Both the Old and New Testaments warn about the dangers of innocent or deliberate occult involvement. We need to understand that any and all occult involvement brings spiritual desolation and either lessens or totally removes grace. As Christians, all magical participation is a sin that must be repented from. But how can a person repent if they don’t recognize or remember their involvement in the occult? The following examination can help to purify your soul from damage caused by innocent or deliberate occult involvement. Do this examination prayerfully, deliberately, and slowly. Ask the Holy Spirit to let the Light of Christ penetrate your interior darkness, where all occult involvement likes to hide, to bring to memory everything. Then repent.
Although both are sins, using profanity and cursing are two totally different things. Profanity is crude and vulgar. People who use profanity don’t usually say those types of words in church because their conscience and social etiquette convict them. Jesus never ever used profanity. Jesus was never crude or vulgar. He never told a dirty joke, and the type of thoughts that generate dirty jokes never crossed his mind. He did not have to suppress dirty jokes as many do. All profanity is BAD, but cursing, for example, saying, “God damn you!” or “Go to Hell” is practicing witchcraft. Do you participate in the evil practice of cursing?
To Satanists, Halloween is their Christmas and Easter combined. As we Christians may renew our baptismal vows, on Halloween, we pledge allegiance to Satan and all his evil ways. Yet it has become so secularized and a part of the “spirit of the world” that many Christians peripheral participate in this celebration. How many children parade around wearing costumes of devils, ghosts, witches, vampires, etc.? I think this participation grieves the Holy Spirit. What do you think? Do you innocently celebrate this evil day? Even giving out candy without the ghoulish entrapments is participation. Remember the bible story where deacon Stephen was executed. Saul, later to become St. Paul, didn’t actively participate in the stoning, but he held the crazed evil mob’s coats.
Knock on Wood - Have you ever seen people tap on wood three times and say, “Knock on wood.” This isn't very good for two reasons. First, it is a superstition, a violation of the First Commandment. Most importantly, this is a remnant of the ancient pagan druid religion. They believed that spirits lived in trees. When they wanted help from these spirits, they would knock on the tree three times to get the spirits’ attention. So when a contemporary person “knocks on wood” for luck, they innocently practice an ancient religion. Which has crept into modern Christianity.
Movies, television shows, cartoons, and books often have demonic themes. How much time have you spent with media about white or black magic, witches, poltergeist, astrology, pagan religions, ESP, religious hypnotism, casting spells, telepathy, communicating with the dead through seances, numerology, automatic handwriting, levitation, mind reading, astral travel, water witching, energy healing, psychic healing, tarot cards, Wicca, conjuring spirits, channeling, incantations, crystals or crystal balls, non-Christian new age occult healing oils, etc. Have you enjoyed this evil media? Let me explain this participation using the medical model. If a person is in a room with 10 disease-free people, they are safe from contracting a disease. Everybody is exposed to the disease if just one person in the room has tuberculosis. Some may contract the disease while others do not. You have been exposed to these spiritual diseases. Some who are exposed may contract the disease.
Have you ever practiced, studied, or taught witchcraft, belonged to a coven, or visited a coven meeting. Have you attended a Black Mass, read the Satanic Bible, made a pact with, or sold your soul to the devil? Were you a perpetrator of Satanic ritual abuse, participated in santarea or voodoo? Have you become a blood brother with anybody, but especially with someone involved in the occult?
Have you ever asked unclean spirits for help or sought healing, protection, or good fortune through charms, amulets, potions, mediums, or incantations? Have you ever practiced being a medium using tea leaves, fortune telling, palm reading, or various other new-age sinful practices? Have you called a psychic hotline?
I have had a daydream for many years about being at a carnival with friends who wanted to have their palms read by a fortune teller. In the dream, I pretend to want to read the fortune teller’s future. Looking at what they call the lifeline, I said, “Your lifeline says that if you don’t repent of your evil ways, you are going to Hell.”
Do you believe in or teach about reincarnation, chakris, chi, or fungswae?
Toy stores sell Dungeons and Dragons, ouija boards, and tarot cards. Have you ever played with this stuff, even as a child?
Do you have any occult objects (jewelry like necklaces or rings) or books in your home or work? These bring evil upon you. They are like uranium in that they radiate, but not rads, but evil.
Have you ever taken psychedelic drugs like LSD?
Do you or have you listened to evil music that blasphemes God or glorifies abominations? This type of music is often dedicated to Satan.
Do you have an uncanny fascination with demons or occult? How about an obsessive interest in Hitler?
Have you ever gone to a cemetery to go ghost hunting, grave robbing by digging up a body, or breaking into a mausoleum?
Have you ever practiced yoga or martial arts? Some yoga or martial arts is like going to a stretching class or taking wrestling or boxing. Others are dangerous because they are modern extensions of very pagan and demonic religions.
In transcendental meditation, the practitioners are emptying their minds for some supposed spiritual benefit. I don’t practice martial arts anymore. I’ve repented and destroyed all my martial arts paraphernalia. But back in the day, at a karate school, the instructor asked me what I was doing during the beginning and end of the class during meditation. I told him I was praying and asking Jesus to protect us from getting hurt. He became outraged because, for him, martial arts was part of his religion.
Do you have friends or family who practice the occult? Are you a victim of ancestral spirits in the form of a generational curse? Is your home haunted? Are family members demonically possessed or oppressed as a result? In these cases, you are more a victim than a perpetrator.
Are you a victim of Satanic sexual ritual abuse? Have you had a sexual partner who practiced the occult? Consequently, you may have un-Godly soul ties that must be repented.
Have you ever visited or worshiped in a pagan shrine or temple? Regrettably, I have. When I was 20-something, a colleague invited some of us from work to go with her to her Hindu temple. They asked us to take off our shoes as we entered, and I did. I even participated in the service. Even though I repented and have been wiped clean by the blood of Christ, I still carry some emotional baggage. Have you ever participated in other false religions or cults like Christian Science, Rosicrucian, Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, some Martial Arts, or Yoga?
Do you casually read daily horoscopes or use them to guide your future? I know this person who, when asked, “What is your sign?” He responds, “My sign is the sign of the cross,” followed by a short mini-sermon about the horror of horoscopes.”
Any involvement, ignorant or deliberate, is contaminating. You can’t go into the water without getting wet.
Somewhere in the Bible, it mentions that sometimes when we meet someone, it is actually an angel, so I guess sometimes we can be sitting by a witch, warlock, or Satanic high priest without knowing it. Or maybe a demon itself masquerading as a human. If we are exposed to these evil souls, what hexes or curses will they put on us? That is why, as Christian soldiers, we must pray a lot because the enemy hates our guts.
Examination of Conscience
This should be very helpful to those who have participated in different occult things. A soul may have experienced the sin even when young and do not remember it. There are several types of memory, but the two I want to mention now are recall and recognition. Recall memory is more complex than recognition memory. If we look at a multiple-choice question, the answer is right before us, and we can more easily remember it. But when we see it, we have a greater chance of identifying it, even if it had been for God.
A general examination of conscience reveals the sins we have recently committed. This review is different because it can span a lifetime. For example, did we play with the Ouija board when we were six? For example. Did that six-year-old child's sin get forgiven since they have forgotten it and haven't repented?