Discovering Evil
Personal Encounters of a Non-Believer

Quite often people contact me for help as they claim they have been feeling like they were haunted or possessed by other entities that enter their bodies and instruct them how to think or act. These people often feel baffled, vulnerable, and desperate; in most cases they are what we call regular people, with no necessarily religious or spiritual backgrounds. They want to know: Are they making it up? Is it real? How can we know for certain? Did they allow it to happen to themselves? Do they bring it upon themselves and are responsible for this invasion? Do they act up their traumas? These are all valid questions. I learned to never contest their stories and experiences, as I believe that every personal experience is valid and real, and for my clients it is for sure a reality, seen or unseen by me, they have to deal with.

From ancient mythology found in all spiritual traditions and from stories passed from generation to generations, we hear accounts of individuals whose bodies and spirits were overtaken by bad or evil spirits. Sometime these negative energy forces can be felt imprinted in geographical locations where humans performed harmful acts on others. In my own Jewish tradition, there are two universal opposing forces of good and evil, God and Satan, which are also ingrained in the Hebrew language. God’s name is SHaDDaI, and the word for evil being is SHEDD, which omits the letter I (Yud) which symbolizes God. This is similar to English were if you just reverse the word EVIL you get the word LIVE.

“Satra Achra”

My great-grandfather, a well-known Tzaddik (Righteous) Kabbalistic Rabbi Mordechi Zundel Margolis from Kolono, Poland, devoted his life to the war with the “Satra Achra,” the Aramaic phrase for “Other Side.” He claimed that in the war between dark and light forces, the dark ones wanted to divert him from the righteous path.

He said: “When God created the world, he created it with the option for people to choose between good and bad. The good is the choice to follow God’s ways and the bad is the option to create distance from God and go after all kinds of strange earthly passions. Inside us we have our soul, which is our truest and purest manifestation. The soul wants us to live in tune with it, to be with God and do good deeds.

“On the other side, God created bad forces that exist outside the human being. Their goal is to force a person to behave in opposite ways to his true soul, to be bad. These forces are called Satra Achra, or the Other Side. It is the opposite of the good side. These forces try to darken the world from God’s light. They consistently try to make a person choose between the bad over the good. It is important to note that a person has the power to choose the good. The bad forces are created so people can realize their inner powers. When we control the bad, we create happiness in the upper worlds, and the light of happiness will then come to the lower worlds.”

Ways to Understand Evil Spirit Possession

Before I had a personal dramatic encounter with these forces, I tended to look at them from a psychological or even so-called “New Age” approach. I thought evil was illusionary and exists only because humans believe in its existence. I followed an approach that said spirits are neither good nor bad, benevolent nor malevolent but can be so because of the projections of the mind. According to this approach evil is a state of mind and the key to deal with it is the power to change the mind by achieving a higher awareness and consciousness through various breathing or meditation techniques. Or evil can be diffused by using positive imagery and energy words only and avoiding words that have negative connotations. Another view suggests that evil and suffering present themselves in order for us to learn and heal our Karma or life lessons. In this way bad and evil spirits are our teachers.

Ayahuasca Spirit Talking

I have been going to the Ecuadorian and Brazilian Amazon almost yearly for fifteen years to learn from South American shamans. It was there a few years ago on the bank of one of the Rio Negro tributaries in the Brazilian Amazon, I took part in a sacred ayahuasca ceremony led by a Pishuna tribal elder. As the ceremony began, I heard sweet angelic sounds and then saw sweet-looking spirits hovering above me. “This time it will be an easy ceremony,” I happily thought. After awhile, those sweet spirits asked me to convert to their religious teachings. I politely refused, asserting my atheistic upbringing from the kibbutz where I was raised. But they kept sweet-talking me, promising salvation and all of my heart’s desires in return. I became suspicious. They kept trying to tempt me and promised, “If you follow our teachings, you will get what you want and become who you want to be.” I became agitated and we started to verbally wrestle with each other.

“It’s a trap, it’s a trap, it’s a trap!” I heard the ayahuasca spirit warn me.

“Don’t fall into the hands of evil. Look and see their real faces,” it whispered in my ear.

I looked up again and saw their authentic faces: they were dark and contorted. I was taken aback, and we began to argue again. They laughed acidly, saying in a superior fashion, “You can’t resist us, we rule millions of people around the world who follow us blindly!” We continued to wrestle for what seemed like a long time. At last, although I was totally exhausted, I found my inner power and declared as loud as I could, “I choose to follow the Light! I’d rather give up my life than join you!” They laughed at me again. Then I used all the energy I could muster to gather in the powers of light and thrust that energy toward them like a spear, over and over again, until they slowly receded, finally disappearing into the void.

I took a few deep breaths and looked up at the sky. Just in front of me a male figure, a spiritual teacher engulfed in bright light, became visible to me. He said sadly, “The universal evil forces took over our Hebrew spiritual teachings. They truly intend to conquer the world by deceit.” At that moment I felt an extraordinary beam of light and love streaming from me towards this humble and loving fellow man, a light that surrounded me too. “You are part of me,” he said kindly. My head started to clear and I began to hear the loud singing sounds of the cicadas and river toads filling the cooling night air. Finally, I let my body relax.

A Shamanic Approach

When I speak about evil spirits, I make a distinction between three types that are slightly different in manifestations, origins, and experience and which many times can run into each other. But, I believe they are distinctions that can be helpful in our shamanic work.

First, independent evil spirits come from a different realm than the one we live in and may take many forms, often of ghastly animal-like creatures. In the Tukano Amazonian language they are called Akuras or what we may think of as gargoyles. Another type are simply bad spirits that can appear in human form or shapeless and shapes-shifting energy forms. Sometimes these bad spirits are those of deceased people who were angry and frightened in their lives and died in those energies and continue to spread them. Often people who are angry because of their “untimely” death continue to spread a kind of angry energy. Lastly, there is bad energy that does not have a human appearance but is sent by humans to hurt each other, like curses, the evil eye, and jealousy. These energies can also be found in certain geographical locations like land, springs, mountains, cemeteries, battlegrounds, and homes where violent activities occurred.

Accepting the shamanic view that evil can be an independent force in the universe may seem primitive, uneducated, or a superstition from the old human past. But looking only for the light and not acknowledging the shadows and darkness is like denying the existence of night. One Amazonian tradition holds that several evil forces possess every person all the time. These can manifest as addiction, anger, sexual misdeeds, jealousy, lying, greed, stealing and so forth. These characteristics are believed to be caused by the intrusion of negative forces that can be removed by local shamans.

Some Modern Examples of Possession

In my workshops on Shamanic Self Defense participants tell personal stories about their own encounters with evil spirits in various forms. In my healing practice I encounter many clients who also suffer from some kind of possession. Here are some examples with the names changed to provide anonymity

Kathy, a professional in the world of finance, was hearing male voices that gave her misguided driving instructions, reprimanded her on her bad behavior, and sometime punished her by preventing her from obtaining the jobs she was applying for.

Helen, a young beautician, claimed she was possessed by an evil entity that caused very bad accidents for people she was in close contact with.

Mary, a filmmaker, had a right hand that shook uncontrollably which was caused by an evil intrusion.

Paul, an author, claimed he was possessed by evil spirits that resided in his stomach and told him to hurt himself and mutilate other people.

Jane claimed she was woken up at two in the morning to see a dark force in her bedroom which then proceeded to strangle her.

Brandon, a CEO for high-tech start-up company, encountered alien evil spirits during and after consuming ayahuasca.

Bruce, a practicing shaman, was having panic attacks due to the intrusions of negative spirits he absorbed during healing sessions with his clients.

John, was cursed by his father who from early age told him that he was stupid and that nothing good would ever grow from his hands.

Many people like these say that they feel engulfed by dark energy or a cloud that blocks them from moving on with their lives, that prevents them from getting new jobs or perusing their careers or finding the relationships they want.

What makes seemingly sophisticated, educated, ordinary people living in today’s highly sophisticated technology society and who are not necessarily interested in spiritual work, experience these kinds of phenomena, and seek the help of shamanic healers? Many of them gave up on finding answers or help from western medicine and psychiatrists. Some have been disappointed by the answers given by their religious teachers. When these ordinary sources do not reveal the source of their problems, they turn to shamanic healing as the last resort. From a shamanic perspective, as I understand it, there are symptoms of spirit possession and bad energies that can be detected in individuals and can also be found on a larger scale in political parties, corporations, and even in the spirit of an entire nation. In individuals, evil or bad spirit possession sometimes manifests in physical, emotional, and spiritual forms with symptom such as an inability to take charge of your life, feeling shackled by unseen forces, uncontrollable body shaking, dribbling mouths, opaque eyes, sweaty sticky palm, speaking in tongues, paranoia, hysteria, reality distortions, fainting with no apparent reason, sudden radical behavior changes, addictive behavior, soul loss, luck of empathy, scarcity, lack of reverence for universal oneness and unity and disrespect for the well-being of the earth. I don’t mean to imply that these are always evidence of possession, but I do find one or more of these symptoms in my clients who are possessed.

How to Detect Evil Spirits

I asked the late Ipupiara Makunaiman, the Brazilian shaman which I’ve studied with for twelve years, about the nature of evil. He looked me straight in the eye with his wise brown eyes and said. “It is hard to detect negative energy when it is not showing its real face, which often it does not because of its deceiving and shape-shifting nature. Many times it appears in forms of a force for good, love, and light. But evil or negative energy promotes suffering in others which sometimes they accept in return for temporary gain of money and power. It thrives on igniting fear, unleashing anger, creating separation and division, and calling for revenge. It creates helplessness and depression, mentally and economically. This heavy energy wants to slow things down and bring life to a stop. If not cleared, it seeps through our clothing and skin, into our mind, organs, and bones, resulting in sickness or even death.

“On the other hand, positive energy or light energy is easier to recognize because the forces of good tend not to harm anyone. They treat all beings with love, and equality and they show a reverence for Mother Earth. It is our role as shamans to remove negative energies and replace them with positive energies that restore health and balance to our clients’ lives.”

“But Ipupiara,” I asked him, “why do some people do evil things to others?” Ipupiara explained, “Some people do bad things not because they were born bad, no one is, but because of the negative energy of outside forces they can’t control.”

My First Akura Sighting

A petite young woman in her late twenties with a short fashionable haircut walked into my healing room for her first shamanic healing ceremony. “I am an actress and a playwright, but my creativity is blocked and I don’t know why! I need help; I don’t know what to do,” she said in despair.

I followed a diagnostic technique I learned from my Quechua teacher that is often used by shamans in the Andes to perceive the dark cloud of bad energy. I asked her to brush a candle all over her body. Then I lit it and proceeded to read the candle’s flame: “Fear and trauma,” I made a mental note. Looking at her palm I thought, “Still nothing out of the ordinary.” I asked her to stand, facing me, to start the limpia (cleansing ceremony). I took a mouthful of trago (sugar cane rum) and inhaled a big breath. Then, just as I was closing my eyes and getting ready to spray the energy-cleansing solution, I noticed a wicked-looking, black furry creature high above her, descending fast in her direction. I couldn’t believe my mind’s eye as I watched it attempt to clutch her in its sharp, long-nailed claws, huge monkey eyes popping out while it screamed through a crooked, eagle-like beak.

“What in the world is that?” I thought to myself, and more urgently, “What in the world should I do?” My intuition told me I had to find the warrior within, fight this creature and remove it, even though my training never prepared me for such a battle. But could I? I doubted myself. Improvising, I called my spirit guides for courage and protection and quickly used all the cleansing techniques in my arsenal: fire, smoke, rum, swords, spears, prayers, and threats. Finally, after what felt like a long time, I was able to kick most of it out through the crack under the door.

When the ceremony was over, my client’s posture had completely changed. She was now calm, relaxed and grounded—even smiling. “How do you feel?” I asked.

“Fine, lighter, and more energized,” she answered happily.

I, on the other hand, was exhausted and a bit in shock. We sat down and I shared what I had just seen and experienced. I asked if she would grant me permission to consult with my shaman mentor about what had happened. She readily agreed and after she closed the door behind her, I called Brazil.

Ipupiara’s mobile phone rang. “Olá!” my late mentor answered. “Ipu, I need your help!” I said desperately. He was in a canoe on the Rio Negro along with “by coincidence” master shaman Shoré from the Kannamarie tribe. “What’s the matter, Itzhak?” he asked, concerned. I described what had just happened. “Oh, don’t you know? That would be Akura! Everyone knows that,” he said dismissively in his Portuguese accent.

“Everyone?” I asked in disbelief. “Akura? You never mentioned that in all of the six years we’ve known one another.” He went on to explain that Akura means evil spirit in Tukano.

He paused, “Hold on.” I could hear him speaking with Shoré in the background. “Okay,” he said with authority. “Here is what you have to do. Write it down.” And he went on to prescribe a list of ceremonies to perform. “But also ask her if she likes the color green and if she has green plants in her home because Akuras hate anything that is green and alive. They feed on darkness and fear.”

My client agreed to the treatment. I asked her Ipupiara’s question. In a disgusted and curt voice she said, “I hate the color green. I never wear green clothes and never have plants in my home, since they all die anyway.”

This gave me goose bumps. “She is possessed. What did I get myself into?” I thought. I still doubted that I could succeed in getting rid of her Akuras.

We met the next night and after three subsequent sessions, following the two Amazonian elders’ instructions, her condition was completely reversed. She now wears and enjoys green cloth, grows plants at home, and more importantly, has moved on nicely with her creative career and got engaged to a wonderful supportive man.

Meeting the Wall Street Akura

Sometime evil energy that is intended to hurt someone can be passed and spread from one generation to the next. Michael, his fancy Armani suit and glasses giving him an aura of business authority and success, walked through my door one day. The diagnostic candle reading showed he was depressed and surrounded by strong heavy negative energies. “What do you do for a living?” I asked. “Oh, I was on Wall Street,” he said sheepishly.

“I was one of those tough sharks. I had everything: expensive cars, women, vacations, and I could afford everything my materialistic wife wanted. Then the financial crisis began and I was fired. My wife divorced me, and my world collapsed. I started asking myself who am I, why did this happen to me? I lost 100 pounds; I was over 340 at the time.”

“Were you abused as a child?” I asked, looking into the candle

“Oh, yes, mentally and physically. I was too ‘soft and sensitive’ and my father and two brothers constantly harassed me calling me sissy. I had to prove I could be more ruthless than them. And I did. I became a son-of-a-bitch, I cheated and lied, and I bullied everyone. I was greedy. I was possessed. I didn’t care, and I was good at it.” He lowered his eyes, looked to the side and quietly said, “I was eating compulsively.” And I thought: to hide and protect your true sensitive self.

“You know, Michael,” I said, ”the candle says you are a shaman, a teacher on a spiritual quest. I bet you see spirits too, is that right?” I asked.

”I do, but what does that say about what I’m supposed to do now?” And the big man across from me started crying, a deep heart wrenching cry. Finally, he let himself be reconnected to his lost, kind, and true soul. The evil energy that his father and brothers put on him in order to shame him and make him tough, Michael in turn used to harm others. But now that evil energy had finally left.

A Pain in the Groin

Joey, a heavy-set man in his mid- fifties, was obviously in awful pain when he came to see me. He was moaning and squealing from a pain that spread through his groin. He was hardly able to walk. His girlfriend, deeply worried about him, brought him by cab from Queens. Looking at the candle flame I detected the spirit of his deceased aunt. She was angry and vindictive. She said she hated his mother, and she took revenge by hurting her son. “Yes. It is true,” he said. “They were enemies, fighting all the time. She was consumed by jealousy as she never had children of her own.”

We proceeded to do the limpia cleansing ceremony. I applied half a dozen eggs to extract his aunt’s spirit from his groin and convinced her to leave his body and move on to wherever she needed to go. Then I proceeded to cut the cords that were binding her spirit to his body. Joey got up from the chair with no pain. I instructed him to continue to do more healing and protection work at home.

A few weeks later he called again; the excruciating pain was back. His aunt had come back with a vengeance. “Did you do your homework?” I asked him. “No,” he said. This time I went to his home, did house energy clearing, and performed another limpia ceremony. This time it worked.

Shedim Ve Ruchot

One time I was visiting the graves of my parents in a cemetery in Israel, placing stones on the grave, and making prayers, when I suddenly fell into a deep reverie or meditation. I saw hundreds of faces of men, women, and children, young and old, swarming all around me like a group of jellyfish in a dark ocean of anger and frustration. “Le kol ha shedim ve haruchot,” I thought to myself, which is a Hebrew expression that means: “To all the devils and the spirits.” I thought, “Where am I? Who are those people?”

“Do I know you?” I asked. I could see the hollowed, sad, and angry eyes, the rotten facial flesh and the mutilated bodies, mouths twisted with horrible expressions, and the exposed teeth peering under their stretched ashen skin. Their faces reached even closer, whispering in my ears in rasping voices like stormy wind blowing through the cracks of Venetian blinds. “Oh, this is terrible,” I said to myself. My stomach turned upside down and unexplained fear overwhelmed me. I yelled at the bodiless faces. Waving my hands in the air I fought the swarm of circling faces, begging them to leave me alone. But they paid no attention to my requests and kept on with their unwavering motion, surrounding me from all sides. I heard them telling me that they had not finished what they came to do here on earth and were not ready to leave just yet. I knew from my shamanic training that they were unaware that they were dead. They were stuck here unable to allow themselves to let go and move on to the other realms.

I wanted to run from there, but my body refused to move. It took great effort and finally I woke up from this deep vision. I opened my eyes slowly and found myself still sitting in the Kibbutz cemetery, on the same green wooden bench in front of my parents’ graves. I had no idea of how long a time had passed.

I could only hear the pine trees blowing silently in the soft wind and a few birds chirping from time to time. I sat facing the dried and yellowed mount Gilboa looking at the graves, the pine trees, trying to figure out what had just happened. I had the feeling that I was somehow connected with some of the mad souls who were buried there. This was one of the first kibbutzim established in Israel, and settled by many people who led lives of anger and criticism, thinking themselves the righteous ones and hostile to those who thought differently. Some of these souls could not accept the fact that their lives were over and they were now dead. I realized how meaningful and important it is for people to release the angry, even evil, energies that they harbor in their souls before they pass over into the next life.

The Powers that Shape Our Lives

The ongoing battle between good and evil in the unseen worlds constantly shapes our experience of reality. We are all affected by it. These forces can be sent by other people, and they can also come from greedy corporations, repressive governments, and radical or extreme political parties. These energies live in violent programs on television, radio, magazines, internet and other media. And as Ipupiara so wisely noted, evil can be difficult to recognize because it is secretive and elusive. Evil can impersonate the images of good and light, using deceptive words, such as freedom, liberty, love, health, and so forth. So how can we decipher them? There is no way to tell immediately one-hundred-percent of the time if a spirit is good or bad. That is why we need to pay close attention, read between the lines, and discover their real intentions. We can ask if what they say or do is supportive of life, or does it suck energy away from life and/or cause harm to others.

Good spirits never take over or possess a person’s physical body, energy body, or mind. They do not bring or cause harm. They support and guard us and treat all beings and nature herself with reverence. Good spirits work in light, transparency, and love.

Over the course of thousands of years, shamans from traditions all around the world have devised impressive tool- kits for working with evil spirits. These include ceremonies, herbs, minerals, stones, plants, eggs, candles, amulets, and so forth, as well as spiritual practices such as prayers and energy shielding to protect people and their environments from the malicious, negative energies of evil spirits. We need to learn, practice, and become experts in these techniques, and with them, not fear our encounters with evil spirits and bad energies.