The Exorcist's Bestiary

Exorcism

The word exorcism brings many scary movies to mind for people, but we use it here in reference to the removal of a demon from a person’s life. While exorcisms can be intense, the exorcism model we use tends to keep our sessions ordered, effective, and rarely like the movies. We typically use the word exorcism over the word deliverance, because deliverance has a variety of meanings to most people, while exorcism tends to be direct.

Dreamscaping

Our exorcism model revolves around the classic Christian practice of imaginative prayer. Explained simply, 1 Corinthians 2:10-12 creates a dynamic where Christians can know the thoughts of both their spirit and God’s Spirit. Since many people come to know their thoughts through their imagination, we believe participants have the capacity to know God’s thoughts through their imagination. Said another way, just as many Christians believe we can hear God’s thoughts through the Holy Spirit, we believe we can see God’s thoughts through the Holy Spirit.

Since most people think of imagination as made up or fake, we’ve designed our own word: dreamscaping. We teach our participants to close their eyes and imagine a safe landscape (or dreamscape) where they can be with Jesus. We then invite the Holy Spirit to join the imagination and interact with us, which we call dreamscaping. We have consistently found all three kinds of spirits can interact in a dreamscape: the participant’s spirit, the Holy Spirit, and demonic spirits. The Holy Spirit uses this space to help us discern what’s going on. Of all of our stories, we understand that many find this practice hard to believe, so we’ve dedicated an entire page to explaining it in depth.

Learn more about dreamscaping →

participant

The participant is the person we remove the demon from. Many feel very scared or even dirty when they wonder if they have a demon. The word host is too demeaning, and the word client is too legal. We call them participants to elevate them. They are a part of the answer to getting the demons out, and they participate throughout the entire session.

Sponsor

While it’s not always the case, many of our exorcism sessions have a sponsor. The sponsor is a third person who helps with the session. They bring another mind and spiritual gifting to the table and their added experiences and stories create more opportunities for the participant to hear examples of healing. The sponsor also becomes another person for the participant to rely on throughout the week while spiritual warfare continues outside our sessions. They are typically the participant’s gender and are usually a trusted acquaintance. The sponsor adds to the session where they see fit and is naturally discipled in the work of exorcism as they attend and help with these sessions.

Session

Most of our exorcisms revolve around weekly or monthly sessions that can last for one to three hours. Like counseling or therapy, these sessions may repeat for weeks, months, or years. Because we don’t typically remove demons until the Holy Spirit gives us permission, each session is used to see what themes, memories, and demons the Spirit wants to address.

Manifestation

When we use the word manifestation, we’re referring to the times in which a demon reveals itself in some kind of physical way. The most common form of manifestation for most people is when a demon takes over the participant’s body or voice, but they can cause a myriad of other physical issues as well without fully taking over.