Whence do the unclean spirits come forth, O Most Pure Mother of God?
From an unclean woman; from her unclean marriage with her own son. An unclean mind defiles the soul, its mother, and from an unclean soul come forth unclean spirits, whose chief fortress is the heart.
From the chief fortress, then, the evil spirits assault their own parents with unclean passion, and multiply both in the soul and in the mind.
How great is the number of the unclean spirits, O Most Pure Mother of God?
There are more of them, many more unclean spirits than pure ones. For they are powerless as a shadow before the pure spirits. And they band together into legions against a single pure spirit, against a single virginal spirit.
They multiply most of all in rottenness, and they attack most fiercely a virgin — all that represents virginity in body or in soul, in male or in female, in mind or in heart.
As many wrong desires as there are in the heart, and poisonous pleasures, and feelings of fear, and feelings of hatred toward everything heavenly — so many are the unclean spirits in the heart.
As many self-delusions about the world as there are in the mind, whether in images and concepts, or in imaginings and words — so many are the unclean spirits in the mind.
And all the unclean spirits from the heart sow their seed throughout the mind. And all the unclean spirits from the mind sow their seed throughout the heart. And all together, from the one fortress and the other, sow their unclean seed over the field of the will. And in the soul, the greatest fortress, there are as many of them as there are shadows in the world.
And they multiply one from another, without order or law. Sworn enemies of every order and law! And they look for their strength and victory not in quality but in number. And truly they are crumbled fine as sand, and ever finer do they crumble.
They multiply not out of mutual love but out of hellish selfishness. Nor do they feel any blessedness whatsoever in their existence. The struggle for rights and primacy fills all their time. Woe to the man who becomes their battlefield.
What is the result of the working of the unclean spirits in a man, O Most Pure Mother of God?
The breeding of sickness in the inward man and, consequently, in the outward man as well. Sin is the seed of sickness. The seed of sin grows rank as a weed.
All sicknesses are the consequence of sin. Truly — blindness, and deafness, and dumbness, and all the rest. And however strange it may be to say — death too is a sickness, the consequence of the same cause, rot from the same worm.
O Most Pure and Light-bearing Mother of God, deliver us from the unclean spirits; wash us from every sin; heal us of every sickness, by the mercy of Thy Son and the power of Thy Holy Spirit.
From the midst of the rotting we cry out to Thee on our knees: with Thy radiance burn up all the rottenness that chokes us, O Mother of God.