Our culture is saturated with the supernatural. TV shows such as Medium, Charmed, and Lost all have an "other-worldly" theme. Most of them blur the lines between good and evil. This past year was a "record" year for Hollywood in the production of films that dealt with the supernatural/paranormal. While we choose our entertainment, our kids don't often have the luxury of choosing whether to be exposed to these things at school.
This book seeks to present a lucid and comprehensive examination of the paranormal and occult by breaking down the principles of paranormal practices, giving key points about the practices so that parents can readily identify them. The book discusses the occult view of supernatural energy and of good and evil, and how these concepts are seen in some popular literature and movies. The book also explains the dangers and gives a biblical basis for concern. Christian parents need to be equipped to discuss these matters with their children!Our culture is saturated with the supernatural. TV shows such as Medium, Charmed, and Lost all have an "other-worldly" theme. Most of them blur the lines between good and evil. This past year was a "record" year for Hollywood in the production of films that dealt with the supernatural/paranormal. While we choose our entertainment, our kids don't often have the luxury of choosing whether to be exposed to these things at school.
This book seeks to present a lucid and comprehensive examination of the paranormal and occult by breaking down the principles of paranormal practices, giving key points about the practices so that parents can readily identify them. The book discusses the occult view of supernatural energy and of good and evil, and how these concepts are seen in some popular literature and movies. The book also explains the dangers and gives a biblical basis for concern. Christian parents need to be equipped to discuss these matters with their children!
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Overview
Our culture is saturated with the supernatural. TV shows such as Medium, Charmed, and Lost all have an "other-worldly" theme. Most of them blur the lines between good and evil. This past year was a "record" year for Hollywood in the production of films that dealt with the supernatural/paranormal. While we choose our entertainment, our kids don't often have the luxury of choosing whether to be exposed to these things at school.
This book seeks to present a lucid and comprehensive examination of the paranormal and occult by breaking down the principles of paranormal practices, giving key points about the practices so that parents can readily identify them. The book discusses the occult view of supernatural energy and of good and evil, and how these concepts are seen in some popular literature and movies. The book also explains the dangers and gives a biblical basis for concern. Christian parents need to be equipped to discuss these matters with their children!
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780781411400 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | David C Cook |
| Publication date: | 08/05/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Spellbound
The Paranormal Seduction of Today's Kids
By Marcia Montenegro
David C. Cook
Copyright © 2006 Marcia MontenegroAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7814-1140-0
CHAPTER 1
What Is the Paranormal? The Hidden and Forbidden
When you hear the word paranormal, what do you think of? Superman leaping tall buildings? Time machines? Palm reading? Or maybe that TV psychic who says she can see dead people? Bingo on the last two! The first two we'll shelve under the fantasy label and cover later.
Here's a concise definition: The paranormal involves efforts to access or use supernatural power or attempts to gain secret or hidden information outside the use of the natural senses. These practices are otherwise known as the occult. Think of ghosts, hauntings, psychics, telling the future, astrology, summoning spirits, sorcery, and incantations. Now you are getting an idea of what the paranormal is about.
It might help to make a distinction between the words occult and cult. Cult describes an authoritarian organization, usually religious, that strictly monitors and controls the beliefs and activities of its members through fear, threats, and manipulation, whether subtle or overt. Though they may contain many beliefs not unfamiliar to Christians, cults by their very definition deny the essentials of Christian doctrine. Occult is a term for sets of practices related to contacting spirits or false gods, seeking supernatural power, and claiming ways to uncover hidden or secret knowledge. These practices are aligned with unique belief systems and can be found in many forms. A cult can have occult practices, but the two terms are not the same.
Paranormal means going above or beyond the normal. Supernatural means going beyond the natural. Paranormal and supernatural activities involve the attempted use of invisible forces, energies, powers, or spirits that cannot be objectively discerned or quantified. Keep in mind the key terms: unseen, hidden, and forbidden.
The Marks of the Occult
The occult is not a belief system, but rather an umbrella term for a set of practices that arises from assorted belief systems involving a blend of secret teachings, hidden meanings, and supernatural or paranormal activities.
Some of the marks of the occult include
• attempts to contact or use unseen power or forces not known in the natural world;
• secret or hidden knowledge available only to the initiated;
• secret or hidden information unavailable through natural methods but revealed via supernatural abilities;
• seeing hidden meaning in objects or images;
• practices forbidden by God.
A person can engage in an occult practice independently of a belief that supports it. Anyone can be involved in an occult technique, knowingly or not. There are no "casual observers" at a séance, nor any players who are merely "enjoying a game" when playing with a Ouija board.
The occult includes a range of experiences, from esoteric practices with complex layers of teachings to simplified instructions in a spell book or a deck of tarot cards you can buy at your neighborhood bookstore. Many games marketed today to children include occult references and content too.
Since the occult does not come from one source or religion, elements of it are sometimes mixed in with teachings or beliefs that have a basis in truth, or that even sound Christian. Occult teachings often borrow from the Bible and attempt to counterfeit Christianity. (One such teaching advises followers to say something three times to replicate the Trinity.) Two of the main hallmarks of the occult are that it is based on reading hidden meanings in ordinary patterns, and that it promotes a belief in contacting, accessing, or manipulating unseen things or beings (often described as energy, forces, gods, spirits, or ghosts). Either these unseen beings have no basis in the objective world, or they may be spirit beings (angels).
Going to Deuteronomy 18
Take a look at Deuteronomy 18:10–14. Here God lists the practices of the occult:
There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a wizard or a necromancer, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this. (ESV)
The Hebrew words translated as "sorcerer," "charmer," or "wizard" here may be different in other Bible translations since Hebrew words often describe actions rather than provide labels, as we find with English words. For example, some versions will use "soothsayer" instead of "observer of times," or will say "one who casts a spell" or "enchanter" instead of "charmer."
Here's the same passage in a different translation.
There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord; and because of these detestable things the Lord your God will drive them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. For those nations, which you shall dispossess, listen to those who practice witchcraft and to diviners, but as for you, the LORD your God has not allowed you to do so.
An Old Testament Hebrew word, qesem, rendered in this passage as "divination," is sometimes translated as "witchcraft." The biblical prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, and Zechariah mention this practice in a deprecating manner. In addition, there are several Old Testament words from which one can derive the words for sorcerer, witch, astrologer, or magician. Another word in this passage, translated as "witchcraft," is anan, and refers to observing times; the practice of soothsaying, spiritism, augury, or witchcraft; or it could mean sorceress, diviner, or fortune-teller.
Hebrew terms for these practices are very descriptive. For example, a word translated as "astrologer" might come from a word meaning to divide up the heavens. In the Old Testament some words translated as "witch" come from the word kashaph, meaning to whisper or hiss, so the noun form, kashshaph, means an enchanter, sorcerer, or magician. This word is meant to sound like the hiss or whisper of someone doing spells.
What Is Deuteronomy 18 Telling Us?
God's view of these practices is clear: They are an abomination. It is significant that God groups the practice of sacrificing children along with the occult practices because it emphasizes just how detestable these acts are and points out that they all stem from turning to false gods.
Despite the range of terms in different Bible versions, it is plain what is being forbidden. Following the order of the text, these practices can be broken down into these categories:
1. Divination or fortune-telling
2. Sorcery, including casting spells
3. Contacting disembodied spirits, including the dead
To dabble or engage in these practices is, first of all, disobedience to God. Secondly, it can lead to contact with the demonic.
Okay, now you have the basics. There's much more to learn in chapter 2.
Bringing It Home
Here are some ways you and your child can go over the Deuteronomy 18 passage:
• Ask your child to read this passage with you.
• Ask your child to list in his or her words what this passage is saying about activities God does not like.
• Make a list of what is mentioned in the passage and work together to divide it into the three categories of divination, sorcery, and spirit contact. Some items might belong in more than one category. (Chapter 2 will go over this in more detail.)
CHAPTER 2Hidden Meanings, Hidden Powers, Hidden Beings
[B]y practicing magic you put you [sic] self in a spot where danger and chaos can get to you easier, but if you're willing to learn God will (or nowadays, books and group leaders) teach you how to protect yourself from those negative energies, so you can safely continue on a magical path (which for some people is a better path than maybe Christianity, or Buddhism, etc.) to become closer to him (god) and learn his love and secrets like no other man or woman would imagine.
Like I said before I've been in to Magick and the Occult sents [sic] I was 10 years old. When I was 15 years old I become a member of an Occult Order here in C____ ... Do you know about the Temple of Set? I am planning to become [sic] a member of it so I can study the most advance [sic] forms of Black Magick.
Break out a magnifying glass and closely examine the three terms: divination, sorcery, and spirit contact. Note that these three areas involve the paranormal and sometimes overlap with each other. Now grab a nice cup of coffee or tea and get comfortable for this tour through the terms of the hidden and forbidden.
Breaking Down the Terms
1. Divination: Hidden Meanings
Divination, often called fortune-telling, is retrieving information by using paranormal methods or by reading hidden meaning where there is no apparent meaning. Divination may require an ability that goes beyond the five senses, such as psychic powers; or it may involve a tool or system that assists in the extraction of hidden meaning from the natural world. One source defines divination as "the effort to gain information of a mundane sort by means conceived of as transcending the mundane."
Psychic powers most commonly include telepathy, which is receiving or sending thoughts to another person; precognition, a knowledge of the future; clairvoyance, the ability to see the past, present, or future; and psychometry, the ability to "read" an object by holding it, thus gaining information about the owner or past owners and history of the object. Psychics may also contact or channel spirits, such as spirit guides or angels, or beings they consider to be from another planet, galaxy, or dimension.
Many forms of divination are familiar: astrology, tarot cards, palmistry, numerology, tea-leaf reading, pendulum, scrying (gazing into an opaque surface), and runes (symbols inscribed on stones or cards). Astrology is based on a belief that the planets and their positions have a meaning related to a person's life. Tarot cards are tools used for reading hidden messages. For most people, the lines on their palms are simply lines, but for palm readers, the hand itself is a tool whose shape and lines contain hidden meaning. Almost anything can be used as a divinatory tool; the actual instrument is not important.
Interpreting omens from nature, something mentioned in the Deuteronomy passage, is a category of divination sometimes called augury. An omen is often believed to be a sign of an impending event. Patterns in clouds and smoke or in the way birds were flying were read in ancient times to discern the will of gods. Other omens became part of folk superstitions, such as the idea that dropping a spoon on the floor meant a guest was coming to visit, or breaking a mirror would bring seven years of bad luck. A lot of superstitions as well as the belief in luck reflect an occult way of thinking.
2. Sorcery, Casting Spells, Magic: Hidden Powers
These practices include an attempt to access, channel, or manipulate a power or energy that is not natural or measurable in order to bring about a desired end. Turning on a light switch in order to get electricity is not sorcery! Electricity has known components that can be identified and measured; there is objective, consistent data about it. When dealing with paranormal energy or forces, however, there is no known data or objective, verifiable components.
Those who practice magic mainly include three groups: those from indigenous cultures who practice shamanism and are considered to be the mediators between the spirit world or gods and the people of the community; magicians who use a complex system of ritual or ceremonial magic; and Wiccans or Witches, followers of an earth-based religion who believe that the earth and nature are sacred and are often polytheistic.
At the core of nature magic is a belief in the elements of air, earth, water, and fire, and belief in the elementals, which are the spirits of the elements. These elementals can take animal or human form. Such spirits appear in many folktales around the world under different names (sometimes equated with "fairy" or "deva") and are typically considered mischievous, deceptive, and even dangerous to humans. Elementals are summoned, or conjured, in magical rituals to be used by the magician or witch, and then dispatched. Water elementals are known as Nymphs or Undines; the earth elementals are Gnomes; the air spirits are Sylphs; and the fire elementals are Salamanders. Because these spirits are linked to the elements of nature, they are considered "natural" and not supernatural, especially by Wiccans and Witches.
In some magical systems, the elementals are ruled by "higher beings," called Lords of the Watchtowers who, in turn, are ruled by the Mighty Ones, the Old Ones, or the Guardians. Sometimes the Lords of the Watchtowers are equated with the Guardians, depending on the magical system being used. When some Wiccans or Witches cast a circle, they call the corners, which can be considered to be the Elementals, Guardians, or Watchtowers, and even other terms are used.
Sorcery is a word not commonly used today by those in the occult, as it implies the use of black magic (magic to do harm). In the past, it also carried a negative connotation, though its meaning varies in different cultures.
Shaman is a term associated with the practice of magic and the paranormal that has become popular today through the New Age movement. Shamanism emphasizes trance and ecstatic states, often induced through hallucinogenic plants or drugs, spirit contact, contact with or talking to animal spirits, leaving the body, and healing. These practices are drawn from several cultures: Native American, various Latin American indigenous groups, Hawaiian, Eskimoan, and others. Traditionally, the shaman is the community's healer and link to the spirit world, and is looked to as the local wise man or woman. The word shaman, however, has been Westernized and has taken on additional or new meanings, so that the definition is no longer clear or agreed upon. Nevertheless, it is being used today, usually in concert with the use of paranormal powers.
All of the above involve the use of one or more of the following: rituals, magical tools, visualization, incantations, magical potions, drugs, or other objects or methods whereby one is seeking to bring about a desired end. These practices often include contact with spirits, whether these spirits are believed to be angels, gods, or other disembodied entities. Visualization is a method for picturing a desired goal clearly in the mind and believing it is already accomplished in order to bring it into reality. This often is part of a technique to bring one into altered states of consciousness.
Ceremonial magic can involve complex rituals and spirit contact. Spells done by Wiccans or Witches often involve casting a circle, incantations, visualization, and invoking gods or goddesses. Techniques such as candle magic involve burning a certain color of candle, often along with visualization or incantations. Such practices vary, however, and there is no standard procedure.
White magic is generally considered harmless and benevolent because it is done for a good purpose, while black magic is done to gain power over someone or to harm. Not everyone in the occult agrees on these distinctions or definitions, and often the line between the two blurs. God's Word, however, is unmistakable that any such activity, whether considered benevolent or harmful, is strongly condemned.
3. Spiritism: Hidden Beings
An attempt to contact a disembodied spirit or entity is spiritism, and an attempt to contact the dead is called necromancy in the Bible. Necromancy was performed to get information about the future from the dead. This is what King Saul did when he consulted the medium (or "witch" in some translations) of Endor and asked her to call up the spirit of Samuel (see 1 Samuel 28:7). Mediums today are psychics who specialize in contacting the dead.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Spellbound by Marcia Montenegro. Copyright © 2006 Marcia Montenegro. Excerpted by permission of David C. Cook.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments,Foreword,
Preface,
PART ONE: WHAT IS THE PARANORMAL, AND WHY IS IT A THREAT TO OUR KIDS?,
1. What Is the Paranormal? The Hidden and Forbidden,
2. Hidden Meanings, Hidden Powers, Hidden Beings,
3. Fantasy vs. the Paranormal,
4. Bewitching Entertainment,
5. The Dark Side,
PART TWO: WHAT ASPECTS OF THE PARANORMAL DO OUR KIDS ENCOUNTER? WHERE DIVINATION, SORCERY, AND SPIRIT CONTACT TOUCH OUR KIDS,
6. What's Your Sign? The Mystique and Mistake of Astrology,
7. Who Are the Psychics and Can They Help?,
8. Divination—Not Divine!,
9. Is Magic Just in Fairy Tales? Part One,
10. Is Magic Just in Fairy Tales? Part Two,
11. Magic as a Game,
12. Angels of Light: Deception from Beyond Part One,
13. Angels of Light: Deception from Beyond Part Two,
14. The Ouija Board: Dialing for Danger?,
15. Auras, the Astral Plane, Astral Travel, Energy, and Symbols,
PART THREE: TALKING TO YOUR KIDS ABOUT THE PARANORMAL,
16. Taking a Stand: The Fear of God Is the Beginning of Wisdom,
17. Responding to Objections,
18. Protecting and Equipping Your Kids,
Concluding Words,
About the Author,
Extras,