Some folks, Christians among them, get bent out of shape, my using this terminology, so I will define my terms.
Concerning “the occult”: its root meaning – coming from the Latin occulere – is hidden (from view), concealed, covered over; in medicine it is used as in the terms “occult blood in the stool,” or “occult carcinoma.” I use it in a neutral sense, not specifically referring to demonic practitioners (as common usage does) unless so indicated. The prayers (and prayer warfare!) of a man of God as well as the spells of a sorcerer are both in the realm of the occult – hidden from human eyes! – or so is my use of the word in these writings. The use of the term “warrior-priest” will become apparent in due time.
There are multitudes of folks who are turned off to religion and religiosity, as I am myself. By religion I mean “a cultural and spiritual worldview held with zeal and devotion, the moral and ritual observances thereof defining character, more than – and often to the exclusion of – the reality of consciousness.” I know that’s a mouthful, but it succinctly says what I mean.
Without apology I own myself an occultist, as I have defined it. What’s the big deal? I have gone after demons to break their power over friends and loved ones. In this I but imitate the undisputed Champion in this warfare, as I am encouraged to do in the Writings. I have, in earlier years, been snared and defeated by demonic adversaries, spending near two decades in regions of darkness, in both the Abyss and amid humans, in what I call the archetypal howling heartlands – also known as the psychedelic wildernesses of the ‘60s (which went into the ‘70s and ‘80s and on). I’ve never been a “religious” person, though I do indeed hold to a “spiritual worldview” with zeal and devotion, yet not submerging consciousness beneath morality, and as for rituals, I observe exceeding few!
Am I a Christian? I surely will not deny I follow Christ and keep His word, for – as ancient Samson with his hair – heart-union with Him is the source of my strength.
Where I see a race of beings seduced into darkness and horror by a sadistic but brilliant monster of great power, with the Creator of this race devising a way for them to regain – nay, surpass – their former state of being through a remarkable rescue, others often smear religious gunk over the story, prescribe all sorts of rituals and traditions, making it an altogether distasteful thing, except perhaps for religious types who like that sort of stuff. Where I see a warfare the playing field of which is one’s perceptual field, with invisibility-cloaked predators adept at stealth intrusions into this field of consciousness, able to affect mind, imagination, volition, emotions, even the physical body, and our response the discernment of such, and the exposing of this activity, along with the use of a dazzling display of spiritual weaponry for the overcoming of said predators (worse than Sigourney’s, truth be told), others often see only moral conduct, conformity to certain ways of talking and dressing, believing certain teachings unexamined or tested, and having little or no experience of actual consciousness of the teachings and spirit realities involved.
The other end of this spectrum consists of those who are completely irreligious – believing none of such things one way or the other – but who devote much of their lives (their consciousness, time, and energy) to film, books, and / or computer games dealing with imaginary adversaries (these may be demonic, alien, or other) and elaborate warfare and sagas concerning such. Getting lost in fiction may be as dangerous as being “found” in religion.
The work (featured here), A Great and Terrible Love (AGATL), is the history of my experiences in various realms of the spirit world, and human situations. Women played an important part in my survival – who can live without love? – as has the world of letters, especially poetry. As will be seen, I do not mean that versification alluded to by Ferlinghetti in his Populist Manifesto:
We have seen the best minds of our generation
destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.
At least at its inception, the story told is neither pretty nor holy (my definition of “holy” is being free of the demonic and having a purity of heart in union with the Christ), but the tale is a true account. There is a lack of true accounts in this realm, and while the conduct and states of the “protagonist” may at times be unsavory (with no sexual explicitness) and horrific, it has the virtue of being, first of all actual, and secondly – eventually – leading to an illumination rarely depicted in literature. From these two qualities comes its redeeming value.
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A true occultist warrior-priest looks at Supernatural
Those who are strongly interested in spiritual and occult matters, please note that this, as well as other writings in Lightning Sword Journal, are not fiction.
One of the things that makes Supernatural so appealing are the deep and simple human responses of Dean Winchester to supernatural forces greater than himself – be they supposedly good or evil; he is irreverent, cynical, defiant, and humorous. Being far from a “religious” type – and his brother Sam much like him – Dean can function amid demons and angels without losing credibility or appeal. No “belief agenda” is being pushed on us, and so we can engage the story without resistance.
Did I say, “No ‘belief agenda’ ”? Well, no overt agenda! The show purports to be an adventure with demon and monster hunters going after these evil entities, but the methods they use to dispatch them, the nature and activities of these entities, and much else is sheer fiction. Which is not to say there are no monstrous entities in reality, though the show’s depiction of them is unreal.
There are such things as demons, or devils; and there are such things as ghosts, but they are not as shown. Ghost is another name for spirit, but the spirits / ghosts of deceased humans do not have the freedom to stay on the earth, they are in regions called Hell or Heaven, and may not depart those places. I will not broach the topic of dreams of deceased loved ones here, for that is a separate matter.
When ghosts of departed people are sighted or heard from these are but devils impersonating them (they can do it well, as they may have been in proximity to them all their lives); the souls of the departed do not have the liberty to leave their respective abodes prior to the great gathering of the Resurrection.
Salt, iron, silver, “holy water” etc are not efficacious in warding off demons. Demons cannot have bodies and so there is no such thing as “demon blood”. While it is true demons can possess humans, the bodies are not theirs, nor is the blood in them theirs in any respect.
There is power and effective method for withstanding assaults of demons; also for casting demons out of those possessed, though this is rare nowadays – more common is giving the knowledge and power to a human host to evict demons who have entered their life (short of full possession) through that person turning from evil and renouncing their participation in it. It is a moral change of heart, and the entrance of a greater power that expels the demon from one’s person.
About vampires. In season 3, we have an episode with them in it. Although these creatures have been discussed at length in “Horror on Apokalypse Field” and “King of the Strung-Out Soldiers” (see A Great and Terrible Love), I will mention them here briefly. They certainly exist, but not as legend and myth portray them. The secret is darker and deeper than they indicate. They are among the living dead, those beings who possess unending existence but do not have unending Life, that illumination of love and glory which marks the difference between Hell and Heaven. When I say they are among the living dead, I mean humans in this life now. That would include the majority of humankind. We are so filled up with the pleasures and activities of this life, our plans and dreams and thoughts, that we do not take proper inventory of our state of being. The primordial human after the first great Wounding, which was the dread sting of death, and which bereaved us of our true Life, is properly called a zombie, and he was the father of us all. This is the human condition, notwithstanding the glorious skin coverings we possess. Have you eternal life? If you are dead to that realm now, you are dead period. Vampire and werewolf refer mainly to feeding styles, psychically speaking. They both are of the lineage of the archetypal zombie. How we love to project it out into monsters on film and paper! Not us! We’re happy human beings! The monsters are “out there”! Who knows C.S. Lewis' saying,
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that even the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. (The Weight of Glory)
The seed of what we shall be is at the heart of what we now are. If we are the living dead, we shall be the undying damned. The doctor who does not diagnose truly will never give a true cure.
Can one talk of Christ without being religious? It is not easy because such talk is usually saturated with religious content. What do I mean by religious, then, in the pejorative manner I am using it here?
Here are some examples: when ritual replaces activity of the heart, i.e., we participate in religious rituals but have no experience or knowledge of the actual presence of Christ or God. We have faith in our rituals pleasing God (which is not to say this is true faith), but we do not know Him, and are not united in heart with Him. True faith is having confidence in what God has said, not what the traditions of men say. In this age, however, having such confidence may not come easy, if it ever has!
Sometimes people think that “being good” and keeping moral commandments earns them points with God – God now beholden to favor them for their “goodness” – so there can be “good” people who are moral, but have no experience of God’s presence. When such moral people look at those less “good” than themselves, they look with disdain.
Sometimes (this is another example) we are full of religious talk, theology this, theology that, doctrine this, doctrine that, Amen this, Praise the Lord that, but where is our consciousness? How many would say that the immediate experience of Deity constitutes the greater part of their awareness?
When I talk of Jesus Christ – and I mean the historical person, Jesus who hailed from ancient Nazareth in Israel – I am referring to Him in the living moment. No, He is no longer dead and buried, but lives an endless life elsewhere, and He is present to those who are united to Him.
If this is “religious” to you, rather than simply awareness in the spirit worlds, then maybe I’ve lost you, but to adhere to narratives – and narrative in film may be extremely powerful – where the supernatural is depicted, without possessing a power and understanding greater than the demonic which is manifested, there is danger, for you have opened your mind and heart to thoughts with supernatural power. Deception is a power; the poisoning of the mind to distrust the Deity and His angelic messengers is a great power.
All of which is to say, Supernatural really is supernatural! For it posits a spiritual worldview quite forcefully; its source is spiritual: Angels are devious and not to be trusted, having malign agendas (we won’t fully learn of till season 5), demons the same. God “is not in the house” according to one angel, and those angels who speak in His name are evil, though purporting to be the “good guys”. It is clear then, Supernatural is a vehicle for the spreading of serious disinformation concerning God, the angels, demons, humans, and many other things. It may be entertaining (and it is), but at heart it is information warfare designed to distort clarity of thought and accuracy of knowledge concerning what is needed to know the Deity and enter into a saving heart-union with Him, thus being transferred out of the realm of the power of darkness. It is a potentially lethal dose of falsehood.
One angel – who fell – said that only four angels have ever seen God, all the rest of them take His existence “by faith”? And this particular angel said she removed “the grace” that was in her and threw it away as though it were a thing or faculty inherent within her – when she threw it it fell to earth and gave birth to a huge oak tree miraculously. The one true source we have of realities in the heavens – the revelation the Deity has given humankind, His word spoken (and written) through prophets of the Hebrew people – says that multitudes, angels and human both, have seen God, though sometimes His radiance is so great they must shield their eyes. Nor is grace any such thing as depicted in the show: rather it is the undeserved favor of the Deity, the blessing of His mighty presence and love. Grace pertains to relationship, not qualities inherent in the angelic (or human) being.
An important spiritual term, “the Apocalypse”, is distorted; the book which mainly speaks of this, the Apostle John’s Revelation in the Bible, is referred to by one of the “good” hunter characters, Bobby; he says, “The widely distributed version is just for tourists, you know.” Meaning the Biblical version is for dilettantes, but his true version – the secret one for the elite – is the one to trust. You can take Hollywood’s word for it!
The last episode of the season was titled, “Lucifer Rising”, and through a series of events was scheduled to finally manifest in the world, supposedly to wreak havoc, unless the characters, Dean, Sam & company, can somehow thwart or defeat him.
I see on the net that the first show of the 5th season is to be titled, “Sympathy for the devil” (after the Stones’ song). So we shall see what gives.
Oddly (they must have some savvy consultants), in the actual apocalypse these are around the days when the devil is loosed from his partial imprisonment (his activity has been restrained to a set limit) to wage a certain war on the earth.
The term “apocalypse” means uncovering or revelation, and this is the chief characteristic of John the apostle’s famous last book of the Bible, which is called the Apocalypse, or Book of Revelation. What it reveals is God’s agenda for this age. This is how it starts:
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him, to show to his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel to his servant John...
That word “signified” in the original Greek – in the present context – means to reveal though signs or symbols, that is, images. I will continue this vein of writing, and will be talking of what Revelation shows has come upon the earth, is upon it now, and is coming, and also, what is transpiring in the Heavens, for it is from there the decrees originate, and cause things to manifest on the earth.
