The dangers of the Occult and the New Age are all around us. So too is the solution to the woes they drag in their wake. Such were the sentiments of someone I had met some time ago, a woman who specialised in freeing souls from those shackles. Recently, I set out to find her again, and this time to question her more closely.
That search concluded as a train pulled into a lonely country station, somewhere in the British Isles. Even at that early hour, the streets were deserted. I made my way through the cold wind to a non-descript avenue and to an equally ordinary house on it. As the door opened, I observed the woman stood before me and remembered the reason for my expedition, and its unusual nature. This was no social visit, but rather an interview with a demonologist.
For reasons that will become clear, the identity and location of the person visited must remain secret. Suffice it to say that the woman I had come to see had lived in a monastery as a contemplative until retiring to her current hermitical life under the authority of, and in obedience to, her local bishop. I shall refer to her simply as Sister. About her own life, she was scant on details, enough to satisfy my need to know, but little more; in any event, we had other things of which we needed to speak.
For the last 12 years she had been engaged in a ministry both public and concealed. It is one of deliverance, working alongside exorcists: helping to deliver those unfortunate enough to be caught up in the Occult and the forces that surround it. She knew the power of what she opposed. She was under no illusions; it was a war she was engaged in, albeit an invisible one, even if, at times, its victims manifested material aspects of that with which she fought.
The weapons to be employed in this struggle were those prescribed by the Church. Often priest exorcists ask her to accompany them, especially when exorcising women. She is more than willing to do so, even if what she witnesses is not for the faint hearted. Nothing she does, or has done, deviates from what the Church teaches in these matters. She is clear no layperson, nor a religious sister for that matter, can carry out an exorcism. Her ministry is deliverance – parallel, but nevertheless different.
Interestingly, it was not something she had sought. In fact, to begin with she was sceptical about so-called ‘deliverance’ ministries. Then a priest prayed over her at a Charismatic prayer meeting. It changed her life – its impact both real and definite. Still, she doubted, if more from not understanding what had happened to her. She was left wondering if she had been given a gift to heal others, and so sought help in discerning this. This came, as well as evidence that her gift was needed. At this point, she changed the subject of our conversation, and returned to talk of the dangers in our midst.
For her there is no grey – only black and white. There is the true Church of Christ arraigned in its ceaseless fight against the Powers, Principalities and Dominions that roam this world for the destruction of many. She has made an exhaustive study of these forces – their lineage, their masks, their assorted names, and the various cultures they have moved through. She chased them down the centuries: Shiva, Astarte, Baal, Pan…Such a realm exists, of this she is in no doubt, and at its head sits the Evil One. Careful not to criticise anyone, she laments that more is not preached on the reality of the Devil and his Legions, involved as they are in a struggle as old as Man himself, and one that continues until the Valley of Josaphat echoes with the sounds of Armageddon.
Today things grow still more ominous. In modern Britain there are now generations of new Pagans. Unlike their ancestors over 1500 years earlier, these have turned away from the Light in ever-greater numbers and now, in their despair, are embracing the Darkness as never before. In the small remote town that the Sister lives in, she told me that therein lay at least two witches’ covens. Her work with exorcists, however, brings her to all parts of the British Isles. She is under no illusions as to how widespread the problems caused by demonic and occult activity are. They are certainly not insignificant, especially so, as, for many, there is little by way of defence and sometimes even an unwitting invitation to such entities.
The Sister spoke of the portals through which the demonic enters. Based on Church authorities, especially the writing of Popes and the Saints, in particular St. Thomas Aquinas, she recounted the relentless rise of the Occult over the last two centuries often disguised in the shinning raiment of the New Age. This, coupled with widespread sexual immorality, has made these forces rampant throughout society today, bolstered by silence on the part of some called to proclaim the truth about such matters in season and out.
Concealed in words of ‘peace’ & ‘fulfilment’, of ‘realisation’ & ‘truth’, of ‘transcendence’ & ‘love’ – the New Age had propagated its lies to the point where even some in the Church no longer understood its venom whilst those outside Her boundaries were all too easily fooled. The Sister’s study of the New Age had led her back to the worn out falsehoods of the 19th Century, Theosophy and Spiritualism, and on to the syncretism of these last times. They may be a hackneyed collection of ideas, yet, as ancient as the hills and woods at which their modern followers now gather, the spirits that animate them are far from tired.
She paused, and then recounted just one example of the spread of the New Age starting from when the Sister was a young woman studying in London. She remembers that Tarot Cards became fashionable around 1967, with its so-called Summer of Love. Thereafter, occult books began to appear in the Religion Section of London’s bookshops. By the 1980s things had turned full circle – just a few books on religion were now to be seen in the New Age sections of such stores. I told her that, in London at least, things had become even more desperate with Tarot Card readings now taking place in bookshops, some of which were solely dedicated to the subject of the Occult and its fellow travellers – the tide had turned…
Enough of the Darkness: what of the Light with which to counter it, I asked? Once a person had escaped the clutches of the Occult or the New Age they had to make Christ the centre of their lives. Destroying all forms of attachment – both spiritual and material – to their former practices. And for Catholics this meant regular Confession, the reception of Holy Communion, as the whole Sacramental life of the Church was henceforth to be lived. Prayer and mortification were essential, so too was the reading of the Sacred Scriptures, the recitation of the Rosary, and a complete turning away from the glamour of all the works of the Evil One. Also, the Christian must forgive. The holding of grudges or hatreds, however painfully justified, were to be renounced completely. There was nothing new in what she said. It was a plan of life for any Christian. What was new, however, was the urgency with which she spoke.
Needless to say, she applauded the current Holy Father in his reminding the world of the reality of the Devil. More needs to be done, however. The need is real; she told me of one diocese where the bishop had recently increased significantly the number of exorcists therein. She then went on to tell of some of the victims she had helped. The stories were as revolting as they were sad, as maddening as they were disturbing. People trapped by the secrecy of the world they had entered, and then slowly dragged ever deeper into an abyss of personal degradation and evil. Of their sick rites and perverted cruel ways, the Sister talked of the need to combat this with prayer, with whole parishes consecrated and entrusted to the powerful protection of Our Lady – she who has, and who shall, crush the head of the Serpent.
The Sister’s experiences were first hand, and all the more shocking for that. Too shocking to recount here, but across Britain, in villages and towns, in the lonely country hills and in the crowded tower blocks of the inner cities an evil has been loosed to devastating effect, and with it a trail of broken lives and destroyed innocence now covers this land. And the only thing able to break this oppression, ultimately to silence it, was the Name above all names and one whose power had been largely forgotten whilst other names of a very different hue were returning, called forth by some in ignorance, and by others knowingly…
She was clear the time has come to once more invoke this Holy Name.
The Sister lives as quietly as she can. For reasons now apparent she does not publicise her work. In any event she is already far too busy, inundated by those in need of help. And then there are those who would wish for her to cease. I asked if she felt threatened. Suffice it to say, her trust is in the Good Lord who protects her; nothing less, for it is in His Name that she casts out.
It was now late and night had fallen. I looked at the woman in front of me. A strange mixture of seriousness and joy, engaged in something I was only just beginning to understand. She watched me leave through the same empty streets as I had arrived. Making my way back to the train station, the night had grown strangely opaque. Then my thoughts returned to the woman I had just bid farewell to, and, in so doing, I thanked God for her unique ministry, and with that the night no longer seemed so black, and in the distance the moon rose to shine brightly over far away hills.