The Exorcist's Bestiary

Demons are not all-knowing or all-powerful. They make mistakes. Their plans are not foolproof, and you can ruin them.

In one case, I was trying to determine if we had removed a specific demon. It hadn’t shown its face in a while, but some of its themes were still present in the participant’s life. One day, an agitated demon manifested to get in the way of something we were doing. At one point, I noticed it used the word “we,” and I called it out.

“We? So there’s more than just you left, huh?” I asked. You could see in their face that they had just been caught. What was amazing to me was that the demon was so startled by its error that it didn’t even try to lie its way out of the mistake. It just went silent. I was sure it would say something like, “Well, it used to be ‘we’ until you kicked all my friends out,” or, “I mean ‘we’ as in the plan ‘we’ created before you removed my partners.” But I think the demon was too caught up in its own thoughts and fears in the surprise of that moment to think of a clever way out of the situation.

I remember a time when a weaker demon gave me a list of some of the other demon’s names and then told me not to tell the other demons it had told me. Over time, I could tell that the other demons did not like that particular demon very much, and I assume the one that just said “we” was probably thinking about how he let his friends down and how mad they might be.

Again, demons make mistakes. Much of what they say can be used to discern their plans, and there are many ways to strategically twist their words against them. Talk to the Holy Spirit, not to the demons. But when they get in the way, it may be helpful to discern some of the things they’ve said with the Holy Spirit. You will need the Holy Spirit’s help and wisdom because demons are compulsive liars.