Though I haven’t been a charismatic, speaking-in-tongues Christian for a good twenty years now, they did teach this now agnostic a thing or two while they were at it.

Pentecostals do love their demons, judging by how much they talk about them, how often they find them lurking in every door knob and children’s toy in your house. They’re like animated, malevolent troll dolls that collect themselves with only the slightest provocation. Tribbles, really. Or gremlins?

Tongue-talkers have devoted so much time and effort to casting out demons that they’ve learned some guidelines that make getting that tempting succubus out of your boxer shorts so much easier. If you’re into that, you can consult Pigs in the Parlor for some classic suggestions.

But today our interest is in just one of their exorcism tips, namely, to cast out the malevolent spirit, you must first name it.

There is some obvious truth to this—you’re just wasting your time if you’re trying to oust the wrong imp. But there’s also a mystical belief behind it: if you can get a demon’s name, it’s real name—be it lust or rebellion or addiction—you have power over it. Casting it out becomes much easier. All you need is some good anointing oil to boot, and you’re most of the way there.

Some schools of psychotherapy rely on a similar principle: insight. If clients can realize what’s driving them to an unhelpful behavior, they’re well on their way to breaking free. There’s still work to be done, but it just got easier. They’re no longer shooting in the dark.

So it goes too for the ancient Gnostics. They studied under teachers who claimed to have laid out just who the gods were who held humanity down, led by the ignorant, malevolent Demiurge who created this screwed up world in the first place. If they could achieve the same insight as their teacher, they could transcend the gods of this world and free the spark of the divine that lived within them and reach the great Pleroma, the source of all goodness.

It’s a noble vision, whether you believe in their eons and eons of gods and goddesses or not. They were trying to free themselves from what held them back—the short-sighted gods of their age—by having insight into what screwed everything up to begin with.

There are gods of our age too, of course. I don’t mean a literal Zeus and Apollo and Aphrodite who live on a particular mountain anyone with the time and means can visit for themselves. No, I mean ”gods” more than gods.

It’s not that they exist or don’t exist that’s important, or even interesting. It’s that the gods of our age might as well exist, because we act like they’re real and have power over our lives. And they do have power over us, because we give it to them.

Who are some of those gods? The Market, the Academy, Medicine, Infotech. We live our lives for these gods, playing by the rules they’ve handed down to us. These gods bestow great gifts but also great limitations. Like the gods of Olympus, they’re always a mixed bag. God help you if you get on the wrong side of one.

If we’re going to transcend these gods and the goals they set for us that serve their own ends, recognizing their gifts and their limitations, rejecting them at some moments and burning incense to them at others, we have to begin by naming them. And that’s what I hope to do here.