The Exorcist's Bestiary

In Tolkien’s mythology, there is a rank of angels known as the Valar, who occasionally incarnate so that they may interact with Middle Earth more tangibly. These angels can put on skin momentarily or permanently, but when they do so, they experience earthly limitations. As Austin Freeman points out in his book, Tolkien Dogmatics, they “can perceive nothing outside of it except through memory. They are likewise now cut off from the direct mind-to-mind communion with God that the other [angels] still enjoy.”

When they choose to incarnate permanently, they need to “slowly relearn many things.” So, for example, the pre-incarnate angel Olórin put on flesh to become the wizard Gandalf the Grey, forcing him to set aside much of what he used to know. However, he gained some of this wisdom back when he was elevated to the place of Gandalf the White.

This lore sets us up for our illustration. In the first season of Rings of Power (spoilers ahead), an angelic figure comes down to Middle Earth as a shooting star. This newly incarnated wizard suffers from great amnesia. He doesn’t know how to speak. He has powers that he doesn’t quite know how to use correctly. There are some things he remembers that are important to him, but he doesn’t seem to know why. The angel-become-wizard has much to learn about who he is and why he’s here.

While this wizard is trying to understand his identity, three witches track him down and begin to inform him that he is evil. This belief contradicts a young harfoot who had told him he was good. The wizard is in a psychological battle, trying to grasp his identity. Who is right? Who will he ground his belief in? Will he yield his power for good or evil?

This is the question all must face in exorcism. On one side, we have the Holy Spirit reminding us that we are good. Humans are made in the image of God, and on the first day of judgment in the Bible, God declared that humans are good along with the rest of creation. Demons, on the other hand, work hard to give us a different identity in which we’re nothing more than wretched sinners—dirty worms that can never rise above our sin. When we buy into this demonic worldview, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which shame keeps us stuck in a cycle of sin.

Who you believe you are has everything to do with spiritual warfare. The Holy Spirit often has me wait to remove demons from participants until they truly believe what God has declared about them. The picture of the amnesic wizard stuck between a harfoot and a coven is the picture of us all. We so often forget who we are, and sometimes we struggle to believe the truth because it simply is too good.

When we take God’s word seriously, we can ground ourselves in goodness. It is not just something we can live into: goodness is actually in the fabric of our being.

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