In ancient times people were sometimes possessed by gods. They were called “prophets” and they gained a breed of knowledge hidden from most other people. Demons were believed to exist, but they did not possess people. Instead, demons were used as explanations for misfortune, whether malevolently premeditated or not. Demons reflect, in today’s society, the concept of pure evil. Fr. Vincent Lampert, one of America’s 24 official exorcists, visited Montclair State last night to discuss evil, and according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger, he believes evil is a reflex of how people treat one another more often than a “figure with the hooves and horns.” No doubt there is a public fascination with demons, but few people understand their religious pedigree or what other explanations may be used to categorize them. According to the paper, Italy claims 300 exorcists – demonstrating that demons show culturally determined characteristics.

The 2005 movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose, lays out how science and religion differ on the issue of the demonic. Anneliese Michel, a young German woman, died in 1976 after being subjected to a prolonged treatment of exorcism. Her story was the “inspiration” for the film, and it raises the question of the reality of the demonic in the physical world. Fr. Lampert is more circumspect, noting that real life exorcisms are not as dramatic as those shown in the movies. He does, however, recall having seen a person levitate, but not during an exorcism. The human behavior he’s seen while on duty may all be readily explained by mundane physical and mental phenomena.

What does seem certain in all of this is that demons are not the behooved and behorned antagonists of films like Constantine or countless other graphic-novelesque portrayals of evil. Their Pan-based characteristics hearken back to the days when Christianity had to make plain its dismissal of foreign gods. In the ancient world hooves and horns were symbols of strength generally associated with powerful, if sometimes capricious, deities. In other words, what were one culture’s gods have become another culture’s demons. Movie makers understand the simultaneous revulsion and draw of the demonic character, but it seems that Fr. Lampert strives for a more balanced perspective. Evil has many faces, and most of them do not conform to Hollywood standards. Perhaps if all religions were respected demons would lose their power to torment and people would learn to get along with each other.