Keeping the First Commandment: How to Avoid Misguided Spirituality in a Culture Hooked on Halloween

[fbshare type=”button” float=”right” width=”100″] By Adam Blai

Catholic Halloween, all souls day, all saints day

 

There are several false religions or spiritualities in the world. It’s important to guard against falling into them, as they are almost always pathways to demonic interaction.

Every measure must be taken to guard against the false promises of Satan in black magic, which has become readily available online and promoted in the media. Avoid the offers of power, information, control over demons, and worldly success. These supposed benefits of demonic relationships may be provided in the short run, but are followed by crashing further down than where you started. The demons feign obedience and lie in order to draw people into worshiping them, use their victims, and then turn on them.

Guard against media that is actually veiled demonolatry (the worship of demons) or black magic. This includes things like occult films, depictions of magic rituals, books that glorify magic and demons, or occult music events. There is a disturbing trend of increasingly explicit black magic indoctrination at music festivals in Europe and the United States.

There are many cults that mix Catholic saints or devotions with pagan systems or explicitly demonic entities. They often use some Catholic symbols, or altered Catholic symbols, to insult God and to gain some amount of acceptability and legitimacy. One of the best known is Santa Meurte, a very large religion that sprung up in Mexico. Followers worship a skeletal female figure that is reminiscent of the Virgin Mary. Though there are many false religions and cults, the games of the demons are the same. The deceptions of the Devil are usually based on pride: for instance being “chosen” in a cult to play a certain role or being identified by spirits as a powerful magician that can control them.

Many New Age and pagan practices that are advertised as healing or healthy are spiritually dangerous. For example, Kundalini Yoga teaches that a serpent spirit is at the base of the spine and after activation from the touch of a yogi master rises to the head. This then causes uncontrolled movements and vocalizations. Similarly, Reiki healing has led to a number of possession cases, often after years of well-meaning work. Other occult powers beyond healing are involved in the higher levels of Reiki that are usually not taught to Westerners.

Divination (fortune telling) and necromancy (supposed communication with the dead) are the two most common traps that people fall into that violate the First Commandment. This is because they both address people’s primary fears of death: fear about their own future or sadness at the loss of a loved one. Going to psychics or having mediums speak to dead loved ones can open doors to demonic problems. Trying to communicate with the dead opens the door to a relationship with demonic spirits since any poor soul in purgatory would not draw a person into violating the First Commandment.

People that use divination based on using their own body as instruments of their practice usually develop problems faster. Examples include talking boards, pendulums, trance mediumship, lean testing, grip testing, and other similar activities. These are particularly dangerous because they give spirits permission to move part of the body and those rights of control remain until properly renounced.

Paranormal investigating is essentially necromancy because it is an attempt to make the dead manifest and communicate. This opens doors to relationships with demons on a large scale; about 25 percent of all demonic cases come from paranormal investigating. Many of the participants on paranormal television shows have had demonic problems themselves but this is not revealed as part of the shows.

 

Adam Blai is an expert on religious demonology and exorcism for the Pittsburgh Diocese. He has been an auxiliary member of the International Association of Exorcists in Rome for a number of years. Blai is the author of Hauntings, Possessions, and Exorcisms, a field guide to defense against the demonic.