You can discover the future with the help of magic. However, many people think that there is no need to go to witches and psychics for advice. The fact is that often the desire to know the future can lead to not the most rosy consequences.
Today, the number of people who are interested in various kinds of fortune telling has only increased. This happened for various reasons. For example, constant problems at work lead to stress and depression. Therefore, they turn to magicians and fortune tellers for help. In our material today we will talk about the main dangers for those who would like to know their future. We will also analyze in detail the attitude of the Church to various manifestations of magic.
Is it worth knowing why you can’t go to witches, fortune tellers and psychics?
First of all, you should not contact witches and fortune tellers because their answers can, to a certain extent, “zombify” a person. Suspicious people and those with low self-esteem are especially susceptible to this influence. In certain cases, conversations with this kind of “experts” can completely change your life for the worse.
Of course, people do not turn to psychics because they have a good life. Often their answers are remembered by people for a long time. As a result, the information received has a significant impact on a person’s future. For example, in any subsequent actions, people will take into account the predictions of “experts”. Depending on the predictions, they will choose certain options for the development of events. In other words, if something positive is predicted, they will act so that the decisions somehow intersect with the prediction, and vice versa.
Indecisive people will generally find it difficult to control their actions after a visit to a fortune teller. If the predictions lead to unpleasant consequences, they completely stop believing in themselves. As a result, they independently deprive themselves of the chance to successfully reveal their potential, their capabilities, which they actually have from birth.
In addition, it is important to remember that there are no fortune tellers or psychics who will always correctly predict your fate. Everyone makes mistakes sooner or later. Even the famous Vanga made mistakes. The reasons may vary. For example, specialists may “see” only one possible scenario, but not see the events that will lead you faster to your goal.
The Church's attitude towards magic
If you are a believer, then all religions condemn any kind of appeal to magicians and psychics. In the church it is considered a great sin to seek help from a fortune teller.
Priests have repeatedly stated that psychics and magicians do not offer prayers to people. This means that they are not one with the Lord. The clergy consider this path irresponsible. In fact, magicians only require trust from them, and this can lead to the voluntary donation of their soul to dark forces. In other words, the Church believes that when communicating with a psychic, a person unwittingly surrenders himself into the hands of the devil.
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Interview with Abbot Nektariy (Morozov). On the attitude of the Church to psychics and the nature of “paranormal phenomena”
Text version of the TV program
Ved.: Today on the Internet, on television, in many print media you can find a huge number of advertisements offering the services of psychics, bioenergetics, magicians, and clairvoyants. Moreover, the range of problems that they propose to solve is quite wide: from healing various ailments to organizing your personal life and even spelling money and good luck. Why are there so many of them, and how are they dangerous? - today we are talking with the rector of the temple in honor of the icon of the Mother of God “Quench My Sorrows,” Abbot Nektariy (Morozov). Hello, Father Nektary.
This “epidemic” has been around for several years now and, as we see, it does not subside and only seems to be gaining momentum. Why is this happening?
Hegumen Nektariy: Probably, several main reasons can be identified here. One of them is that it is common for a person not to be satisfied only with what the material world can offer him. Man instinctively seeks solutions to his problems beyond the boundaries of this visible world. Let's just say that for a person in the full sense of the word, a believer, a church member, it is completely natural to turn to God in prayer and ask not only for eternal salvation, but also for some of his temporary needs, because our life cannot do without this. For a person who has not truly come to God, has not turned, faith is still a kind of abstraction, something that has not entered into his life. And at the same time, his soul persistently reminds him: “you are weak, you are limited, you need the help that people cannot give you.” And here, on the path that logically should have led a person to the temple, numerous traps and snares are placed, into which a religiously illiterate person naturally falls. And these snares and traps are the very specialists of a very wide market of occult services. These are magicians, and psychics, and astrologers, and the so-called “grandmothers” and others, others, others, all this kind of public.
Why does such a stir persist in this area today? The fact is that almost all researchers of this problem - and this problem is not a year old, not ten years old, it periodically arises throughout, probably, the entire history of mankind - agree that all the unfavorable periods in the history of various states, the world as a whole, are sure to be marked by a surge of interest in this side - precisely for the reason we are talking about.
Judging from a religious, spiritual point of view, why does this or that crisis arise in the country, in the world? Yes, because people forget about God, they move away from Him as the Source of their being, and this leads to failure in everything - in the economy, in politics, in the personal lives of specific people, and the life of that society is formed from the personal lives of specific people which they make up. And this gives rise to a feeling of uncertainty, panic: “Where to go?” And all this mass of people who are actually far from God rushes to where we are talking. And in our country we can observe, unfortunately, for many, many years, extreme instability in both the political and economic spheres, and hence people’s uncertainty not only about the future, but also about today. Since, unfortunately, no one really deals with people’s problems, this pushes them into the arms of potential deceivers and murderers.
Ved.: But we constantly hear that people who call themselves clairvoyants, psychics, true healers, very often deceive their “clients” and turn out to be swindlers. Isn’t a person, turning to such a “specialist,” afraid that he will be deceived? Why is this fear missing, why is common sense missing?
Hegumen Nektariy: Again, there are several reasons. Firstly, in fact, a person is a creature who, with enviable persistence, is inclined to repeat his mistakes. I once, quite by accident, saw an instructor teaching German Shepherd puppies to be distrustful on a site specially designed for this purpose. There is a necessary skill that a service dog must have, and this is done very simply: the instructor calls the puppy who came with the owner to him and, when he runs up cheerfully, he nibbles him. It hurts him, he gets offended and runs away. And it’s very interesting that there were puppies that didn’t come up the first time, there were those that came up once, and after experiencing the unpleasant sensation from the pinch, they didn’t come up again, and there were those that came up twice, and three, and four, and Five times. And it turned out that no matter what you do with them, they will still come up. Most people, unfortunately, are like this because they are careless, they live without using the experience that the reality around them offers them. Well, and on the plus side, there is probably some element of conscious “delegation of responsibility” in this. When a person is inclined to refuse responsibility for something, it is very difficult to expect reasonable actions from him. Psychologists say that there are many different fears and phobias in modern people. But these phobias are really very different, and they can be combined into one - this is the fear of living, in principle. What's the worst thing in life? Not fear of hunger, not fear of death, not fear of some kind of disease, no. This is the fear of being responsible for the gift of existence that God gave you. Of course, not every person understands it this way, but, nevertheless, it is so. There is a huge temptation to “entrust this responsibility” to someone else.
When a person comes to the temple, they begin to explain to him: “This action is performed for such and such a purpose, this is for such and such a purpose...”, and the person can understand what he is doing. If a person comes to some sorcerer, magician, healer, he does not understand anything. He says: “I have such and such a problem, solve it for me.” This very appeal suggests that a person will not be interested in what is being done to him (and indeed not a single person knows what is being done to him there). This means that this is a person of a certain type: he will still come and not even think about the fact that he can be deceived, and trust, and endure harm, damage, and then he will go again. And, perhaps, not to this, but to the second, to the third, to the fourth. Because I had to see a lot of people who were passed on like a baton: first they came to their grandmother, then to an astrologer, then to some psychic from some distant country who doesn’t even remember what it’s called, and so on and so forth , other. In these wanderings, a moment may come that will be critical, when both the human psyche and his physical composition will reach such a state that he will naturally approach death. You also have to see such people.
Ved.: But it turns out that there are also people who, under no circumstances, will go to magicians and healers?
Hegumen Nektariy: Yes. There are people who simply by their nature will not go, and will not go precisely for the reason that they think this way: “If I don’t understand what they will do to me, then I will not let anyone do anything to me.” You know, our norm in Soviet medicine was: “What will they do to me now?..” - “Patient, it’s none of your business how you will be treated.” This is not a normal approach to the healing process. It's the same here. A person must understand. If he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t go - if the person has developed critical thinking. In essence, those people who end up in totalitarian sects, those who go to psychics, magicians and occultists for treatment - these are people of approximately the same type. These are people who are not inclined to think critically, analyze and want to delegate their responsibility for themselves and their destiny to someone. Moreover, it’s an amazing thing - people are sometimes ready to do any damage to themselves, even damage to their health and life, as long as they don’t have to answer for anything.
Ved.: Father, but there are situations when a person actually cannot adequately assess them. I speak now, remembering the example of the mothers of Beslan, to whom Grigory Grabovoi promised to resurrect their children. In such cases, it is probably difficult to demand any kind of critical approach from the mother. The man is driven to despair. Maybe you can somehow prepare yourself in advance?
Hegumen Nektariy: No matter what state a person is in, he will still do what is natural for him. Of course, in that tragic situation, Grabovoi played in the most terrible, most vile way on human grief, on the state in which these people were. But, on the other hand, if before this terrible episode, before this terrible tragedy, they had not had the potential readiness to turn to this kind of charlatan, then this would not have happened when the tragedy actually happened. Therefore, the only way to avoid making such a mistake is to have a completely clear attitude towards this type of market, and this is precisely the market.
This is commerce, this is a market, and really nothing more. Although these are not always swindlers, not always charlatans, often these are people who really have some capabilities. But the nature of these opportunities is another matter. I would even say this: getting to a charlatan is not so dangerous, because a charlatan can extract money, deceive, force you to make some decisions that will not have the best effect on your life, but he cannot cause irreparable spiritual harm to a person. And if this is not a charlatan, if this is a real psychic, that is, a person who, voluntarily or unwittingly, has given himself up to serving the dark forces, then everything will be much worse.
Ved.: Yes, the Orthodox Church says that the worst thing, probably, is to harm your soul through communication with the world of spirits, or at least through an attempt to communicate with this world. How real is this danger, and what does it consist of?
Hegumen Nektariy: She is completely real. It’s just that most people who seek this kind of help don’t think at all about any kind of spirit world. They hear something about cosmic energies, about the hidden reserves of man himself, but do not ask questions - neither what this energy is, nor what these hidden possibilities are, but allow themselves to tell themselves any more or less suitable story for this case. In fact, we are in some kind of constant space, a field of struggle. This is approximately the struggle that Dostoevsky spoke about when he said that the human heart is a field on which God and the devil fight for a person’s soul. But all this is not so simple, not so clear. It’s not that God and the devil fight for a person’s soul, no. God gives a person everything he needs for salvation, but the enemy wants to destroy him - that would probably be more correct to say. And when a person does not even have the moral question: “Where will help come from?”, then by the mere fact that he does not make such a distinction, he puts himself in a certain risk zone. And then, when it turns out that he is looking for help from those people who draw their strength from this opposite to God, evil, terrible, destructive force, he gives this force the right to enter his life.
Why are we convinced that this kind of “miracle workers” draw their power from such an unclean source? For a very simple reason: if we talk about whether there were true miracle workers in the history of the Orthodox Church - yes, indeed, there were, and there were many of them, but none of them were engaged in the “practice of healing.” These were simply people who lived in God, and the Lord was more likely to hear and fulfill their prayers because of the purity of their hearts, because of their closeness to Him. The Lord hears every person, and is ready to fulfill every person’s prayers, but the problem is that sometimes fulfilling a person’s prayer can be dangerous for him. And there are a lot of people whose prayers cannot be fulfilled, not only because they ask for something that is not beneficial, but simply because they will become proud, die from vanity, and even simply go crazy. There are many such cases in the history of the Church, when people died only because it began to seem to them that they were miracle workers, that the Lord was fulfilling all their requests. Therefore, the Lord can fulfill the request of either a person who is close to Him and pure in heart, or of a person whose fulfillment of the request will not harm him. It is like a child who can be given a medicine, and it will cure the disease for which the child wants to be treated, but he himself may take too much or take it incorrectly, and die from some other disease or the consequences of taking this medicine.
The same people who practice healing today, if you look at their lives, are not righteous, not saints, not hermits, not silent people, not stylites. These are people who commit many sins and misdeeds in their daily lives. It's not that I blame them for something and say that they are worse than everyone else. No, they may not be worse, but they are not better either. And then the question arises: where did they get this amazing gift? If we take the consequences of this kind of treatment, we see that they turn out to be very destructive. Sometimes a person comes to a psychic with an ulcer, a certain number of years pass after receiving “help” - and he dies of stomach cancer. It happens that the life of a family, which was formed thanks to some kind of love spells and lapels, is completely destroyed. It happens that in such families terrible events occur, the cause of which is completely incomprehensible - for example, the husband suddenly jumped out of the window, and the wife turned on the gas... And no one can understand what was the starting point of that process, which then completely destroyed and family and personality.
But it also happens that nothing so terrible visibly happens, but even more terrible things happen: a person passes by God in his life. Because why does the Lord send us illnesses, sorrows, and some difficult circumstances? - Because this is a reason for us, unreasonable ones, to turn to Him. And so, as I already said, a man moved along a certain path, and suddenly someone appeared on his way and said: “You don’t need to go there, I’ll decide everything for you now.” And the problem is “solved” without repentance and without changing the person’s heart, and the person never comes to the Source of being, happiness and salvation. This is even more terrible than any visible consequences of such treatment.
Ved.: Moreover, often, when a person comes to some psychic or clairvoyant, he sees Christian paraphernalia around him - icons, candles, the Crucifix. It is difficult for him to recognize in this healer to whom he came a charlatan or a magician who could harm his soul. In such cases, what should he pay attention to, what should he think about?
Hegumen Nektariy: Well, first of all, as for the paraphernalia, this is a completely natural thing, because we live in a country with very deep and ancient Orthodox roots, and therefore, for people who are engaged in providing this kind of service, in general, it is clear that You can play great on this. Although there is another, let’s say, “layer” of specialists of this kind who understand that there is a huge craving, relatively speaking, for a certain East, and without knowing anything about this East, they surround themselves with some attributes of Eastern religious mysticism. This could be smoking sticks, certain sounds, certain poses, clothes, etc. What should you look at in order not to be deceived? Again, to what we are talking about: what does a person seek first of all? The healing of your soul, the source of the disasters of your life? If a person begins to persistently seek it, he understands that this source is his departure from God, and even his failure to think about Him. By and large, we must not forget that the need to analyze and think critically is something that should be inherent in absolutely every reasonable person responsible for his life. And these small precautions, critical thinking, analysis - they will already allow you to avoid such a disaster.
Ved.: Father, what should I do if, for example, I find out that some close person of mine is going to turn to such a healer, for example, and I’m trying to explain that “you can harm your soul,” I’m trying to find him some words. and he says: “No, it doesn’t matter, the most important thing is that they help me now, the most important thing is that I stop hurting.” What to do, what “last word” to find for him?
Hegumen Nektarios: The Apostle says that the intelligent must be saved by reasonable arguments, and those who are obviously unreasonable must be saved by fear. That is, if a person is not afraid of spiritual consequences, we can explain the possibility of purely physical consequences, which we talked about earlier. If this person lives in the modern world, he imagines what it is like to conclude a deal or some kind of agreement. For example, people have to sell and buy an apartment, there are a lot of legal issues. And if a person has not read the agreement on the provision of certain services, he, as a rule, does not sign it. And here a person goes and signs an agreement, the subject of which is himself, but what is in this agreement, what the consequences are, he has no idea. Before using the medicine, you should read the paper accompanying it, the annotation, which states what the side effects of taking this drug may be. And I need to inform the person, if he has read it to me anywhere, what the consequences may be. And then all that remains is to pray for him and hope that he will make the right choice. Although ultimately it will depend on the person himself. And God will definitely give each person according to his heart. If a person seeks to be tempted, he will be tempted and fall in that temptation. And it’s only up to us to do the little that we can.
Ved.: It happens that a person feels some kind of unusual gift in himself: he either foresees some events, or feels that he can heal or somehow influence other people. What should he do in this case, how should he react to this, and how can we help him figure out who this gift is from - from God or from the opposite side? There is an opinion that the devil cannot bestow any gifts.
Hegumen Nektariy: It is probably necessary, without having the experience of independently distinguishing such gifts, to turn to experience that already exists. For us, believers, such experience, or rather, a treasury of experience, is the huge library of patristic works. And with all the differences, with all the differences in those situations that are described in the lives of the saints, in various Fatherland books and Patericons, one can see something in common. When the saints were given the wondrous gift of working miracles, healing the sick, driving out unclean spirits, most of these saints, with rare exceptions, fled this gift, asking the Lord to take the gift away from them. And moreover, there were saints from whom, through their prayer, the Lord took away this gift. Why? Because they knew how easy it is even to be deceived by God’s gift, how easy it is to fall.
Why does the Apostle Peter first walk on water and then begin to drown? They say simply because he doubted. If you dig deeper, what do you doubt? He did not hesitate to step onto the raging water and walked along it. So he had enough faith to do it. But, as some interpreters explain, at some point he forgot that he was walking on water only by the power of God, he thought that he was walking on his own. And as soon as he thought that he was walking on his own, at that moment he already doubted and began to drown.
The same thing happens, and can very easily happen, to any person who has received some kind of gift from God, so the saints were afraid of these gifts. But what is a holy man? This is a person who acquired this holiness, this purity through a long-term feat, long-term attention to himself, cutting off all proud, vain, impure thoughts and movements of the heart. Do we have such experience? Do we have experience of this kind of struggle, similar heart purity? No, we don't. And therefore, if this gift (we won’t even figure out where it comes from) appears to us, of course, it can very soon destroy us.
As for the gift, I don’t think that it will be given to a person who is not ready for it by the Lord, because He cares about the person and does not want death or any temptation for him. Then this is really some kind of temptation from the enemy, and the enemy cannot work real miracles. But, nevertheless, it has that power with a negative sign that can create the illusion of miracles. He can't really create anything, he can't create anything. But to put a patch on something, so figuratively, primitively speaking, yes, of course, it can.
But these can also be natural human abilities. Which? Not some mysterious “reserves” that psychics talk about, but rather, it is a kind of shadow of what was lost, because the primordial man was beautiful, he was perfect. And he had many possibilities that are no longer inherent to us now. Probably the most important change that has occurred is the loss of abilities in the human soul. We read in Scripture that after the fall of our forefathers, the Lord made leather vestments for them, and they became theirs and ours for the rest of their lives. Of course, these are not the skin, which, apparently, were originally present in humans. These are not the skins of wild animals with which a person covered himself so as not to be afraid of the cold. These leather vestments, according to the interpretation of many holy fathers, are a kind of “fencing off” from the spiritual world. Why? Because in his fallen state, a person would much sooner enter into a relationship with the world of fallen spirits than with the world of light spirits. And yet the increased sensitivity of the soul remains in some people. It’s like some kind of very thin membrane that catches the vibrations of what is happening, but these vibrations can be very unclear, indistinct. And again, having experienced how what you foresaw or saw in a dream comes true once, twice, three times, it is very easy to be seduced by this, it is very easy to be damaged. But the enemy is somewhere nearby, and he is ready to take a person who has trusted him and lead him somewhere by the hand. Not even one who believed him, but simply one who believed himself. Because it is the same - that to believe in yourself, that to believe the enemy - for him it is the same thing.
It happens that we feel that something is happening to a person close to us. Do we feel why? Our soul feels this. But it’s always better not to trust this feeling, but to at least call and ask. And even if this is confirmed, do not assume the next time we feel something again that it is so. Again, there were ascetics in the history of the Church who began to see dreams, hear some voices, and this came true, was realized. And then, at some point, they suddenly threw themselves into the abyss, committed suicide, or in some other way ended their lives in a very disastrous way.
Ved.: If a person is still tormented by the fact that, having given up his gift, he will not help someone else, how can he be consoled or his consciousness slightly changed?
Hegumen Nektariy: Again, such fear, such unbelief is a lack of hope in God, because God has so many ways to help a person. And to believe that it is through our certain abilities that we do not understand that He is ready to provide this help - in fact, this is great pride and great foolishness. We have hands, we have legs, we have strength - and this is what we can really put into serving our neighbor, and we can be more or less confident in the consequences of such service. And if these are some forces unknown to us, how can we know whether these forces create or destroy? Or do they first create and then destroy? We don't know. Therefore, you should not, without knowing it yourself, destroy another person with your ignorance. Because if we talk about medicine, one of its fundamental principles is “Do no harm.” How can you be sure that you will not do harm when you operate on something that is beyond your control?
Not long ago I had to communicate with a former psychic. This sounds wonderful: “former psychic,” which in itself suggests that this is some kind of “profession” that a person acquires and then can leave it. And he was a fairly sincere, frank person who was talking about what he understood very well: what he was doing was simply making money, exploiting what he did not fully understand about himself. And this thought depressed him more and more and, in the end, tormented his conscience so much that he abandoned what he was doing. Unfortunately, such honesty, sincerity and willingness to follow the dictates of conscience are very rare. But there is another point: he felt the danger of what he was doing, because he really did not know the source of this power, these nascent abilities. But it must be said that what comes from God is always peaceful and calm, and a person has no fear, no trembling, no trembling. On the contrary, a feeling of peace. And the “power” that comes from the enemy, and the “help” that comes from him, is always associated with a feeling of anxiety, unpeace, excitement, exaltation. But again, people with the skill to distinguish between good and evil, to discern spirits, as one of the apostles says, can truly distinguish this. For us, ordinary weak people, it is better to simply remember that everything that is from God will definitely be given to us by the Lord Himself, and unexplored human abilities or “cosmic energies” are what the enemy dresses up in order to deceive us.
Interviewed by Inna Stromilova
