II.   Supernatural

Possession is the belief that a deity, god, spirit, demon or some other entity may temporarily inhabit the body of a higher order life form such as a Homo Sapien, resulting in noticeable changes in personality, knowledge, health and behaviour.

Noticeable changes in personality, knowledge, health and behaviour are believed to be key preconditions and proof of any alleged possession, excluding misdiagnosed or undiagnosed mental illness. This is in spite of the logical and reasonable conclusion that a “valid possession” by a certain entity could conceivably occur without any outward noticeable changes whatsoever.

The belief in possession is a common feature in the majority of ancient and contemporary Religions and Cults. The two most common forms of possession believed to exist are spirit possession and demonic possession.

As mind is awareness, there is nothing in Natural Law that precludes the possibility of possession other than the intrinsically strong bind between a mind and its brain and body. In all historic examples of genuine possession, such episodes have normally been temporary on account of the excessive amount of fatigue possession inflicts upon the possessing entity.

Historically a range of mental illnesses have been misdiagnosed as forms of possession including psychosis, hysteria, mania, tourette’s syndrome, epilepsy, schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder. This misdiagnosis of mental illness as possession continues in many poorly educated regions of the world, especially dominated by Cults.

The key emphasis and presumption that possession may be demonstrated by outward physical and behavioral signs of change, not only favors misdiagnosis of mental illness as possession in ignorant Cult dominated societies, but permits individuals in such societies to relatively easily feign outward signs of possession for wanted attention, notoriety or some other personal motive.

Evidence exists that certain Religions have developed sophisticated rituals to enable spirit possession and to test and determine genuine possession from fake possession, in particularly certain indigenous cultures.

Evidence exists that certain people have genuinely appeared to have been afflicted by possession of malevolent spirits. However, in almost all cases such spirits appear to be a vengeful or negative spirit of a man or woman pretending to be demonic, rather than any genuine ancient arch-demon. This is evidenced by the general ignorance of knowledge, history, language and genuine occult of such possessing entities and their predilection for stereotypical Cult dogma.

The forced removal of any unwanted or malevolent spirit possession is most frequently called exorcism. The significance of the ritual most often is associated with the culture of belief of all participants. The more ignorant and influenced by Cults, often the more theatrical the ritual of exorcism in antithesis to the deliberate theatrical display of fake possession.