James Vivian puts on scrubs as if he's preparing for surgery. He wraps a silver cross on a chain around his wrist. Next to the leather recliner, he sets a plastic bucket lined with a fresh trash bag, in case his visitor vomits.
The sun is setting on a mid-March day, and the man Vivian is expecting is almost 20 minutes late. Vivian wonders whether he's coming at all.
"A lot of people don't want to know what they have inside them," Vivian says.
But the man does come. We'll call him Max because he doesn't know that the witness on the living room sofa is a reporter. Max appears to be in his late 30s, and he's tall and well-built, dressed in a polo shirt and slacks. He's been depressed lately, prone to panic attacks, and he's been having trouble sleeping. He told some friends about his troubles, and they gave him Vivian's phone number.
Vivian welcomes Max and directs him to the recliner. Vivian puts a folding chair before him and sits down.
"Now, the first thing we have to do is have you fill out this history," he says, handing Max a few stapled papers. "This is just to let me know what I might be dealing with."
Normally, Vivian, who is 6 feet tall and weighs more than 300 pounds, has a second man to help him in case anything goes wrong. But tonight's job was on short notice.
The first sheet of questions might come from a job application, except for a few odd questions — What was your relationship with your parents? Do you have any special training I should be aware of? The second sheet has more than 50 boxes to check — a list of possible sins a subject may have committed. There's a box for cocaine and a box for homosexuality, one for yoga and one for incest and one for depression. The subject can specify whether this behavior was in the past or is ongoing.
The answers will presumably show Vivian where the doorway is — the unconscious invitation that allows a demon to enter.
Vivian excuses himself to prepare. "Just be honest about everything so I don't have any surprises," he tells Max. "It's completely confidential. No one's ever going to see it but me. And don't worry about being judged, because everybody's got something in their life."
Max flips through the sheets. He looks up at a painting of Jesus on the cross, mounted on a small shelf between a copy of the Torah and a bottle of frankincense oil. "My friends told me some great things about him," Max says of Vivian. "I know there's a lot of people that have come to him. I guess everybody's looking for answers."
Max is still going over the questions when Vivian returns. Vivian goes to the front window and looks outside. He lives in a three-bedroom home on Olive Street across from a playground. Sometimes he thinks the playground is used for drug deals, and he doesn't trust the neighborhood. Bars cover his ground-level windows. The streets are empty, but he closes the blinds anyway.
Vivian claims to have performed more than 500 exorcisms.
People find him through referrals, as Max did, or through Bob Larson’s Spiritual Freedom Church", which is based in Denver.
Larson claims to have done more than 6,000 exorcisms — so many that on March 19, the U.K. channel Virgin1 started broadcasting a reality show about him. On The Real Exorcist, Larson stalks demons across Great Britain. Shortly before his show first aired, he was quoted in European papers suggesting an exorcism could help singer Amy Winehouse conquer her drug addiction.
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You have shown the procedure for ridding a host of undue influences that had been performed by various religious groups and some lay practitioners for possibly a than 1000 years or more. How about the other side of the coin, the clinical procedure.
For many years various techniques have appeared in therapeutic or clinical procedures with the purpose of eliminating undue influence in the medically and psychiatrically impaired individuals. These therapies are not by any means in the main stay of medical practice, but in fringes of therapy.
In the early 1900�s Dr. Titus Bull wrote of his discouragement with �modern� medicine and of the many patients who were not responding or were left unhealed by the traditional medical mode. Dr. Bull started writing about a procedure that was born from that frustration. What he and others involved in the work have found are entities who have found themselves in an existence that involves a human still occupying a psychical body. Simply put, many of the inflicted were occupied by a ghost.
In the case of exorcism what ever may be found or believed to exist to torment the victim must be demonic in nature and must be purged. Therapist have found that not all entities are demonic in nature, many have once occupied a psychical body of there own. The concept of purging the entity has changed to more of a rescue. Interesting enough, in the several hundred times I have conducted or observed the therapy the subject has never needed to restrained.
Just wanted to add some info to the subject.
Thanks
You have shown the procedure for ridding a host of undue influences that had been performed by various religious groups and some lay practitioners for possibly a than 1000 years or more. How about the other side of the coin, the clinical procedure. For many years various techniques have appeared in therapeutic or clinical procedures with the purpose of eliminating undue influence in the medically and psychiatrically impaired individuals. These therapies are not by any means in the main stay of medical practice, but in fringes of therapy. In the early 1900’s Dr. Titus Bull wrote of his discouragement with “modern” medicine and of the many patients who were not responding or were left unhealed by the traditional medical mode. Dr. Bull started writing about a procedure that was born from that frustration. What he and others involved in the work have found are entities who have found themselves in an existence that involves a human still occupying a psychical body. Simply put, many of the inflicted were occupied by a ghost. In the case of exorcism what ever may be found or believed to exist to torment the victim must be demonic in nature and must be purged. Therapist have found that not all entities are demonic in nature, many have once occupied a psychical body of there own. The concept of purging the entity has changed to more of a rescue. Interesting enough, in the several hundred times I have conducted or observed the therapy the subject has never needed to restrained. Just wanted to add some info to the subject. Thanks
I wonder if they are hiring for a witch pricker? I'm really good. I used to be a warlock but the economy is so slow with gas prices and lack of demonization due to the preaching of righteous chritianites like pasta Phelps. What if the person does not have a demon inside their head but are just bipolar? Does that make the exorcist demonic?
I wonder if they are hiring for a witch pricker? I'm really good. I used to be a warlock but the economy is so slow with gas prices and lack of demonization due to the preaching of righteous chritianites like pasta Phelps. What if the person does not have a demon inside their head but are just bipolar? Does that make the exorcist demonic?
Very, very well written article. It is rare today to see a subject such as this broached by a writer without the reader being able to visualize the writer rolling his or her eyes behind each paragraph.
But in this case the writer just presented the facts as they were revealed. The reader can choose to roll his eyes, or catch a flight to Kansas City in hopes of being cured; depending on the reader's point of view.
A refreshing read. Thanks for taking a subject that is easy to make fun of and resisting the temptation! Well done!
Very, very well written article. It is rare today to see a subject such as this broached by a writer without the reader being able to visualize the writer rolling his or her eyes behind each paragraph. But in this case the writer just presented the facts as they were revealed. The reader can choose to roll his eyes, or catch a flight to Kansas City in hopes of being cured; depending on the reader's point of view. A refreshing read. Thanks for taking a subject that is easy to make fun of and resisting the temptation! Well done!
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