Category: Isis Unveiled, Volume II: H. P. Blavatsky (1877)

"We do not pretend to give the questions and answers literally, for they occupy twenty-three pages; but the substance is here, as may be seen by anyone who cares to read the Golden Legend. The full description of the hideous bellowings of the demons, their enforced glorification of the saint, and so on, is too [...]

"Following is the colloquy between the "blessed exorcist" and the demons: Question - How did you take possession of this man, and how many are you? Answer of the Devils - We came into him for having spoken disrespectfully of the rosary. We are 15,000. Question - Why did so many as 15,000 enter him? [...]

"Before leaving the subject, let us give one or two more instances from the Chronicles of the Lives of the Saints, selected from such narratives as are fully accepted by the Church. We might fill volumes with proofs of undeniable confederacy between the exorcisers and the demons. Their very nature betrays them. Instead of being [...]

"Having conceded so much, we will now ask of any impartial person; is it possible to believe at the same time that the power given to the exorcist-priest, that supreme and divine power of which he boasts, has been given to him by God for the purpose of deceiving people? That the prayer pronounced by [...]

"We fancy that it would be hard to demonstrate to satisfaction that the visions of Catholic saints, are, in any one particular instance, better or more trustworthy than the average visions and prophecies of our modern "mediums". The visions of Andrew Jackson Davis - however our critics may sneer at them - are by long [...]

"The story of the prince Radzivil is well known. It was the undeniable deception of the monks and nuns surrounding him and his own confessor which made the Polish nobleman become a Lutheran. He felt at first so indignant at the "heresy" of the Reformation spreading in Lithuania, that he traveled all the way to [...]

"We beg the reader to note well the underlined sentence, as we mean to test its truth impartially. We are prepared to adduce proofs, undeniable and undenied even by the Popish Church - forced, as she was, into the confession - proofs of hundreds of cases in relation to the most solemn of her dogmas, [...]

"And now we will quote in this connection the truthful remark of a writer who passed years in India in the study of the origin of such superstitions: "Vulgar magic in India, like a degenerated infiltration, goes hand-in-hand with the most ennobling beliefs of the sectarians of the Pitris. It was the work of the [...]

"Who was it then that taught the exorcist? The priest who clothes himself with an authority not only over the magician, but even over all these "spirits", whom he calls demons and devils as soon as he finds them obeying anyone but himself? He must have learned somewhere from someone that power which he pretended [...]

"We have already noticed the confession of an eminent prelate that the elimination of Satan from theology would be fatal to the perpetuity of the Church. But this is only partially true. The Prince of Sin would be gone, but sin itself would survive. If the Devil were annihilated, the Articles of Faith and the [...]