EV writes: “I don’t understand why it’s so dangerous to read a horoscope or get a tarot reading just for fun. If I don’t have any intention of being in contact with demons, what’s the harm?”For starters, a good question to ask yourself is why fooling around with preternatural powers is something you consider to be fun. On a natural level, it's the equivalent of saying “I hear playing in traffic can be dangerous but I’m just doing it for fun so how deadly can it be?” Regardless of why you’re playing in traffic, you can still get hurt.
The same rules apply in the demonic realm. In his book, Liber Christo: A Field Manual for Spiritual Warfare, Dr. Dan Schneider uses the example of so-called “friendly fire” in the military. Soldiers often say, “Friendly fire isn’t” for this very reason. “Regardless of the subjective intention of the shooter, the bullet carries an objective and lethal reality with it.”
He goes on to clarify: “The devil, therefore, always works in the objective (what is) and not the subjective (our intentions or feelings.)”
In other words, demons couldn’t care less about why you’re dabbling in divination, or psychics, or yoga. All that matters to them is that you are. And once you make that turn toward them with your own free will, whether it’s for fun or for real, they now have your authority to be there. After all, it was you who opened the door.
Nor does it matter that you opened the door simply because you didn’t know that anything bad could happen. Ignorance is not an excuse. Regardless of what you know, or don’t know, you can still get hurt.
As Dr. Schneider reminds, “Nowhere in the natural realm does our ignorance of a rule of law mean we are not subject to the penalty of its violation.”
As a Christian, you should know that both the Bible (Deuteronomy 18:10, et al) and the Catechism (Nos. 2116-2117) consider these practices to be dangerous and are therefore forbidden. If you didn’t know this simply because you didn’t make a reasonable effort to learn about these prohibitions, then you’re guilty of vincible ignorance – meaning an ignorance that you could have corrected if you made an effort to do so. And being vincibly ignorant is not going to protect you from the ramifications of dabbling in these practices.
To put it in simpler terms, not resorting to the Bible and Catechism to learn about the dangers of the supernatural realm before dabbling in the occult is the equivalent of opening your front door to whoever is standing on your porch without bothering to use the peephole to see who’s there. Would you feel safe doing that? I wouldn’t.
The fact that you’re even asking this question tells me that you have at least some knowledge about the possible dangers of these activities, so why take the chance? There are plenty of other fun things to do that don’t come with such potentially disastrous risks.
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