Demonic interference during reading

a holy priest — who said it is unworthy for such things to be published and cast into the ears of the profane; for, he says, even the one who consorts with the adulterer becomes liable according to the law. Nevertheless, from such signs they know what is hidden in the heart, and from these they take occasions against us. Indeed, we have often reproved some who had reviled us, not being lovingly disposed toward them — wherefore we also fell to the demon of rancor, and immediately conceived evil thoughts against them, the same as we had formerly known to befall us.

Wherefore the Holy Spirit also rightly accuses us: ‘Sitting, you spoke against your brother, and against the son of your mother you laid a stumbling-block’ (Ps 50:20); ‘and you opened a door to the thoughts of rancor, and troubled the mind at the time of prayer, ever picturing the face of your enemy, and deifying him — for whatever the praying mind beholds, this it confesses worthy to be God.’ But let us flee, beloved, the sickness of backbiting; let us never remember anyone evilly, nor contort our faces at the memory of our neighbor.

For the evil demons scrutinize all our postures, and leave nothing against us unexamined — no reclining, no sitting, no standing, no word, no passing by, no glance; they scrutinize all, they disturb all, all day long they contrive craftiness against us, so that they may slander the humble mind at the time of prayer and extinguish its blessed light. Do you see what holy Paul also says to Titus? ‘In doctrine, an uncorrupt, sound, irreproachable word, so that the one from the opposite side may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say about us’ (Titus 2:8). And blessed David also prays, saying: ‘Deliver me from the slander of men’ (Ps 119:134) — calling the demons ‘men’ as well, because of the rational element of their nature. But the Savior also, in the Gospels, called ‘an enemy, a man’ the one who sowed among us the tares of evil (Matt 13:28). From him may we also be delivered by the grace of Christ our God, to whom honor and glory are due unto the ages. Amen.

Chapter 66. There are certain unclean demons who always sit beside those who are reading, and attempt to snatch away their minds, often taking occasions even from the divine Scriptures themselves and ending in evil thoughts. And sometimes, contrary to habit, they compel them to yawn, and impose a most heavy sleep, quite foreign to the usual — as some of the brothers supposed, by an ineffable natural contrariety; but I, having often observed, learned it to be thus: they touch the eyelids and the whole head, and chill it with their own body — for the bodies of the demons are exceedingly cold, and like crystal — whence we also feel the head being drawn as if by a cupping-glass, with a gnashing of the teeth. And they do this so that, drawing to themselves the heat stored up in the skull, the eyelids — slackened by the remaining moisture and cold — may overflow upon the pupils of the eyes. Indeed, I have often felt and found the eyelids hardened like crystal, and the whole face deadened and shivering. And yet natural sleep is by nature disposed to warm bodies, and renders the faces of the healthy blooming, as one may learn even from experience itself; but the unnatural and strained yawnings they bring about, thinning themselves and touching the inside of the mouth. But this I had not understood until today, although I have often suffered it; but I heard it from holy Macarius, who told me this and adduced as proof — according to an ineffable ancient tradition — the sealing of the mouth by those who yawn. And we suffer all these things because we do not attend soberly to our reading, nor remember that we are reading the holy oracles of the living God.