The dangers of dabbling in the Occult, New Age, and NeoPaganism

  • Thread starter Thread starter Holly3278
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Alright, I see. I was in no way trying to be steriotypical I was making a sarcastic comment. Also it’s not every day I bump into another person who actuly enjoys naval history. My apologies for misunderstanding your use of “knot”, I figured it was auto correct.
 
Hunter24 said:
In my experience Christians “discussing the occult” equates to them ranting and raving about the dangers and busting out those inflated “pagan comes to Christ” story’s.
Click to expand...
To be fair, most of the published books on this subject that I’ve seen come from Protestants, not Catholics. It’s like the religious version of “true crime” books. The Catholic accounts I’ve seen on this website are actually pretty reasonable. None of this “I was a third-degree Gardnerian, Siberian shaman, AND a Druid,” nonsense.
 
Back to original issue! I have heard the catholic church come against new age recently. I heard a discussion recently on ewtn i believe ,concerning yoga practice and centering prayer. It was actually rooted pretty deep in some parishes and is considered to be dangerous to our spiritual life.yoga has prayer poses you must get in too which are not toward Christ. My understanding of centering is it is a form of eastern mysticism.
 
Lokabrenna said:
To be fair, most of the published books on this subject that I’ve seen come from Protestants, not Catholics. It’s like the religious version of “true crime” books. The Catholic accounts I’ve seen on this website are actually pretty reasonable. None of this “I was a third-degree Gardnerian, Siberian shaman, AND a Druid,” nonsense.
Click to expand...
That is so true. Some of those books can be really out there. But then, I suppose no one would buy a book entitled “I was a solo practitioner who could never get a spell to work”

IMO, books like that actually weaken the Christian position on these things, simply because the claims are so outlandish, that people just look at it as one big joke, rather than actual religious practices. Then, separating the acts from the religious aspect, it encourages syncretism (amalgamation of different religions), which, from a Christian perspective, can be dangerous.
 
Daizies said:
Then, separating the acts from the religious aspect, it encourages syncretism (amalgamation of different religions), which, from a Christian perspective, can be dangerous.
Click to expand...
I also feel this way, but from my perspective on my own spiritual path. The problems I see with ‘new age’ is that they tend to have a very, VERY superficial grasp of actual authentic teachings. Almost as if someone ‘heard about this practice and this is what it’s supposed to do’, and instead of researching fully what that practice might be, they appear to Google it instead, LOL.

Take, for instance, “The Secret.” This book is pretty much off the mark, but if someone had known where to look and had actually cared about giving an authentic teaching on the concept of creating a more prosperous life, than they could have found the original Indian scriptures and real teachings.

But I guess that’s too much work, and why would you want to borrow from actual scriptures when you can write a book and make it sound like it’s all your idea? That’s how I view a great deal of new age material. Writers take bits and pieces and make them into something that ends up not being beneficial at all, and what was once an authentic teaching is now corrupted and quite possibly lost, or at least deeply buried. Luckily there are those who still know where to look, but the general population of self-helpers are completely blind to any reality behind the quite poor writings.

Personally, I am all for following tradition and scriptures, or what in my tradition we call ‘lineage’. In that respect, I agree with the Catholic Church. 🙂
 
ebonykawai said:
Take, for instance, “The Secret.” This book is pretty much off the mark, but if someone had known where to look and had actually cared about giving an authentic teaching on the concept of creating a more prosperous life, than they could have found the original Indian scriptures and real teachings.
Click to expand...
“The Secret” and other books of its ilk make me, as a religious studies major, cry, as does any use of the word karma outside of an Indian context.
 
I was in New Age. I’m still recovering. I remember trying to become “One with God”, and it would be exhilarating for a few moments, then I’d suddenly become terrified. Like I was being eaten alive, that I had stopped existing. Sure enough I had dissolved into “It”, and it felt good - but also very dangerous, like I’d been tricked into doing this.

I believed in reincarnation - which is silly when you really think about it - and I was determined to never reincarnate again. (Strange, considering I never had before - otherwise I would have remembered it, right? I was so scared I’d come back to this world. I didn’t want to forget everything and come back. I remember reading Autobiography of a Yogi and Conversations with God which described how even great masters are reincarnated - Yogananda claimed to be a yogi in a previous life - and that the cycle never really ends. Walsch wrote that we’re all placed back on the treadmill eventually. I felt I was going through all this development and spiritual growth for nothing, because eventually I’d just return back to the start. Basically the doctrine was that we would reach the pinnacle of spiritual development where we would effectively cease to exist as individuals, would be nothing but “consciousness”, spend some time there, and then be recycled back to the beginning. I hated that.

I begged Vishnu, my personal god, to not let that happen to me. I asked him to accept me as I was, even though my karma hadn’t worked itself out yet, and to not force me become the same substance as him. My ego both had to be inflated (I was one with God, and thus essentially perfect and unstained) and destroyed (I had to cease all identification with my temporal self). I asked not to have to go through that. I didn’t have the confidence to insist that I was totally self-dependent on my search for Godhood. I asked Vishnu to let me into Vaikuntha and not send me back out again while he got to stay there and keep his spiritual gains. (The other opinion was that even he eventually died, and I didn’t want to think of God as mortal, since it meant he was imperfect and I didn’t want to trust such a deity.)

Still I had the confidence to insist that I was one with God, even though I wasn’t always comfortable with it. My mystical world-weariness was proof enough of that. I let my ego grow into God. I didn’t have to be what other people considered a “good” person. I had to focus on my spiritual development and not be distracted by others and their needs. What need could be higher than spiritual attainment? And everything I did was justified, even if I was rude or selfish. Yogis in India are allowed to act that way towards their devotees, even demanding sex and money of them. It’s because they’re trying to impart lessons on them (what those lessons are, I don’t know), and because they’re entitled to that sort of behavior due to their exalted status. I thought people should look up to me for seeing “The Big Picture”. I actively looked forward to the time I would get ahold of some DMT or ketamine or LSD, so I could expand my spiritual consciousness. (Looking back, isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard? Taking a pill and thinking that it makes you closer to spiritual reality? It’s a freaking pill! Like Tylenol! The sights you see and sounds you hear - those are all just side effects and HALLUCINATIONS, not anything real! Just like most dreams! It changes how your brain chemicals work. That’s all!)

Long story short, God eventually shamed me. He showed me that I was not Him, but His creation. There was no way I could mistake manipulating my thoughts and brain into feelings of Godhood anymore. I didn’t realize it but I had been begging for a Savior, and He came to me. Now I feel blessed that I did not have the pride to assume I did not need grace or help. If I had it probably would have blinded me, and I would have gone on meditating and ascending, burning karma with prostrations and withdrawing, presenting gifts to gurus who dismissed them, and giving others unwanted advice about how they should be more like me - holy and perfect. There was always that seed of desperation inside me, underneath all the layers of ego and self (non-self?). I am now grateful God sent me here to where I am now, rather than letting me continue on my course. He really did answer my prayers.

I truly believe I was under the influence of something evil that still tracks into my thoughts from time to time. I was cooperating with it in the hopes of glorifying myself (I eventually hoped people would pray to me as a master), and so it’s going to take a while before I can totally extricate myself from it. I still get temptations but nothing compares to the Holy Spirit.
 
You shouldn’t lump all new age into one category. Some is dangerous, some just misunderstood.

When my daughter was a baby, she was slowly dying. Failure to thrive was all the doctors could say, nothing could be done. I prayed non-stop and was lead to an alternative chiropractor. He did no chiropractic, but energy movement and muscle testing. Say what you want, but it worked! I thank God for showing me this path. It called on no spirits, no other gods or anything I found to be against my Catholic faith. But I saw my child improve immediately, and years later she is still healthy.

I think its sad that some would deny that we don’t know everything, or deny the energy in our bodies that even science is beginning to accept.
 
NonServiam said:
There are no dangers, aside from wasting your time and money on a bunch of nonsense and doing a bunch of goofy things like wearing crystals, lighting candles, calling yourself something ridiculous like “Raven MoonShadow.”
Click to expand...
The Church is actually closer to this position than some ‘spiritual warriors’ here would want to admit.
Hunter24 said:
In my experience Christians “discussing the occult” equates to them ranting and raving about the dangers and busting out those inflated “pagan comes to Christ” story’s. Even if Christianity is dead set against it, you would think people would want atleast a basic knowledge of the stuff. Atleast to understand whats out there. (although I guess if anything beyond god is evil than all you need to know is throw some holy water at it)
Click to expand...
This has always been my problems with the ‘spiritual warfare’ crowd. They see the devil under every rock. They’d sooner fear a witch than a terrorist.

All of this is quite far out of line from what the Church actually teaches. (The persons who argue that ‘spiritual death’ is worse than ‘physical death’ forget that the latter precedes the former. Therefore, it really is more logical to fear someone who can kill you over someone who belongs to a smaller, tree-hugging religion.)
 
Lost_Wanderer said:
This has always been my problems with the ‘spiritual warfare’ crowd. They see the devil under every rock. They’d sooner fear a witch than a terrorist.

All of this is quite far out of line from what the Church actually teaches. (The persons who argue that ‘spiritual death’ is worse than ‘physical death’ forget that the latter precedes the former. Therefore, it really is more logical to fear someone who can kill you over someone who belongs to a smaller, tree-hugging religion.)
Click to expand...
I would totaly agree. There is nothing wrong with being a “Spitual Warrior” as long as you treat it as you would being a physical warrior. I don’t go kick down the door to the neatest communist convention and start screaming Libritarian stuff at them, so why would I go attack or speek against people of a different religiouse view. There’s nothing wrong with exorcism or any of that stuff as long as its in a defensive context. I own guns so that I can defend myself from a physical threat, not to go make others do as I do. In the same way, religion and magic and ect. Should be used to defend yourself from spiritual or occult attacks, not make others think as you think.
 
I would add that it really isn’t an attractive worldview, looking over your shoulder all the time like that. It’s practically Demonbuster levels of paranoia. (There’s still some part of me that thinks demonbuster is a parody site, I mean, stuffed animals are Satanic?)
 
Let me give a shout out to Buffy the Vampire Slayer for showing Wicca as good in some ways but could be used wrong and could be evil.

I will admit in my younger years I went to a fortune teller waste of money and now I don’t even like scary movies because I think it invites evil… ya I turned into one of those people 🙂 and I am just not a fan of scary movies lol
 
when did the church say this, although i do recall he that is not for me is against me.
 
Hunter24 said:
I . In the same way, religion and magic and ect. Should be used to defend yourself from spiritual or occult attacks, not make others think as you think.
Click to expand...
wow it sweems we have all the magic crowd here on this thread downplaying satan.
a few documents backing up these ideas would be great same for the rubbish about church
is actually closer to this position than some ‘spiritual warriors’ here would want to admit
Click to expand...
crystals, lighting candles, calling yourself something ridiculous like "Raven MoonShadow."
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top