Practices
Exorcism
Purificatory Practices
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Origin Attested independently in Mesopotamian, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Chinese and African tradition
The expulsion of a spirit, demon or unclean presence held to have taken hold of a person, a place or an object, performed by someone claiming the authority to command it. The Catholic form is regulated: possession must first be distinguished from illness, the exorcist is appointed by the bishop, and the revised rite of 1999 requires medical and psychiatric consultation. Pentecostal and charismatic deliverance ministry is far less formal and very much more common, often conducted by lay people in ordinary church settings and sometimes in front of a congregation. Islamic ruqya recites Quranic verses over the afflicted; Jewish tradition has the dybbuk and rites for expelling it; Daoist, Buddhist, Hindu and West African practice each have their own procedures, as do the possession religions in which spirits are welcomed rather than driven out. The traditions agree on almost nothing except the premise that a person can be occupied by something that is not themselves.
Facts
Practice
Category of PracticeExorcism, the ritual expulsion of a possessing spirit, is formally provided for in the Roman Catholic Rite of Exorcism, which restricts its formal use to trained clergy acting with explicit episcopal permission. 2 Who Performs ItTrained or authorised specialists 1 Practitioner DetailSourced to the subject's own accountCatholic practice requires an ordained priest to perform a formal exorcism under the Rituale Romanum; Orthodox Christianity trains all priests in exorcism, particularly as part of the baptismal rite rather than as a separate specialist role. 3 FrequencyAs the occasion requires 1 Solitary or CommunalPerformed by an officiant for a recipient 1 Origins
Origin PeriodAttested independently in Mesopotamian, Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Chinese and African tradition 1 Origin Period Status
Status Within the TraditionTraditions vary widely in method and authority but converge on one shared premise, that a person, place or object can be occupied by a spirit, demon or presence that is not itself, which is the doctrinal common ground beneath otherwise very different rites. 4 Current StatusSourced to the subject's own accountRequests for exorcism rose roughly 50 percent in the United States between the early 1960s and the mid 1970s after an earlier 18th century decline, and reporting from the United Kingdom describes rising numbers as of 2017, concentrated in charismatic and Pentecostal churches and in some West African immigrant communities. 3 Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 4 Evidence
Basis of the EvidenceSourced to the subject's own accountDemonic possession is not a diagnosis recognized by the DSM-5 or the ICD-10; symptoms historically attributed to possession, among them hysteria, psychosis, epilepsy and schizophrenia, are today understood within psychiatry as mental illness, and exorcism's apparent effect in some cases is attributed to placebo response and the power of suggestion. 3 Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly NoteSourced to the subject's own accountThe Catholic form of exorcism is tightly regulated: possession must first be distinguished from illness, the exorcist is appointed by the bishop, and the revised rite of 1999 requires medical and psychiatric consultation, while Pentecostal and charismatic deliverance ministry is far less formal and much more common, often conducted by lay people in ordinary church settings. 5 Learn More
Casting Out
Exorcism is the practice of expelling evil spirits, demons or malign supernatural influences from a person, place or object believed to be possessed or afflicted by them, usually through ritual command, prayer, or the invocation of a higher divine power. It rests on a widespread belief that human beings can be inhabited or oppressed by hostile unseen forces, and that trained specialists, drawing on the authority of God or the sacred, can compel those forces to depart. The practice is found across an enormous range of cultures and religions, from the spirit-mediums and healers of many traditional societies to the formal rites of the major world religions, and its forms vary from gentle prayer to dramatic confrontation.
Common elements recur widely: the identification of the possessing entity, often by name; the assertion of authority over it in the name of a greater power; the use of sacred words, objects and gestures; and the command to leave. The exorcist typically claims no power of their own but acts as the agent of a divine authority before which the spirit must yield.
From the Gospels to the Modern Rite
In Christianity, exorcism has a direct scriptural basis: the Gospels present Jesus casting out demons as a central part of his ministry and a sign of the inbreaking of God's reign, and depict him giving his followers authority to do the same in his name. From this the early church developed a ministry of exorcism, and the office of exorcist became one of the minor orders. The Roman Catholic Church retains a formal Rite of Exorcism, revised in recent times, which may be performed only by a priest with the express permission of the bishop and only after careful investigation has excluded natural explanations, including psychiatric illness, a caution the church now stresses heavily. The Eastern Orthodox and many Protestant and Pentecostal traditions also practise deliverance from evil spirits, in forms ranging from the highly regulated to the spontaneous.
Outside Christianity, rites for expelling harmful spirits are widespread: Islam has the practice of ruqyah, the reciting of Qur'anic verses over the afflicted; Judaism preserves traditions concerning the expulsion of a dybbuk, a clinging spirit of the dead; and many other traditions maintain their own. The practice sits at a much-debated boundary with medicine and psychology, and the tension between attributing affliction to spirits and to mental or physical illness, and the real harms that can follow when the two are confused, is a recurring concern both within the religious traditions and in their encounter with modern secular understanding.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Kept in the Armenian Apostolic Church. Prayers of exorcism belong to the baptismal rite, and the Coptic and Ethiopian churches maintain a living deliverance ministry outside it.
Kept in the Church of Cyprus, autocephalous since the Council of Ephesus in 431. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.
Kept in the Church of Greece. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.
Kept in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Prayers of exorcism belong to the baptismal rite, and the Coptic and Ethiopian churches maintain a living deliverance ministry outside it.
Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.
Kept in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the see of first honour among the Orthodox churches. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.
Kept in the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Prayers of exorcism belong to the baptismal rite, and the Coptic and Ethiopian churches maintain a living deliverance ministry outside it.
Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Prayers of exorcism belong to the baptismal rite, and the Coptic and Ethiopian churches maintain a living deliverance ministry outside it.
Kept in the Georgian Orthodox Church, which has used its own language and script in worship since the fifth century. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.
Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.
Prayers of exorcism belong to the baptismal rite, and the Coptic and Ethiopian churches maintain a living deliverance ministry outside it.
Simple exorcism belongs to the rite of baptism itself, and the solemn form is reserved to a priest holding the express permission of his bishop.
Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.
Kept in the Russian Orthodox Church, in the Slavonic recension of the Byzantine books. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.
Kept in the Serbian Orthodox Church. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.
Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.
Held Differently
Deliverance from witchcraft, sorcery and ancestral affliction is central to the prophet healing churches, and the readiness to take those afflictions seriously is a large part of why these churches grew.
Deliverance ministry is prayed over a person by members of a congregation, commonly lay members, rather than performed by an appointed exorcist under a reserved rite, and it addresses ordinary affliction as well as possession.
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source 3. Exorcism (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026on the documented rise in exorcism requests, its absence from the DSM-5 and ICD-10, and the comparative officiant requirementView the Source 4. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source 5. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition
Holy See, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997the holders' own accountView the Source Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church
Isabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator), Houghton Mifflin, 1906View the Source The Holy Bible
Anonymous (multiple authors), Robert Barker, 1611Mark 5:1-13View the Source The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel
Felicitas D. Goodman, Doubleday, 1981On the 1975-76 case and the 1978 convictions for negligent homicide
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