My Occult Past (such as it was...)

What I want to do with this post is point out an ancient theme in the life of the Church that shadows her ministry of teaching the apostolic faith. To do this, I want to tell a bit of my story (a VERY small bit) as a kind of witness to what happens when we give ourselves over to the relativism of the zeitgeist. My goal here is not to denounce or condemn but to inform and caution. This post is written specifically for Christians who are either dabbling in New Agey ideas and practices or those thinking of doing so. This post is not intended to persuade those who have left the Church for various occult practices to return to the Church. Nor am I offering here a systematic philosophical critique of occultism/neo-paganism. I am writing as a Christian priest for Christians who are tempted by a darker side. . .

Was I involved in the occult? Yes. How much so? More than most, not as much as some. Basically, I was an observer and a sympathizer but never a practitioner; that is, I was an avid reader of occult books and an eager audience for occult ideas, but I was never initiated into any occult group nor have I ever really participated in any occult ritual. At most, I can be faulted for attending a few Wiccan Circles at Halloween and invoking angels as a kind of magical power. The worst thing I ever did was become an expert Tarot card reader.

My interest in the occult was always a conscious rejection of Christ. During my years of occult interest I was an Episcopalian, mostly fallen away, but nonetheless fully aware of my baptismal duties and readily admitted to communion in the Church as a confirmed member. Nothing in my family background or schooling or childhood would have predicted an interest in the occult.

My earliest memories of the occult revolve around an near obsession with the TV shows Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. Nothing exactly dark and loathsome there. However, the idea that it was possible for me as a human to manipulate matter with my will alone was very, very compelling. Now, I never believed that the kind of magic done on those shows was really possible. But they stoked my imagination and lead me to further studies.

As a teenager I played with a Ouija Board with one of my friends. We did all the things that kids do to scare themselves—looked for ghosts, chanted “Bloody Mary” in front of the mirror, etc. My first inkling that this sort of thing might be dangerous came when I read a second-hand book on demonology. Is this stuff really, really real? This book scared me just enough to push me into a deeper curiosity and further research. By this time I had been introduced to the Catholic Church on a class trip to Mexico. All of the sacramental elements of the Church were on full-display in the Mexican Baroque churches we visited, especially the National Cathedral. Our Lady of Guadalupe grabbed me in Mexico City, and I had a profound conversion experience at 17, feeling powerfully the call to be a priest. Never having been to Mass or confession or anything else remotely Catholic, this experience of being called to priesthood was confusing and scary.

I decided to become Catholic. My parents objected, though not very strenuously. I became an Episcopalian simply because the Catholic Church in my university town looked like a Quaker meeting house—brick box, no sacramentals, glass doors. Unfortunately, the Episcopal Church at the time (early ‘80’s) was slavishly following the zeitgeist and slowly abandoning its apostolic heritage. With the irregular ordination of women into the priesthood (something I fully supported) and the revision of the 1928 Prayer Book (again, fully supported), the Episcopal Church became a church given over to restrained liturgical experimentation and utilitarian morality. I was enthralled to modern philosophy and postmodern critical theory (feminism, Marxism) and the Episcopal Church gave me nothing solid to hang on to during this bumpy time. It was easy to stay in the Church and worship the zeitgeist. So I did.

The one occult practice that I became very good at was Tarot card reading. It was something of a game for me at first. I would bring my deck to a party and sit in the corner doing card readings for my friends and colleagues. As I did it more and more, it became more and more necessary for me to do it. Two events lead me to see the danger of the practice. One of my Episcopalian friends asked me if I could do a reading through her for her brother; in other words, she wanted me to read her brother’s future without him present. I agreed. I didn’t know her brother. Didn’t know she had a brother. So, I read the cards. What the cards said was exactly on target. Her teenage brother was having an affair with a married woman and the husband knew. Her brother was in danger of being seriously injured or killed. My friend was so horrified that I knew this through the cards that she stopped speaking to me for months. Another incident happened while I was at a party. One of my married friends was having an affair with a married man. I knew this and thought nothing of it. When I read her cards, they told me that she and her fellow adulterer were going to get married. But before this happened her husband would die. She was freaked out to say the least. What I didn’t know at the time was that wedding plans were underway and that her husband was indeed dying. These two incidents caused me to put the cards away. I haven’t touched them since.

Another frightening incident occurred years later when I was at my lowest. While working in a psych hospital in the last 90’s I had two radically different spiritual influences in my life: a Wiccan roommate and a charismatic Protestant supervisor. My life was in shambles. Emotionally and spiritually, I was a disaster. Clutching at any and every spiritual fashion that Barnes & Noble put on its “spirituality” shelf, I drifted from Wiccanism, Druidism, angelism, various kinds of divination, esoteric Christianity, anything but the Real Thing offered through Christ.

During a particularly low period, I came home one evening from work and my Wiccan roommate began to question me about my spiritual life. This was very odd because he was always “open to the diversity” of all spiritualities and encouraged my exploration. When I remarked that his questions were annoying and inappropriate, he told me that earlier that evening he came out of the bathroom and saw a dark cloud hovering outside my bedroom door. The cloud moved away from my door and toward him. He said that he cast a “banishing spell” on the cloud several times and it drifted away outside the house. I was incredulous, of course. He was worried nonetheless and “blessed” the house with salt and incense, etc. Whatever, I thought.

The next morning, I went to my second job and my supervisor (the charismatic woman) pulled me into her office and started pelting me with questions about my spiritual life. Déjà vu. I answered very vaguely, not wanting to know of my interest in the occult. She grew frustrated and blurted out that I was under attack by demonic forces. This woman is insane! Then she told me that she and her prayer group were engaged in spiritual warfare against dark forces trying to influence the local population, and that I was a central target. Needless to say, I was more than a little dubious. She told me that during their prayer group she had a clear mental picture of me being attacked by a black cloud in my home. I asked her when this happened. She said: yesterday, Sunday. The same day my roommate saw the cloud outside my door. I became so rattled that I had to leave.

About a year later I left the Episcopal Church and became a Catholic. After a failed attempt to join what I now know is a dissident Catholic religious order, I moved home and continued working in a psych hospital. There I injured my back and got a staph infection from a patient in the injured disc. I spent two months in indescribable agony. Finally, my doctors discovered the internal staph infection (something rare I’m told) and they began treatment. For seven weeks I administered I.V. antibiotics through a PIC line inserted in my arm and running internally to my heart. It took almost seven months for me to recover fully. My infectious disease doctor told me that I was very lucky to be alive after going more than two months with an internal staph infection! Apparently, staph destroys heart valves. Anyway, during those two months I was completely dependent on my parents for everything—feeding me, dressing me, putting me to bed—I was nearly paralyzed by the pain. The humility of that experience returned me to a desire for Christ and his Church. That’s another story.

I joined the Dominicans in 1999. Being on the inside of the Church as a religious has opened my eyes to a number of problems that I recognize from my days as a fan of the occult. Everywhere, I see religious, priests, the laity giving themselves over to radical feminism and Earth worship; theologians preaching Gnostic doctrines like pantheism and pagan mythologies; the profession of various kinds of utilitarian-situational ethics in the public square; Catholics teaching pro-choice, sexual libertinism; various kinds of syncretistic liturgical theology (a dash of Hinduism here, a pinch of Native American religion there, some Wiccan rituals as decoration); but the final straw for me was then and is now the prominence of “social analysis” in among the “peace and justice” crowd in the Church, an analysis that was nothing more than Marxism in vestments. I should know. I was professed Marxist for years, and I am very familiar with the primary and secondary literature. There is also a superficial interest in postmodern philosophy and critical theory that informs some of the biblical research and instruction in the Church’s seminaries. Again, one of my areas in my doctoral studies was postmodern theory. I know it when I see it. And I know from personal experience what it does to one’s allegiance to the possibility of knowing and acting on objective truth.

Now, I have to say here something that some of my readers won’t like every much. There is nothing wrong on the face of it with being required to read texts that oppose the Catholic faith. I taught an entire seminar on post-metaphysical theologies using thinkers who would never darken the door of a church much less a Catholic Church. Categorically, I am NOT opposed to the academic pursuit of truth. What bothers me is that this stuff is often taught uncritically and presented as compatible with the Catholic faith. There is a difference between reading texts that oppose or deny the truths of the faith in order to “know the enemy” and combat him and being required to read these texts as a replacement for the faith. I firmly believe that most of those who read and believe these texts understand themselves to be believing Catholics in good standing with the Church. I’m not suggesting some evil conspiracy. Like me years before, they have been lead down a primrose path into a garbage heap. And frankly, I have done a poor job of challenging these tendencies, preferring stubborn resistance and polemic to good old-fashioned Dominican disputation. My unease is wholly my own creation.

Then I was despondent that I had left my postmodernist occult life behind only to find it again in the Church. As I grow in the faith, I see less and less of this sort of thing among my immediate peers (professors, younger priests, religious, and laity) but more and more in the Church at large (diocesan chanceries, retreat centers, etc.). We have all seen the websites of religious orders and dioceses that feature one sort of New Age-Gnostic practice or another. It’s out there in the Church as it has always been. But that it has always been there is no reason not to call it by name. For those Christians interested in mediation, bodily prayer, ritual, esoteric philosophy, mystical theology, revelation, and the holiness of the feminine, you won’t find a deeper treasure box than the Church. Keeping in mind the questions I presented in the post on New Agey Catholicism, it is entirely possible to live a good Christian life thoroughly steeped in the mystery of God’s love and in His “hiddenness.” If you choose to spend your time denouncing The Rules or finding loopholes in the rules, then I would suggest that you are as legalistic as the hierarchs you denounce. It takes a lawyer to challenge a law-giver head-on and find the way out of a merely legalistic attempt to control.

My goal here is not to point fingers or denounce but rather to give those who think they need help the help they need to avoid these pitfalls. I tell my story as a way of saying, “I’ve been there.” You may see “demons” as nothing more than the dark side of human consciousness or as truly fallen angels. Fine. Regardless, we are tempted by something or someone to deny the truths of the faith and to seek after our own divinity without the help of our divine Creator. This was Adam and Eve’s mistake. Don’t make it yourself.