The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) is reporting that Cabrini College hosted an evening of occult activity for their students which featured tarot card readers who read fortunes for students.
Cabrini's Campus Activities Programming Board hired Marilyn Sukonick-Zeff, a tarot card reader, for the event. According to Zeff's Facebook page, she claims to be able to "create numerology profiles, handwriting analysis, voice and dream analysis, as well as personality profiles based on photographs presented during a reading, and of course, in depth Tarot Card readings. On occasion, information is presented to me from those who are deceased, known as channeling."
She described how she typically begins an event such as the one held at Cabrini:
"Everyone picks a small envelope prior to entering the venue, or the envelopes are taped under their chairs. Inside the envelopes ultimately reveal what is, or what will transpire in their lives due to the Tarot Card placed inside the envelope."
She goes on to claim that "instinct" makes it impossible to pull the wrong card due to "our being guided to choose the appropriate cards."
Of course, Zeff neglects to mention who is doing the guiding and only those students who are spiritually savvy would know that the power behind these predictions is always either the devil or the psychic's con-artistry skills. Sadly, none of the students who were interviewed by the college newspaper, The Loquitur, had any idea what was really going on.
One student admitted that he didn't believe in psychics before he came to the event, "but after she read my palm I started to think that she knew what she was talking about,” he said.
Another professed belief in the psychic's power, saying that "the fortune teller knew what my major was, how I’ve been lately and knew my personal problems. I was amazed at how he knew so much about me and how accurate he was with my facts.”
Even though the con-artistry in the fortune telling business is legendary, Marcia Montenegro, a former professional astrologer who once engaged in occult activities said she often received unexplainable insights from exterior powers.
“When reading astrological charts, I did on occasion receive startlingly accurate information that seemed to be fed into my mind," she writes in I See Dead People: A Look at After-Death Communication. "I usually went into an altered state of consciousness and felt a beam of energy connect me to the chart (not the client).”
Instead of labeling all psychic phenomenon as fraudulent, Montenegro believes what happens during a reading is a combination of factors: coincidence, good guessing, the mediums’ imaginations, generalities, demonic sources, and the client’s belief and interpretations of the reading.
That psychics open themselves up to contact with demons is a very real possibility. “Due to their spiritual beliefs, meditative practices, and training as psychics, the mediums may be opening themselves up to information from somewhere. If it is not the dead, then who is giving information when it is specific and correct?” she asks.
It can't be God, because Scripture explicitly warns us against dabbling in the dark arts, saying those who do so are an "abomination to the Lord."
“Let there not be found among you anyone who immolates his son or daughter in the fire, nor a fortune-teller or soothsayer, charmer, diviner, or caster of spells, nor one who consults ghosts and spirits or seeks oracles from the dead. Anyone who does such things is an abomination to the Lord.”(Deut. 18:10-12).
If it isn't God, nor His angels who can only do His bidding, or disembodied souls who do not have the power to manifest in the material realm without direct intervention from God or angels, who's left?
The devil.
Even people who have witnessed mediums go into trances say as much. The Pontifical Councils for Culture and Inter-Religious Dialogue claim that participants “willingly acknowledge that the manifestations are indeed spiritual but are not from God, despite the language of love and light which is almost always used.”
Why would a Catholic college host such an event? According to CNS, representatives of Cabrini College aren't talking and have chosen to hide under their desks rather than speak to reporters about this scandalous event.
But they can't escape forever. As CNS so wisely reminds, " . . . (L)eaders of a Catholic college cannot plead ignorance when called to account for endangering students’ souls."
Photo by The Loquitor newspaper
