Anthropologist Felicitas Goodman wrote The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel and the book How About Demons? Possession and Exorcism in the Modern World. Dr. Goodman was convinced that Anneliese was a victim of demonic possession, most likely brought about by a curse rumored to be placed on Anneliese prior to birth solicited and paid for by a woman jealous of Anneliese’s mother. Goodman said that in her experience, nearly all these kinds of possessions were the result of a powerful curse placed by powerful practitioners of the dark arts. Anneliese was a gentle, kind, intelligent, thoughtful individual who seemed like the last person on Earth to “deserve” what happened to her. So much so, in fact, that she and her family came to believe that her plight and suffering were somehow sacrificial and for the benefit of others. Because otherwise, it didn’t make sense to them. Dr. Goodman noted that in Haiti, it is believed that an exorcism will succeed only if the exorcist is more powerful than the one placing the curse. Was this the case with Anneliese as well? Did the exorcisms fail, and Anneliese died because the priests were not as “powerful” as the one who placed the curse? What can Creator tell us?

The issue of who wins out, and why, when caregivers are brought in to deal with paranormal phenomena can become quite complicated and governed by many nuances little understood or appreciated, even by open-minded seekers familiar with spirit phenomena, but still mired in outdated perspectives and simplistic notions of how to navigate and bring a successful resolution of spirit-caused problems. It is quite true that curses have psychic power. The power of consciousness is real and, when focused on evil intentions, can be harmful to an intended victim. In fact, spirit meddlers can see such energies and follow them to their target and, to the extent a curse causes a breach in the protective energetic aura surrounding a living human being, spirit meddlers can use an attacking curse as a way to gain entry and take up residence. So what is going on here is to reckon with the problem of thought forms, a body of consciousness launched by a practitioner of the black arts, in this case, which becomes corded to the intended victim energetically, providing a direct pathway and an energetic circuit in that sense. That cording can be reinforced through repetition of the curses to build the energy, with respect to intensity and duration of its power and influence, and this will embolden and further empower spirit meddlers to pile on and join the party, so to speak. The problem becomes one of strategy in how best to deal with such situations. The most powerful way is to partner with the divine realm to work on the issue, but even with such help there are limits, because of the rules of engagement in what the divine realm can negate directly, because of the free will of all soul-based beings to use their energies as they please. So while launching a curse is an act of wrongdoing, that cannot necessarily be summarily blocked or removed without some finesse to do so in a lofty way that provides an alternative to honor the free will through a kind of rebalancing of things to lessen the incentive for a negative outcome, and only by doing so can the dark energy of the curse be transmuted to something neutral or even positive. Both strategies are quite commonly used by the divine realm to deal with such things, but this can take time to arrange. So there are many complexities in dealing with evildoers, whether living or in spirit form but bent on causing harm. Usually, the acts of evil are done first and have a significant head start in the ability to cause harm before a resolution can be devised and implemented and gain power and effectiveness over time. So there will be many situations where quite a struggle ensues in trying to help people under the control of evildoers. That does not reflect on the truth of the divine but simply the complexity of the energetics, especially in having to follow rules of engagement and stay within specific limits on energetic reach by the divine realm.