This is part two of a 7-part series. You can start with the Introduction here.
In the Introduction to this series, I suggested that we
cannot meaningfully ask whether New Age spirituality is “occult” until we
define the word. Historically, occult refers first to what is hidden,
concealed, or beyond ordinary perception. It does not automatically refer to something
that is evil.
That creates an immediate complication for Christianity. Christianity
itself is filled with the hidden. The biblical tradition includes
dreams, visions, prophecy, angels, healing, mystical encounters, symbolic
actions, and experiences of divine presence that cannot be reduced to ordinary
sensory perception.
The Christian tradition that followed is no less mysterious.
It includes contemplatives and visionaries, stories of divine encounter,
practices of discernment, sacramental theology, and centuries of reflection on
experiences that resist easy explanation. If the mere presence of unseen
spiritual realities makes something “occult,” Christianity would have
difficulty exempting itself.
Mystical experience itself cannot be the dividing line. Christianity
has a rich mystical tradition. Its mystics have spoken of union with God,
divine presence, sacred darkness, interior transformation, visions, silence,
and experiences for which ordinary language seems inadequate. Mysticism is not
an alien intrusion into Christianity. It is part of Christianity's history.
The same is true of ritual. Christianity is profoundly
ritualistic. Water, bread, wine, oil, candles, incense, sacred words, gestures,
seasons, fasting, feasting, pilgrimage, laying on of hands, and communal prayer
all embody spiritual meaning. Ritual engages more than intellect. It involves
the body, imagination, memory, community, symbol, and place. It creates a space
in which meaning is not merely explained but enacted.
This matters when Christians encounter rituals from outside
their own tradition. A ritual does not become spiritually suspect merely
because it involves candles, circles, chanting, sacred objects, symbolic
gestures, or attention to particular times and seasons. Christianity has its
own versions of many of these things.
The relevant question is not simply: Is this ritual? The
more useful questions are:
What does this ritual mean? What kinds of relationships
does it cultivate? What understanding of reality does it embody? What does it
do to and for the people who participate in it?
This is where I find a distinction between mysticism and
manipulation useful.
Mysticism, at its healthiest, involves openness to a reality
greater than oneself. It tends toward receptivity, humility, transformation,
and an awareness that the mystery encountered cannot be completely possessed or
controlled.
Manipulation moves in another direction. It seeks control,
certainty, power over others, or guaranteed spiritual outcomes. It may create
dependency on a teacher, leader, institution, or system. It may discourage
questions. It may use fear to maintain authority.
But here again, Christianity cannot use this distinction
only to judge others. Christian communities can also become manipulative.
Christian leaders can claim unquestionable spiritual authority. Christian
institutions can exploit fear. Christian practices can become superstitious.
Christian language can be used to control rather than liberate. A Christian
label is therefore no guarantee of spiritual health, just as an “occult,”
“pagan,” or “New Age” label is not proof of spiritual danger.
Perhaps the more useful distinctions lie elsewhere: Contemplation
or control? Receptivity or manipulation? Humility or spiritual superiority? Freedom
or dependency? Love or fear?
These questions do not eliminate theological differences.
Different traditions make genuinely different claims about God, humanity,
revelation, salvation, and the nature of spiritual reality. But labels alone
cannot do the work of discernment. If Christianity wishes to speak meaningfully
about “the occult,” it must first acknowledge its own relationship with
mystery. It must distinguish the mysterious from the sinister and the unseen
from the evil. It must also ask how we decide what is spiritually trustworthy.
For me, that question begins not with Wicca, Theosophy,
paganism, or New Age spirituality. It begins much earlier in my spiritual
experience. It begins in childhood, within the Wesleyan stream of Christianity.
Next in the series
My spiritual journey did not begin outside Christianity. Its
foundation was laid within Methodism.
In Part Three, I will explore how that foundation still
shapes my approach to spiritual discernment and how Scripture, tradition,
reason, and experience provide a framework for remaining both rooted and
open.
