More powerful than any Mind-Control ray...

At first reading the account of the “strange and dreadful occurrences,” I was not quite surprised. Such an account leaves little doubt about the situations of the writer and readers. It is an automatic for them that such strange occurrences would be the result of a demonic possession. There is also the statement that such things are relatively common, and that only the power of their benevolent supernatural can keep it from happening to them.

Sounds like a pretty powerful form of mind control to me.

Today, we label things “illnesses” and “dysfunctions,” because we have been able to trace specific maladies to specific problems with the body. We know that if such things occur, then it is probably the result of one or more imbalances within the body. Hallucinations, convulsions and irrational behavior can be linked to specific biological problems. This “natural understanding” allows us to fix the problems as they occur, and even to prevent the problems from occurring in the first place.

But the body of science that is available to us now was not available when this article was written. Instead of a “natural understanding,” they must use a “supernatural understanding,” with cues and a frame of reference provided to them by an outside source. In this case, the outside source provides a demonic interpretation of mental illness and hallucination. But that is not all. Recall the line



“Remember the late storm of hailstones in which many things were slain and beaten to the ground, which Hailstones were equal in greatness to a Goose Egg, of eight inches about”



This storm is described not in terms of naturally occurring weather phenomenon, but in terms of the “wrath of God.” We still use those words, but today they have somewhat less literal meaning. But in this case, the storm is the actual anger of the supernatural being, a judgment come down from the supreme deity as a result of negative human actions.

In a similar way, negative human behavior is not a result of chemical imbalances, but as a result of hostile spirits. Since only the benevolent supernatural (and the belief in said and conformity to the code of conduct imposed by the institution advocating said) can protect the individual from those negative spirits, there is a significant benefit to believing.



The metaphor of demonic possession creates several logical results. The first is that there must be spirits and supernatural entities, some of them friendly and some hostile. The second is that those hostile spirits can enter the human body and take control, or affect reality in some way. Yet another result is that those entities can not only affect reality, but can affect each other.

But those beliefs are only a part of a structure which affects how people act and think. If belief in a particular supernatural being can prevent possession, then what happens when one is possessed? The actions and strange behavior are not the result of an illness, or disability, but rather the result of personal sin. Thus, such actions are a reflection on the moral state of the individual, rather than any curable medical condition. Such an individual would be ostracized, or shunned as a result. Exorcism, rather than treatment, was the primary means of getting someone back to normal.

Today, we call such hallucinations and convulsions a disease. In fact, we have several different names for the conditions, depending on what biological factors cause the actions. That is far different than the model of demonic possession. Our model requires an understanding of disease causality. Their model provides a causality dependant on a particular theology. While our “belief” in science is just that, there is nevertheless a major difference between the theological and the scientific. The idea behind science is that at any point in time, any individual could replicate the experiments. But theology is different. It functions on a level necessary to explain the world around the individual, but it can create unexpected results- especially when it is used as a metaphor to explain things which have personal consequences.

After all, how else could have the woman been possessed, if she did not “fall from God never so little.” That is, after all, the message of this piece: “Be wary, lest yee too fall victim.”

One can find the reasoning behind the metaphors by asking one simple question “what purpose does it serve?” In some cases, it serves to communicate (bats have radar/sonar) In other cases, it serves to affect the ways that people see issues (drug abuse as sickness). In still other times, it can be used as a form of mind control, a powerful method of making people act and think in a certain way. It is this third way that is present in the article. The metaphor is controlling. It serves to define not only the actions, but the very beliefs of the people using the metaphor. Think about that the next time you use or see any metaphor- that the metaphor itself is mind control. (and what did I just use? Hmmm?)