Encounter with devils

Gary, a boarder sleeping in his room alone, awoke and felt someone roll on top of him, trying to sodomize him. He struggled and threw the being off. He sat up and saw a shadowy figure crouched on the floor. The figure vanished slowly from his sight.

The incident alarmed the household. For days afterward, there were signs that the being was around, waiting for an opportune time to attack again. The 27-year-old Gary was scared to be in his room alone. His landlord, a relative, had to sleep with him.

The landlord sought help from a church. A Franciscan priest, said to have ESP powers, blessed the premises. As he did so, he said, he sensed unseen beings scampering away. He asked Gary to go to confession, and receive communion at least once weekly.

Gary obeyed. The household followed the advice to pray together daily. But they sensed the being still coming. The landlord went around asking what to do, and he learned of similar cases, though the people concerned wouldn’t talk about them.

He went to a religious order a member of which was said to be “learned” about occult matters. But that priest was already too old and didn’t handle cases any more.

The landlord sought the help of an exorcist-spiritista from Mt. Banawe. Mang Joe, the spiritista, showed up with two mediums: a good-looking girl in her 20s and a matronly woman. In the house, the mediums said they discerned big, dark beings lurking in the shadows and corners, beings with horns and tails.

During dinner with the family, the three explained that the beings picked Gary, a straight guy who neither drank nor used drugs and was of above-average intelligence, because of his music. Gary played in an amateur rock band. He played rock music when alone in the house, as he beat the drums he had set up in his room. Rock music allegedly attracted dark beings. Prayers kept them at bay or at a distance.

The older medium said prayer was very powerful, especially the Lord’s Prayer, Apostles’ Creed, and Hail Mary. As part of the exorcism rites, the spiritista put up signs—oraciones—above doorways and other crucial house parts. The oraciones were actually parts of the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, though written in a peculiar fashion.

The exorcism was successful. For years afterwards, the landlord followed the advice of the Franciscan and the spiritista. He went about his house, smoking it out with incense. He maintained an altar, and kept holy water and sacred salt in corners. He saw to it that the signs—penned on ordinary cardboard—remained in their places.

He became devout, going beyond the required basic practices of his faith. He read more on philosophy, theology and religion. As far as this writer knows, the dark beings didn’t bother Gary anymore until he moved out beyond reach.

These things of which this writer was a witness happened 15 years ago. They came to mind when an Inquirer columnist advocated a kind of free-wheeling spirituality as he sneered at religious people and practices while using the word “religiosity” deceptively.

This is not meant to be a point-by-point answer to that column, whose writer displayed either gross ignorance or severe mental dishonesty as he sought to mislead, perhaps unwittingly, the unwary to perilous and treacherous grounds.

That column was written in response to questions about spirituality. Indeed, there are many kinds of spirituality as there are many kinds of spirits out there, as Gary’s experience showed. And not all are heavenly or amiable.

And while purportedly belonging to the upper or nobler realm, some forms of spirituality subtly target people’s worldliness or materialism, with disastrous results to worthwhile spiritual values, or even to ordinary human existence.

We won’t go into the specifics of spiritualities, but there are enough materials about those dark areas which have raised the guard of some religions for very good reasons. Their concern is based on good grounds and spurred by scary cases, which are quite numerous.

What should interest ordinary people, including those who seek a good life and a better country, should be Christian spirituality of which there are also enough materials. The trouble is, Christian spirituality doesn’t promise material or worldly benefits. And it is very hard to pursue. It is difficult to define, although it has produced great spiritual men and women and continues to do so. Despite the attractions of the modern materialism, it still attracts followers who, if sincere and willing to sacrifice for it, cannot fail.

Protestant theologian Gordon T. Smith uses a metaphor to quantify Christian spirituality as living waters which can quench thirst permanently. He says people need a container to drink that water. That container is discipline.

Christian spirituality always has detractors, who can be motivated by business interests, or worse. When they denigrate time-honored religious practices, truths, sacraments, sacramentals and practically all forms of prayer, they are likely under the spell of dark forces.

Christian spirituality needs other elements apart from discipline, stressed Smith, who was once senior pastor of the Union Church of Manila. Among these are humility and submission to higher authority.

Without those elements, Christians can get lost. Affirming that there are dark forces out there, Smith said Christians who rely solely on themselves can have interior lives with secret worlds and dark corners, sometimes unknown even to themselves.

Such lives can drastically go awry and end up in tragedy, as has repeatedly occurred, with the Guyana mass suicide of over 900 people and the ambush-murder of a handful more people in 1978 among the most notable aberrations.

Quincy T. Ataviado, a retired newspaperman, considers himself an ordinary, mediocre Catholic.