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that ancient serpent, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was cast out to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him (Rev. 12:7-9).
So the beautiful Dennitsa became Satan, and the angels seduced by him became demons. It is easy to see that there is not the slightest reason to talk about Satan’s war against God. How can one fight with God who has suffered a crushing defeat even from his fellow angels? Having lost their angelic dignity and place in Heaven, the fallen spirits turned out to be like the soldiers of a defeated army, who tore off their orders and shoulder straps during the retreat.
CRAZY POSTMAN
The word “angel” itself is of Greek origin; when translated into Russian, it literally means “messenger,” that is, the one who brings news from God, communicates His good will to the rest of creation. But whose will can an angel who did not want to serve his Creator communicate, what message can such a “messenger” bring - and can this message be trusted?
Suppose in a small town one postman became terribly offended by his boss for something and stopped coming to the post office for new letters. But he was very proud of the title of postman, he loved to deliver letters and, what’s saddest, he couldn’t do anything, well, he just couldn’t do absolutely anything else. And a strange life began for him. All day long he restlessly wandered around the city in his postman's cap with an empty mail bag on his shoulder, and instead of letters and telegrams, he stuffed all sorts of rubbish picked up on the road into people's mailboxes. Very soon he acquired a reputation as the town's madman. The police took his bag and cap away from him, and the residents began to chase him away from their doors. Then he was terribly offended by the residents too. But he really wanted to carry letters. And he came up with a cunning trick: on a dark night, when no one saw him, he slowly sneaked along the city streets and dropped letters written... by himself into mailboxes. He had worked at the post office for a long time, so he quickly learned to forge senders’ handwriting, their addresses and postmarks on envelopes. And in letters he wrote... Well, what could such a guy write? Of course, only all sorts of nasty things and lies, since he really wanted to annoy the residents who drove him away.
...Of course, this sad tale about a crazy postman is just a very weak analogy to the tragic story of the transformation of angels into demons. But for a more accurate description of the depth of moral decline and the madness of evil spirits, even the image of a serial maniac would be too light, soft and unconvincing. The Lord Himself called Satan a murderer: he (the devil) was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks his own way, for he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).
Angels are not capable of independent creativity; they can only fulfill God’s creative plan. Therefore, the only way of existence for angels who abandoned their calling was the desire to destroy and destroy everything that they could even touch.
Envying God, but not having the slightest opportunity to cause Him any harm, the demons extended all their hatred of the Creator to His creation. And since man became the crown of the material and spiritual world, God’s most beloved creation, all the dissatisfied vengefulness and malice of the fallen messenger angels fell upon him, bringing to people, instead of God’s will, their own will, terrible for all living things.
And here a very important question arises: how can a person build relationships with such a formidable force that seeks to destroy him?
SHISH OR CANDLE?
In the collection of Russian folk tales by A. N. Afanasyev there is an interesting story on a religious theme:
“One woman, putting a candle in front of the image of St. George the Victorious on holidays, always showed a fig to the snake depicted on the icon, and said: here is a candle for you, Saint Yegory, and for you, Satan, shish. With this she angered the evil one so much that he could not stand it; appeared to her in a dream and began to frighten: “Well, if you end up in hell with me, you will suffer torment!” After that, the woman lit a candle for both Yegor and the snake. People ask why is she doing this? “Yes, of course, my dears!” After all, you don’t know where you’ll end up: either heaven or hell!’”
In this story, despite all its Christian surroundings, the pagan principle of simultaneously establishing relationships with both evil and good deities is very succinctly and convincingly presented. And the path to a practical solution to the problem is indicated here quite clearly: a candle for everyone and everyone is happy! Why does the foresight of a naive woman look so comical in this folk joke? Yes, because only those who do not understand the simple truth can hope to appease the demon: it is impossible to establish good relations with evil spirits. Having hated all of creation without exception, demons have driven themselves into an ontological dead end, since they themselves are also God’s creations. Therefore, hatred has become for them the only possible form of relationship with each other, and even they can only hate themselves. The very fact of one’s own existence is painful for demons.
Such a terrible feeling can probably only be compared with the state of an unfortunate animal dying from a viral infection, which is colloquially called rabies, not without reason. The main symptom of this terrible disease is spasms of the esophagus, which do not allow any fluid to enter the body. Water may be very close, but the animal dies of thirst, without the slightest opportunity to quench it. Maddened by this torture, the sick animal rushes at everyone who had the temerity to approach it, and if no one is nearby, it bites itself in complete darkness. But even such a terrible picture can give only a very weak and approximate idea of what a creature that fiercely hates the whole world, not excluding itself and its own kind, can experience.
And now the final question is: would a sane person try to make friends with a mad dog? Or, for example, could Kipling's Mowgli survive in a pack of rabid wolves, constantly tearing each other apart? The answer in both cases is obvious. But then an immeasurably more hopeless undertaking is the attempt to appease the demon in order to secure a comfortable place in hell.
Making curtsies towards the forces of evil is a meaningless and useless exercise. The Holy Scriptures clearly say that for Satan people are of interest solely as potential victims: Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour (1 Pet. 5:8).
And although poking a cookie at the icon of St. George the Victorious, as the heroine of Afanasyev’s joke did, is not at all a pious thing, and, of course, it’s not worth doing this, but still, those Christians who experience a superstitious fear of demons would do well to remember that in the very rite of the Sacrament of baptism, every Christian not only shows a figurine to the demon, but literally spits on him three times, renouncing Satan.
Moreover, subsequently the Christian daily remembers this renunciation in the prayer of St. John Chrysostom, read before leaving the house: “I deny you, Satan, both your pride and your service; and I unite myself with You, Christ God, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
But where does Christians get such boldness? The answer is simple: only those who are under reliable protection can give a damn about such dangerous and powerful enemies.
WHO DROWNED THE PIGS?
People who are becoming acquainted with the Gospel for the first time sometimes pay close attention to those details of the Gospel narrative that for a churchgoer are secondary and insignificant. One such case is described by N. S. Leskov in the story “At the End of the World,” where an Orthodox bishop, traveling through Siberia, tries to explain to his Yakut guide the essence of Christian doctrine:
“Well, do you know why Christ came here to earth?
He thought and thought - and did not answer.
Do not you know? - I say.
Don't know.
I explained all of Orthodoxy to him, but he either listens or doesn’t, and he keeps giggling at the dogs and waving the weeds.
Well, did you understand, I ask, what I told you?
How, Bachka, did I understand: I drowned a pig in the sea, spit in the eyes of a blind man - the blind man saw, he gave the people a loaf of bread and fish.
These pigs in the sea, a blind man and a fish, settled on his forehead, and he won’t rise further ... "
Paradoxically, all the same pigs that have settled in the forehead of Leskov’s illiterate Yakut, in our days can sometimes confuse already quite civilized people with higher education. How could the meek and loving Christ, who “will not break a bruised reed or quench the smoking flax,” mercilessly drown a herd of pigs? Doesn't God's love extend to animals too?
The questions seem to be formally correct (although they could probably only arise from a modern person who in no way connects the ham on his table with the pig from which this ham was made). But there is still an error in such reasoning. And the point is not even that the pigs mentioned in the Gospel would sooner or later still fall under the butcher’s knife.
Upon careful reading of this passage in the Gospel, a simple fact becomes obvious: Christ did not drown the unfortunate animals. Demons are to blame for their deaths.
When He came ashore, He was met by a man from the city, possessed by demons for a long time, who had not put on clothes, and who lived not in a house, but in tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before Him and said in a loud voice: What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me. For Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man, because it had tormented him for a long time, so that they bound him with chains and bonds, keeping him safe; but he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the desert. Jesus asked him: What is your name? He said: legion, because many demons entered into it. And they asked Jesus not to command them to go into the abyss. There was also a large herd of pigs grazing on the mountain; and the demons asked Him to allow them to enter into them. He let them. The demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the herd rushed down a steep slope into the lake and drowned (Luke 8:27-33).
Here the destructive power of demons’ hatred of all living things is very clearly demonstrated, forcing them to act even contrary to their own interests. Expelled from man, they ask Christ to allow them to enter the pigs in order to live in them and not go into the abyss. But as soon as Christ allows them to do this, the demons immediately drown all the pigs in the sea, again being left without shelter. It is impossible to understand such behavior, since there is no logic or common sense in hatred. A madman walking through a kindergarten with a straight razor in his hand will look like a harmless and peaceful everyman against the background of demons. And if such terrible creatures could operate unhindered in our world, then there would be nothing alive left in it long ago. But in the gospel story with the pigs, the Lord clearly showed that demons are not at all free in their actions. This is how St. Anthony the Great says about this: “Even over pigs the devil has no power. For, as it is written in the Gospel, the demons asked the Lord, saying: command us to go among the pigs. If they do not have power over pigs, much less do they have power over man, created in the image of God.”
By renouncing Satan in baptism, a person entrusts himself to the One who has absolute power over Satan. Therefore, even if demons attack a Christian, this should not particularly frighten him. Such an attack is possible under the only indispensable condition: if the Lord allows it. A snake bite is fatal, but a skilled doctor knows how to prepare medicine from snake venom. Likewise, the Lord can use the evil will of demons as a means to heal the human soul. According to the general opinion of the fathers, demonic possession is allowed by God to those people for whom this path turns out to be the best in acquiring humility and salvation. “Spiritually, such punishment from God does not at all serve as a bad testimony about man: many great saints of God were subjected to such a tradition to Satan...” writes Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov).
“Meanwhile, being burdened with a demon is not at all cruel, because a demon cannot at all cast one into Gehenna, but if we are awake, then this temptation will bring us brilliant and glorious crowns when we endure such attacks with gratitude” (St. John Chrysostom).
THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT ANTHONY
Demons act only where the Lord allows them to do so, turning the evil plans of fallen spirits for the good of people. This partly explains Goethe’s famous paradox of Mephistophelian self-determination: “I am part of that force that always wants evil and always does good.” Although even in a literary work, the demon still continues to lie: he, of course, is not able to accomplish any good and, as always, ascribes to himself the merits of others.
But what can a demon really do? In this matter, the opinion of the father of Christian monasticism, Anthony the Great, can be considered more than authoritative, since demons fought with him in the desert for several decades. Hieronymus Bosch’s famous painting “The Temptation of Saint Anthony” depicts a terrible picture: a flock of fanged and horned monsters attacks a lone monk.
This plot was not invented by the artist, it was taken from the real life of St. Anthony, and the saint actually experienced all these terrible attacks. But this is the unexpected assessment that Anthony the Great himself gives to these horrors: “In order not to be afraid of demons, we must consider the following. If they had power, they would not come in a crowd, would not make dreams, would not take on various images when plotting; but it would be enough just to come alone and do what he can and wants, especially since everyone who has power does not amaze with ghosts, but immediately uses the power as he wants. The demons, having no power, seem to amuse themselves at the spectacle, changing their disguises and frightening children with many ghosts and phantoms. That’s why we should despise them most of all, as powerless.”
Demons hate God. But how does God respond to this hatred? St. John of Damascus writes: “God always provides benefits to the devil, but he does not want to accept. And in the next century, God gives good to everyone - for He is the source of good, pouring out goodness on everyone, and everyone partakes of good, as much as he has prepared himself for those who receive it.”
Despite the depth of the fall of demons, God does not fight with them and is always ready to accept them back into the rank of angels. But the monstrous pride of fallen spirits does not allow them to respond to all manifestations of God’s love. This is how the modern ascetic, the Athonite elder Paisius the Holy Mountain, speaks about this: “If they had said only one thing: “Lord, have mercy,” then God would have come up with something to save them. If only they had said “those who have sinned,” but they don’t say that. Having said “those who have sinned,” the devil would again become an angel. God's love is limitless. But the devil has a persistent will, stubbornness, and selfishness. He doesn't want to give in, doesn't want to be saved. This is scary. After all, he was once an angel! Does the devil remember his former state? he is all fire and fury... And the further he goes, the worse he becomes. He develops in anger and envy. Oh, if only a person could feel the state in which the devil is! He would cry day and night. Even when a good person changes for the worse and becomes a criminal, one feels very sorry for him. But what can we say if you see the fall of an angel!.. the fall of the devil cannot be healed by anything other than his own humility. The devil does not correct himself because he does not want to. Do you know how glad Christ would be if the devil wanted to correct himself!”
Unfortunately, the devil does not give any reasons for such joy. And the only correct and safe attitude for a person towards fallen spirits, maddened by anger and pride, is to have nothing in common with them, which is what Christians ask the Lord in the concluding words of the Lord’s Prayer: ... lead us not into temptation, but deliver us us from the evil one. Amen".
Alexander Tkachenko
King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand: divine king with camera
Piggy Bank - Bible Questions
Recipe: Zucchini pancakes - With cheese - very tender and tasty
Flower mastic recipe
Hot smoked lard at home