I saw half a scary movie the other day. Not really my genre (I have never watched The Exorcist, for example) but it seems there are the traditional horror movies, still popular, and the newer ones with a supernatural angle that’s eerie and disturbing rather than 100% evil and scary. But they all generally have a supernatural angle, whether bad ghosts or evil spirits or humans in league with Satan. If it’s just a bad guy with guns killing people, that’s an action pic or a thriller.
Once in a while there’s a supernatural plot where the spirit is a guardian angel or the helpful spirit of some recently deceased person. Ghost with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore comes to mind. But for the most part, when there is a supernatural plot, there is evil afoot. It’s supernatural evil. That’s what makes the scary movie scary.
Now let’s talk about Scary Mormonism. Let’s bracket Satan for the moment, and focus instead on that one-third of the host of premortal spirits that sadly never got and won’t get bodies. They are, according to LDS doctrine, very unhappy and they don’t like us embodied humans. Not at all. We are taught they roam the earth, obviously in great numbers, with the intention of taking possession of us, our bodies. It’s not spelled out whether that’s one evil spirit per body or whether a whole flock of them can move in (there’s New Testament precedent for a whole flock). In addition, LDS doctrine teaches that those who don’t follow the directives of LDS leaders are particularly vulnerable to such demonic possession. I know, taken as a whole the last four or five sentences sound a little kooky. But that’s what generations of temple Mormons have been taught.
Now let’s talk about why this is so messed up.
First, accepting for the sake of argument the above-outlined doctrine, if LDS leaders and members really believed all of that, surely there would be both demand for and provision of LDS exorcism ordinances. Certainly the mighty power of the priesthood can cast out any such demons. But exorcism is a big black hole in standard Mormon doctrine (with the exception of a suggestive episode familiar to temple Mormons). If you go to your bishop claiming you or a family member are likely possessed by a demon, I can tell you with 99.99% confidence that (1) the bishop will NOT confirm a diagnosis of demonic possession, and (2) if he wavers on that point, he will equally likely NOT schedule you for an exorcism next Sunday in his office. There are stake clerks and stake auditors, but there is no Stake Exorcist. This is a bit puzzling. It almost suggests that LDS leaders both local and general don’t really believe in demonic possession anymore, despite it being taught to explicitly in LDS doctrine.
Second, think about how supernatural evil is talked about by LDS leaders in General Conference and by the average Mormon over the pulpit on Sunday. It’s all about Satan. His evil influence is deemed to reach anyone and everyone, as sort of a dark parallel to how the influence of the Holy Ghost is described. If, for example, someone planned to attend the temple with their spouse on Saturday, then when leaving discovered not one but two flat tires on their car, they are likely to bear their testimony the next Fast Sunday about how Satan tried to derail their desire to attend the temple (which they righteously overcame by catching a ride with their home teacher or something). Here’s what you will NOT hear in that story: the claim or suggestion that is was an evil spirit (assigned to the anti-temple detail) that did the dirty work. Depending on how you look at it, either Satan’s powers have expanded to preclude the need for any evil spirit associates (partly true, I think), or else LDS belief in specific evil spirits, as opposed to the one Evil Spirit Satan, has declined or simple evaporated. Again, this is rather puzzling in view of the longstanding doctrine of evil spirits and scriptural examples of demonic possession.
Let me sketch two alternatives describing what is going on here. First, it could be that Scary Mormonism is still alive and well, it’s just it was previously described using a host of evil spirits that threatened those who didn’t diligently follow LDS counsel. Whereas now it is described only using the figure of Satan and his vast powers. It’s like the 19th and 20th century version was Scary Mormonism 1 and now we have the sequel, Scary Mormonism 2.
The other alternative is that no one really believes Scary Mormonism anymore. What was once the Plan of Salvation is now termed the Plan of Happiness. No room for scary in the Plan of Happiness. If you bring your troubles to the bishop, he thinks in therapeutic terms, not good-versus-evil possession and exorcism. You are probably aware that Christian belief in Hell has declined dramatically in recent decades. Same phenomenon, different terminology. The term “Hell” does not map well onto the wider variety of LDS postmortal destinations following the Last Judgement, but the apparent fact that Mormon belief in evil spirits roaming the globe seems to have declined dramatically is a good parallel. It would be an exaggeration to say that LDS belief in Satan has likewise declined dramatically — Satan gets plenty of airtime in General Conference and in LDS talks and lessons — but it is possible that such talk is simply habit and tradition. It may be the case that a good portion of even active Latter-day Saints don’t really believe all the talk. It may be the case that many LDS have lost their testimony of Satan. Is that good or bad?
What do you think?
- Do you (or do most Mormons) believe in hordes of evil spirits roaming the globe, seeking to take possession of unwary or wayward humans?
- Do you (or most Mormons) believe in guardian angels or good ghosts, the righteous parallel to those evil spirits? LDS doctrine doesn’t specifically affirm the specific idea of “guardian angels,” but does, of course, affirm angels in general.
- Do you (or most Mormons) believe in Satan?
- On the topic of Satan, please go read Elaine Pagels’ book The Origin of Satan (1996) if you haven’t already. Thank me later.
Wheat & Tares 
I grew up with a dad that drilled into us the protocol in D&C Section 129 and assumed that’s how all families work, but I’m now aware loads of Mormons have no idea about this section. The Handbook used to have a section about blessing houses and I also viewed that as an exorcism of sorts. So I guess it was out there, but not sure how mainstream.
I also remember the show Touched by An Angel was pretty popular in Utah growing up so I also presumed that most Mormons also believe in guardian angels/John the Revelator/Three Nephites literally protecting people. And when I say literally, I use the original meaning =).
BoM Musical has the spooky Mormon hell dream. And RMN has sad heaven with empty chairs. Sounds like Scary Mormon evolution.
Reading this made me think of those youth wilderness camps where “wayward” kids are kidnapped in the middle of the night and re-located to the Utah wilderness. I understand these programs are open to all kids not just Mormon kids but they were run by Mormons mostly. As I understand it from some of the people that I know who sent their kids there, it was kind of a Mormon lite exorcism where the kid would learn to overcome their personal demons through hard work, dieting, and bug bites.
I recently mentioned something about not believing in Satan anymore with some friends over lunch and the Christian/Mormon folks there had a visceral reaction. I assume more Mormons believe in Satan and his minions walking the Earth. YMMV.
We’ve got enough trouble with real evil in this world without needing imaginary evil. I used to travel to Venezuela in the 1990’s. What has happened since then has been very bad for Venezuelans, and 25% of them have left the country. Governments are capable of creating all the evil we could ever want.
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Ya want spooky? Mormons may have eased up on connecting Satan’s minions with the strictly supernatural, but there is still plenty of spooky in their political thinking. Don’t you just love those QAnon conspiracy theories making appearances in priesthood and Sunday School lessons?
Like with so many other issues, it’s hard for me to tell what’s actually changed in the Church broadly and what might have just changed in the particular place and experience I have. That being said, it’s definitely my impression like you said that Mormonism is way less interested in supernatural evil than it used to be. I grew up in Utah Valley in the 80s and 90s, and it seemed like there were lots of references to evil spirits. Well, maybe not lots, but certainly more than I hear now, which is about zero. There were evil Ouija boards that might lead you to accidentally summon evil spirits (or maybe Satan), and D&D was clearly wicked and likely to invite them, and rock music was designed not only to drive us to sex, but also to unleashing evil spirits. It was the time of Satanic panic, I think, when lots of people, Mormon and not, were caught up in the idea that there were semi-secret groups who were ritually abusing children as part of their Satanic worship.
A particular instance of this type of teaching I remember was the seminary teachers who would carefully lead us through the calculations of estimated numbers of people who had ever lived on the earth, and then estimated size of the third part of the host of heaven, and then the ratio of demons to living people at the moment. I remember a teacher who warned us that the real number of demons concentrated on each of us was probably even higher, since we were Mormons of the chosen generation, and the ones who were assigned to evil drunks could probably leave their charges to join in with the hordes already assigned to us.
I have never felt comfortable discussing Satan (or hearing him discussed). It feels nasty to me and superstitious, and a distraction from following Jesus Christ. It also feels old fashioned and in some way improper. I think it’s something younger members of the church are less likely to refer to. After all, today we can determine the actual scientific and physical reasons most things occur, instead of attaching a more fantastical label.
It really has added to my understanding to listen to Dan McClellan explain that the word translated as Satan in the Old Testament referred to an adversary…typically the tribe next door that fought with your tribe periodically for resources. Dan says even in the story of Job it translates more like God’s lawyer than Satan. He says the beginning ideas of Satan began in the New Testament, and weren’t really fleshed out until more recent centuries.
As for evil spirits…I think both good and bad exists in the world. However when people talk about evil spirits, I tend to think it’s just another way of referring to depression, schizophrenia, or other mental illnesses. It’s counter productive, in my experience, to think about or refer to evil spirits. Today we have other more descriptive words to use and other ways to tackle our problems than to use religious terminology. I prefer to study, ponder and pray for inspiration to solve whatever problems I have by tangible means, than to even consider evil spirits.
Again, I think this is a generational and terminology difference.
Very much related to this, there was a great article from Jana Riess a week ago on the changing LDS view of Satan:
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2024/07/24/lds-leaders-have-changed-how-they/
Now I want there to be a Stake Exorcist calling. That made me laugh. I could only imagine how many young male RMs would vie for it in singles wards. It would certainly be a prestigious calling, likely with regular testimony bearing on fast Sunday. Imagine how exciting those meetings would be when the Stake Exorcist on the high council came to speak at your ward? Of course it would be a male-only calling, as exorcism would require ordination despite both men and women being endowed in the temple with the power to cast out Satan.
Your OP does bring up interesting questions. My dad taught us about evil spirits and Satan and said things that overlap with this post. Growing up, I generally didn’t pray out loud for fear that Satan would hear my prayers and use them against me. I was taught that. I’ve also thought it’s interesting that Mormons will pray to not be tempted above what they’re able to bear. Wouldn’t being constantly tempted to a degree beyond your capacity to refuse be coercion essentially? Where’s the free agency in that?
Belief in Satan and evil spirits is alive and well in certain branches of Mormonism (see Snuffer, Doctrine of Christ, Mike Stroud, Julie Rowe, Chad Daybell, etc.). There was a movement in recent years about Halloween activities inviting in evil spirits, with some Latter-day Saints instead opting to celebrate a new light-filled “Shekinah” celebration.
My daughter told me that one of her active LDS high school friends had gone through an exorcism in a previous ward. My daughter was understandably shocked.
I think the idea of “Scary Mormonism” going away is very much dependent on your environment. Missionaries in other countries often deal with cultures that still fully believe in demonic possession.
I think a lot of Mormons believe in “spirits” both evil and good. They use them as an excuse for the good and bad that happens in their lives. I think it’s really hard to take responsibility for your own actions so it’s much easier to blame someone or something else. I think it’s one of the reason so many follow Trump, because he’s so good at presenting the evil out there intent on destroying us. We just don’t have the faith in ourselves or others that good can exist on its own.
There was an episode of You’re Wrong About that discussed exorcisms, and the surprising thing was that exorcisms…wait for it…actually work. Now, the one caveat is that they work for believing Catholics, not for skeptics or whatever. There’s clearly some kind of placebo effect at play, but those who undergo it feel better in time.
In a weird coincidence, I just watched a Criminal Minds episode yesterday in which a priest was using exorcism to kill people.
I’ll quote a high school friend of mine: “I don’t know if I believe in God, but I sure as hell don’t believe there’s a devil.” That was back in the 80s, during the Satanic Panic, but I think the attitude is astute. Satan doesn’t sell. It sounds silly and made up when we can see that humans are capable of evil acts. How do you ascribe evil to Satan after a century of Hitler, Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, etc.? As to your scenario with tires being deflated, my understanding growing up in the church was that Satan & minions could not do physical acts due to the whole not having a body thing. They also could not read minds, but they could “hear” what you said or read what you wrote. There were a lot of rules about Satan.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Chadwick, Book of Mormon Musical is another scary movie/play I have not attended.
Old Man, now I’m really scared.
Ziff, yes I’m tempted to blame some of this on Utah/Idaho Mormon culture, but demonic possession and “spirits roam the earth” is so mainstream Mormonish that I’m sure those raised or living outside the Mormon Corridor have been taught it as well.
lws329, sounds like Dan McClellan has read the Pagels book.
Mary Ann, great point about some of the schismatic movements embracing this kind of stuff. That’s an indication this stuff was much more popular decades ago and is now in decline. LDS splinter movements tend to retain some of the discarded LDS doctrines and practices.
There is a lot to think about and I can remember hearing much of the ideas about presented on the OP and the comments as I was growing up.
@Chadwick, one reason that Touched By An Angel was popular among LDS viewers was at least for those living the metro Salt Lake City area was the fun in trying to figure where the segments were shot was because the show was primarily shot in the SLC area.
This seems to vary by family tree. Naively, I wonder if it traces all the way back to the faith tradition ones ancestors converted to Mormonism from. A devout mormon friend of mine that I met as an adult is convinced that he met Satan himself, embodied as a 2000s emo teenager, on the streets of small town Idaho. Growing up, my very devout Utah county parents didn’t really get in to the evil spirits, raise your right hand, possessions and such. They did get in to prophecies and revelations happening in dreams and priesthood/patriarchal blessings. I was surprised when I met my wife to find that her family was a little more in to the evil spirits, ghosts, etc. type stuff. Her mom had had her home blessed, a ritual I didn’t even know existed.
I never really got in to what I still tend to think of as the folksier side of the church (and Christianity in general, maybe) but I’ve found that since leaving I have more patience with those types of beliefs than I do with corporate, political Christianity. Like if someone wants to burn sage or dance to the moon or collect pretty crystals all good with me as long as no one is being hurt or coerced or foregoing legitimate medical treatment. I don’t really think there’s anything to it, but at least the sun and the earth and the moon and the plants all actually exist and bring life so treating them with reverence or even worship doesn’t seem like that bad of an idea.
I have a few honest questions that I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a good Mormon answer to. I know that evil is supposed to be conquered once and for all at the end of the Millienium. I have heard/read that Satan will be bound and powerless either literally (he’s bound and jailed somehow) or practically (since no one remaining has the desire to sin, so Satan is powerless). What does Mormon theology say happens to Satan at that point? Does he just roam the universe as a super frustrated spirit since he can no longer pursue his favorite pasttime of causing mortals to sin? Does the same thing that happens to Satan after the Millenium also happen to the billions and billions of spirits who “didn’t keep their first estate”? Are we just going to have billions of spirits roaming the universe with absolutely no purpose? Is there any official Mormon theology regarding these questions?
I was raised outside the Mormon corridor, but nonetheless was taught that all the stuff mentioned in the OP was literally true. I’m now somewhat agnostic about. I think Mick Jagger got it right (in the song “Sympathy for the Devil”) – we’re plenty capable as a human race to commit all kinds of evil acts all by ourselves. Overall, I never found Scary Mormonism to be particularly useful, productive, or uplifting in any way, but to each their own. I would be curious to know if it’s discussed more openly in places like Africa (where the Church is growing the most), where the presence of an unseen spiritual undercurrent to everything seems to be ingrained in the culture.
I grew up in an environment of scary Mormonism. When I was 13 or 14, my Aaronic priesthood leader told us about how there were evil spirits living among us, even in the very room we were in, and that these spirits were constantly trying to tempt us to sin. My late oldest brother (RIP brother) had some psychological problems that became more severe after his mission. He rebelled from my parents and spent some 30+ years more or less estranged from them. My mom thought he had an evil spirit that needed to be exorcised. I went through my teenage years believing that evil spirits existed and went about causing problems. Now I haven’t heard anyone tell stories about evil spirits, but I still think that Mormons generally believe that they exist and that they roam the earth. It is just that this is no longer a point of emphasis and it has become somewhat inappropriate to talk of them.
On guardian angels, my mother-in-law just a year or two ago told a story about how she was in the grocery store and was going over to say hi to a neighbor and then slipped and appeared as if she was about to fall. But then she didn’t. She recovered her balance. Her neighbor (very Mormon, just like her) remarked about how this was a miracle and how it appeared how she was absolutely going to fall but then didn’t. She and the neighbor attributed this to a guardian angel. Another story is about my very Mormon cousin with whom I traveled to southern Utah to visit the grave of a great grandfather. He is 60 something and works in the church history department. At some point my other cousin who was guiding us to the location on this dirt road came upon deep mud and got his truck stuck. Then out of nowhere appeared his daughter and son-in-law with a Suzuki Samurai which had a winch with which to pull them out. My one cousin remarked, “I thought you were one of the three Nephites coming to help us in a time of need.” He kept going on about three Nephite stories. To the extent that I figured that he must believe that the three Nephites really exist. Growing up I heard three Nephite stories all the time.
Mormons believe in Satan. They believe that he tempts people and attribute bad behavior to Satan’s influence.
As for me, I don’t believe in evil spirits roaming the earth. I don’t believe in guardian angels. I don’t believe in Satan. I full out reject dualist theology which has a good god and an evil god (such a theology seems to come from Zoroastrianism and was adopted by Israelites after their return from the Babylonian captivity at the hand of Cyrus the Great). I believe evil exists. And I believe in an immanent god who is synonymous with nature.
As far as positive spirits go (guardian angels, ancestral visitors, unborn children, etc.), Mormons definitely still believe. If you work in a family history-related calling, you will hear stories often. They usually begin with, “I know this is gonna sound crazy, but…”
Do I believe in spirits of ancestors influencing us? Oh yeah. My grandmother whacks me on the back of the head whenever I do something stupid. Unfortunately, she’s had to whack me so many times I have developed male pattern hair loss.
I didn’t grow up with heavy doses of “scary Mormonism”, just occasional cautionary tales about not playing with tarot cards, ouija boards or otherwise dabbling in the occult. I had never heard of Mormon “exorcisms” (casting out of evil spirits with LDS priesthood authority) until I was in college and occasionally heard recent RMs tell 2nd or 3rd-hand accounts of such events on their missions. Invariably, they only happened in Central/South American missions, or other places with lots of poverty, historic ties to Catholicism, and superstitious folk beliefs baked into the culture. Never happened to missionaries I know who served in US/Canada/UK/Western Europe.
I think the idea of a real, personified Satan is appealing to many believing Mormons because of the temple endowment, in which Satan is portrayed by a human actor, and thus is as real as God, Jesus, Adam and Eve. Ironically, this was also a big part of my deconstruction of the concept of Satan, because in the endowment narrative he is ultimately powerless; all bark and no bite, dismissed with the wave of a hand. Particularly, in the endowment films he is often performed as a mincing, flamboyantly dressed cartoonish supervillain (Michael Ballam will always be Satan in my heart; you never forget your first) which is entertaining to watch but also makes it hard to take seriously as a genuine threat to my eternal salvation.
All this talk of Satan’s minions just has me imagining little yellow creatures in blue overalls, black gloves, & goggles trying to be helpful to Satan’s grand evil plans but mostly bumbling around, causing minor mischief, and talking about bananas. New temple movie anyone? Forbidden fruit is actually a banana? I can guarantee temple attendance would skyrocket.
I think a lot of what people perceived as demonic possession was mostly misguided attempts to explain mental illness and certain disabilities. Science is now able to provide some reasons and real treatments for conditions that would have been terrifying to witness in previous ages.
That said, when I was growing up my dad used to bless the new house when we moved. It wasn’t so much about casting out demons, but it was sort of a ceremony to officially try to declare our new house as the family home and make it a loving place. It was a good experience as a kid when feeling somewhat uprooted after a move.
I do also know members and missionaries who would get phone calls asking for help casting out an evil spirit from their homes. Often it was very devout older converts who had left religions like Catholicism. I can’t speak to whether any actual demons were cast out, but they did go over to be with the person, pray with them, and help them feel better. Believe whatever you want from the metaphysical side of things, but I can’t imagine Jesus being upset about finding a way to comfort someone feeling distressed and scared real demon or not. I think providing community and kindness during a scary moment, regardless of its source, is where churches can be valuable if they’re focused on the right things.
Jack Hughes,
We are all having different experiences. While my temple experiences have tended to put me to sleep, I have been made aware of a young person in my community that suffers from religious scrupulosity. This is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder where a person feels compelled to exactly follow everything they have been told to do with exactingness and with no exceptions. For instance such a person may feel that if a sexual thought crosses their mind they may feel they have to immediately kneel down and pray to be forgiven even if they are in a public place.
This young person suffers terribly. For instance, they can no longer attend the temple because when Satan looks at the audience and says “You will be in my power”, this person gets all freaked out and terrified, and it goes on for days. They cannot attend fast and testimony meeting because they were taught that they had to obey the prompting to bear their testimony each time, but now the ward is too large for them to do that, plus they are shy and don’t want to. Still they are wracked with guilt and overwhelmed by their inability to follow every direction exactly and every time.
Unfortunately religion can be a fertile ground for concepts that can contribute to mental illness. The more we ratchet it up and emphasize how we know and it’s true beyond a shadow of a doubt, the more we move away from accepting reality as it is. This can have the affect of promoting mental illness. Better to emphasize how much we just don’t know, how everything conflicts and that it is impossible to do anything “perfectly” (what’s that?) with exactingness.
Satan, evil spirits, the 2nd coming, repentance, purity culture, and many other concepts can contribute to mental illness in some people.
I think it must be according to what religion your family converted from, because way back in the 50s and 60s there were plenty of people who believed both ways. Among my close friends, we none of us believed because in 9th grade we all had the same seminary teacher and he gave a really “satan’s minions are out to get you” lesson, and by lunch, we were all giggling over it as the stupidest thing we ever heard, but the table next to us was horrified that we were not taking it seriously. And if you think we were just a group of apostates, nope, we had two BYU professors as our fathers, and I was the only one from a partly inactive family. Two of the three boys went on missions and all four of us girls married RMs. So, very religious even for Provo.
Ziff’s comment really resonated. My family got into the Satanic panic stuff. My brother was banned from playing D&D because it could lead to Satanism. There were rumors about mutilated cats being found in the neighborhood – victims of Satanic rituals. My father read “Jay’s Journal” and believed every word of it. I was too scared to read it as a kid.
“Jay’s Journal” was a heavily fictionalized account of a teenager who died by suicide. The book made this poor kid’s life all about Satanism. He was a real person, but all the Satanism stuff in the book was debunked. I read that his grave gets vandalized because of that book. That was a part of the Satanic panic in my area in the 1980s.
My foray into evil was playing “light as a feather; stiff as a board” at sleepovers with other tween girls. I felt very wicked about doing that.
I agree with the other commenters who have said that what used to be considered demonic possession is now explained as mental illness. We avoid attributing behaviors to demons when really the person is suffering from a mental illness and can be treated (without exorcisms).
I’m sure part of the reason the stuff about demons and evil spirits got dropped is that it makes us look really weird.
I ‘ve struggled with sleep paralysis (old hag syndrome) and night terrors for most of my life. And so I know something about the terror that the human mind can manufacture and harbor. And I can say from my own experience that the methods of the adversary are typically much more subtle than those kinds of frightful experiences. As section 93 warns–the adversary takes away light and truth by two means: disobedience and the traditions of the fathers. So that’s where we need to look in order to see his machinations.
That said, I believe creation to be enchanted in ways that we don’t understand very well. I believe that the dust moveth hither and thither at the Lord’s command–or even at the command of his servants. And I believe that there is much more to the sacred cosmos than meets the scientific eye–that there are different plains of existence that interface and interlock with each other in ways that we don’t comprehend. Here’s an interesting verse that touches on these phenomena:
“And so great was the faith of Enoch that he led the people of God, and their enemies came to battle against them; and he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled, and the mountains fled, even according to his command; and the rivers of water were turned out of their course; and the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness; and all nations feared greatly, so powerful was the word of Enoch, and so great was the power of the language which God had given him.”
Enoch’s language was the Word. And creation responded to him as if he were the Lord. And the roaring of the lions out of the wilderness was the cries of the heavenly hosts from beyond the veil. Talk about scary.
In the words of Salieri it was “terrifying and wonderful.”
Hmm.. so my father and a bishopric member went to the home of an inactive member (a cousin) to cast out an evil spirit from the home (it was requested). I was a teenager at the time, and was interested that the bishop assigned a counsellor. That counsellor would have been my preferred choice over the bishop anyway. I assume it worked since I never heard anything else. Back when I was in the YSA ward in London, as a student, the bishop there mentioned he had given a priesthood blessing to a disturbed person who had come in off the street to cast out an evil spirit, which then apparently entered one of the members present, who then also had a priesthood blessing before matters were resolved.
A member of my ward in our previous stake, before we moved to our current stake, mentioned she had prayed with a sister she visited for an evil spirit to leave the home. And felt for some days after that it had accompanied her home.
So, maybe we still believe this stuff in the UK church.
Mary, yes! I was taught that too, so grew up never saying my personal prayers out loud. That’s now ingrained.
Yes I do believe departed ancestors can be looking out for us.
I grew up with the “Satan knows what you say” reasoning as well. When I was about 15, I came to the conclusion that Satan didn’t need to read our thoughts to tell what our patterns of behavior were, and that it wouldn’t be rocket science to plot someone’s downfall that way. I came to the conclusion that since humans were still human-ing (and feeding the Satan information mill), what I had been taught wasn’t accurate.
I had a grandmother/grandson duo get baptized while I was on my mission. The most spiritual, active priesthood holder in the branch exorcised them before giving them the Gift of the Holy Ghost. I was pretty speechless due to shock, and 20+ years later, I am still not sure what to make of it.
Met the devil on my mission. Old guy on the street came up to me, knew stuff about me he couldn’t have known, laughed, was creepy, and told us Satan was choking him while he struggled for breath. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
The AMCAP (Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists, now LDS) journal in Jan. 1984 ran an article called “Confrontation and Rejection of an Evil Spirit in a Therapy Session” by Wesley W. Craig. I found it in pdf form years ago. It’s an interesting read and goes with the times it was written. I grew up in the PNW to convert parents and we had some talk of spirits, and how they play a part of the adversary’s plan. Went on my mission in the Philippines some twenty years ago and served among a people who believe in spirits and angels, good and bad, have an impact in their daily lives. It is a different mentality then we have in the West, one I think that is rejected by this society at large. I had quite a few experiences with things I can’t explain then, some of which I can explain now, some I can’t to this day. I lean towards thinking their is indeed something supernatural transposed above the natural world we see and find ourselves in with our everyday reality, some things which can be explained in LDS theology, some I have yet to find an answer for; maybe that is the part of the “still yet to be revealed.” We’ll see.
I came across a book at BYU titled “Saints of Sage & Saddle – Folklore Among the Mormons” by a husband and wife team named Fife. It was the first deep dive I did into Mormon folklore. It is wonderful. I had heard some bits and pieces of a few of the stories before, some in different versions or forms, but I believe it captures the essence of Mormons’ collective memory and belief on the these type of matters. I was also deeply affected by reading and studying Parley P Pratt’s the Key to the Science of Theology, specifically chapters 12 and 13. I really do think the book is one of the most beautifully written and full produced by a member. I wish we would study that in our second hour then the latest general conference. I die a bit more inside everytime I sit through one of those lessons these days.
I served a mission in Brazil in the early 2000s and while I never performed an exorcism, I knew elders that had. The culture of Brazil (at least at that time) contained all the superstition North Americans inherited from European folklore and Catholicism plus a much heavier dose of Indigenous and African spiritualist and animist influences. So I taught investigators who had “spirits in the garage” and who had demonic visitations while reading the BoM (that one was hard to address).
One elder had an episode of what in hindsight I’m pretty sure was just sleep paralysis, but he described it as Satan attacking him. In his defense, Joseph Smith’s first vision possession sounds a lot like the symptoms of sleep paralysis. But this episode had a bad effect on mission morale. If Satan can randomly possess any hardworking, worthy elder, then who is safe?
Churches in Brazil also included a great many of the more charismatic variety and we heard tales of speaking in tongues and plenty of exorcisms in those congregations. I’ve seen enough of that in the States as well to believe that the average person is capable of sort of role-playing against their will in the right circumstances, possessed if you will by a corner of their imagination deployed for the purposes of going along with the in-group. And that would explain just as many exorcisms as what we would today describe as mental illness.
When I came out I had a old missionary companion reach out to tell me that I had was possessed by a lady devil and that’s why as a guy I’m attracted to men.
Crazy. Can’t make this stuff up.