Wednesday, January 24, 2007

How to Be Safe from Demons

Pretty Lady never ceases to be shocked at the amount of ignorance, superstition and misinformation she finds, surrounding the subject of Demonic Possession. In this day and age! For shame! She cannot understand why there seems to be such a popular dearth of basic, practical information on how to cope with your standard negative entity, whether it be a full-fledged demon, a pissed-off Displaced Soul, a random thought-form, the slimy, tentaculate extrusions of a Possessive Roommate, or Satan himself.

Moreover, the amount of fearful disinformation being spread on this crucial issue is nearly as harmful as the entities themselves. Imagine, that some persons actually shy away from the demon-banishing practice of Yoga, under the mistaken delusion that this wholly benign and helpful exercise actually summons demons! Or, worse, that demons themselves are a fictive superstition, not worthy of even so much consideration or precaution as one would take to guard one's home from, say, mice, or cockroaches.

Although Pretty Lady herself is by no means an expert exorcist, or a regular traveler in the Occult, she sees clearly that it falls upon her shoulders to rectify this abominable cultural oversight, until such time as practical techniques of psychic self-defense are taught in kindergarten, alongside the alphabet.

Now, Pretty Lady confesses that she has stumbled upon many of her theories by experiential anecdote, which, indeed, given the psychically ignorant society in which she was raised, was nearly her only means of acquiring such information. Thus, a great many of her points are ad hoc and observational. If any of her dear readers have advice to the contrary, please do not be shy about calling her out.

At any rate, these are the primary principles one must take under consideration:

1) Remain within one's own body at all times.

To some individuals of 'scientific' persuasion, this may appear to be a tautology. It is not. If you take the trouble to observe the persons around you, you will quickly notice that many of them have a tendency to absent their souls from their physical manifestations, whether it be to avoid guilt, pain, trauma, social interaction, or mathematics examinations. These persons may have a 'blank' look in their eyes; they may make inappropriate, disconnected comments; they may continue casually chatting about fashion design while their four-year-old is making mud pies on their neighbor's brand-new grand piano. They may go hiking on treacherous terrain without appropriate footgear. One notices that these individuals appear to float above the earth, rather than walking upon it.

It is crucial, then, for any person who wishes to avoid an unwelcome demonic intrusion into their corporeal space, to occupy this space at all times. The primary technique for occupying one's own body is called grounding.

To ground:

Feel the earth under your feet. Feel that this earth is holding you up. It will not allow you to fall. Allow your weight to rest entirely upon floor, upon soil, upon bedrock, upon molten magma extending a thousand thousand fathoms deep. Feel that there is a line connecting your core to the core of the earth; feel that this line is made of light. Feel that the fire in the core of the earth connects to the fire at your core; feel that these two fires are one. Allow yourself to be supported.

This is not a joke; this is not a load of horse droppings. One of the ladies whom Pretty Lady knew personally, who was most distressingly possessed by the displaced soul in Pretty Lady's house in Mexico, was unable to do this. Her body, when Pretty Lady went to do a healing, was a mass of hysterical knots which only tangentially resembled the human anatomy; Pretty Lady told her, gently, "Sophia, the earth is holding you up."

Sophia replied, incredulously, "Really??!!" She genuinely did not believe it so.

2) Avoid extreme drugs.

Methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, morphine, angel dust, acid, and enormous doses of marijuana are Right Out. All of these substances are toxic, negative, and leave the aura wide open for evil influences to enter. Large amounts of hard liquor are ill-advised, as well. Pretty Lady is sorry to say that her own personal habit of downing straight tequila and listening to American Music Club, in times of great emotional duress, is an extremely risky one. But being an exceptionally grounded soul, Pretty Lady occasionally walks that line. She survived the house in Mexico with soul intact, when many lesser persons fled, at any rate.

3) Visualize a tough eggshell of white light around your entire body, extending into the ground.

When one sees this eggshell in one's mind, one must really see it. One must be grounded, first; otherwise, one's energy system is inadequate to mount an effective barrier. When you are good and grounded, visualize the eggshell. It allows good things in, but mean, nasty, spiky or slimy things bounce right off of it. Get your eggshell very firmly established; examine it for holes or thin places. If you cannot get this solid in your mind, it is not protecting you. If you have breaks, blocks, patches, or weak places, you will be able to sense them.

Pretty Lady has used this simple defense to great effect upon innumerable occasions, most notably when her roommate was psycho, and her antiquarian co-worker was irrationally obsessed with her. It is your basic all-purpose psychic shield, and is effective on all forms of negative energies, whether they emanate from the living, the dead, or the in-between.

A very strongly grounded individual may be able to place a shield of this nature around family, home, child, or car, as well as self. This can be very useful in avoiding parking tickets.

4) Yoga, prayer, and martial arts help immeasurably with this sort of thing.

Grounding and defending should be Step 1, in any decent yoga or martial arts instruction. Any good Christian who avoids these disciplines out of provincial religious squeamishness is an effete yahoo, who more than deserves the burden of those negative entities who will undoubtedly attach themselves, taking advantage of both the physical disconnectedness and psychological evasion that such notions encourage.

5) Chanting and vegetarianism, however, not so much.

Pretty Lady is All For meditative and purifying practices--in moderation, and under the supervision of an adept. However, she has noticed that the vast number of friends of hers who have ended up passing out or screaming obscenities in the streets, under the influence of greater or lesser demonic entities, have nearly all been ungrounded vegetarians who chanted to excess and smoked recreational marijuana.

Pretty Lady rather suspects that she survived her two-year stint in her House with Ghost unscathed, largely upon the strength of her cooking. Steak quesadillas, pea soup with chorizo, goat cheese sandwiches with grilled veggies, and huevos mexicanos were all mainstays. She hiked, she jogged, she swam in muddy dams, she biked round the panoramica, she performed aggressive dance aerobics; this, and her basically phlegmatic temperament, all seemed to keep her resident surly Inquisition ghost more or less quiescent, except for the time he set fire to her altar.

When the vegetarians moved in, however, all Hell broke loose, quite literally. Eventually the local clairvoyant got rid of him, but it was not an easy battle. Much simpler to keep that barbecue grilling, and the stereo cranked.

6) Sea salt, baking soda, sage, and ethanol--all good.

Pretty Lady once exorcised a Cursed Apartment with four bowls full of rock salt burning in ethanol, four candles, and Arvo Pärt at full volume. She re-painted the apartment after the exorcism, to make it habitable, but she is certain that she would not have even been able to remain in that place long enough to rinse her rollers, if it hadn't been for the initial cleansing.

Sea salt baths for one's person, and sage smudges for one's surroundings, can never go amiss. If one's house happens to be inhabited by an exceptionally stubborn Inquisition victim, the sage will not get rid of him, but for clearing space of residual toxicity born of grief, arguments, poverty and drug abuse by prior tenants, it is a tool of standard efficacy, obtainable at your local spook shop.

7) Toxic emotions and attitudes attract their own kind.

If you are addicted to rage, misery, paranoia, blame, suspicion, ill-will, aggression, narcissism, manipulation, parasitism, passivity, and egotism, and you wish to keep your personal space clear of negative entities--well, good luck with that.

8) If you suspect you or a friend may be possessed, seek expert assistance.

Catholic priests and gypsy psychics, in general, will only make matters worse. The priests will officially deny you have a problem, while unofficially quavering in their vestments; the psychics will try to charge you a large sum of money for passive-aggressive assistance. What you want, ideally, is an adept with the practical skills of a midwife and the aura of a linebacker, who has no personal axe to grind. Make discreet inquiries round your local community; if a prospective exorcist gives you hives, run away. Trust your intuition, and not glib rhetoric or psychic perspicacity. Remember, 'psychic' does NOT equal 'benevolent.' Character is All.

And Pretty Lady is very sorry to tell you that garlic and crucifixes, in her experience, have no anti-demonic efficacy whatsoever.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't disagree with much.

Even ancient Zen masters that I have read have warned of the potential dangers of un-supervised meditation.
Jesus warned of sweeping the house clean of demons and then leaving the house empty and winding up worse than before.

I'm not certain if vegetarianism is the problem or if it is the type of people who embrace vegetarianism in the West who are the problem.
Health food stores give me the creeps.

PT

Anonymous said...

I will have to email you my response to this since it is far too long to post. I have experience with this, but mine differs significantly from what you describe.

Being grounded is an interesting concept, since I have had that term applied to me often over the years. I have never thought of it in the terms you describe, but allow me to give an example.

Years ago when I still attended a church, I often volunteered to usher. During the service mothers would frequently bring their newborns to the back when they would start to cry. Once, a mother asked me to hold her squalling two-month old while she rummaged in her baby duffel for a bottle, and I held the child in my hands, looked in it's eyes and it immediately stopped crying. After a number of instances where this happened, many of the women would bring me their children to hold if they were fussing, and they would usually calm down when I held them. Frequently they would start up again when I handed them back to their mothers, but many babies respond to me in this fashion.

I would like to address here briefly your statement regarding yoga and martial arts. If the subject is a weak-minded fool and starts getting involved in Eastern mysticism they will fall, and the reactionary response you get from Christians is based on that. The intelligent martial artist, well-versed in his faith will not have any difficulties despite the most rigorous of training. The problems come from people who believe in nothing, find an unexplainable truth that they cannot deny then rush to embrace the experience and end up in dangerous waters when they in return are embraced by something less than friendly.


Crom

Pretty Lady said...

If the subject is a weak-minded fool and starts getting involved in Eastern mysticism they will fall

Yes, and this is why the Eastern mystics themselves did not allow students to start practicing yoga until they had been training for decades.

My observation is that many people get involved in spiritual practice to escape something about themselves that they cannot cope with. They end up trying to 'tune in to higher vibrations' while completely un-grounded and with gaping holes in their energy fields; the rest is pretty predictable.

That's why I give basic grounding instructions to just about everyone I know, particularly those who suffer from migraines. Yoga practice, in my experience, tends to help undo the blocks and strengthen the weak places in people's energy fields, which is why I recommend it. It only becomes a problem if it is over-done.

PT, what I have observed about vegetarianism is pretty much the same--people trying to escape their pain by over-doing the yin. Certain people can be helped by it, depending upon their body type and nutritional background, but all too often, vegetarians are traumatized people who are both trying to escape their bodies and to control other people out of fear. That's why they tend to be toxic.

Chris Rywalt said...

PL sez:
If you take the trouble to observe the persons around you, you will quickly notice that many of them have a tendency to absent their souls from their physical manifestations, whether it be to avoid guilt, pain, trauma, social interaction, or mathematics examinations.

Do you think people ever absent their souls from their physical manifestations for good reasons? Is there ever a good reason for this? I go into a fugue-like state while writing. Is that the same kind of thing?

Pretty Lady said...

Is there ever a good reason for this?

Yes. Many people who 'vacate' their bodies first learned how to do so while undergoing some horrendous trauma in childhood, such as being raped or abused. They report that suddenly it is as though they are 'watching their bodies' from an upper corner of the room, for example. I once spoke with an elderly Englishwoman who told me she'd been able to leave her body at will since childhood; she said she could undergo minor surgery without anaesthetic because of this talent.

Is that the same kind of thing?

No, I don't think so. When you're caught up in a 'work trance,' I think you're actually more present in a certain way; you're connected to the flow, to the work, to the present moment, so that your mind is in a state of timelessness. You're submitting your body entirely to the process, not checking out of your body.

mitzibel said...

I've only known one family of truly healthy, grounded vegetarians. They were observant Jews, and it's a hell of a lot easier to keep a kitchen kosher when you never so much as bring meat into the house. But of course, they were still getting their dairy fix on, so that may have helped. Watching their daughter grow up and go to college was interesting, though--instead of the usual rebellion of getting drunk and puking all over her dorm room, she'd eat ribs and do the same.

Anyway. Stellar advice, and you managed to give it without sounding like a froot loop. The "psychic does not equal benevolent" line needs to be physically burned into many peoples' brains.

Chris Rywalt said...

PL sez:
They report that suddenly it is as though they are 'watching their bodies' from an upper corner of the room, for example.

A few years back it was discovered by a neurologist that Out of Body Experiences could be reliably caused by stimulating a particular region of the brain.

Pretty Lady said...

Yes, I read about that. It's also been discovered that a standing wave produces the same physiological effects as a 'ghost encounter'--sudden chill, hairs standing up on back of neck, etc.

To me, this sort of thing only confirms that people who report paranormal experiences are not just crazy or making them up. So a 'ghost' is a 'standing wave.' So what caused the standing wave, that looks like a ghost and acts like a ghost and quacks like a ghost?

And when people are 'checked out' of their bodies, something in them is evidently leaning on the part of the brain that causes them to check out. This can be an excellent survival mechanism when a person is in the midst of rape or gum surgery, but as a regular habit, not so much.

Crom said...

What a provocative email address you have. It seems almost designed to inspire fear and jealousy in the female mind.

Heh.

Desert Cat said...

Now I see that Pretty Lady does indeed speak my language.

In my experience, the strongest ward against demons and other unclean spirits is the name of Jesus. And the placing of shields around home, property, loved ones, etc. is immeasurably easier when done in His name, and with the assistance of His angels.

I'd never thought to try that against parking tickets though. ;)

But I can back you up on that drugs thing. In the midst of a shroom induced hell, even the name of the Lord is only an anchor point, not the end of the storm. South American "deities" tend to be deadly serious sorts. I hate to think of the effects on people less grounded than myself.

Anonymous said...

Mushrooms are scewing with your brain, not demonic possession, so I don't know if calling on Jesus will help or not.

A lot of 'scienists' are desperate to make everything fit their materialist world model so they can easily suspend their sense of cause and effect when needed. Does a physical/physiological stimulus cause the ghost or out of body experience or does the experience cause the change in the brain? As PL said.

PT

Pretty Lady said...

It seems almost designed to inspire fear and jealousy in the female mind.

You mean females don't love me? I think I'm going to cry.

Anonymous said...

"You mean females don't love me?"

Not at all. Fear, jealousy and love are sadly not mutually exclusive.

**proffers linen handkerchief**


Crom

Anonymous said...

My experience with garlic is that it is a great spice in foods, and my experience with crucifixes is that they make good decoratiive items.

Yes, yes... people who believe in vampires swear by garlic, but I've never run into a vampire, and people who believe in gods swear by crucifixes, but I haven't run into one of those gods either.

At least not yet....

Desert Cat said...

At what point is it merely psilocin (or LSD or?) "screwing with your brain", and when may it be an outside spiritual influence taking advantage of the gates flung wide open and all the windows with their curtains fluttering out in the breeze?

I don't particularly care to explore that question firsthand any further.

At least not yet....
As far as you know anyway.

Perhaps I'm just an unhinged lunatic, but I believe I have met my share both great and small, and that's in addition to the one to whom I belong, of course.

Anonymous said...

Good points Desert Cat...

The possibility does exist that I am locked up in an asylum--totally unhinged--and have created an entire new world in my mind, of which you are now a part.

Anonymous said...

Your page contains a small amount of truth, just enough to allow the misinformation to appear justified.

Until you have seen that of which you speak, please stop posting. You are only causing harm.

You are not safe, and nothing you have posted will protect you or your readers.

You inexperience is painfully clear; please, I ask of you - stop searching for something you truly do not want the answer for.

Pretty Lady said...

Honeybun, either provide some practical information yourself, or cease with the portentious warnings. Pretty Lady finds it most tedious to quote herself verbatim, but she must:

a great many of her points are ad hoc and observational. If any of her dear readers have advice to the contrary, please do not be shy about calling her out.

Also, seek expert assistance.

Pretty Lady spends exactly none of her time seeking out demons; she prefers to focus upon more positive matters. This entire post was largely tongue-in-cheek, and the vast majority of her readers are intelligent enough to read it as such.

Anonymous said...

I suppose I am not intelligent enough to distinguish between your rambling and your sarcasm; and, perhaps you seek nothing at all. Who am I to question your eternal wisdom in the subject of spiritualism?

I have found no expert assistance. I do not believe there are any left in this world who could even carry on a dialogue, never mind offer assistance.

Do you always speak of yourself in the third person, or is this simply your style? I thought you were into the whole grounding concept; yet, you have disassociated from yourself.

ChaosFae wonders why.

Pretty Lady said...

Pretty Lady, my dear, is a persona, or perhaps a postulate, which Pretty Lady's author uses in order to visit alternative realities, and tease people she would ordinarily not encounter in everyday life. Pretty Lady's author is rather more grounded than that, but still has her flighty moments.

Who am I to question your eternal wisdom in the subject of spiritualism?

Well, who ARE you? Presumably you are privy to some sort of uncommon and esoteric information, or you would not so cavalierly have called bullshit on Pretty Lady's.

I am quite ready to be informed, but you must provide some concrete information to support your assertions.

Anonymous said...

"
Hold me now, I need to feel relief. Like I never wanted anything... I suppose I'll let this go and find a reason I'll hold on to. I'm so ashamed of defeat.

And I'm out of reason to believe in me. I'm out of trying to get by.

I'm so afraid of the gift you give me. I don't belong here and I'm not well.

I'm so ashamed of the lie I'm living. Right on the wrong side of it all.

I can't face myself when I wake up and look inside a mirror. I'm so ashamed of that thing... I suppose I'll let it go until I have something more to say for me. I'm so afraid of defeat.

And I'm out of reason to believe in me. I'm out of trying to defy.

I'm so afraid of the gift you give me. I don't belong and I'm not well. I'm so ashamed of the lie I'm living. Right on the wrong side of it all.

Hold me now, I need to feel complete.

Like I matter to the one I need.
"

Seether - The Gift

You want some esoteric knowledge, eh? Well, let me pass these fine words of wisdom unto you: it's not esoteric unless I keep it hidden.

Maybe the timing just ain't right, ya know? Who can say what the future holds - you, or I?

I'm surprised you even bothered to answer me. I thought I'd just flame you at the beginning and see what the fire brought to light. I'm impressed. No sarcasm.

While you are visiting those "alternative realities" keep your eyes open (metaphorically speaking) and you just might catch a glimpse - a fluttering of wings in your peripheral.

PEACE

Serenity Love said...

I work as a spiritual healer, Australia.
My collegues and I identify, acknowledge and remove negative entities on a regular basis. It's far more common to catch an entity in your field than a cold!
prettylady how could you post a bog like this tongue - in - cheek...nah, surely your an entity healer..you just haven't woken up to it yet. It's ok luvvy, we all start out that way.
ps: non - vegitarian
non - druggie
non - hippie
regular working, mum & family person who is respected in her community.