The Exorcist's Bestiary

“Tell me the truth of what happened to my participant,” I told the manifested demon. 

“Close your eyes and I’ll show you,” he responded.

I began to feel a tingling sensation I recognized from when I had experienced an exorcism. Except during my exorcism the tingling sensation moved up and off my head—this one was starting at my head and trying to move down.

“Demon, in the name of Jesus, get off me,” I commanded. His snarky, pleased grin changed to an expression of great annoyance and the tingling sensation faded away. His plan for him or his protege to sneak into my life had failed. I don’t know for sure that he could have actually shown me the participant’s memory had I let him, but I wasn’t about to find out.

I don’t make deals with demons, because demons are liars and deceivers. As Jesus said, Satan “does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” We must always remember this because when demons start to lose the fight, they sometimes propose making a deal. I don’t even hear their deals out when they get desperate—I just silence them immediately.

Though I have made a deal with the Holy Spirit before. During one extreme exorcism, the participant and I created a plan. We asked the Holy Spirit if he would be willing to temporarily remove some problematic demons (that otherwise weren’t ready to be removed) so that we could more clearly focus on overcoming the themes attached to those demons. It was clear to the participant that the Holy Spirit loved that plan, and it was immediately initiated.

Jesus once made a deal with the demons known as Legion, but it seemed to be a trick on Jesus’ part. In his time, an exorcist would often try to transfer a demon from a person to an animal, and then drown the animal in hopes to disembody the spirit. While this is not how exorcism works, the fact that Jesus’ story ends in such a way conveyed to the people of his time that he was the ultimate exorcist.