Recently, I was standing in my backyard burning directions and a small box for divination bones that someone had asked me to decommission for them. I burned everything I could and then buried the bones with exorcised salt and holy water and prayed they would never be found. I followed a protocol a priest-friend had told me in the past because this is not the first time I have been approached by someone needing help with occult items or issues.
In fact, there is a greater and greater frequency to the number of people the Lord sends to me who need help with an issue pertaining to the occult. Four days after this experience in my backyard, a friend approached me in desperation because she is witnessing an unprecedented number of young people dabbling in the occult in her practice and didn’t know what to do in response. We are seeing this uptick across the board.
We need to stop pretending like the devil is a myth or a figment of our imagination or ignoring this reality altogether. This is a very serious problem within the Church. I have on more than one occasion been teaching in parish settings when someone in the group has told me that the devil isn’t real, that he’s just a symbol. On those occasions, I taught very clearly and emphatically that the devil and his minions are real, and they are doing everything in their power to drag us away from Christ towards hell.
Christians and non-Christians dabbling in the occult, because they think it is harmless, is becoming a very serious problem, especially with young people. As Christianity continues to decline in Western culture, other religious practices are taking their place. Human beings are made for worship. If we abandon Christ who is the source of all true worship, then we will worship other things. It is not that young people are not interested in spiritual realities. They are very interested, but they are choosing witchcraft, Wicca, New Age, Eastern mysticism, or a hodgepodge of their own making. They are opening themselves up to very dark forces that are evil. As every exorcist will tell you: “There is no such thing as good magic.”
The Lord keeps sending more and more people my way who do not know what to do when their friends or family are involved in these practices or people who are dealing with the consequences of these practices. Across disciplines, from counselors to priests to students, many people are noticing a very dark trend occurring within our culture.
My students have found crystals under their beds. There are witches and Satanists on campus, and I know that they will do what they can to spiritually undermine my mission. I have had very honest discussions with my students and told them to come to me for spiritual protection if their roommate or friends are involved in these practices. I take this very seriously because I know how dangerous it is, and I know it is commonplace in the dorms.
While the larger Church in the West remains silent, many young people who were raised Catholic are turning to casting spells, crystals, reiki, mediums, psychics, curses, drugs, and other practices that awaken them to dark spiritual realities. In the month of April alone, I dealt with four different instances of people either trying to help others dealing with the occult or people who had opened themselves up to it. All this and I live in the mountains, not near a thriving metropolis.
Rod Dreher had his finger on the pulse of the culture when he wrote Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age. He shares the story of a successful young man who encountered the occult in his workplace:
At a 2022 conference in Oxford, I met Daniel Kim, then twenty-seven, an Anglican seminarian who left a lucrative career working as a creative in the London advertising world to study for the priesthood. Daniel told me that in his job at a high-powered firm, there were no atheists—but that, as far as he could tell, he was the only Christian in the office. The rest were all into the occult to some degree or another.
This makes sense given Western culture’s obsession with destroying its Christian roots and hierarchical institutions. Young people have been raised in a nihilistic culture that seeks power as an ultimate good, so they are seeking the power that comes through the occult. Dreher writes a few pages later:
Religion scholar Tara Isabella Burton observes that paganism and its offshoots make sense for young adults because they appeal to their intuitional preferences (“lived experience”) and rejection of institutions and established hierarchies as oppressive. Occultism promises an experience of the numinous, but unlike Christianity, in which believers surrender their wills to God, occultism tells practitioners that they can use higher powers to impose their own wills on the world.
Many of us are witnessing young people who dabble in the occult, but also still claim some form of Christianity in the United States. This blending of the two is becoming more and more prevalent. I had to tell someone to decommission with holy water and bury a crystal that promised powers of some sort that was a First Holy Communion gift! We need to be prophetically declaring the truth about how harmful these practices are for the users.
There is a growing trend towards seizing knowledge and power through occult practices for those who have abandoned God altogether. Young adults are realizing that if they summon demons, they will show up. God, who is sovereign, does not bend to our own wills—we cannot control Him or outcomes through our prayers. The Christian path is one of surrender. The occult path is a grasping at power and the ultimate Luciferian response of non serviam.
This topic makes Christians in the West uncomfortable. In some ways, we have bought the lies of the rationalists and materialists that these things do not happen. Travel to Africa, Haiti, and other parts of the world, and you will quickly realize that we are deluding ourselves into thinking that we are not living in an epic spiritual war. When a student tells me that a friend is having nightmares and feels a presence in their room, I believe them because I know occult practices are widespread on college campuses, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and other places of power and influence in our culture. The problem is, these students are inviting demons in, but refuse to stop doing what allowed them in when the dark side of these practices manifests.
It is time for us to wake up to this reality. Parents should be aware that their children will encounter these practices on college campuses and in the workplace because it is also rampant on social media where so many young people live the majority of their lives. Rod Dreher is correct about the rise of the occult. Young people are interested in enchantment, but rather than it being the true enchantment of Christianity, it is dark enchantment. This is not something I have only read in his book or in exorcists’ writings. I am witnessing it firsthand with an ever-increasing frequency.
We cannot fight the enemy if we refuse to read the signs of the times. It’s time to reclaim our spiritual heritage and begin fully engaging in the spiritual battle at hand and warning souls of the dangers of the occult.
Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash
