The Exorcist's Bestiary

“The Secret Fire whispers to us if we have ears to hear. It tells us things—even shows us things,” Tom Bombadil explained to the stranger in The Rings of Power.

“How do I learn to master its power?” asked the stranger. “To fight back against the darkness?”

“What does the Secret Fire need with you as a master?” snapped Bombadil.

Who or what is the Secret Fire? Some scholars suggest it’s the Holy Spirit, which lines up perfectly for me, given the characteristics and themes Tolkien attributes to the Secret Fire throughout The Lord of the Rings.

Bombadil’s instructions to the stranger are right on point. You can’t master the Holy Spirit—he masters you. When you get together with a participant, you wait for the Holy Spirit to help, who (as he recently told a participant) “arrives precisely when he means to.” (I have seen the Holy Spirit use The Lord of the Rings references during inner healing sessions with several people.)

New participants often come to their first inner healing session feeling nervous. “What if it doesn’t work? What if the Holy Spirit doesn’t show up? What if they’re just wasting everyone’s time?”

First off, regardless of how a session goes, you are never a waste of time. Secondly, we are not in charge of the Secret Fire—the Holy Spirit is in charge of us. We don’t work things up to manifest the Spirit’s presence like the prophets of Baal tried to do with their god. Sure, there are some tricks to help the participant meet with the Holy Spirit, but you cannot force the Holy Spirit to do anything. Jesus took the Holy Spirit seriously. We must, too.

In our model, there is no pressure on the participant to perform. We have had sessions where little or nothing happens, and we don’t consider those moments to be failures. We just do what we can as we assist the participant in discerning the Holy Spirit’s voice so that he can help us through the healing process.

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