Alignn said: I dunno, I've always thought of exorcism as forcefully removing a soul...
Might depends from the religion. As far as I know (not much, in fact), Christian exorcisms are mainly about removing the evil presence (usually a demon or a devil), while Shinto exorcists are more about calming down the angry spirits (either souls either youkais), without any real malevolence taking place.
But a real expert might help us here, as I'm probably overlooking a lot of thing.
FRien said: Might depends from the religion. As far as I know (not much, in fact), Christian exorcisms are mainly about removing the evil presence (usually a demon or a devil), while Shinto exorcists are more about calming down the angry spirits (either souls either youkais), without any real malevolence taking place.
But a real expert might help us here, as I'm probably overlooking a lot of thing.
Christianity's Exorcisms are for Destroying the link between the Spiritual Realm and the Physical Realm. Thus, it is forcefully removing the soul, Alignn would be right. Technically, this is what Exorcism means. Most Christian Exorcists resort to Exorcisms as Last Ditch efforts, it's not what the movies like to portray it as. There are 'Councilings' for when the spirit can merely be convinced to move on. Note that a supermajority of modern-day actual Christian Exorcists don't belive in Ghosts in this aspect, so many will only go in when they're sure there's a Demon involved and that prayer alone could not drive it out. Councilings these days mainly happen to remove 'lingering sentiments' or 'energies'.
The issue is when translating between Japanese and English. Their word for 'exorcism' covers both the forceful (the textbook Exorcism) and the peaceful (counciling) methods.
So in the Japanese sense, Frien is right ...but in the Technical sense, Alignn is right.
For qualifications, I used to run with Chirstian Exorcists (they were all Ministers) and assisted on and off.