Possession, Safety, Law, Mental Illness and Mass Murder: More on the Spirituality of Spree Killing

Kudos are in order to Elizabeth Vongvisith and Del Tashlin for writing excellent blog entries which inspired me to finish this one.  Before parenthood intervened, I wanted to respond to a (now weeks-old) Wild Hunt post on James Holmes and the "demonic possession" narrative wherein Jason Pitzl-Waters stated:

The truth has always been that humanity needs no external spiritual help to do gross and inhumane things to one another, for reasons that can seem as opaque as this current case. We should collective reject any attempt to place a demonic possession narrative, especially a Catholic possession narrative, on these killings and instead focus on practical prevention and using our faith(s) to comfort those affected. Anything else is cynical, self-serving, and unneeded.

Jason rightly castigates the Catholic exorcist for his facile treatment of the issue.  Explaining away atrocity with a pat "the devil made him do it" is intellectually and spiritually unsatisfying: using atrocity to poke jabs at Harry Potter and Tarot cards is just gauche.  But I wonder if we might use possession not as a conversation-stopper but as a topic for further discussion and exploration.

I should note that I am not making any kind of pronouncements on James Holmes' mental or spiritual state.  As my wife Kathy Latzoni (Mambo Zetwal Kleye) pointed out, diagnosing possession on the internet is like trying to diagnose schizophrenia based on a few newspaper articles.   I have not been hired as a spiritual counselor by the prosecution or the defense and I have no way of knowing what spiritual forces, if any, drove Holmes to his terrible act.

But as one of the two people who wrote the book (OK, a book) on possession,  and as a hard polytheist who believes that the spirit world is a diverse and densely populated place, I cannot dismiss the possibility of violent possession out of hand. There is certainly precedent in folkloric and scholarly sources. The Malay "running amok" comes to mind immediately: two mediums and a spirit named Lakwena have instigated decades of bloody, brutal and ongoing civil war in Uganda. If we are open to the idea that spirits can give us good and useful advice we should also consider the possibility that they can lead us into madness, perversity and even murder.

Possession would not exonerate Holmes from the consequences of his actions. Alcoholics have a harder time saying "no" to a drink than someone with ethanol-tolerant genetics. But their disease does not provide a Get Out of Jail Free card when they get into drunken fights or get pulled over for driving under the influence. As Del (who, like yrs. truly, has first-hand experience both with possession and mental illness) says on his blog:

In fact, I take is as a moral imperative that I never excuse behavior that my body does, or words that my mouth utters, by passing the blame onto the Deity in question, even if that’s really what happened. I feel strongly that I am the gatekeeper here – I gave the Deity in question permission to use my body, I am the one who negotiated limits and boundaries, and if the Deity does something hurtful, or even worse, illegal, while wearing my skin, it’s ultimately me who has to pay the piper. I mean, would you actually consider telling a police officer, “Sorry I was running naked with a knife dripping in blood, but it wasn’t me, Sir. It was Kali Ma, who had possessed my body”? I didn’t think so.

The vast majority of possession experiences require planning and an ongoing relationship with the spirit who hopes to ride the horse. Even most cases of "involuntary" possession begin with someone opening a door -- using a Ouija board,  moving into a haunted house, etc. -- and then engaging with what they find on the other side. The spirits may use lies, promises and even threats to gain further access to the individual, but the individual must grant them that access.  (There are occasional truly involuntary possessions, but they tend to occur as mass movements.  The Klikushestvo  or "Shriekers" of imperial Russia and the Tarantella Pizzica of southern Italy are examples of this sort of mass hysteria.  Even here an academic might point out how these arose out of intense social pressures and fractures: a spirit-worker might note that people who are worn down by outside events are just as vulnerable to spirit infestation as to bacterial contagion).

African traditional religions take pains to purify the area before a ceremony and spend a great deal of time and energy on cleansing spaces and people. This is because they recognize the spirit world has some dark and dangerous corners. They understand that there are entities out there which do not have our best interests at heart: they work not for the highest and greatest good but for their own ends.  Not infrequently those ends involve wreaking havoc in the lives of those on this side of the veil.  And just as human sex predators and con artists prey on the vulnerable, these predators are wont to prey on those whose psyches are already fractured.

There's a tendency among many to frame mental illness and spirit possession as either/or.  In practice the lines are rarely so clear-cut.  One well-known Shamanic death/rebirth experience involves treading on the Madness Road -- an intense ego-disintegration and psychic meltdown which resembles garden-variety schizophrenia.  Those who have come back from this path (like yrs. truly) generally come away from the experience with some scars: almost 20 years after my meltdown I still have to keep constant guard lest The Crazy slip in again.  Certain psychological disorders can cause a heightened sensitivity to the spirit world, although they also produce difficulties in distinguishing between signal and noise.  And just as there are mental illnesses which can mimic possession, one can easily write off someone who is spirit-infested as "mentally ill" -- especially when you don't believe in a spirit realm and think that all religious expressions are psychopathologies.

In the Aurora case, we have evidence that Holmes plotted this attack for months. This is not the act of an automaton spontaneously possessed by a devil. If there was spiritual involvement in this, it was a collaborative effort.  Holmes was either the driving force or, at best. a willing participant seduced by something which took advantage of a disaffected, angry loner.  He may very well have planned the entire atrocity on his own. As Jason pointed out, humans are capable of doing all kinds of shitty things to each other without anybody egging them on.  Even if there were spiritual entities involved the evidence at present suggests he was a willing participant in their conspiracy, not a helpless pawn driven to slaughter against his will.

Were we to consider possession or spiritual infestation in a courtroom setting, it's likely that we would apply some variant of the M'Naghten Rule. According to Queen v. M'Naghten (1843) an insanity defense applies if and only if

at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from a disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.

By that standard, and given the evidence to date, it appears again that Holmes would be held liable for his actions.  And given that no remotely competent defense lawyer would mount a "possessed by the Joker" defense in this case for any number of reasons, it's most unlikely that this line of reasoning will ever be anything but speculative.

Yet amidst all these speculations I would raise this important point: the spirit world can be a dangerous place.  Murderous entities may be more common than we think. Richard Ramirez and his allegiance to Satan, Kenneth Bianchi's multiple personalities, the "Ugly Spirit" that William S. Burroughs blamed for Joan Volmer's shooting -- there are many thought-provoking examples that might or might not involve the spirit world.  There are many more examples which appear in myths and legends from various cultures and eras.  The idea that the gods are entirely benevolent and the spirit world is a harmless place is of very recent vintage.  For most of human history we have greeted the other realms with caution and trepidation: we assumed that it contained wisdom which could strengthen us but also poisons which could corrupt us.

If we are going to work with advanced techniques like possession, it behooves us to acknowledge this danger. We need to understand the difference between aspecting and full-on trance possession. We also need to realize that when we open ourselves up to shadowing or aspecting we give the entity in question a toehold into our Being, one which a malevolent spirit can use to our detriment.  There are a reason for the various ritual protections we see in trance-possession cultures. When working with those practices, we make alterations and take short cuts at our own peril.  Your new spirit companion might not urge you to shoot up a crowded theater: it's likely smart enough to know that you wouldn't be amenable to such suggestions.  But that doesn't mean that it can't cause all sorts of other difficulties for you and those around you.

Possession and Invocation

While cleaning out my mailbox, I found a 2006 e-mail to Lupa on the distinction between possession and invocation.  (This was written during the period when Raven Kaldera and I were soliciting information for Drawing Down the Spirits). I thought it might prove useful for those interested in the topic: you may also want to read Raven's essay on possession, "The Path of the Horse."

***

In an invocation, the magician calls upon and then draws into hirself the energy of a particular spirit being. This energy can have some pretty powerful psychoactive and spiritual effects. It can result in short-term and even long-term changes in behavior, have positive and negative consequences for your health, be used to effect real-world real-time changes, etc. But the deity doesn't take control of the situation. The user's psyche may be altered by the rush of spirit-energy but it's not kicked to the curb. S/he remains in control of hir body and mind.

Invocation is a necessary precursor to any possession ritual. (I might say it's an integral part of any successful magical operation). Any invocation worthy of the name draws the attention of the spirit world. Many of the techniques used to raise the energy -- meditation, drumming, dancing and prayer -- can also be used to encourage a possession. But in most instances invocation does not culminate in possession but in a general feeling of post-orgasmic bliss and good will. Please note that I'm not minimizing invocation's importance. Most conventional religions work almost exclusively with invocation. By and large invocation is safe, and if done well can have powerful beneficial effects. Invocation can heal disease, improve luck and weave powerful magic. But in and of itself invocation is not trance possession.

Invocation's cousin evocation works in a similar fashion, only in evocation the energy is directed to a particular area and constrained therein. Indeed, when using evocation, the magician takes pains to make sure that the entity's energy does NOT mix with hir own. If possession has a polar opposite, evocation is it. But that doesn't mean we can't learn from it. Like possession, evocation has a reputation of being extremely powerful and exceptionally dangerous. Many of the safeguards used in Goetic evocation can be applied to any possession ritual to ensure things go as smoothly as possible.

A few traditions use what has come to be known as "aspecting" or "shadowing." They become a vessel for the Divine or the spirit and move with the spirit. The Divine moves through them, but they never completely "step out of the way" and let the Divine take over. There's always an option to stop and regain complete control, whether or not the aspecting/shadowing magician wishes or chooses to use it.

Among most of the Religions of the Book, even attempting this would be a major sin. Stating that you were speaking as Allah, YHVH, Jesus, etc. would be the height of hubris. Consider the revealing of the Q'uran: Muhammed claimed that he was receiving Allah's Word through Jiv'reel or Gabriel and then reciting it, not that Allah was speaking directly through him. (Eliade might describe the Prophet's recitations as so many "spirit journeys," a technique he contrasted favorably with possession). But it appears to have been quite common in many pre-Christian cultures. Many of the public Greek and Egyptian rituals appear to have involved aspecting, for example: while I don't know enough to say with any kind of authority, I suspect the same is also true of many of the Mesoamerican religions as well.

Done right, aspecting may be all you need to speak with Deity and have a completely effective ritual. A good priest/ess who is able to subsume hir ego and who is able to listen to Deity can function as a channel without losing complete control. As Raven & Co. put it, they get to remain in the driver's seat while the Deity gives directions. By treating aspecting as a sacred encounter, not as playacting or rote recitation, a group can incorporate some lighter aspects of possession into their Work with relative safety and with great benefit.

Now we get into one of the great Possession Debates: where does "aspecting" end and "channeling" begin. At what point does it cease to be the Priest/ess speaking for Deity and Deity speaking through Priest/ess? When is it no longer you but the spirit moving the body and speaking the words? This is a hotly-contested issue, and one for which there are no easy answers. I've seen many borderline cases, and I've seen situations which started out as aspecting and became full-on possessions.

(I also would note that full-on possessions generally end pretty definitively, with little or no shading into aspecting or invocation-level energy, at least in my experience. Once the spirit gives up possession S/He usually goes away, with a palpable decrease in energy).

A common rule of thumb among Afro-Caribbean traditions is that a possession is only valid if the horse loses all consciousness. In my personal experience, I've found this misleading but not entirely untrue. When I've been hit by a lwa I've generally felt like I was watching the possession from a distance. I was somewhat aware of what was going on, although there were greater or lesser memory gaps afterward, but I certainly wasn't in control of things. I believe Raven & Co. call this "back seat, watching behind the safety glass" level of possession.

However, a couple of times I have lost consciousness altogether for the duration of the ride. These typically happen with Danto, who's known to be a rather hot and fierce spirit. These full-on "locked in the trunk" possessions are pretty intense but don't typically last more than a few minutes. (Although honestly I wonder if anyone could physically sustain any level of Danto possession for much longer without shorting things out). I will also note that I've found most possessions involve some level of memory loss, typically around messages the lwa gave to someone else. I've also had fugues where I attributed things to other people: thinking "somebody just got Ogou" when I heard myself shrieking, for example.

To add yet another layer of complexity, I've heard people who work with totem or animal spirits describe a variant form of possession. Instead of letting the animal spirit get inside their heads and bodies, they get their heads and bodies inside the spirit. They wear the spirit like a hat; while they give it some control over their bodies, their intelligence and ego remains more or less intact. Based on some cursory research, I suspect this was the case for many of the pre-Christian warriors and shamans who inspired Europe's "werewolf" legends.

Kenaz Filan and Raven Kaldera to appear on "Dawn of Shades"

On August 18, 2009 (Tuesday) Gia Scott will be discussing Drawing Down the Spirits on Dawn of Shades, her paranormal talk radio program.  While Raven Kaldera and I have given a number of presentations at Free Spirit Gathering and other places, this will be the first time we have been interviewed together about our book.

Ms. Scott and I share a number of interests, including animal welfare, New Orleans and gourmet cookery. I'm looking forward to appearing on her show and to chatting with Raven once again. We will be speaking with Gia from 8-10pm Eastern time:  if you miss it, the podcast will be available for download later.

Meet the new Batboy

Nancy Sanz at Inner Traditions just sent a June 2009 article on Drawing Down the Spirits that appeared in American supermarket tabloid The Sun. (These are the same people who put out the late and lamented Weekly World News, home of Batboy, the Alien/President meetings, and all the Nostradamus you can handle). 

The article is actually quite well-written: the reviewer obviously read the book and presented readers with a few of our tips on how to stop a possession, as well as symptoms of involuntary possession. I'm quite pleased to have made my mark on American journalism. I've always had a great fondness for supermarket tabloids, and it's great to see that they're fond of me too. :) 

A Great Bad Review of Drawing Down the Spirits

When indulging my vanity and searching for my name in Google's Blogsearch, I discovered an  excellent (although highly critical) review of Drawing Down the Spirits.  Miadhachain (and several of the people who commented on his review) obviously took the time to read the book and raised several valid points.  I felt it was only fair to address those here. Hopefully I can be as thoughtful and respectful as those who disagree with me.

To begin with , the overall "tone" of the book was a bit confusing to me and was a little ambiguous. In one chapter, the authors would write of possession or some other activity as being incredibly useful or no more dangerous than riding in a car. However, in another passage further along they may say that the same activity should be avoided by almost everyone and could have harmful side effects. In one section of the book the authors may promote activities which could lead to creating problems, yet later talk about how these problems should always be avoided. These contradictions in tone of opinion, not necessarily fact, were a little confusing and I found that I often had a hard time determining the points of various arguments.

Raven and I wrote Drawing Down the Spirits as a collaborative effort. There are areas in which we differ: for example, I am less convinced than he that all horses are born, not made.  (I do believe that some people have more of a knack for horsing than others). When it comes to possession as a spiritual practice, there are no authorities: there are only those who are trying to map out uncharted territory. It's up to our readers to draw their own conclusions based on their own experiences.  You'll do best to treat Drawing Down the Spirits like an AA meeting: take what you need and leave the rest behind.  

One thing we both agreed on is this: possession is an advanced and potentially dangerous technique. It is not something to be performed casually or without proper preparation. I used the analogy of driving a car because careless driving can be fatal. You don't get a pass for good intentions if you turn left in front of an oncoming semi or miss a stop sign. 

It is my personal belief that deity possession, as it is known in the Afro-Diasporic faiths, is essentially not attested to in Indo-European sources (I will focus on Indo-European mythology almost exclusively as I am not familiar with various Middle Eastern, Egyptian, East Asian and other such sources). While I believe that many of the mythologies of various Indo-European cultures may have events that may "look" like deity possession, I have come to believe that these events are really something quite different - more akin to what I would call "ecstatic trance" or "inspired trance". This would be a situation where the vehicle is being inspired by a deity to say or do things, but is not necessarily possessed by the deity

We certainly did engage in a bit of back-formation: it could well be that many of the examples we gave of "possession" might be classified as "ecstatic trance," "shadowing" or something else altogether.  As we stated in the book, there are definitely varying degrees of possession, and it's not always clear where play-acting shades into shadowing shades into aspecting etc. This is certainly a place where reasonable gentlepersons can disagree.

First of all, I do not like using the terms "horse", "riding" and etc to describe the phenomena of possession outside of Afro-Diasporic religions. I am very uncomfortable with this practice as these are words which are very "culturally linked" to specific religions and practices. I think that other words could be coined to describe the phenomena in neo-pagan circles. I like the term "seated" as opposed to "ridden" and "throne" or "chair" as opposed to "horse". They possess similar qualities and could mean the same thing semantically, but do not really "borrow" from Afro-Diasporic traditions

We used "horse" and "horsing" because they were terms that are already recognized in the community. Like many Reconstructionists and Neopagans who are working with possession, our ideas are informed by training (in Raven's case) and initiation (in my case) in an Afro-Caribbean tradition.  I understand the concerns about cultural appropriation and misleading use of words: the God-possessions I've seen differ in several respects from Vodou law-possessions. But there are enough similarities that I/we felt it useful to use that term to describe both rather than create different terminology to create what appeared to us to be different manifestations of the same phenomenon.

2 - I also found myself disagreeing with the attitude in the book that being a "horse" was a calling or vocation of some sort. I simply do not agree with this. The authors of this book, along with many of the individuals interviewed for the book, talked of being a "horse" as if it was some sort of position or calling - basically some people are "horses" and others are not and that people who are horses can "horse" almost any deity at any time - for example at one time they may "horse" Odin for one group and then Baphomet for another and yet Artemis for another. 

Actually, we've found that the spirits can be quite choosy about their horses.  There are a few lwa who will possess me at the drop of a hat (Damballah and Ezili Danto). There are others who will do so if no one more suitable is around (Ogou) and there are still others who wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot poteau-mitan.  I'm sorry if we didn't make that entirely clear in the book: I thought we discussed that at some length but I don't have a copy of the book with me at present since I'm still away from home. 

As far as "calling" goes: so far as I can tell horsing is something like musical talent. Some people are naturals at it and frequently get possessed by various spirits, just like some people are born with perfect pitch and the ability to write symphonies before puberty. Others will get chosen by one or more spirits as a medium/horse/whatever you wish to call it.  And still others will never get possessed no matter how much they wish to do so. 

Overall, I do not think someone could (or should) go out and research a Deity with the intent of becoming possessed by him/her when requested by some group when the "horse" had no previous relationship to that Deity three weeks earlier. I think that this is something that should be allowed to occur naturally and not choreographed. If a Deity wants to come he/she will and he/she will take the person who is most devoted to her - who may not be the person who thinks of him/herself as a "horse" - who is a member of the group (if that group is supposed to be working with this phenomena). In other words, I believe that a deity would most likely choose someone from the group who is honoring him/her rather than some outsider to the group who was metaphorically "hiring themselves out" as a "horse" for the group.

I agree with Miadhachain 1,000% and share hir concerns about the "Horsing for Hire." I have seen rituals where this approach worked swimmingly: I've also seen situations where it caused problems.  However, I've also found that the gods will often choose someone who has a natural knack for horsing over someone who is devoted but lacks that ability.  I can think of a couple of reasons for this. One is that it's easier for them: the second is that forcing a possession can do real damage to someone who lacks horsing aptitude. The gods might not ride the most devoted follower in the room not because they don't love hir but because they do and are concerned for hir well-being.

However, again, I often find when it is sought out (especially without any established protocols as those that exist in the Afro-Diasporic religions) it attracts a lot of lesser entities who are MORE than willing to possess a person and claim to be a deity even if those people believe themselves to be a "professional horse".

Raven and I discussed this at some length: there's a real danger of getting a real possession from a phony spirit. This is why divination, discernment and common sense are so important when you start incorporating possession into your spiritual practices. This is an advanced technique which can do real psychic and physical harm to the careless or irreverent. 

Perhaps my most serious concern was when the authors began to speak of "sexual offerings". Basically, the premise was that some Deities will possess a person and expect or want to have sex with other individuals. This raised a lot of concerns for me. First of all, one can obviously see how this could become abusive - intimidating someone into having sex with another person because that person believes an individual is possessed by a God and is afraid to go against the "will" of the God. Such a held belief could easily be used by some (I am not saying that the authors of the book or those interviewed are guilty if this - as I have never met them nor observed one of their possessions so I make no judgment on them, but speak in the general)unscrupulous individuals who might fake possession in order to engage in sexual activities. Quite frankly, this never seemed to cross anyone's mind when reading the interviews and discussion in the chapter. 

It certainly crossed OUR minds: that's why we tried to offer some pointers on how to distinguish between genuine and phony possessions.  There's a very real danger of some horny fuckwit play-acting trying to score some nookie by pretending to be "possessed" by Odin, Ghede, Zeus or some other notoriously libidinous entity.  On the other hand, there's also a very real danger of said horny fuckwit becoming a "Pagan" so he can watch naked chicks performing skyclad rituals.  Are we going to protect ourselves by sanitizing our religious practices of anything that might attract H.F. and his monkey-spanking minions? Or are we going to acknowledge that adult activities should only be performed by and in the presence of responsible adults? 

Perhaps instead of trying to force "possession" into an Irish or Celtic Construct, it may be more worthwhile to investigate Imbas Forosnai protocols. Similarly for Norse/Heathen cultures - perhaps it would be more useful to explore practices associated with Spae or Seidhr - which seem to be attested to in the historical record - rather than attempting to use techniques of deity/spirit possession and protocols from an Afro-Diasporic religion.

When we're reconstructing pre-Christian religions, we're working with scraps and fragments. We know a little bit about Egyptian funeral rites and how the wealthy people in Athens honored the gods. We have some Norse and Germanic folk tales preserved by devout Christians writing centuries after the worship of the gods came to an end. And we have a few references to the Druids by the enemies who engaged in a campaign of genocide against them.  Any attempt at rebuilding is going to involve a whole lot of substituting, speculating, and making stuff up as we go along.  

The African Diaspora possession traditions are reasonably well-documented: the protocols which they use to avoid some of the bigger pitfalls are sound and effective. If we want to incorporate possession into our spiritual practices - or if the Gods have started incorporating it for us - we could do worse than look to a viable and living tradition for pointers. Religion has never happened in a vacuum: beliefs and practices have always been informed by neighboring tribes and wandering visionaries.  The Gods are not museum pieces to be dusted off and displayed: They are living beings honored by a living congregation with living practices. That implies continuous change and development, based on interaction with the environment and with available resources. We (and They) are working with what we have, based on our present circumstances. 

Again, I would like to thank Miadhachain for his lengthy analysis. Critics are a dime a dozen: critics who take the time to explain their position and offer intelligent commentary are far more rare and valuable.