Preparing for an Exorcism
I had an exorcism performed on me. Now I'm ready to talk about it. [Part 1 of 3]
As 2024 moved in to 2025, I was house-sitting for my personal mentor David Cordes while he was in Poland. With just two dogs and two cats to keep me company as January 1st hit, it proved to be an emotionally-challenging time for me. I was struggling heavily with my finances, unsure if I could complete my commitments with Anarchapulco and even survive beyond that. I found a swirl of nasty thoughts and self-limiting belief systems echoing around my head endlessly, seemingly amplified as each day turned to the night. I was seeing no way of resolving my strife and feeling disconnected from those who might have an insight. It was horrible.
In a desperate frenzy, I took some thick twine from the outside garage and made my way into the attic, with some vision of hanging myself from the rafters. Nothing of the sort happened, but I sat there in the attic for a while, my feet dangling down into the opening. Eventually I made my way back down and crashed into sleep from the mental exhaustion.
David returned a few days later, at around 4am. He immediately noticed the latch for the attic opening and the ladder slightly out-of-place (his perceptiveness is one of the things that has made him such a great mentor) and challenged me with a forceful tone on whether I had been up into the attic. My invitations at delaying the explanation with replies of “it’s personal” and “let’s talk about it after sleeping” were declined. Full of agony and tension, I told him the truth, and his eyes looked into me as if he actually saw what was going on. It was the first time I remember anyone looking at me like that.
I don’t remember if it was that night or the following morning that he told me he’d seen a demon within me in that moment. I’d never used that language in attempting to understand what was within me, and yet it felt so apt and fitting. So many times in my past it felt like I was conversing directly with another entity within my head in trying to silence my negative thoughts, whether in response to rejection in the playground, when I felt compelled to run away from home one night in my teenage years, or when I tortured myself for “going along” with what was expected of me in Dental School even when I knew better.
For the first time, I felt like I had a better sense of what was happening to me. He made a promise to me that we would get this demon out of me through an exorcism - something he had done once before in his life. I knew it needed to happen, and did my best to hold tight until the right opportunity came around.
I grew up in a non-religious household. My dad, although raised a Christian in the early portion of his life, moved away from that religion after believing his nan (my great-grandmother) died unfairly before he moved into his teenage years, and that no benevolent God could ever take such a kind and loving soul away from him in such a manner. My mum has never spoken much about her relationship with higher powers, at least to my knowledge.
As such, I came to believe that Western science - as was promoted in schools and the societal structures around me - was the only path to comprehending the world around me. I did very well academically, including in science, and poured myself into all sorts of extracurricular and supercurricular studies outside of classes to pursue this further. This became a part of my motivation to train to be a dentist; I wanted to use the scientific knowledge I was acquiring in a practical way that I thought would help people tangibly.
Another part of my motivation was the perceived sense of security I saw in pursuing a degree with a 99% employment rate and regular work hours. Sitting with this now, it seems likely this need for “security” came from some innate understanding that the prevailing scientific mindset of the time was accurately answering all the questions I had about the world. Even before university, I’d already started listening to the likes of Jordan B Peterson and Konstantin Kisin and begun seeing how prevailing narratives in society - even ones that mask themselves as scientifically sound - could be inaccurate.
The tyranny of Covid, which kicked into gear during my first year of university studies, proved to be the catalyst that tore down the remaining castle walls. The god of Scientism had been defiled and removed from the altar of my mind. I began to appreciate how much of “science” was wrong, the relevance of energy, frequency and ancient wisdom, the falsification of history and, ultimately, how there were divine powers at play.
This opened the door for another conception of where my individual agency and purpose came from. A big moment for me in this was in reading Carl Jung’s memoirs (Memories, Dreams and Reflections) and in how he found God in appreciating the design and beauty of nature, rather than through scripture - something that highly resonated with me. This still rings true today. My belief in God (and, as we will get to in a subsequent piece, angels and Christ) have their foundations in my lived experiences. I am not a Christian, nor do I prescribe to any other organised religion or denomination of faith. I suspect all of those threads are simply attempts to tell the stories of those who have attempted to bring the power of God into the matrix we inhabit. And too, I am certain many of them have been laced and subverted with false information and narratives designed to corrupt whatever pure intention they may have once had. Especially after my experience with an exorcism, I suspect this is ultimately Satanic in nature. My conception of God is also completely congruent with many native and indigenous cultures seeing God as divine energy as well as other spiritual practises around the world.
I believe it was this development in my life that prepared my body and soul in a way that I could let go of the entity I would later see within me, and that had been working in the shadows up until this point. I may not have felt qualified to deal with it fully - and I didn’t need to. God does not call the qualified, he qualifies the called.
In November 2025, I went on a private retreat in Costa Rica as part of a container of individuals who had worked with David. The theme of the retreat was “A Third Way”, where we would explore what it meant to step out of tribalism and fake binaries across every area of our lives in order to create a more harmonious world around us.
The main bulk of the retreat was comprised of individual experiences for each of the participants involved, with contributions and space-holding by the other members of the retreat during that process. What this process was, exactly, rose organically based on what had been alive for them coming into the retreat and where there were narratives and pieces from their past where they were still “stuck”. In some ways, I was an exception to this, as me and David discussed in advance that my work would be the exorcism he had promised me at the beginning of the year. In other ways, it was no different to the other participants; neither me or him had any idea what this process would look like. That was okay. One of my other reasons for holding David as my mentor is his ability to tune in intuitively to the needs of the moment and act accordingly. Sure, I was terrified of what might happen, but at the same time I knew I would be safe in the hands of David and in the hands of the container.
The demon began to come online in the lead-up to the exorcism. I had a shower shortly before it began and looked at myself in the fogged-up mirror as I came out. Only, it wasn’t me. The image in the mirror morphed. The face that confronted me was jet-black, with a dark aura around it attempting to shape itself in a sketch of this demon I’d made a few weeks ago that I’d binned out of fear and fright. I found the light energy within me that I needed to temporarily contain it, and made my way down to the yoga shala where we had been conducting the inner work of the retreat.
It was necessary that a majority of the participants had already completed their processes before my time in the spotlight came. It made sure enough of the participants who needed to hold space for me had already gone through an emotional cleansing so that that they could effectively bring their light into my process. I am certain I would not be here writing these reflections now if that had not been the case. If my experience has taught me anything, it’s that it absolutely takes a village to confront and expel demons, and I could not be more grateful for the support they provided.
I will showcase exactly why this was the case in the follow-up to this piece.
Thank you all for making the time to read this. I invite you to share your experiences with me on what those ideas of “demons” and “exorcism” mean to you, and if anything has shifted as a result of you reading this pieces.
I look forward to bringing you more soon.
With gratitude,
Tom
Find subsequent instalments in this series below:
Thank you for the courage to share your journey, Tom. It was an honour to be a part of it. 🙏💙
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Tom,
To me...
Tribalism, as in a cultural theme of "we're great" (and the unspoken "and they're not") is how I understand the failed attempt to be human by building community.
I see both demons and angels, that is, both the devilish personifications of evil as well as the heavenly hosts of the Kingdom of Heaven, such as saints and angels, as extensions of good and bad relation.
I see the *things* we give names to and relate to as secondary, like the label on a jar of pickles. I see the *relation* as primary, like the pickles in the jar, which may be labeled, sincerely and truthfully, in many different ways. I notice that labels, like various religious creeds, do not affect the thing labeled.
My religion, even when it is atheism, is at best like such a label, or perhaps like a finger attempting to point at the moon. It's the moon that matters, not the finger.
"Deliver us from evil" might as well be "remove the (d)evil from us." Same natural law, different language.
The road upward and the road downward are one and the same road. My better angels help prevent me from backsliding or help turn me around as necessary.
One more image,
(a la Dr. Quan Le):
My better angels hand me the reins of the two horses of my self actualizing chariot. The two horses are Fear and Greed.
BTW
When I hear you being labeled as an Irish Leprechaun, I don't think of the crude political implications, but rather an image of your poetic intentions as a whimsical angel of goodness and light.
Keep shining.
mark spark
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