The mental (suggestive-telepathic) form of the influence of demons on a person (from the Latin mens – mind) is characterized by a direct impact on his consciousness, memory and spiritual feelings, and an impact that influences, first of all, intrapsychic processes. In this case, demons telepathically introduce mental, sound (speech, musical) or visual information into a person's consciousness, which can be transformed by his consciousness into abstract symbolic (usually false) images and ideas necessary for mental activity (often pathological). This form of influence leads, as a rule, to an autopsychic alienation of experiences, thoughts, and consciousness of one's own personality, and in some cases is expressed, according to the terminology of K. Gaug, as an allopsychic alienation of perceptions and ideas from the external world.

This form of demonic influence on people's souls can cause various hallucinations in a person: visual or auditory, obsessive thoughts and ideas, unjustified feelings of hostility or, on the contrary, inexplicable affection and trust. By such an influence, demons also cause in people feelings of pathological fear, or inhuman malice, despondency, hopelessness, despair or, conversely, unjustified emotional enthusiasm. By influencing memory, they can remove from memory (amnesize - psychiatrist) entire blocks of information about past events or knowledge necessary for a person to save the soul. They can partially or completely suppress the will of a person and lead him to a split personality up to complete depersonalization.

Very often, demons cause a short-term shutdown of the consciousness of a person (absence-psychiatrist) sitting behind the wheel. A few seconds are quite enough for an accident to occur, or, for example, they inspire the driver with an irresistible desire to overtake at the most risky moment, which, as a rule, ends in a disaster and the death of people. Observations show that a significant number of accidents occur due to precisely this demonic influence. At the same time, prayerful appeal to God, even in the most extreme situations, often frees a person from demonic influence and saves life under the threat of seemingly inevitable death.

Among the visual hallucinations caused by the influence of demons directly on the visual cortex of the brain is the case described in the life of St. Macarius the Great (300-390). It tells about the curse inflicted by a sorcerer on a chaste Christian wife (or rather, on the people around her) at the request of a man whose advances she indignantly rejected. Having failed to evoke in a pious woman a reciprocal prodigal passion for the "customer" with the help of sorcery, the sorcerer forced the demons to create a hallucinatory image of a horse in the minds of everyone who looked at the woman (pseudo-hallucinations in extraprojection – psychiatrist). Thus, the husband, coming home, instead of his own wife, saw a mare on the bed. To his credit, he immediately invited the priests to the house, guessing that what had happened to his wife had a spiritual background, and did not doubt that it was his wife who was in front of him, and not a horse at all, as any modern atheist would believe. However, by God's permission, even the priests fell under the demonic influence and saw a horse instead of a woman.27 Remembering the great Egyptian ascetic, the Monk Macarius, the husband, putting on a bridle, led his wife-horse into the wilderness. The monks, indignant at his desire to enter the monastery with the horse, did not let him in and reported to the Monk Macarius, that a certain man had brought a horse to him. At the same time, they said, the man assures that it is not a horse, but his wife. "You yourselves," answered Macarius, who had already received God's revelation about this woman, "are like animals, since your eyes see the image of a beast. As she was created by a woman, she remains one, and has not changed human nature, but only appears to your animal eyes, deceived by magic charms."

The monk blessed the water and with a prayer poured it on the woman, thereby driving away from her the demons, who transmitted the information they needed directly to the visual cortex of the brain of the people around her. And immediately after that, everyone saw a woman in front of them instead of a horse. "This has happened to thee," said the monk, "because five weeks have passed since thou hast not communed of the Divine Mysteries." Having instructed the husband and wife to partake of Christ's Holy Mysteries more often, he dismissed them in peace.28

The sensory (sensory-energetic) form of demons' influence is aimed almost exclusively at the sensory-perceptual (sensory-perceiving) sphere of man. Of course, we cannot penetrate into the details of the "mechanism" of such influence. But it is logical to assume that the fallen angels excite specific parts of the cerebral cortex (taste, tactile and olfactory analyzers), which creates a false impression of irritation of the receptor fields of this or that part of the body or its organ.

As a result of such influence, a person has false sensations that have no physiological basis, for example, various forms of senestopathy (painful sensations of pain), as well as autometamorphopsia (distorted perception of the shape and size of one's own body), parageusia (gustatory hallucinations), allotriosmia (olfactory illusions and hallucinations), and so on.

Why do deceptive sensations occur? The human brain cannot distinguish between impulses received from the receptors of one's own body (arising from any mechanical, chemical, or other objective influence) and false sensations provoked by demons. Thus, receiving false sensory information from demons through the analyzers of their own brain, a person's consciousness will absolutely realistically feel something that does not and cannot actually exist. It is this mechanism, in our opinion, that underlies almost all deceptions of the senses described and studied by psychopathology. To this form of the influence of demons on a person we also include some phenomena of psychic automatism, in particular, motor-volitional automatism (G. Clérambault, 1930), as well as various distortions of the sense of time and space.

With the help of such an influence, demons can cause a variety of painful symptoms in a person in the absence of the disease itself, as well as physical weakness and excessive fatigue, the explanation of which doctors cannot find, despite the most careful research and analysis. In the same way, demons are able, for example, to completely deprive a person of appetite, sharply increase body temperature or blood pressure, thereby causing a stroke or heart attack, sometimes leading to death. I personally know of a case of a sudden and seemingly causeless mastopathy of an 85-year-old woman. This happened on the eve of the pilgrimage of her relatives to the Alexander Svirsky Monastery. Assuming the spiritual nature of an illness unnatural for a woman of this age, the confessor blessed her daughter to read the troparion to St. Alexander of Svir and the akathist to the Martyr Tryphon every few hours. These prayers for two days allowed the woman to get rid of all the symptoms of a serious illness that required long treatment (swollen, purple breasts, temperature of about 40 degrees).

Very often, by influencing the orgastic pleasure centers located in the hypothalamus and cerebral cortex, demons cause specific sexual sensations. With the help of such long-term influences on these centers, they manage to make sexual maniacs out of people (erotomaniacs - psychiatrists). Moreover, in some cases, demons even achieve a perversion (perversion - psychiatrist) of the natural sexual instinct, generating, for example, an irresistible attraction to persons of the same sex (homosexuality), as well as such inconceivable perversions as sadism, masochism, exhibitionism, visionism, voyeurism, servility, incest, pedophilia, necromancy, coprophagy, and so on. It should be especially noted that it is perversions and perversions (deviations from socially accepted sexual norms) that are the best and most universal indicator of the highest degrees of a person's possession, when he becomes practically a puppet in the hands of fallen angels.

"CONSCIOUS"

AND "UNCONSCIOUS" SORCERERS

Earlier mention was made of the division of sorcerers into two distinct groups. Now let's consider each of them sequentially.