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“Λίγα λόγια για τον κίνδυνο της γιόγκα και του διαλογισμού”
November 4th, 2024, in Paphos
St George Karslidis of Drama
Office against Heresies
- What is Occultism and Evil practices?
- When the occultist practices can damage us?
- What to do if we suffer the harm of occultist practices?
- The danger of doing Yoga
- Conclusion
The Almighty Triune God absolutely forbids any involvement in occultist practice what is expressed in the Holy Scriptures:
- “‘I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute themselves by following them, and I will cut them off from their people (Lev 20:6)
- But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” (Rev. 21:8)
Occultism is the invocation of demonic powers – instead of God – in order to help people to fulfil human wishes.
It is the desire to have an autonomous life, independently from God. To become “gods” without the union with God. It is the continuation of the sin of Adam and Eve, who believed the serpent, Satan, they could become like “god” without God. This is idolatry and unfaithfulness to Jesus Christ, the only true God.
- Occultism (from the Latin occultus, meaning secret, hidden) is the mysterious teachings and cults that express a longing to penetrate the spiritual world, learn about the powers there, and possess them.
- The purpose of this preoccupation with the occult is strictly utilitarian: to find out secrets, to attain worldly acclaim, to win someone’s love, to strengthen one’s health, to enhance one’s potential, to take revenge on an enemy, or simply to “play” with the mysterious or to reach a more perfect life on earth pretending by their ego to replace in their lives the commandments of God by their own moral values.
For this reason, the canons of the Orthodox Church compare those who practice sorcery and occultism, with those who betrayed the faith in difficult times and circumstances, and with murderers. To ask the help of the enemy of God, it is betrayal to God, and in the Bible is called “spiritual adultery” and “spiritual prostitution”.
List of occultism practices that are completely forbidden by God:
The practice of the various forms of occultism, such as yoga, psychics, ‘mindfulness or meditation,’ bioenergetics, reiki, feng-shui, hypnosis, shamanism, witchcraft, divination, enchantments, spiritism, fortune-telling, non-traditional medicine, voodoo, umbanda, black and white magic, fortunetelling, contact with spirits, astrology (zodiacal signs), contacting ‘dead people’ through mediums, UFOs, parapsychology, telepathy, and other Eastern cults lead to a deepened association with demonic spirits.
Saint Elder Cleopa of Rumania explains that devils have no power whatsoever to heal someone, they can never work genuine miracles, but it is only through illusions that they deceive the unfaithful and the ones of weak faith. Those who practice witchcraft and go to witches, or those who practice yoga or another occultist activity, commit a great sin against the Holy Spirit, as they leave God and ask for the devils’ help. These people cast off Christ and unite with the devil bringing him into their hearts and houses. The are no longer entitled to be named as Christians, but as apostates.
Our Holy Fathers explain that these occultism practices can harm us, when we don’t have an Orthodox Christian spiritual life.
Saint Elder Paisios of Mount Athos explains that the spells or black magic or any other occultist practice can damage an Orthodox Christian when “one has to have given rights to the devil. In other words, give him a serious reason, and not have put ‘oneself in order’ with repentance and confession. To a person who confesses, even if spells are shoveled onto him, they won’t affect him at all. Because if that person has been to confession and has a cleansed heart, no collaboration whatsoever between sorcerers and the devil is able to harm him… however If you can’t perceive your error and you don’t repent, even if all the spiritual fathers in the world get together and pray for you, the demon won’t leave you.” (From the book Spiritual Counsels of Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, vol. 3, ch. 1)
The occultism can damage us only when we do not conform our lives to the commandments of Jesus Christ:
- When we don’t live with repentance, humility, frequent confession and Holy Communion.
- When we do not pray every day, we do not fast.
- When we do not read the Holy Scripture and the life of the saints.
- When we do not have self-sacrifice helping others as much as we can.
In our negligence, through our sins we opened the doors to demons giving rights to them to torment us and harm us.
One of the most serious and important open doors to demons in our lives is the ‘evil power of complaining.’ Because complaining begets complaining. One who complains destroys himself. But who glorifies God, the devil leaves him powerless.
Another serious door that we open to demons is the unrepentant and unconfessed sins. Not knowing ourselves, and without repenting of our errors and sins, we can not be free from the power of the occultist practices. Another door that we open to demons is to believe in visions and dreams. St Elder Cleopa warns us, with all the Holy Fathers, do not believe in any vision and dream, “due to the danger of deception from visions and dreams, some of the Holy Fathers didn’t accept any kind of dream before performing a very careful examination. Saint John of the Ladder [Abbot of St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai (6th c.) & author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent] says “Whoever does not believe in visions and dreams is a spiritual philosopher,” … So, it is a sin to believe in dreams and visions, because it is through such things that devils deceive us very easily and throw us into the terrible sin of pride and vanity, to the point where man ends up trusting himself more than the word of God.” (Excerpt from “Ne vorbeşte Părintele Cleopa”, 4th vol.)
St Paul writes, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1)
The first step for freedom in Christ is repentance, the first teaching of Jesus Christ, “From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”” (Mt. 4:17).
The medicine and freedom of any harm of these evil and occultist practices is Holy Confession and Holy Communion fundamentally. Through frequent Holy Confession, these doors that we had opened to demons, are closed. And after confession, we must receive the medicine: Holy Communion, that according to our Holy Fathers, is the “Medicine of immortality “
St Paisios of Mount Athos teaches that those who were harmed should go and confess everything with sincerity, and have watchfulness over their actions, go to church regularly and receive Holy Communion with the blessing of their spiritual father in order to be purged from every evil activity.
The Orthodox Church has as well other spiritual medicines to protect us against any occultist practice. Orthodox Christians can invite a priest to their homes to perform the Blessing of the house, the performance the Holy Unction, read the Healing prayers or exorcistic prayers, and drinking of the holy water every morning as well.
We, Orthodox Christians, must wear the Cross. We are not allowed any kind of talisman, ‘eye’ or anything like it. St Paisios of Mount Athos says, “Don’t make talismans, because even sorcerers make talismans nowadays, but inside them, they place all sorts of spells. Poor souls – they wear talismans of that sort, supposedly to be helped, but instead they end up tormented. Those items should be burnt and the ashes buried, or be thrown into the sea, and then they should go to confess.”
Orthodox Christians must Cross themselves with the sign of the Cross with reverence and many times a day. We must bless the food that we eat, the beverage that we drink and give thanks to God for them, and must Cross with the sign of the Cross to our children and blessing them.
The black powers of darkness are powerless, have no power. People make them powerful when they separate themselves from God and the life in the Church.
Finally, when any Orthodox Christian lives in Doxology, as Saint Elder Paisios of Mount Athos teaches, the demons do not have access to us. As St Paul Apostle writes, “give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:18)
The results of practicing occultism
It is well proven and established that those involved in occult activities sooner or later begin to manifest psychic or psychological abnormalities; many fall into depression or are driven to alcohol and narcotic abuse and many commit suicide.
Many are being deceive that the practice of Yoga for stretching and modeling the body is not harmful. This is a big deception.
The word ‘Yoga’ is derived from the Sanskrit root ‘Yuj’, meaning ‘to join’ or ‘to yoke’ or ‘to unite’. As per Yogic scriptures the practice of Yoga leads to the union of individual consciousness with that of the so called ‘Universal Consciousness.’
The goal of yoga is to connect your will with “the serpent Kundalini” (false “divine” energy in the body) and elevate it to “Shiva” (a demon) and experience your “true” self (meaning spiritual deception). All the paths of yoga are connected to each other like branches of a tree. For this reason, yoga tries to unite the mind/body or self with Shiva (a demon). The ultimate goal of yoga is to awaken the “kundalini (ie satanic) energy coiled at the base of the spine” in the image of a snake (Satan).
Through yoga, he slowly “harnesses the shakti” (shakti is the satanic force) that yogis refer to as the “Divine Mother”, who is actually the “dark goddess” associated with other important “Hindu gods” (the demons). This energy that comes from the practice of yoga is not from the Holy Spirit. It is a fraud to think that yoga practice brings wellness. What people experience as well-being and relaxation is a fake “inner peace” that comes from demons.
Yoga is associated with Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism. Yoga postures are not religiously neutral. All “classical asanas” have spiritual significance. Many yoga postures are depicted as being taken by Hindu deities, representing these deities.
The prophet David says, “the gods of the nations are demons” (Psalm 95, 5). For example, the one called “Sun Salutations,”—perhaps the best-known series of “asanas,” or postures, in hatha yoga is literally a Hindu ritual, idolatry. It consists of a whole series of rituals of worshiping the sun as a “god”, thanking him for this source of energy. Yoga takes the sun as “god”, falling into a clearly demonic and pagan practice.
Finally, in Yoga, it is the ‘goddess Kali’ (who is the goddess of death), who tries to unite yoga practitioners through ‘shakti’ (satanic force), with ‘Shiva’ (a demon). It means that it is union with demons through the deception of a seemingly “innocent” and “ancestral” activity of Hinduism. Also, very widespread practice in the West is “Tantric Buddhism or Tibetan Buddhism” whose spiritual leader is the Dalai Lama.
St Paul Apostle warns us against this kind of ‘teachers’: “Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of spirits disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind… Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules.” (Col. 2:18-23)
Our contemporary Holy Elders explain to us that today, painfully, the demons have a lot of control because people gave them power with their sins, without repentance and confession. Those involve in occultism practice can easily work magic on anyone who lives far from the Orthodox Church, and the mysteries, specially, confession and Holy Communion. This occurs because the person has no defenses.
We should not be curious about the demons and their work, but neither to be afraid of demons. The demons are always setting traps lying to us saying that these evil practices of occultism and yoga and new age are innocent, without negative spiritual consequences. Practicing them (or going with them) the soul is impregnated with the energy of demonic spirits. For this reason, we don’t have to mess with these occultism practices.
In order to hit this darkness in our lives, we need to bring the light of Christ to our lives, His light dispels all evil influence of witchcraft and occultism. We need to pray the Jesus Prayer and read the Psalms of David. The daily reading of the Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God is an unvaluable protection. We need to have a pious life in the Church, that is the Hospital where we can find the medicines to heal and free us, it means, the mysteries, especially Holy Confession, Holy Communion and Holy Unction.
Our Lord Jesus Christ founded His Church saying: “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it (Mt. 16:18). The Lord promised us that those who are members of His only Church, the Orthodox Church, living on the “rock”, the true faith and having a virtuous life, cannot be affected by the evil power of Satan and Hades. Amen.
With love in Christ
from the Office against Heresies
of the Holy Metropolis of Paphos