What is a demon?

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

Just where did he gets his "facts" !
As a Catholic you should know this:
The Revelation granted to the Church in the forms of the Bible and Tradition.
Regarding Tradition, the Tradition handed down by the Fathers of the Church, and,
The liturgical Tradition handed down in the Rite of Exorcism;
The theological understanding of the angelic nature as understood from Scripture and developed by St. Thomas Aquinas.
The author's vast thesis research for his doctorate in theology;
The author's own experiences during exorcisms.
The Bible is not the sole rule of faith and morals for the Church. Revelation is a larger body and the personal experience of the exorcist must not be discounted.

-Theo

I guess that some of these so called biblical scholars have forgotten how the Angels took human form to Have Sex with the women of man?

Fr. Fortea divided his book into questions. I just translated and quoted question #1 out of 183. He treats this question elsewhere in his book.

These Angels were banned from ever returning to Heaven and thus became Demons, cast into the darkness and out of the light of God

Now the shoe is on the other foot: there's nothing in Scripture stating this conclusion explicitly. This is YOUR conclusion. At best, a hypothesis, at most, incomplete.

Angels were also in body when the ‘Men’ of Sodom wanted them over lots daughters

There's no biblical basis for that statement. At best it's wrong; at worse it's ridiculous.

-Theo

“Please, don’t judge Fr. Fortea from only reading his first, and mostly introductory, essay to these questions.”

I was not judging him. My hat is off to anyone who does this type of work. There is no room for division when we are on the same team. My only comment was that some of his details were not quite correct.

The eyes truly are the window to the soul and I thank you for posting his picture with the article. It’s the first thing I looked at. He is a very humble man who has been through the school of hard knocks. Those are prerequisites for doing this type of work or one will self destruct very quickly.

I thank you for posting this article as it is a topic that everyone needs to understand. Ignorance of the subject sets one up to be a target.

“What instrumentation setup did you use to measure this 15 foot radius?”

I have the person close their eyes, I say nothing, I do not physically touch their body in any way, and I stand 15 feet from them and touch their memories with my hand. It often knocks them off their feet. I can tell them what their mother thought of their father while they were in her womb. All memories since conception are stored in the soul and easy to read.

As I walk toward the person, I am crossing the timeline of their entire life. If you were to do a cross section, the rings would appear similar to the rings of a tree with the high density rings being the heavy emotional events of fear and anger.

“Just where did he gets his “facts” !”

Most of his facts come from the Bible, some come from other people’s experiences, and many come from his actual first hand experiences. You can tell when you read it that he speaks from actual experience of being in battle and not just repeating other people’s stories.

Being an exorcist is not an identity anyone who does the work would strive for as that would mean they were coming from ego and their own will. You only do this work by allowing it to be done through yourself and your identity must come from being a servant to perform thy Father’s
Will.

Thank you for sharing those scriptures.

The “Tower of Babel” concept is at work here. When human consciousness is working at a level where all must be perceived through the five senses, a person is considered to be sleeping. (Matthew 13 tares in the wheat parable uses the sleeping phrase too) At the higher levels of consciousness, there are no languages as you perceive each others thoughts and past thoughts. You can learn through epiphanies rather than struggling to study a subject. Much that is invisible to the five senses now becomes visible as the senses perceive at a higher frequency. This is why the disciples who were unschooled were as wise as the educated when filled with the Holy Spirit.

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

I agree.”

Your skepticism is very wise. Be careful when someone is extrapolating beyond scripture. However, when someone is yielding the “Fruits of the Spirit” listen carefully and pray on their words that the truth be revealed to you. The scriptures have many levels of understanding. That is why Jesus taught in parables and said “Let those who have ears hear.”

Your statement is exactly the position the Pharisees took when debating with Jesus. I too am a skeptic as I have seen many people who were sleeping led astray by people claiming to have the answers. The “Truth” will never be inconsistent with the scriptures. However, it may lead you to a different level of understanding that interprets the same scripture in a completely different perspective with a completely different meaning.

“The Bible simply provides little information on this topic, the author is making it all up, speculating with his own vain imagination.”

Many times while doing this work, scriptures that I was unfamiliar with came out of my mouth. I learned much by listening to the words that flowed through me. When you have experienced this first hand, you no longer believe the scriptures to be true, you “KNOW” the scriptures to be true.

Jesus only taught those close to Himself how to perform exorcisms. He even warned that many will cast out demons in His name who do not know Him. All of His teachings were meant to empower individuals to work on themselves and cleanse their souls to grow closer to God. Not to work on other people.

This is why He made the statement to His disciples, “I share this knowledge with you. Do not share it with others.” (Sorry for the paraphrase)

If allowed to make my own choice, I most likely would not desire to be in the field of combat doing this work as you get wounded often if you do not practice the presence of God every minute of every day. The personal demons that Paul spoke of are real and waiting for an opening at all times. It is given that I will make mistakes. However, as long as my motive is pure I will be forgiven and no harm will come to me or the person I am working with.

There are many dangers to the person performing this work and to the person it is performed on if you are doing it from “self.” This I have learned from the “School of Hard Knocks.” If you remove a demon and the wound that allowed it in is not healed, seven more even worse can come and take its place. If you confront a strong demon and you do it from a position of “self” it may turn on you and enter you. Pride is the greatest enemy from within for a person performing deposessions. You never perform this work in public as bystanders may get stung and injured and/or you develop pride in their eyes. Pride is the greatest poison as if you are full of yourself, you have no room for God to perform the work.

In one instance, when a dark powerful demon was removed from a lady, she went into a deep depression as her entire self identity was based upon life from the perspective of an internal dependency upon the demon. She needed to accept the Love of God in order to fill the void that was created by the removal. This is why Jesus told the story of the ten lepers who were healed, and only the one who “praised God” was made whole. He does not say it, but the reality is that the other nine got their leprosy back. This is what happens if the wound is not healed. Just because Jesus removed the wound in the person’s soul and often said, “You are forgiven.” does not mean that they heeded His warning to “Go and sin no more.”

People often get upset with me about three days after I work with them when the inner joy goes away. I ask them, what have you done to keep the joy there? If you do not continue to add fuel to a fire it goes out. If you do not continue to focus on God, your joy will fade away.

“There’s no biblical basis for that statement. At best it’s wrong; at worse it’s ridiculous.”

At the center of the soul of all seeds that God planted here on earth is the spark of light. It is seen in the purity of children and hidden when they do something wrong. As long as a spirit has that spark of light, no matter how many baskets it is hidden under, they are redeemable. This is true, even if they no longer have a physical body and are just in spirit form. This is why we are not to condemn the sinner, just the sin. Remember Jesus said in John, “I have not come to judge, but to save.”

In the darkest of demons, I have not been able to see this light it is hidden so deep. They not only do not allow any light to shine from within, but act as a vacuum to all light around them. This is why it is so cold in their presence as they are robbing your energy. These demons never had an earthly physical body. To the extent that you are filled with the light of God, your energy is so strong that it will burn them, thus they are very afraid of you. This is why, “Giving a prayerful blessing to an evil person is like placing hot coals upon their head.” This is why the “weeds will be burned” in the end times. This is why “The earth shall be destroyed by fire.” but the saved shall not be harmed.

The entire Bible is written about this topic, but written in such a way that those who are not looking will not find. And those without pure motive will never be able to see. (i.e. always be blind.)

Oh ... the veil comes fully off. I didn't expect that ...

You are a sorcerer, a new age Chaldean posing as a Bible teacher.

These entities which you interact with, their purpose in giving you this ability which you claim, is only to deceive you. To ensure your eternal judgment ... and through your works deceive many into rejecting the truth.

The epistle from Jude should be a harsh warning to you.

8 Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.
9 But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
10 But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.

Paul was a murderer, David was an adulterer, Peter denied Jesus Christ publicly three times ... and each of them walked away from their life of sin and rebellion against God ... so it is not too late for you either.

I urge you to turn away from this so-called science that you have embraced and repent before it is too late for you. I read your tagline and suspect that you are approaching the twilight of your life ... but your experiences, your knowledge, all that you have become is built upon a delusion, and that delusion will carry you away into black darkness ... unless you turn wholly from it ... soon.

May the Lord Jesus Christ open your eyes.

re: “Do you find it puzzling that Jesus said to the Pharisees “Your scriptures say that “You are Gods.” in John 10 when He was referring to Psalm 82?”

Not exactly sure what you mean - could you elaborate? Also, not sure which translation you are using as all the ones I’ve looked at say, “Has it not been written in your ‘Law’ (not scriptures), ‘You are gods’” (notice the small case ‘g’).

Of course, Psalm 82:6 is a part of scripture, but Jesus refers to their Law. I’m not sure what the nuance is (and maybe there isn’t one).

The word “gods” in Psalm 82:6 is ‘elohim’ which can mean “gods” or “mighty ones”.

I think Jesus’s point is that if human beings (judges in this case) can be called ‘gods’ in the scripture because of their position, then why is it so strange that the One Whom God sanctified and sent into the world (He’s referring to the Messiah) is called the Son of God? He goes on to make clear that the Father and the Son are One and the same essence, John 10:37-38.

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