The occult is, I
think, attracting and dissuading many young people from the Faith. It is full
of mystery, ritual and the promise of
power, which the youth -and older folk- find attractive. (Perhaps it would have
helped our young people avoid the occult had we kept a liturgy full of ritual
and mystery as in the Extra-ordinary Form).
The first thing to be
clear about is what we mean by the ‘occult’. The word ‘occult’ comes from the
Latin word occultus, which simply
means ‘hidden’, and while it is most often applied to the world of the wicked
spirits, it is applicable to all forms of
trusting in or calling upon unseen powers and forces, the demons hiding
their evil works under seemingly innocent activities and attractive,
pleasurable pursuits. (This necessary to them because if the activities were
obvious ways of inviting hell into our lives we would not do them (if sin was
not attractive and pleasurable we would not do it). Thus,
the most important thing to remember about the occult is that it hides itself
under attractive and pleasurable activities so that are fooled into an attachment to hell.
Unfortunately most
people today do not take the destructive influence of the occult seriously; with
the result that the occult shows up in fashions (where skulls and cross bones
are common); in hard rock music) where it glorifies sex, violence and drug
abuse); in board games and even in TV in serials abut the ‘living dead’ (vampires,
zombies, etc). These fashions, films, music and such insidiously remove from
folk any awareness of the dangers of the occult by making it ‘entertainment’. One
young man telling me he got the idea of praying to the devil from his rock
music and TV programmes, and continued because the devil always answered
prayers and God did not. I pointed out that this is because the devil, like the
child molester, gives us whatever pleases us so as to have us get into us into
his car with him, whereas God will say ‘no’ to some of our requests because He
knows they are not good for us in the long run. (The bad parent gives his
diabetic child sweets/candies when the long-term effects are dangerous and
fatal; God is the good parent who says ‘no’ to what is haermful, even though it
is pleasurable).
The fundamental problem with all aspects of the
occult being that it draws upon or trusts in powers other than the providence
of God, it inevitably opens the door to wicked spirits; to powers opposed to
God. We cannot afford to open such doors. Should we do so we fall into sin, and
sin deprives us of salvation. We can include in our list of dangerous entertainments
and hobbies such things as hard rock music, occult films, amulets, good luck
charms, fortune telling, crystal-power and spiritualism, as well as overt
things such as witchcraft, devil-worship and superstition. All of these are a
trusting in )or a calling upon) powers other than God and His Divine
providence; they constitute and an idolatry that breaks the very first
commandment.
Some aspects of the
occult (of seeking power and knowledge outside of God) that many folk do not
recognise to be the occult are the following. Note
as we look at these that we are not saying all those who promote such things
are bad people with bad intentions, but that the things they are promoting
militate against the soul’s salvation.
Ouija
boards seek to contact the dead and the spiritual world.
We do not know what kind of spirit we are conjuring up here, so it is as
dangerous to the soul as eating things we have never seen before is dangerous
to the body. Spiritualism
holds the same desire to contact dead, but through living persons (mediums).
The trouble with both Ouija and spiritualism is two-fold: first, we should not
drag the dead from their rest; they should be left to rest in peace, not
conjured for our own ends. (If the dead wished to come to us they would do so
of their own free will, not wait to be conjured up). Second, since all
knowledge is available to all spirits (being unlimited by the physical brain)
it is easy for a wicked spirit to know the secrets of the dead we seek to
contact and impersonate them so as to give us advice that in the long run, causes
us to make bad choices and fall away from God and salvation.
Fortune
telling and horoscopes
embody the desire to know the future and control it. Both fortune telling and
horoscopes usurp the place of God in our lives, and are thus sinful. We cannot
regard these as “just fun”, because they embody the grave danger of abandoning
God’s providence for other powers. It is like having fun by playing with
traffic. What is ‘dangerous fun’ is not good.
Superstition
is not a direct dabbling with occult powers as are Spiritualism, Ouija boards,
fortune telling etc. Nevertheless, superstition
rests on an assumption that unseen powers are directing our lives other than
the providence of God. Superstition is thus sinful because
it is an insult to God: it
assumes He is forced to change His plans simply because
we have crossed someone on the stairs, broken a mirror or placed new shoes on a
table.
Lucky
charms are seen by most people as harmless, but the
reality is that they seek to draw upon a power (‘(luck’) that is not of God and
is opposed to trust in His providence, as such their use is offensive to God,
and sinful.
Reiki,
while not usually seen as the occult, nevertheless is akin to occult practice
since it seeks to tap into “unseen universal life energy” in order to provide
for one’s health. Some forms of Reiki claim to work with angels as vibrations
of the Divine, but this has the additional problem of leading to angel-worship.
Inviting occult
powers into our lives by Ouija boards, spiritualism, fortune telling etc, may
well lead to such spirits taking control of our lives. Possession (as seen in the film ‘The Exorcist’) is rare, but the
more folk who dabble in what we may call ‘heavy’ occult practices such as Ouija
boards, spiritualism, witchcraft etc) the more widespread possession will
become. Exorcism by the Church is rare, since the Church will not perform one
unless the person has had a full psychiatric assessment and is shown to have
more going on that is apparent in pure psychiatric disorder. The sound reason
for this is that engaging in exorcism when the person is ill rather than
genuinely possessed would only compound the illness and make the situation
worse.
Psychiatric illness
is often entangled with a person’s religious belief and as such, religion is
often seen as the cause of the illness. Yet it
is just as possible that the personality fixates upon religious ideas once
their illness arises, rather than religion being the cause of the illness. To
say the cause is religion rather than say that religion has been caught up in
the illness strikes one as prejudice; a pre-judgment about religion that can
block scientific assessment of the cause and treatment of the illness. It is
true however, that in some cases psychiatric illness can follow dabbling in the
occult. Not because the devil seeks to make us ill, but because the person
becomes obsessed with the search for power and answers. The devil, in fact, has no desire to make us ill and no
use for such illness; his desire is to make us sin
since illness cannot keep us out of heaven but sin does, and it is keeping us
out of heaven that is the devil’s goal.
What is more common than
Possession is that the devil giving us an obsession: he gets us obsessed with good things
that can distract us from God, and because the things we are obsessed with are
good, we are blinded to the problem. Yes, even good things such as healthy
hobbies (football, swimming, dancing) and such good things as socialising,
work, home improvements etc, can become over-important to us; so much so that
we put them before our obligations to God (Sunday Mass, prayer and charitable
works). In such cases, the
devil’s work is done without ‘possession’: he has distracted us from our
obligations to God and thus placed us in sin. Indeed,
obsessions with good things are more his method than possession, because
possession does not cut us off from God and heaven whereas obsessions do (this
is because possession is not willed/chosen by the soul but forced upon it,
whereas obsessions are freely chosen goods that we have placed before God,
which is sinful). If the devil wants to
deprive us of heaven, it
is by making us obsessed with good things that he achieves this,
not possession.
Fundamentally, the
Church’s attitude to seeking out occult powers (by Ouija boards, consulting
spiritualists etc) or trusting in hidden powers (horoscopes, lucky charms,
superstitions etc) is that such things are always gravely wrong. Remember:
mankind is in a Spiritual War: “Our
wrestling is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers,
against the rulers of this world and its darkness; against spirits of
wickedness in the high places” (Eph.6v12) Dabbling with the occult or becoming
obsessed with the good things of this world runs contrary to our eternal
salvation. How then, are we to deal with the occult?
First things First: How Can We Know we have a soul
[to be saved]?
We can know we have a soul because our thoughts cannot be seen, touched, or
measured with a ruler, yet they are real -and must come from some part of us
that cannot be seen, touched, or measured with a ruler yet is equally real.
That part is our soul (our spirit). Since God is the Supreme Spirit, pictures
of God as an old man in the sky are ridiculous; they are absurd, and give a
very wrong impression of God.
How can we know there is a Supreme Spirit (whom we
call God?)
We can know there is a Supreme Spirit (God) by logic. This is not easy to
understand, but we can simplify it like this: we have existence, but are not existence itself; we have life,
but we are not life itself. We cannot
say “I am existence; I am life”, because life and existence are something we have, not something we are. Now, since it is the very nature of
existence to exist, and in the very nature of life to be alive, there must be a
single, “living existence” from whom all life and existence comes (nothing can
have tyow starting points so existence and life must exist as a single unit).
That living existence is what we call ‘God’. “May the force be with you” is almost
akin to what Catholics mean by “The Lord be with you” -only we know “the force”
to be a Person: God; the mind behind the mathematical
underpinnings of the universe.
What are wicked spirits? How and why do they tempt
us away from God? Wicked
spirits are angels who refused to obey God; they originally receive their
existence from Him, as all angels do, but have chosen to be wicked. They tempt us
to live immoral lives (deceitful, lustful and violent lives) by making the
pleasures of life attractive, and the cares of life so important to us that we
give up on God and religion. Why they do this is simple: they want to take us from the hand of God our
Father to prevent us getting what they threw away: Heaven.
Are ‘Ghosts’ wicked spirits? No; ghosts are human souls which are
not at rest; souls who are in purgatory (the purifying state prior to entering
heaven); souls who are either still too attached to the things of this world or
souls who have not made recompense for their sins. As such, they are not yet
able to enter God’s presence and Heaven.
In what ways can the evil spirits get at us? They can get
at us by giving us an obsession that
distracts our attention from God They can also attack us by oppression, which is
where they harass us to get us to lose confidence in God (obsession and losing
confidence in God by oppression, are the only way they can get us into a sinful
state). Possession (which is very
rare and usually happens to those who get involved with devil worship) is where
they take us over. Deliverance frees us from obsession and oppression, while
Exorcism (very rare and done only by priests with specific permission from the
Bishop) frees us from possession.
What can we do to keep evil spirits at bay? Here is some
basic advice.
1.
First,
Do not be afraid. God is the
Supreme Spirit who has overcome all the evil angels who rejected Him. If we are
close to God we have already overcome them.
2.
Live
good lives –ungodly lives are an alliance with ungodly spirits
3.
Pray
and go regularly to Confession & Holy Communion
4.
Have
your home blest by a Catholic priest, and keep Holy Water in your home to
re-sprinkle it now and again to build the blessings it holds
5.
Wear
a blest medal (blessings attach to the medal, so the blessings go where the
medal goes)
6.
Ask
your Guardian Angel for his help on a daily basis
7.
Say
the Rosary and Prayer to St Michael the Archangel every day
8.
DO
NOT engage in conversation with evil spirits: talking builds an alliance.) Rather,
in virtue of your baptism inot Jesus Christ, order the spirit to be gone in the
Name of Jesus Christ.
Remember: “Have
no fear little flock, for it has pleased the Father to give you the kingdom”
(LK.12v32).
Catechism of
the catholic Church:
#2116: “All
forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse
to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead, or other practices falsely supposed
to "unveil" the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm
reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and
recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time and history...”
#2111 Superstition is the deviation of religious
feeling...e.g., when one attributes an importance in some magical way to
certain practices [crossing a person on stairs, new shoes on a table etc]
otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of
sacramental signs to their mere external performance [quite[ apart from the
interior dispositions that they demand, is also to fall into superstition.
