Possessions? Why?

Until I had a possession experience where the possessed priest of my religion, Kemetic Orthodoxy, stepped aside and allowed Sekhmet to come through and talk about a very specific experience that no one within the religion or even online knew about, I doubted whether or not possession was real or if my Sekhmet would show up at the ceremony.

Having a deity you've known for years show up and know instantly that they are the one you've known, and have them speak to something no one could have known about? It's pretty mindblowing. All of the possessions I've witnessed in KO have solidified my belief in it as a real thing; it's not a mental illness.

Just because you do not believe in spirits, Brysing, does not mean they are not real. We cannot prove or disprove their existence, but we also cannot deny that *every* culture in humanity has had some form of work with incorporeal entities (even if we don't believe in what they did).

It is one thing to say that people should not state their belief as fact, but an entirely different thing to say that their belief is not real simply because you don't believe. It gets everyone nowhere, fast.

I agree fully with both you Eiss and Neb. I have even have my own personal experiances with possession, I find it to be a beautiful thing when experianced. I find it also not to be a mental illness.

One thing I must also mention is that even if you do not believe in spirits, or even if you do, there are also other valid explanations for the spiritual phenomena than mere schizophrenia.

It's a form of invocation, some magicians believe that invocation awake certain facets of consciousness within ourselves which arise from the deep unconscious mind to the conscious and the egoic consciousness steps back temporarily allowing these facets of consciousness to take hold: this is in the extreme case of invocation.

I won't say my own thoughts on the matter because they will most likely be shot down by theists and atheists alike.

Do I believe most demonic posessions are mental illness? Of course.

But willed posession/invocation is a valid magical practice, I have the belief that one cannot be truly possessed, or at least is unlikely to be, unless they are willing for it to happen. I also think that many people do fool themselves with psychological tricks akin to the placebo effect, however, I can't deny the fact that possession as a religious act is carried out by normal, mentally healthy individuals, and that they live normal lives outside of those rituals. Someone with mental illness which is untreated cannot do that, which suggests what is going on in these cases is something else.

I agree with Hadit about the psychological and placebo effect. There are many cases of this, such as the Stigmata appearing on the hands and feet of devout Nuns. But that cannot really be called "possession".