What is a demon?

Vivificat - From Contemplation to Action ^ | 11 January 2012 | TDJ

[Teófilo]

Author: Fr. José Antonio Fortea | Source: Summa Daemoniaca: Tratado de Demonología y Manual de Exorcistas (Spanish Edition)

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus’ Name.

For awhile now I’ve been meaning to share with you a translation of Question #1 of Fr. José Antonio Fortea’s work, Summa Demoniaca. Fr. Fortea’s work is a huge undertaking, a treatise on demonology and exorcism. In it he goes much more in depth into this issue that many other writers I know. I want to share this question with you because I wish to use it as a “jumping board” to other issues I want to discuss with you, such as the nature of evil, war, homicide, sexual abuse, and the like. Yep, I know, “heavy issues” that I can only speak about only if I build first an authoritative foundation and Fr. Fortea’s work - and as you will see later, one by Venerable Fr. John Hardon, S.J. - will provide such a foundation. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit assist us in this endeavor and strengthens us in order to provide answers to a world thirsty for the Truth. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

[Translation note: Fr. Fortea recurs frequently to ellipses, expressions in which the subject of the sentence is not explicitly stated, but it is known and implied in the sentence. This works well in Spanish but in English it adds ambiguity and fog that may lead the reader to misunderstand. I’ve added those subjects in brackets to aid the translation. I’ve also added some questions for meditation and reflection at the end].

What is a Demon?

A demon is a being of a spiritual nature condemned for eternity. He doesn’t have a body, nor does he possess matter of any subtle kind in his being, nor anything like matter at all. His existence is singularly spiritual. Spíritus in Latin means breath. Since they lack a body, demons do not feel the slightest inclination toward any sin committed with a body. Therefore, gluttony and lust are impossible in them. They can tempt men to sin in those matters but demons only understand those sins in a merely intellectual way, since they lack bodily senses. The sins of demons are, therefore, exclusively spiritual.

Demons were not created evil. They were offered a test at the time of their creation, the test they had to undergo prior to acquiring the vision of the Divine Essence. Before this test, they saw God but they didn’t see His Essence. Even the very verb “to see” is an approximation, for the angels’ vision is an intellectual vision.

Since many will find difficult to understand how angels could see or know God without seeing or knowing His Essence, [it could be said in the way of] a comparison that they saw God as a kind of light and heard Him as majestic, holy voice but his Countenance remained hidden from them. All things considered, although they could not penetrate His Essence, they knew that He was Holy, the Holy among Holies.

Before acquiring the beatific vision of His Divine Essence, God tested them. While undergoing the test, some obeyed and some disobeyed. Those whose disobedience became irreversible became demons. They themselves became what they are. No one made them that way.

There were phases in the angelic psychology before they turned into demons. These phases didn’t take place in our material time, but in the aeon. (What’s this aeon will be explained later in this work).

Since they took place in the aeon, these phases would seem to us human beings as having occurred almost instantaneously. However, what to us would seem so brief, to them it was a long time indeed. The transformation phases from angel to demon were as follows: First, they doubted; a doubt that disobeying the Divine Law was better than not. At the moment in which they voluntarily accepted the possibility that disobeying God was an option to consider, they sinned. In the beginning, accepting this doubt constituted a venial sin which little after little evolved toward grave sin. Yet in the beginning, none of them during this first phase were willing to move away from God, not even the devil. That happened later, when what they had chosen with their will began to settle into their intellects, despite the judgment of their own, very same intellects reminding them that such disobedience went against reason. But their wills kept moving away from God and as a consequence, their intellects began accepting as true the evil thing their wills had chosen. Their intellects continued to consolidate their error. The will to disobey continued to consolidate, becoming deeper in its determination; their intellects continued to seek more and more reasons to increasingly justify their stance. This process led them in the end into mortal sin which took place at a concrete moment, [in time, in the aeon] through an act of their will. In other words, each angel reached a moment in which he not only wanted to disobey, but also chose to have an existence outside the Divine Law. It was no longer that their love for God had grown cold, that theirs was not a minor disobedience to something predetermined that was hard for them to grasp, but that in their wills appeared the idea of a destiny apart from the Trinity, an autonomous destiny.

Those who persevered in this thought and decision commenced a process of justification of their decision. They began a process in which they tried to convince themselves that God wasn’t God; that God was but just another spirit. He might have been their Creator, but thought that He had flaws, errors. They started to caress the possibility already present in their intellects: the possibility of an existence apart from God and from his norms. This existence apart from God appeared to them as a freer existence. God’s norms, the obedience owed to Him and to His will, appeared progressively to them as something oppressing, too heavy [a burden]. They began seeing God as a tyrant to be faced-down in a quest to free themselves from Him. In this new phase of estrangement it’s not that they simply sought a destiny apart from God, but that God himself appeared to them as an obstacle in the path to that freedom. They thought that the beauty and felicity of the angelic world could have been greater and freer without an oppressor. Why is there a Spirit above all other spirits? Why is it that His will must be imposed over all others’? We are not children, we are not slaves, they must have thought. God was no longer an element that has been left behind, but was someone who had begun to turn into something evil to them. Thus, they began to hate Him. God’s calls to these angels to return to him were seen in turn as unacceptable intrusions. In this phase, their hatred toward God grew in some more than others.

It may be surprising than an angel may come to hate God. It needs to be understood that to them, God was no longer the Good, but the Obstacle, the Oppressor, the Chain of the Commandments. This hatred was born from the energies of the angelic wills who resisted the calls from God who sought after them as a father. To tell it in terms intelligible to us, their hatred was born as a logical reaction of a will who must cling to its decision of abandoning the father’s house. It’s like saying that someone who wishes to leave his father’s house, does so in the beginning simply because he wants to leave, but then the father calls after him repeatedly and the child ends up saying leave me alone. God called after them because He knew that the longer their wills were estranged from Him, the more they would cling to their estrangement.

Of course, many of the angels who had become estranged at first returned. This is the great struggle in the heavens spoken of in Revelation 12: 7-9:

Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it.

How is it that angels can fight among themselves? Since they lack a material body, what kind of weapons can be used? An angel is a spirit, therefore the only combat they can engage in is of an intellectual kind. Their war was an intellectual war. The only weapons they could wield were intellectual arguments. God sent grace to each angel to return him to fidelity, or to keep him in it. The [good] angels gave arguments to the rebel ones to compel them to return to obedience. The rebel angels retorted with their reasons to justify their posture and to introduce rebellion among the faithful ones. In this angelic conversation involving thousands of millions of angels there were casualties on each side: there were rebel angels that returned to obedience and there were faithful angels that were convinced or seduced by the evil reasoning [expounded by the rebels].

Their transformation into demons was progressive. With the passage of time - since the aeon is a kind of time - some hated God more, some less. Some became more prideful, others not as much. Each rebel angel began deforming more and more, each one in a set of specific sins. In the same way, but in reverse, the faithful angels became progressively holier. Some angels became holier in one virtue and others holier in another. Each angel focused on one or another aspect of the Divinity. Each angel loved with a measure of love. That’s why within the ranks of the faithful angels there started to be many distinctions, according to the virtues that each angel practiced the most.

Each angel had its own nature given by God, but each angel sanctified himself in a measure proper to the grace God granted to him in a manner corresponding to the angel’s will. Again, this is true for the demons too, but in reverse. Each demon received his nature from God, but each one deformed himself according to his own estranged ways.

That’s why the battle stopped when each one ended up pigeon-holed in his own posture irreversibly. The moment came when only accidental changes registered in each spiritual being. For the demons, the moment came in which each one kept himself firm in his imprudence, jealousy, hatred, envy, pride, egolatry, etc.

The war came to an end. They could have continued arguing, talking, disputing, exhorting each other for thousands of years in human terms, but only accidental changes would have taken place. It was at that moment when the angels were admitted to the Divine Presence while demons were allowed to their estrangement, to their state of moral prostration that each one had elected for himself.

As one can see, it’s not that demons are sent to an enclosed place of fire and torture, instead, they are left as they are, abandoned to their freedom, to their will. They are not taken anywhere since there is no place to take them. [Since they lack material bodies] they occupy no space, therefore there is no place to which to take them. There are neither tools of torture, nor flames that could torment them, nor chains that can tie them. Nor did the faithful angels entered any place. They simply received the grace of the beatific vision. The heaven of the angels, and the demons’ hell, are states. Each angel carries his own heaven within himself no matter where he is. Each demon, wherever he is, carries within his spirit his own hell.

The point of no return is the moment in which an angel sees God’s essence.That’s because after seeing God nothing will change the angel’s mind; after seeing God, the angel will not choose to do anything that would minimally offend Him. The angel’s intellect understood that offending Him would be tantamount to choosing dung over a treasure. [For the angel], sin became impossible after this moment. Before entering heaven the angel understood who God was; he understood what God’s holiness supposed, his omnipotence, wisdom, love...After the angel was admitted to contemplate His Essence, he didn’t only understand it, but he then saw it. That is, the angel sees His holiness, love, wisdom, etc. Once the [angelic] spirit sees [God’s essence] he is filled with such love, such veneration, that he would never, under any condition, would want to separate himself from It. Hence, sin becomes impossible [for the angel].

The demon remains irremediably tied to his choice from the moment God decides not to insist any more. The moment in which God stops sending graces of repentance is that moment, since every grace of repentance can only be overcome by the demon’s reaffirmation of his hatred. There comes a point in which God sees that sending more graces the demon’s way serves only to reinforce the demon in his choice. There comes a point in which the God who is Love turns His back and allows his son to continue on his way, allowing the demon to pursue his life apart [from Him].

From one vantage point we could say that there isn’t a unique moment in which the angel transforms himself into a demon, since we’re dealing with a slow, gradual, evolutionary process. But from another vantage point we could say that there was a precise moment in which the angelic spirit had to choose between rejecting or not his Creator, no matter how long the previous (and succeeding) process had been.

It has been stated before that within this process it is possible to turn back, that’s the war in heaven spoken about in Rev. 12: 7-9. But there’s a point in the war in which the demons drew further and further away. There was no sense to keep insisting. The Creator respected the freedom of each.

The devil is depicted in pictures and sculptures as deformed and that’s an appropriate representation, since he is a deformed angelic spirit. He’s still an angel, it’s only his intellect and will which is deformed and nothing else. In everything else he’s still as angel as he was after being created. In definitive terms, the devil is an angel that has chosen his destiny far from God. He is an angel who wants to live free, without anything holding him down. The interior loneliness in which he will find himself world without end, the jealousy he feels when he understands that the faithful ones enjoy the vision of an Infinite Being, moves him to blame himself for his sin time and time again. He hates himself, he hates God, and he hates those who provided him with reasons to estrange himself from God.

Yet, not all demons suffer in the same way. During the war, some angels became more deformed than others. Those who deformed more, suffer more; those who deformed less, suffer less. Again, we must remember that their deformity lies in their intellect and will.

Their intelligence is deformed, darkened, for the proper reasons with which a given angel justified his departure, his liberation. The will imposed to the intellect its decision and the intellect saw itself impelled to justify that decision. The [angelic] intellect functioned as a justification mechanism, to argue what his will impelled him to accept. As we can see, this process has an extraordinary similarity to the process of debasement seen in human beings. We should not forget that we human beings are enfleshed spirits. If we set aside for a moment the sins proper to the body, the internal psychological process that leads a person to join the mafia, or become a guard in a concentration camp, or a terrorist, is substantially the same process [as with the angels who became demons].

That’s because a man’s sins are sins of his spirit, even when he commits them with his body.

A child has a childhood and so does the angel as soon as he was created, because he lacked experience. Human persons receive temptations from other people, so did the angels from their kind. Men can be led to sin by means of [purely] mental constructs such as the motherland, a family’s honor, and the well-being of a child. An angelic spirit also holds before him great intellectual constructs that, although different from those held by humans, supposes a complex correlation between the angelic world and the human world known to us.

We human beings are also spiritual beings although we are endowed with bodies, and we only have to look deep within us to understand how one can fall into sin, how one can debase oneself. When we do so, it is then when the sin of the angels become easier to understand, when it is not as remote from us as we may think.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

1. Fr. Fortea stated that there was a point in time in the process of estrangement when God stops granting graces of repentance. Fr. Fortea also stated that there is a “complex correlation” and similarities between the angelic world, and ours. Think about this: do we face a moment ourselves in which God stops granting graces of repentance and leaves us to our choices? What would that moment be?

2. Suppose that a human being dies having committed many venial sins, including intrinsically evil deeds which they committed without having full knowledge of the intrinsic evil of the deed, or which they were forced to commit, or were unable to fully and willingly acquiesce. They don’t deserve hell but they cannot enter the Beatific Vision immediately due to their ignorance and impurity, although they are redeemed by Christ. What would be the state of those souls after their particular judgment? Can they receive grace? If not, who can receive them for them? What would be their final outcome?

3. Remember this: demons are finite, angelic beings who debased and estranged themselves from God. They were created good and in time - a time called the aeon. They are not all-powerful nor can they act outside of God’s permission. They are fixated forever in their hatred of God - and as we shall see, humankind - and therefore abandoned to their ultimate choice forever. They carry hell within them. They have no power over those who are in God’s grace and if they do, it is because God allows it to harness some ultimate good.

In my next post, I will attempt to describe what’s this aeon time, quoting freely from Fr. Fortea’s explanation and comparing it to some philosophical notions of time that I’ve been reading of late in a special edition of Scientific American. I hope - truly truly hope that the discussion would be enlightening.

[surroundedbyblue]

“Sheesh, it’s a wonder some of you put your pants on in the morning without a Bible in your other hand.”

Lol!!! Wonder if they believe in the Holy Trinity since that’s not explicitly spelled out in scripture???

[Claud]

After I posted that, I regretted being so sarcastic. Should have made the same point without being so ornery. My apologies.

[tired&retired]

I’ve done more than my share of exorcisms in the past 20 years. He is correct in general, but incorrect on a lot of the details.

Most earthbound spirits are not demons, but are recruited by demons. I’ve found them embedded or layered, as high as nine deep. They are usually just earthbound spirits that are locked in at a low frequency of consciousness and as a result, fear the light. These entities believe that the the light will kill them. Thus, as long as you radiate love and light, they can’t even come close to you.

There are also demons who never had a physical body.
They can be real nasty and at the higher levels are not afraid of the light. They have often tried to kill me. I have a tape recording of one that moved into a woman and it was all we could do to hold her in the recliner it was thrashing and screaming so much.

Usually, these things come flying at me and all of a sudden it is as though they hit a brick wall when they hit the field. They’ll spit, try to claw, hiss, moan, growl.... all by taking over a person’s physical body.

The demon’s that Jesus spoke of and referred to as the weeds in the parable of the tares in the wheat are also here right now. They are super high intellect, but have no emotion or compassion. I’ve only encountered four of them to date. When I meet a person carrying one of these, it’s like their are two souls in the same body, one emotional, one high intellect, and there is no connection between the two.

These intellectual demons know that they cannot make it through the coming earth changes and thus are attaching to not have the high frequency of consciousness that is approaching us, (heaven on earth)burn them up. It’s not going to work, but is the reason that we are heading into the world wide turmoil right now.

One of the most common attachments are the simple little misguided souls of aborted fetuses. I see them on women all the time and know what they are. When I remove them and send them to the light, the mother is set free.

There is a hierarchy of dark angels, just as their is a hierarchy of angels of the light. Years ago, I would work my way up the command structure to a high level commander and them redeem them. After they were redeemed, I would have them call out to all of their underlings and we would remove them. One night while doing this, the room became freezing cold and the top dark angel was there. You could feel him sucking your energy. I turned to Mi-Ki-El and said, ‘There he is, you can get him.” Mi-Ki=El replied, “It’s not time yet.” That’s when I realized that God is in full control at all times and things are unfolding according to His plan on His timeline. We are in interesting times. It’s the springtime of soul growth.
We are in the times that Peter referred to in Acts 2 when he quoted the prophet Joel.

[shibumi]

"There are two of them occupying the White Hut right now."

You might be serious, or you might be making a glib joke. Whichever was your intent, my only argument would be with the number "two."

Mark 5:9 -

"And Jesus asked him "What is thy name?" And he answered saying "My name is Legion, for we are many."

As a side note this incident, mentioned in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, supports the belief that demons have identifiable personalities and names. They are not just amorphic evil forces.

[tired&retired]

One more comment. It is extremely difficult to know the timeline as there is so much distortion of time from the level of consciousness that one must be in to see the future and what is necessary to function here on earth. I had many visions in the early 1990’s where I thought what is happening now was going to happen almost immediately after I had the visions. People can’t even comprehend how bad it is going to get before it gets better. But remember, everything is happening exactly according to the Divine Plan.

[tired&retired]

” invisible being”

Demons are only invisible at low levels of consciousness. As you raise up, they become physical tangible beings. This is why the master stated that the weeds were planted “while we were asleep” in Matthew 13.

[tired&retired]

” It’s only when people pass off these speculations that go beyond what is clearly revealed in scripture that I get troubled.”

Very, very wise statement.

[tired&retired]

” the most important deception is to convince humans that the devils don’t exist.”

So true, so true.

They try to hide as that way they can influence us without us knowing it. When we become aware of them, it ruins their plans, and they get angry. But you must be careful as there are excellent imitators. Discernment is sometimes very difficult.

[tired&retired]

“There is almost nothing in this treatise that can be supported from the Biblical text.
The Bible simply provides little information on this topic, the author is making it all up, speculating with his own vain imagination.”

Not true.. Much of it is supported. However, many of the details are incorrect. This is what happens when one learns to do the work from someone else rather than the
Spirit flowing within.

[Theoria]

Angels can take physical form
Genesis 19-Eat food, sleep.
Hebrews 13-Could be Angels, but not known to the individual

Angels can slay vast amounts of humans
2 Chronicles 32

Angels have ranks
Daniel 10

[call meVeronica]

Interesting but huge...bump for later

[tired&retired]

“Lol!!! Wonder if they believe in the Holy Trinity since that’s not explicitly spelled out in scripture???”

It’s not in reality either. It’s like saying that the blood and hands are separate from the body. God is omnipresent. How can there be separation?

[dartuser]

Much of it is supported. However, many of the details are incorrect.

Ah ... so YOU have the correct information? ...

Please ... do share.

[Future Snake Eater]

Primarily the latter, though we have no idea what “pure spirit” means either. From anecdotal evidence (possibly given by complete liars, granted), what’re referred to as the “spirit world” is even more real and solid than our world. The Bible doesn’t really say either way.

[tired&retired]

“Ah ... so YOU have the correct information? ...

Please ... do share.”

Allow me to say that the Bible is very accurate, especially the New Testament.

[Future Snake Eater]

Inference from what? If this guy “inferred” that Christ was a 4’2” black woman who could play the spoons, would you listen to him? He’s going in detail on a subject that’s very vague in the Bible. As I replied to another person, there has been anecdotal relation (not a strong source either, since they could be crazy and/or liars) that the “spirit world” is even more real than ours. Other FReepers who’ve claimed to have seen it have said the same thing.

I highly doubt that the End Days as described in the Bible (there I go, looking at that archaic book again) are going down due to angels thinking real hard at us.

[dartuser]

Allow me to say that the Bible is very accurate

I would say innerant.

especially the New Testament.

I perceive this is your attempt to say that you also are an exorcist ... and that you have the truth about the demonic realm?

[tired&retired]

“Primarily the latter, though we have no idea what “pure spirit” means either. From anecdotal evidence (possibly given by complete liars, granted), what’re referred to as the “spirit world” is even more real and solid than our world. The Bible doesn’t really say either way.”

Pure spirit is one that is clean like that of a child. The human physical body is a manifestation of the spirit or soul around it. Humans have spirit or soul fields just like the dark spirits and angels, it’s just that most people are not aware of anything beyond their physical bodies until they go within. That’s when they wake up. When you are awake, you not only become aware of your own soul field, but the field of others as well. This is how Jesus knew the thoughts of all the people around him.

This is also why the life review appears as a judgement after we die. As the conscious awareness lets go of the physical body, it expands outward through the soul field where all lifetime memories are stored. The soul field spins and thus acts as a centrifuge, causing the earliest memories to be stored on the outer perimeter of the soul, about 15 feet from the physical body. For some reason unknown to me, I have been able to read these fields in total strangers ever since I went through a near death experience with meningitis.

[tired&retired]

Not an exorcist by my choice. It just happens. It is not my identity. I am just a simple soul trying to find answers to many, many paranormal experiences I have had since my near death experience. I’m a scientist. I became one in order to research the logical scientific basis for my own experiences. I can demonstrate and explain the neuroscience on what I am saying in front of groups and have done so many times. I do this not to show what I can do, as that is irrelevant.
I teach to help people understand the Bible and why Jesus taught what He did.

[thesaleboat]

The author is in no way being vain.