I'm interested in getting more discussion going here in the forum, so I want to try something a little different.
From time to time, I'm going to bring up an event from occult history, give some background, tell you what I think happened, and then open it up for debate. The point isn't for everyone to agree with me. Quite the opposite. I want to hear different interpretations, experiences and ideas, especially when we can look at the same events and come to completely different conclusions.
So let's test this out.
For our first discussion, we're going back to seventeenth-century France and the events at Loudun, better known as the Devils of Loudun.
In 1632, Ursuline nuns in Loudun began displaying what was described as demonic possession—convulsions, strange behavior, sexual manifestations and eventually claims that demons were involved.
The man blamed for it was Urbain Grandier, a Catholic priest who was eventually accused of sorcery, tortured and burned alive in 1634.
And Grandier was definitely no saint.
He had a reputation with women, apparently wasn't particularly concerned about clerical celibacy, was arrogant by several accounts, and had collected enemies along the way. Basically, he was very good at giving people reasons not to like him.
But being an asshole doesn't necessarily make you a sorcerer.
The Nuns and Grandier
One particularly interesting part of the story involves Jeanne des Anges, superior of the Ursuline convent.
Grandier had reportedly been asked to become spiritual director of the convent and declined. Jeanne has also been described in accounts of the affair as being attracted to him and resentful of his rejection.
The position instead went to Jean Mignon, who happened to be one of Grandier's enemies.
Then the possessions began.
During the resulting exorcisms, Grandier was identified as the sorcerer responsible for sending demons into the convent.
Maybe.
Because Grandier had another problem considerably larger than an angry nun.
Cardinal Richelieu
Grandier had also managed to piss off Cardinal Richelieu, which was probably not a great career move in seventeenth-century France.
Richelieu may have worn the red robes of a cardinal, but he was also one of the most powerful political figures in Europe and had the ear of King Louis XIII.
Grandier had opposed royal policies involving Loudun and had become politically troublesome. Eventually, royal commissioner Jean Martin de Laubardemont, connected to Richelieu's government, took control of the investigation that would end with Grandier's conviction.
So by this point we have a promiscuous priest, accusations from a convent, personal enemies, demonic possession, royal politics and Richelieu.
And then somebody produced a contract with demons.
The Pact
An alleged demonic pact was introduced against Grandier, complete with marks attributed to spirits including Lucifer, Beelzebub, Leviathan and Astaroth.
This is where I probably have a slightly different perspective than someone approaching this purely as history.
I believe in demons. I practice demonolatry, and I am pacted myself.
My pact, however, was written by me. I used the appropriate seals of the spirit.
Do I believe spirits can manifest physically? Yes.
Do I believe Astaroth showed up in Loudun, grabbed a pen and said, "Where do I sign?"
I'm considerably less convinced haha.
That doesn't mean the pact itself isn't fascinating occult history. It absolutely is. But somebody drawing a mark and saying "Astaroth signed this" doesn't establish who actually put that mark on the paper.
My Theory
I don't think Grandier caused the possessions.
I'm not particularly convinced the nuns were possessed in the first place.
And that isn't because I don't believe possession is possible. I've practiced for years and believe spirits are quite real. I've simply never personally witnessed anything resembling these spectacular historical possession cases.
I think there may have been something considerably more human happening at Loudun.
Sex, attraction, rejection, jealousy, religious repression, fear of scandal—perhaps even fear of a pregnancy or of sexual activity being discovered. I obviously can't prove that, and I'm not presenting it as historical fact. It's my theory.
But put yourself in a seventeenth-century convent for a moment.
If something sexual happened that absolutely could not be admitted, "the Devil made us do it" would be one hell of an excuse.
Then you need somebody to blame.
Grandier already had a reputation. He had enemies in the Church. He had political enemies. Jeanne had reportedly wanted him at the convent. And he had managed to get himself crosswise with the political machinery of Richelieu.
To me, Grandier looks like a very convenient scapegoat.
Maybe something genuinely strange happened in that convent. Maybe Grandier even practiced occultism privately. I don't find the idea of a priest practicing ceremonial magic particularly unbelievable.
Hell, look at the Catholic Mass through an occultist's eyes: altar, candles, incense, vestments, ritual objects, prescribed words and gestures, consecration and ritual transformation. Ceremonial religion and ceremonial magic aren't exactly strangers.
But none of that proves Grandier sent demons into a convent.
I wouldn't have convicted him.
Now It's Your Turn
@Duchess @Citrine @Shadowvox @@uncle-al @Norse900 @Onion @Verdo @Kish @MagisterMikeBee
I'm tagging everyone deliberately because I actually want a debate here. Don't agree with me just to be polite.
Were the nuns genuinely possessed?
Was Grandier a practitioner, a scapegoat, or both?
What do you make of the alleged pact and the supposed demonic signatures?
Was this really an occult event, or did sex, religion and politics create the perfect storm?
And particularly for those of us who already believe possession is possible:
What evidence would you actually need before accepting that someone was genuinely possessed?
I've given you my theory. Now let's hear yours.
— Vitriol
Quaere · Experiere · Iudica
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Personally, I think it's a case of Folie a deux. You find a similar occurrence with the Dancing Plague of 1518.
I'm currently reading an old 3 part book on the Inquisition and incidents that led up to it. The bar for being a heretic is quite low and the Inquisition was different in each territory. Torturing one to admit to heresy was quite common and there was no pardon for it. Just the burn pile.
The sensational admittance of the pact and similar isn't surprising. Especially if it became widely known.
Forbidden Rites - the 15th century necromancy book goes into details on the cleric underground that was actively working with grimories.
I wish you had reserved your opinion until a little further along in the thread, because my opinion is honestly going to mirror yours. When i see stuff like this, i assume first that there was some more mundane reason for the happenings, because that's usually what it is. Most people are occultists, and I dare say that we have way more occultists today than there were back then...so its even less likely that the person(s) involved were performing magick. First, the literacy rates were quite low then, so most people wouldn't even understand the texts they supposedly got this stuff from. Additionally, this wasn't an information age like we've got today where we can access pretty much access any occult text that we wish with impunity. So odds are that this was just a manufactured incident in order to knock off a political opponent. The fact that he was a womanizer probably means that he was likely carrying some kind of STD, and that explains why (possibly) all these women were displaying these sort of symptoms like convulsions and "sexual manifestations." That really is my best guess as to what happened there
@Norse900 @Verdo — both of you actually have me thinking about possibilities I hadn't really considered when I wrote the original post.
@Verdo, are you thinking something along the lines of syphilis eventually producing neurological or psychiatric symptoms? Because that's an interesting angle. Grandier's reputation with women certainly makes an STD plausible, and syphilis—the French disease, Neapolitan disease, Venetian disease, or apparently whatever name allowed you to blame your neighbors for it haha—could eventually produce some pretty nasty neurological consequences.
Where I have trouble making that fit the convent is the transmission route. As far as I know, we don't have evidence that Grandier was actually sleeping with the Ursuline nuns. Without that connection, an STD might explain symptoms in Grandier or one of his sexual partners, but it becomes much harder to explain why several women inside the same convent began displaying similar behavior.
That's where @Norse900's folie à deux and Dancing Plague comparison becomes really interesting. Maybe what was spreading through the convent wasn't an infectious disease at all, but behavior, expectation, fear or some kind of psychological/social contagion.
I do disagree a little with the literacy argument though. Literacy in the general population was certainly much lower than today, and obviously nobody could pull up a PDF of a grimoire on their phone. But Grandier wasn't an average person—he was an educated Catholic priest. Clergy knew Latin, worked with texts and already operated inside a highly ritualized environment. @Norse900's point about Forbidden Rites and the clerical underground working with grimoires is particularly relevant here.
And that raises another possibility: what about the nuns themselves?
Religious communities were also places where women could receive education and have access to books beyond what was available to many ordinary women of the period. I'm not saying we have evidence that the Ursulines at Loudun were secretly sitting around reading grimoires, because as far as I know we don't. But I don't think we can dismiss occult experimentation simply because they were seventeenth-century women in a convent either.
Which gives us a much more occult possibility to play with.
What if somebody inside the convent actually was experimenting with something?
Think of the modern story we've all heard a thousand times: a group of people decides to mess around with a Ouija board, nobody really knows what they're doing, something weird happens, one person gets scared, then another person starts experiencing something, and before long everybody is convinced they've opened a door they can't close.
Obviously there were no Ouija boards at Loudun. I'm talking about the principle: what if someone experimented with some form of spirit contact or magical material, something happened—or they believed something happened—and the whole thing snowballed from there?
That possibility would actually sit somewhere between our theories. Maybe there was genuine occult experimentation without Grandier having anything to do with it. Maybe there was an unusual experience that then developed into the kind of social contagion @Norse900 is describing. And once things got out of control, Grandier's reputation and political enemies provided a very convenient person to blame.
That's why I keep separating two questions:
Could Grandier have practiced magic? Absolutely possible in my opinion.
Did Grandier magically cause what happened inside that convent? I'm still not buying it.
But now I think there's a third question we didn't originally ask:
What if the occult element, if there actually was one, originated inside the convent rather than with Grandier?
Disease, social contagion, deliberate performance, actual occult experimentation—or some combination of all four?
I think we just made this case even more complicated 🤣