October 18, 2023 Show with Marcia Montenegro on “The Testimony of a Former Astrologer” (Part 1)

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 18th day of October 2023.

And, in fact, I request a prayer for, or should

I say from, my listening audience for myself today, as today is the birthday of my late wife,

Julie, and to this day, I have mixed emotions. It's a bittersweet day for me, as are some other special days on the calendar.

So, I would appreciate you lifting me up in a special prayer for today. But today, we have on the program a first -time guest, and I'm fascinated by the subject that we are going to be addressing today.

I've never addressed this subject, at least as a single topic for an entire interview.

Today, we have on the program Marcia Montenegro, a former astrologer who was saved by the grace and mercy of Christ Jesus and founded

CANA, which stands for Christian Answers to the New Age. And today, we're going to be addressing the testimony of a former astrologer.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Marcia Montenegro.

Yes, hi. By the way, am I pronouncing your first name right? Is it Marcia? Is it

Marcia? Is it Marcia? It's Marcia. It's Marcia. Yeah.

Marcia. Well, I'll remember that. It's okay. I don't mind Marcia. And I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away in the event that they have questions of their own.

It is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question is regarding a personal and private matter.

Let's say you have a loved one who is caught up in astrology and other occultic practices.

And you don't obviously want to identify who you are because the person will automatically know who you are, to whom you are referring.

We understand that reasons like that would compel you to remain anonymous. But if it's a general question, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

Well, Marcia, let's start the program by hearing what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised.

Well, yeah, that's a good question. I guess you could say there was a religious atmosphere, but it wasn't very definitive.

My mother was raised Southern Baptist, so she believed that children should go to church.

And going to church was, you know, a pretty good thing to do. And so my sister and I had to go to church, but we lived overseas a lot.

So the choices were limited. Was your father in the military or something?

He was in the Foreign Service. He was he was a diplomat and he was an agnostic.

So so that that's why the question is interesting, because you have an agnostic father and a

Southern Baptist mother who really lived kind of like a nominal Christian.

Right. Except for the church going. And so the churches were, you know, like there was a

French church in New Caledonia, which is a island in the South Pacific.

It's still a French colony. And we went to a French church.

Well, the main language was French. So it was a French speaking church. And I went to a

French school. And I don't really. The only thing I remember about that church is the minister stopped in the middle of a message one

Sunday to reprimand me for talking. I remember that from my days as a child in Catholic school when we would have to go across.

We'd have to go across the street to the church for special holy days. I am no longer

Catholic. I am a reformed Baptist ever since my salvation in the mid 1980s.

But I remember the especially a father white who was an elderly priest was one of the few that would actually reprimand children from the from the altar.

Oh, yeah. Well, apparently I kind of remember that because my mother was just mortified and, you know, grabbed my my hand and pulled me out of the church outside to scold me.

I remember standing there outside knowing she was really mad and, you know, somewhat embarrassed, although I was pretty young.

So I wasn't I don't think I realized how loud I had been or, you know, what a terrible thing it was.

So I just you know, that's what I remember that. And that's all my only memory of that church. But then we went to kind of a a generic army

Protestant service in Berlin when we lived there. But I don't remember it very well.

So when we came to back to the Washington, D .C. area, I did get involved in a

Baptist church and I went I was pretty regular. I went every

Sunday. I went to the youth group. I went Sunday nights and I'm not sure if I went

Wednesday nights. But, yeah, I think I did go Wednesday nights because that's when the youth group met. And so I was very involved.

You could even say always did my Sunday school lesson. But I was not a

Christian. I mean, I think if you had asked me, I would have said I was a Christian because I assumed I was. But I actually did not understand the gospel.

I did not understand why Jesus came at all. I didn't understand all these stories about Jesus.

I thought they were nice stories, but I just didn't have the big picture at all. And I didn't understand why he died on the cross.

So that just kind of threw me. And I'm sure that it was preached, but for whatever reason, it didn't get through to me.

And so I had friends in school who were different religions. And by the time

I was in the 10th and 11th grade, I was pretty much rejecting Christianity because my friends were so serious about their beliefs.

And I started thinking, well, why should I be a Christian? I could really just explore other religions and just choose what

I want. And so that was that was my mindset at that point, which stayed with me, you know, really for a long, long, long time until I did encounter the true

Jesus Christ. But up until that point, it was a matter of exploration to me and my friends.

I was not really interested in their religions. Well, I was interested, somewhat interested, but I wanted to be able to explore, you know, all everything

I wanted to explore. I didn't want to be limited. So one of my friends was a Mormon.

One was a Baha 'i. One was she just called herself a free thinker.

I think she was probably agnostic. And the other one was a was a Quaker. And I was very well, quite a mix.

Yeah, I know. It's quite an eclectic mix. Baha 'i Mormonism, free thinker and Quaker.

There's a joke in there somewhere, a joke that involves a bar in that somehow.

Yeah, the Mormon and the Baha 'i went into the bar. So the Baha 'i girl wanted me to go to a meeting at the house where they met.

And I did. I did. You know, she kept asking me and I was kind of curious. So I did decide to go.

And my father, I did not have my driver's license yet. So my father had the task of taking me there.

But it was to an area, you know, a neighborhood that he wasn't familiar with. And my father was famous for being terrible at directions.

And so we drove around and around and around for a long time. And finally, my father gave up.

And of course, you didn't have cell phones in those days back in the dark ages. And and so my father gave up and he said, you know,

I'm just you know, I'm not going to keep doing this all night. So we went home. So I never got to the Baha 'i meeting, but I was interested in the

Quakers. And I actually went to Quaker meeting, a few Quaker meetings with that friend.

And her name was Laura. I remember that. And then my freshman year of college, I, I went to Quaker meetings.

And later, when I was getting into the new age, I went to Quaker meetings. So for a while there,

I was seriously exploring Quakerism. I read books on the history of Quakerism. It didn't seem very

Christian to me. It was kind of like related to Christianity, but not really Christian.

And it was so different from the Baptist church that, you know, I had been involved in.

And I think that's another reason I liked it. So I. That's where I was when

I went to college and then in college, I got interested in Eastern religions. I did a project on Gandhi.

So I had to read a book he wrote called. Well, no, he didn't write it.

This was written by Tolstoy, but it was a huge influence on Gandhi. The kingdom of God is within you.

And that was a big influence on Gandhi. I was influenced by Gandhi's pacifism.

Of course, that pacifism came from the Quakers, too. And I was very interested in Eastern religions and Hinduism in particular at that point.

And I have to also put in here because I left it out because they're like two tracks here. So that was one track.

The other track was my interest in the supernatural and the paranormal, which actually started back in high school.

So I actually had had a dream when I was 11 years old that got me interested.

I didn't do anything about it. I just had this interest. But in high school.

I read a little bit about things like powers of the mind, you know, like psychic powers.

Right. Or seeing dead people straight, you know, strange. And to me, they were usually classified as strange, unusual or bizarre.

So I was reading that kind of material and very intrigued by the idea of psychics and palm readers.

And I was also very, very interested in astrology. I had a strong interest in astrology, probably starting around age 13.

And I even got my father to take me to hear Jean Dixon, who at the time was very famous columnist.

She had horoscope columns in all the major newspapers of the country. I mean, of course, a lot of people now, especially under age 40 or so, would not know who she is.

But at one point, her name was a household name. Pretty much everybody in the country. I remember

Dixon. Yeah. So I actually got to hear her speak at the at the Washington Press Club.

And I was so excited about that. So I had that going on, too. So I had this interest in astrology and the paranormal.

And then I started getting this interest in Eastern religions. And those were kind of like twin tracks that I was on in terms of spirituality.

And so in college, I had a few more paranormal experiences.

And these experiences verified to me that there was a spiritual realm out there that you could learn about, that you could investigate.

And that's what really fascinated me. Why don't you describe some of those experiences?

OK, well, my my experience when I was 11, the one that really captivated me,

I guess, or started me on that path was a dream I had. Where I was in a house looking for a little boy that I a boy

I actually had known when I was really young, like age five, five, around five years old.

And I was looking for him in the house. Now, I had not seen him or talked to him since I was five years old.

We had moved. That's when we moved to New Caledonia, the French colony in the South Pacific. And I had not, you know,

I completely lost touch with him, of course, and hadn't even really thought about him. But in this dream,

I was looking for him and it was very urgent that I find him. And I kept calling his name and I finally got to this closet and I opened the closet door.

And if the closet was packed with all these little children, you know, all young children, probably around the age, you know, five, which is the last time

I saw him. And they all kind of giggled and ran out. And I said, is

Gary here? Is Gary in here? And they just ignored me and I didn't see Gary.

And I woke up and I was very I was troubled that I hadn't found Gary. And I thought, well, that's kind of a strange dream.

Why did I dream about him? You know, I don't ever think about him. You know, that's somebody I played with when

I was a kid, you know, because now I'm 11 and I'm thinking of myself as pretty grown up, you know, because I'm almost a teenager.

So. So then a couple of months later, I'm in the car with my mother and she says to me out of the blue, she says, do you remember little

Gary Gates? And I said, yeah, and she said, you know, you used to play with him when we lived in, you know,

Arlington, Virginia. And I said, I remember. I said, yeah, I do remember him. And she said, well,

I got news from so and so. And he died. He died of leukemia.

And I then when she said that, I remembered my dream or I had remembered it when she first asked me if I remembered him and I remembered the dream.

And I said, when did when did he die? And she said, well, I'm not sure, but I think it was a couple of months ago.

That was about the time I had the dream. Now, of course, I don't know exactly when he died and I don't know exactly when

I had the dream. But I thought at the time.

I thought, wow, I I dreamed about looking for him and I couldn't find him because he was dead.

So I felt I had received this information in some kind of psychic, you know, supernatural fashion.

And I don't think I use the word psychic. I was only 11. But, you know, my thinking was that this was something beyond the normal, beyond the natural.

And I didn't really know what to make of it. I did not tell my mother about the dream because I wasn't sure what her reaction would be.

And I didn't tell anybody about it. So I just lived with that dream, you know, the memory of that dream experience for several years.

Now, in college, in college, I had a few experiences.

I had an out of body experience while I was awake. I actually thought I had died.

And I didn't tell anybody about that either, because it was so alarming and so bizarre.

That I saw my body on the bed and I was on the ceiling. And that's why

I thought I had died. And I just I could not.

And it was during the daytime. And like I said, I wasn't asleep. I was just lying there resting between classes.

Well, I didn't tell anyone about that. Now, the other thing that happened in college that I remember,

I was with some friends. And we had gone out to eat at a fast food place and we were driving back to the campus.

And I was driving because I was the only one of our group that had a car.

So I was always the driver. Oh, I'm sorry. Let me. I'm sorry. I'm going to silence my phone.

So because it'll distract me if it does that again. So all of a sudden.

Oh, I was I was trying to shortcut. So instead of getting on the main road, I was taking the side road.

That was really kind of a narrow, almost a dirt road. There were hardly

I don't think there were hardly any lights on it, streetlights or anything. I just thought I would try it out.

And I remember as I was driving, I saw in my mind,

I just thought I had this picture of a dog and hitting a dog. And this thought came to me how awful it would be if I hit a dog with my car.

So I said out loud to my friends, wouldn't it be awful if I hit hit a dog?

And, you know, my friends were kind of like, well, yeah, that would be awful, Marsha. I'm kind of like, what do you know?

They were kind of wondering, like, why are you talking about that? But it was just such a strong impression on me.

And about I don't know how much later, maybe 30 seconds or less. Three or four dogs ran in front of the car.

When I had that thought of hitting a dog, I slowed down. I slowed my car down.

And about 30 seconds or less later, three or four dogs ran in front of my car. And then my friends were like, oh, wow, you know, you just said you were afraid of hitting a dog.

And then these dogs ran in front of the car. And I said, I know. And if I'd been going faster, I might have hit them.

But I slowed down. So that, you know, I don't think any of us tried to analyze it or I don't really remember if we discussed it or not.

They definitely thought it was, you know, strange. They thought it was kind of cool, though, you know.

Right. They thought that was kind of a cool thing. I mean, there was lots going on in the country at that time.

So there was a lot of influx of Eastern religions. The Vietnam War was going on. There was there was a lot of unrest and chaos in the culture.

So, you know, I've had people say, well, didn't your friends really think that was strange? Were they freaked out?

And I'm like, so many freaky things were going on in the in the culture that I don't think I think it was hard to freak people out at that point.

It really was. I mean, people were doing, you know, psychedelic drugs and stuff. So which

I did not do, by the way. So those were things that happened. Going back as a

Christian, I have explanations for those things, because sometimes when I tell those stories, people will ask me,

I mean, Christians will ask me, well, what do you think really happened? I think in the case of Gary, I think that I think he had already died when

I had that dream. I do believe that I had spirit guides when

I was an astrologer, which I can get into later. And most people in the occult and new age have spirit guides.

They believe the spirit guides are benevolent, but the spirit guides are actually fallen angels. And I think that somehow that information was given to me and it was supernatural.

Yeah. And I think it was done to get me interested in the area of the supernatural.

Let me just throw out there and maybe you can give me your opinion on it.

I have had as a Christian. On a number of occasions,

I'm saying, I guess, but I don't think I'd be far off to say at least 10 times.

I have had very similar kind of things happen as a Christian. And I'd like, for instance, just to give you an example, having a dream about a childhood friend as an adult in my 50s.

Having a dream about a childhood friend that I haven't spoken with in decades. And then the next day

I get a call from them or having a dream about a specific

Hollywood celebrity. And then the next day when I wake up, that person is on the news or having died.

Things like that. I have had those kinds of things happen to me. And what do you make of that? Since I was a

Christian, I was not involved in any kind of occultic behavior, nor did

I have a mindset towards that. And I'm not to insult too many of my charismatic friends, but I'm not a charismatic.

I'm a Reformed Baptist and a cessationist when it comes to the sign gifts and so on.

So what would you guess those things may have been? You can't ever rule out coincidence.

Now, even in my case of the dream about Gary, one could say it was coincidence.

The reason I don't think it was is because that helped draw me to the supernatural and eventually into what

I got involved in. I don't know. I don't know how to explain these things unless when

Christians have them, unless they're having a lot of it. And then I think something might be going on in their life that they're actually feeding their mind on something that's not

Christian. And that may be causing that. But just having occasional things,

I think, can usually be explained either by coincidence or if it's something maybe the

Lord wants you to know. I mean, depending on what it is. What I have a lot of people tell me is, well,

I had this dream about this plane crashing and then the next day there was news of a plane crash.

Well, that's a coincidence because I tell them that's not a dream for telling anything unless you knew the flight number.

You knew where the plane was flying and how many people were on the plane. Now, if you had a dream that gave you all that information, that would be a dream telling the future.

You know, like, you know, I had a dream one time about a boat sinking and I watch this boat sink.

And the next day there was this news about this ferry packed with people somewhere,

I think, off like in near Scandinavia, one of the Scandinavian countries that had sunk.

But my dream was just it was coincidence because a boat sinking is there only so many things you can dream about.

And, you know, a boat sinking is not specific enough. If I had dreamed the name of the boat, how many people, how many passengers were on the ship or how many of them drowned or something very specific.

That that would then it would be harder to explain as coincidence. But I just wrote my dream off as coincidence.

And I think that's all it was. OK, we're going to go to our first commercial break. And when we come back,

I want you to obviously bring us to the point where some of these experiences, as you already mentioned, led you into a further, deeper investigation, exploration and practice of astrology.

To the point where you actually became an astrologer. And we'll hear about that when we come back.

If anybody has a question for Marsha on anything involving astrology and the occult, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail dot com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail dot com.

As always, give us your first name, at least your city and state and your country of residence. And only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And I believe, according to my webmaster,

Marcia, you may have to unmute yourself, because he muted you on his end during the commercial break, because there was noises going on on your end.

Okay, yes. Okay, and I hear you now. Thank you. Okay, yeah, he did mute me.

Sorry about that. Yeah, I was talking to my son. Okay.

Now, let's pick up where you left off. Well, let me first mention our email address again.

If anybody listening wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N, gmail .com. Give this first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

Now, bring us to the point where these experiences that you were having, that you believed at the time, anyway, were supernatural, and leading you into a deeper interest in astrology and the paranormal and all things connected with the occult.

Can you tell us a little bit about what was the thing that clinched the deal that made you say,

I am going to become an astrologer, and how did you go about doing that? Okay, sure.

Yes, I continued on that path, kind of, you know, investigating areas like that.

There was a girl in college who claimed she could see auras, and I talked to her a lot.

When I got out of college, I, oh, I have to say this, because it was part of my journey.

One more thing that happened while I was in college is that when I was at my grandmother's home on a break, one morning, what

I thought was a dead person appeared to me, and said what day he had died.

Just when you were wide awake? Yeah, yeah. And I was very impressed, you know,

I felt special. I thought, wow, you know, this is really,

I mean, I was very excited about it. Here again, I did not tell my grandmother about it. My grandmother was a very staunch

Southern Baptist, and I knew that she would have definitely not liked me telling that experience to her.

And so, and I didn't want to upset her. So I definitely did not tell her. And that got my interest in communication with the dead, which actually was an area that I first investigated, or I investigated the most after I got out of college.

So I was reading a lot of books on that, books by people like Hans Holzer, who was kind of famous at the time, he wrote a lot of books about these places that were supposedly haunted, and he would go in there and have encounters with these spirits that were haunting the places, and he would get them to leave, that kind of thing.

So long before the movie Ghostbusters came out, and I was reading a lot of his material, and I was reading other material.

This went on for a few years. At the same time, I'm reading books on Hinduism, and I'm reading things like that.

And all of that kind of converged finally to this point where I decided

I wanted to do serious study. I wanted to actually take a structured course and learn some of this stuff.

It just kind of random things, you know, reading random things or talking to random people wasn't enough for me anymore.

So I started, you know, besides my reading, I decided to take classes.

Now, one of the classes I took, the first one, was called Inner Light Consciousness.

And actually, I didn't go out and look for this. I found out about this class at Quaker House.

And I was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time. I went to college in Florida, but I ended up living in Atlanta, Georgia.

And Quaker House announced this course that they would host.

Now, Quaker House was not sponsoring the course, but they were hosting it. And so...

Yeah, right, right. And it was called Inner Light Consciousness. And that really appealed to me because the

Quakers, you know, the whole thing of the Quakers is the inner light that there is an inner light in every man to guide him.

And so I didn't really know what it was about. It was the title that intrigued me.

So I took the course. And the course basically was like a crash course in the

New Age. Apparently, this group that did the course had some kind of commune or something in Southwest Virginia.

I don't know if they still exist. I know they existed for many years after I took the course, but I haven't checked on them lately.

And they were headed by a Hindu guru. Now, I don't know if he started it or what.

I don't know the history of this group. But I did read about them in another book when I was reading later as a

Christian. I came across Inner Light Consciousness course. And it was a crash course in the

New Age. We were talking about... They talked to us about healing and healing with our minds, healing long distance.

We chanted. And the word we chanted was Elohim, which was a word

I was not familiar with. And the guy who led the chant said, this is a word in the

Bible. And so I thought, oh, well, that's good. Because even though I wasn't a

Christian, I thought if the word was in the Bible, it must be okay. And so I thought, okay.

And I don't think he told us what... I don't think he gave us a meaning. He just told us to chant it.

So we were chanting it. And the most important thing that happened in that class, though, which

I think really was a turning point for me, is that every night the leader of the group would guide us through a meditation.

It was what's called a guided visualization or guided meditation. He would get us very relaxed.

We would lie on the floor, close our eyes. The lights would be dim. We would breathe very slowly.

And then he would tell us to picture certain things in our mind. And then we would go on this kind of journey that he would tell us about.

And we did the same thing every night. It was the same thing every night. And then the last night that we did this, he said, tonight it's going to be a little different because we'll do our meditation.

But at the end of the meditation, you're going to meet your spiritual master. So this was very exciting to me.

And he said, the spiritual master will stay with you the rest of your life. And you will be able to contact your spiritual master by doing this meditation.

But eventually, you won't need to do the meditation. You can just have direct contact with him or her.

Or he or she can contact you. Now, we all knew the spiritual master was not a human being, like a flesh and blood person.

We all realized this was a disembodied, discarnate entity.

But he did not, as I recall, he didn't try to say what the spiritual master was.

He just called it a spiritual master that would guide us, guide us and be with us.

It was definitely a good thing from what he was saying. At that point,

I had not heard of spirit guides, but that's really what this was. So we did the meditation.

And at the end, he added on a different part, something we hadn't done before.

And that's where we encountered the spirit. We each had a different spiritual master. There was not one spiritual master for everybody.

We each had our own spiritual master. So I did see somebody. So this was a visual manifestation of a so -called spirit?

Yeah, it was in my mind. In your mind? We're visualizing things.

The whole thing is a guided meditation. So he says, when he's at the part where you go down,

I think we crossed a bridge or something. And then he said to look down at the ground and then look up slowly.

He said, you'll see the feet of the spiritual master. And then you look up, you'll see his or her clothes.

And then you'll see his face. So something like that. So I did. I did see somebody in that.

In your mind? Yeah. But he seemed very real to me.

And I did feel his presence. And actually from that day forward, I felt his presence.

And how did that manifest itself physically? Well, you know, it's hard to say.

Well, I know a couple of ways it did manifest itself. As far as just feeling his presence,

I don't know how to describe it. I just felt his presence. And I felt protected.

I felt very protected by him. I remember at one point, not long after this, maybe a year or so later,

I was on a trip with my parents. And we were in Italy. And I was getting on a bus.

And to cross over, it was this very busy circle, you know, where cars were going around this big circle.

And I don't know if you've ever been to Italy, but they drive crazy in Italy. Well, I am from New York, you know.

Oh, well, okay, same thing. Same thing. New York City, Italy, you take your life into your hands.

And especially in these circles, because you have cars coming at different speeds and different lanes.

And I remember crossing and just feeling really safe. I remember thinking, well, you know,

I'm being protected and not being alarmed at all, not even being all that careful, because I felt so protected.

I do remember that one incident. But there was a few things. There were times with him in the dream instructing me.

Like in one dream, he was instructing, telling me how to move things with my mind. He never told me his name, and I never asked his name.

I don't know why, but I didn't. A lot of people have spirit guides know the names of their guides or their guides tell them their names.

But he never told me his name, as I recall. And another way, the real way that I felt his guidance was later when

I became an astrologer and I was doing astrological chart readings, looking at the chart and talking to the client, then

I really felt that somebody was guiding me through the chart. So, you know, there wasn't any physical manifestation.

There was just this kind of inward guidance that I felt. But, you know, it was benevolent to me.

So it wasn't scary. At least you thought it was. Well, I thought it was, yeah. And as I got more into the

New Age, of course, I came across spirit guides were very common and people who had spirit guides.

Because what I did, there were two other things that happened shortly after this. One was,

I took a, well, it wasn't a class. I started going to this meditation center in Atlanta that was run by followers of Chögyam Trungpa, who was a

Tibetan Buddhist teacher. He was one of the heads of the four, there's four schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

The Dalai Lama is the head of one of the four schools, but he's also the head of Tibetan Buddhism because a couple of centuries or maybe three centuries ago,

I can't remember why, but they made this decision that the head of the school of Buddhism that the

Dalai Lama is the head of would be the head of all the country, the head of Tibet or something like that.

I don't remember the intricacies of it. So most people think that the

Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism and that's it. He's the head of Tibetan Buddhism, but there's three other branches of Tibetan Buddhism and each of them have their own leaders.

And Chögyam Trungpa actually came to this country before the Dalai Lama and set up, he had followers all over the country and he set up these centers in different cities or his followers set the centers up and one of those was in Atlanta.

And so there were followers there who had been taught by him personally.

Oh, he started the Naropa Center in Boulder if you ever heard of that. Naropa, it's a big thing.

If you Google it, it's all over the place. I have a friend who's a pastor in Boulder.

I'll have to ask him about that. Oh, he should know about Naropa, the Naropa Institute. Ask him about it.

That was founded by Chögyam Trungpa and it still exists. It's still there. I saw it when I was in Boulder very briefly.

I didn't go in, but I saw the building and it's still doing its thing.

It's Tibetan Buddhism, but it may also have New Age stuff. I can't remember.

The last time I looked it up online, I read about it, so I know

Boulder is very New Age. I didn't know that. In fact, why don't we pick up on the

Naropa Center when we return from our midway break because we have to go to our commercial break right now.

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Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

And let me just check to see if Marcia has unmuted herself again. No, I can't hear you,

Marcia, can you unmute yourself? I'm sorry, I just fixed it, I just fixed it. All right, great. Well, you were talking about, what was it, the

Naropa Center in Boulder, Colorado? Yeah, the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, which was founded by Choy Gum Trungpa, who was the head of the

Tibetan Buddhism school, you know, for want of a better term, the stream of Tibetan Buddhism that I was involved in.

And, well, I got somewhat involved in it by going to these weekly sessions where the followers would, well, first they instructed me in how to do the meditation.

And then you would go and somebody would give a lecture, like a lecture only, they didn't call it a lecture, it was like a little talk for about maybe 30 minutes or so.

And then we would sit there together in the room and meditate for like 45 minutes.

And then afterwards, they had this table full of all this really, really good food. And you would stand around and eat and talk to other people and talk to the followers of Choy Gum Trungpa.

So I was, and they also had books that he had written for sale. So I bought two or three of his books and I was reading them and I was very influenced by them.

I got very, very interested. Up to that point, I had been interested in Hinduism. I had come to believe in reincarnation by this point.

And but I wasn't really pursuing Hinduism as such.

I was still like on this journey where I was formulating my beliefs. And so I was very interested in this

Tibetan Buddhism because this book he wrote, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, had this impact on me.

And so I and the meditation seemed to be, I don't know, it's like you would have these insights while you were meditating.

And I was definitely taking on some of the beliefs. But what happened there was that they invited me to the sessions they had, which were not open to the public.

And they said, you can come on Monday night when we have private sessions that aren't open to the public.

And I said, well, what do you do there? And they said, well, well, we we learn different things.

And I said, well, like what? I was trying to get some specific information. And the only thing he would tell me was, well, like the mudras.

Well, the mudras are hand movements, are hand positions. Actually, that comes from Hinduism because, you know,

Buddhism, if people don't know this, Buddhism came out of Hinduism. Buddha, who is actually not a real, you know, he has historically questionable figure.

But the teachings came from somebody who was trying to more or less reform

Hinduism and didn't accept the many gods or really didn't.

I mean, even the concept of God doesn't even matter in Buddhism. But right. I heard that there are Buddhists who are atheists.

Huh? I heard that. Yes. Yes. Yeah. There can be

Buddhists who just say there's no God. Buddha himself supposedly never said there is a

God or there is no God. He just didn't address God at all. But, yeah, you could be a Buddhist and be an atheist, actually.

Although you would have to have some kind of spiritual view to have to be a Buddhist. But you could do that and be an atheist.

And so when Buddhism went into Tibet, it was coming straight from India.

So it retained some of the Indian teachings and concepts. Plus, it merged with the indigenous religion in Tibet, which is called

Bon, B -O -N. And Bon was a very shamanistic type religion.

And so Tibetan Buddhism is sort of a mixture of Buddhism with some of Hinduism and some of Bon mixed into it.

So it's very different from other forms of Buddhism in other countries. And it's especially occultic.

It's very occultic. Now, is shamanistic religion the worship of ancestors, the deceased ancestors?

Well, yeah. Or if it's not the worship, it's at least, you know, maybe contacting them or getting information from them.

But it's not just ancestors. It's spirits. It's a lot of contact spirits and gods because the shaman is the mediator between the spirit world and his tribe or village where he's the shaman.

So a shamanistic religion would involve a lot of spirit contact, whether it's ancestors or some other kinds of spirit beings.

And and Tibetan Buddhism is just they have deities. They believe in deities, even though they don't believe in a supreme god.

And they have all kinds of rituals and everything that are very occultic. So when he told me about the mudras,

I didn't know at that time exactly what the mudras were. But mudras really are an occult concept because they believe that, you know, the position of the hands.

It's really a form of yoga and mudras are used in yoga. And so it originates with the idea that you're manipulating energies.

And sometimes these are divine energies are connected to gods with the movements of your hand.

So at that point, I decided to stop going there because I felt like they were trying to recruit me, which is probably true.

They probably were trying to recruit me. And that turned you off because it seemed like you were desiring that kind of thing.

Well, it turned me off because it would limit me. If I if I got involved with that one group,

I knew that they would not want me to go exploring on my own. I mean, I just I just instinctively knew that.

And I was always very anti, you know, joining groups. I would go and learn things.

But then I wanted the freedom to go elsewhere. So I was not a good target for cults.

So, you know, I just wanted to be independent. You reminded me of an old

Groucho Marx joke who said I would never join a club that would have me as a member. Oh, well, yeah,

I wouldn't use that reason, though. That wouldn't be my reason. I do. I have heard that joke.

So from there, I what I then I started after all this Tibetan Buddhist meditation,

I eventually got interested in Zen Buddhism. And I went to some there were places around Atlanta where you could go meditate with other people.

And these were all Westerners who were doing this, doing Zen Buddhism. And they were not like this

Tibetan Buddhist group. They were not wanting you to join anything. You know, what is the difference?

What's the difference? What is the difference between Zen Buddhism and the form of Buddhism that you were previously encountering?

Oh, Tibetan Buddhism. Oh, yeah, there's a there's there are definitely differences. Zen Buddhism came from Buddhism when it went into China.

And there's a form of Buddhism in China called Chan. Chan is the

Western way to spell it. And then Chan went into Japan and became

Zen. But when it was in China and Chan was the form of Buddhism in China.

It took on some elements from Taoism. So Taoism is an ancient

Chinese religion that goes back to about 800 BC. And it also started from shamanism.

It came from shamanism. And I mean, by also I mean that I'm referring to the

Tibetan Buddhism mixing with the indigenous, not Buddhism itself. But the shamanistic elements of Taoism are there.

And Taoism is a very complicated religion that evolved over centuries. But that is where the yin yang comes from.

That's where acupuncture comes from. That's where the chi, the key energy comes from.

A lot of alternative healing. I have quotation marks around healing here because it's one of the things

I warn about is based on Taoism. And would that include some of the methodology adopted by some?

And I have to be very clear, not all, but some chiropractors that have claimed to be able to heal people without even physically touching them.

Like hovering their hands over the person's body and that kind of thing. Kinesiology, I believe it's called.

I think it's kinesiology. Oh, no, I know what you're talking about. Actually, what you described is Reiki. That's where that is from Japan.

That's actually as far as I know, chiropractors don't do that. But they do do applied kinesiology, which they do touch you, though.

Applied kinesiology is the idea that you can get information about the body by seeing the reactions of the muscles.

What was the chiropractor doing that I witnessed? He was providing a so -called service to someone that I know.

And he was just hovering his hand over the person's skin, not touching it at all.

And I'm not sure if that was the approach to healing the person or the approach to diagnosing what the problem was.

What would you call that? You know what that was? It could be a lot of things. I know that some chiropractors do supposedly cleanse your aura or balance your aura.

They also do something called polarity, where they don't touch the body. Yeah, that sounds familiar.

Yeah, and that's very occultic. I would classify all of that as occult healing because healing, a lot of people don't realize, healing is very big in the occult and the

New Age. It's like a huge portion of the occult and the New Age. And that's in our culture.

That's mainstream in our culture. We have Ted in Moundville, Alabama, who says kinesiology is totally legit physical science.

Do you agree with that? Yes, there is a difference between applied kinesiology and kinesiology.

Kinesiology is a science having to do with, I think, the muscles and bones and the movement of the muscles.

It's something used in sports medicine mainly, as I understand it.

But applied kinesiology is completely illegitimate and invalid. You supposedly can hold a person's, well,

I had it done on me in the New Age food co -op where I used to shop. You would try to decide whether you needed this vitamin or this vitamin.

So then you would hold this vitamin and they would push your hand down. And then you'd hold the other bottle and they'd push your hand down.

And then according to how your hand resisted, then you would get, you know, get whichever one.

Either your hand resisted better or didn't resist. And I saw something very similar, if not identical to that, in that exam that I was witnessing.

And by the way, the chiropractor doing this was a professing Christian. Oh, yes.

There are lots of Christian chiropractors who do New Age stuff. This is huge. This is, I have learned about this and I get a lot of angry responses because people don't want to think that Christians can do

New Age things, but they can. Chiropractic is not a medical practice. It's not based on medicine.

So people, there are some people that swear by it, though. And I know that we're not receiving bizarre mystical treatments.

Well, they're probably the people who get adjustments. But you don't even really need adjustments.

You don't have to have those. I used to go to chiropractors. My chiropractor in Atlanta actually was a witch.

But I used to go to chiropractors. I went to a chiropractor as a Christian for three years and then I quit because I realized if I was at the time,

I was not in ministry yet, but I was already doing some speaking. And I felt that I could not honestly talk against the

New Age if I went to chiropractors because I knew they did New Age stuff. So I stopped going. Anything that's not based on sound science and has to do with healing is going to incorporate

New Age concepts and New Age healing in it or quackery, or it's going to incorporate just invalid stuff, whether it's

New Age or not. Pseudoscience. So that's what you get. You get a mixed bag with it.

But I usually tell people I do not recommend going to chiropractors. Now, just a couple of other things before we move on.

And we have to perhaps pick up the pace to where you became an astrologer and got saved because we are going to be running out of time before you know it.

A couple of things that are very common for even a

Christian to receive a treatment for something because they just heard it works.

One of them that immediately pops into my mind is something that you mentioned briefly.

And and my brain, which is deteriorating rapidly when I as soon as I turned 61.

Now I forget what it is, but it's the one that involves the needles. The long acupuncture.

Yeah, acupuncture. Right. Is there any real benefit to acupuncture?

Even if, you know, people may say it definitely removed this pain from my life. And what is the occultic connection to that?

Acupuncture is based on the Daoism and the belief in the chi or the ki that runs through invisible channels in the body called meridians.

And if you look at acupuncture charts, if you Google them, you'll see this very complicated map with all these different channels in the body and where you put the needles.

And actually, there's not a standard acupuncture chart. There are different, you know, you can there are different theories of where you should put the needles.

But the idea is that if you have pain or illness, then it's because the chi is blocked and you have to unblock the chi.

And it has nothing to do with physiology or biology. It's all based on this view of the chi in the meridians and the balance of yin and yang in the body.

And that's what it comes from. Now, they did studies. NIH started doing studies on all these alternative things, including acupuncture.

And they never came to any solid evidence that it works.

They only found in some studies that it seemed to have some benefit for a very few situations.

I think one of them was arthritis in the knee. Another one was nausea after dental surgery and one or two others.

And they said, well, in these cases, it seemed to have benefit. But the majority of studies showed it not to do anything.

And in fact, sham acupuncture worked as better, if not better than real acupuncture.

Sham acupuncture was where they did not. I don't think they actually put a no.

I think they put needles in the person. They didn't put them in the spot you were supposed to to heal that condition.

You say sham, you mean fictitious or sure. Yeah, yeah. They weren't doing real acupuncture. They were it was it was a study.

It was it was one of those studies to see how acupuncture was. And sham acupuncture did just as good, if not better.

So I tell people until they come up with solid scientific evidence for it, then there's going to be a different explanation for it.

Because you can't have a scientific evidence that says the reason that you're sick is because your chi was blocked.

I mean, that's obviously not a scientific explanation. Right. If it's really connected to the body in some way, to the nerves or something like that, then you're going to be able to show that.

And they haven't been able to show that. Now, there's a lot of people claiming that it's valid.

But I have searched and looked and I cannot find anything that shows it's valid.

In fact, all I can find are things that show it hasn't been validated. Why do some people some people get better from it or from other things that I've learned about?

And I tell people there are other reasons you can get better. Number one, it can be a self self -limiting nature of the illness or the pain.

In other words, you get better anyway. Number two, the person maybe had some conventional treatment either before or during the unconventional treatment.

That actually is the reason they got better. Number three, the placebo effect.

The placebo effect is very powerful. It works in about 33 percent of cases with people.

So there are and then I add a fourth factor, which is demonic. I do think that scripture shows us that Satan can afflict people.

And we see that, of course, with Job and we see that with a woman in the synagogue. I think it's in Luke.

I think it's Luke 17. It might be Luke 13. I always forget. He goes into the synagogue and she is bent over double.

And Jesus says, Satan has afflicted you all these years. And then he heals her.

He does not cast a demon out. She is not possessed. She's physically crippled.

And. And Jesus heals her. And of course, it's on it's on the

Sabbath. And so it's another occasion for the Pharisees to, you know, reprimand him for healing on the

Sabbath, which is, of course, probably why he did it. But the point is, he says

Satan has afflicted you. Now, I think my theory is that Satan can.

Can give somebody an illness or a pain. By the way, Luke 13, that example, you were

Luke 13. OK, so I know it's 13 or 17. I always get mixed up which one it is.

And so because it's 10 through 17, that's why you were thinking 17. Oh, that probably. Thank you.

Thank you, Chris. So I think Satan can possibly afflict somebody and then can take it away.

And then you think you're healed, especially if you're going to these people using methods that are based on spiritual belief systems and not on God's creation.

I always tell people science is a study of God's creation. Yes, scientists can be wrong, but science is the study of objective data and God's creation.

God has creation set up a certain way, running on certain principles and certain laws that we have discovered, like the law of gravity.

You know, the most famous one we know of. I mean, we couldn't fly. People couldn't make planes without understanding the law of gravity and other physical laws.

So there are ways to and that applies to the body. There are things we can know about the body by studying the body and using our brains, which

God gave us as well. And so we need to base things on objective data that God has given us in creation.

I just wanted to move on to something that's even more prevalent amongst

Christians than acupuncture, and that would be yoga. And people insist that the stretching involved in some of these positions are beneficial to them.

They are much more healthy, active, flexible to be able to do things physically that they couldn't do before.

When it comes to, you know, ordinary things that might be strenuous or things that, especially when somebody grows older and are far less flexible.

And doing things even like as common as gardening or housework, they find themselves more energetic and able to bend over and do all these kinds of things that they couldn't do before with ease because of the yoga.

And I even had somebody on the program recently who was defending yoga, even if the positions were the positions of idolatrous worship.

As long as the person conducting these things or moving and standing and posing in these positions wasn't consciously doing it to appease some false deity.

I disagreed with the person, but how do you respond to that when somebody says, hey, well, yoga has been my number one question.

I have been talking about this since 1996. So I am extremely I have a lot of experience in answering the challenges and questions on yoga.

I've done whole programs on yoga. Chris, I could do a whole program. Maybe we'll have you back. OK, that would be great.

Well, let me just briefly address it then. Yeah. Now, first of all, I tell

Christians the criteria for doing something should not be, especially if it's based on a spiritual belief system or comes from a spiritual belief system that's opposed to Christianity.

The criteria should not be. It helps me or it works. That's not the criteria, because lots of things that come from false belief systems might help you or might seem to help you.

So that should not be our criteria. Number one. Number two, yoga is not stretching.

Yoga is a series of positions that you do. And yes, many of them honor

Hindu gods or the heroes of some of the Hindu mythologies. And so those positions are honoring gods.

But don't you have to stretch to do some of these poses? Well, you're you. Well, I don't call it stretching.

I just call it you're moving. But you have to do a very specific position. When people naturally stretch, you know, if they've been sitting a long time and they stretch their arms or they get they stand up and kind of bend over or whatever.

That's just normal stretching. You can't accidentally do yoga by normal stretching. So that's why

I tell people yoga is not stretching. Stretching is normal. Yoga is not normal. Yoga has very specific ways, the way you sit, the way you held your arms, the way you where you put your hands.

Or if you're doing one of the positions of yoga, you have to have everything a certain way or else the position is not correct or it won't work or you could harm yourself.

So everything's done very specifically. It's not just like a casual stretching. You're not. And yoga was not designed as exercise.

You know, it was never designed as exercise yoga. And there are many kinds of yoga.

And what we're talking about is hot yoga, which is the common yoga in this country. So hot yoga is designed to train and discipline the body so that the person can advance in yoga to deeper states of meditation.

So you are able to sit for hours so you can deeply meditate.

What are those people doing? Very often it's older people, but not necessarily exclusively older people.

Tai Chi. Yeah, there you go. Because I was going to say. I already know what you're talking about.

Is this another one of your clairvoyant occultic practices? You knew what

I was going to say? Tai Chi is from Taoism. So we're back to Taoism.

Tai Chi. And you see that word Chi in Tai Chi. That's because Tai Chi comes from.

It has a very strange story about how it began. That's really supernatural. Where this guy supposedly was given the 108 positions.

And 108 shows up a lot in Eastern spiritualities, that number. And so these positions.

The reason you do Tai Chi is to help harmonize your body with the

Chi and the yin and yang in the universe and within your own body. And so you actually are doing.

You're kind of manipulating energy by doing Tai Chi and creating harmony between you and the

Chi in the environment. Because Chi pervades everything. It's everywhere. And even

Feng Shui is based on that belief. So Chi pervades everything. She's a very important principle in Taoism.

And it's in Tai Chi. And also it's in Aikido, which is a martial art.

Because you see the A -I -K -I -D -O. K -I is another spelling for C -H -I.

So Aikido is a very spiritually based martial art. Aren't most of them?

Well, you know, some martial arts, the stories are that the monks who traveled would encounter robbers on the road and they had to learn to defend themselves.

And that the martial arts came from that. Now I think from what I've read that most of the martial arts like Kung Fu and Judo came from that and that they later imposed the spiritual belief system on it.

But I don't think that's true. Or Tai Chi. I think Aikido and Tai Chi came out of the spiritual belief system or it's so deeply entwined with the spiritual belief system that you can't separate it.

Just like you can't separate yoga from the spirituality that is part of it. All right.

I already know that we have to have you back because we haven't even really got into astrology yet. But we have to go to our final break.

And when we come back, perhaps we could delve into it. And I don't I don't know if I'm putting you on the spot, but can you come back tomorrow for part two?

Oh, you know what? I think I have. I haven't. Oh, no, actually, I can.

I have an interview tomorrow at eight o 'clock in the evening. All right. Well, folks, tune in tomorrow because we're going to have part two, but we're not done yet.

We're going to go to our final break and we are we'll be right back after these messages don't go away.

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1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. And I believe I may have—no,

I'm still there. Can you hear me, Marsha? Because I'm hearing a weird noise like somebody's trying to connect to the live streaming.

Can you hear me? Can you unmute yourself? Yeah. Okay. I'm back. Not sure—yeah,

I'm not sure what that noise is. That's usually the noise of somebody trying to connect.

But anyway— Okay. Yeah. That wasn't me. Well, we're going to have you back on tomorrow for a more full explanation, but tell us about what is, in its purest sense, and I don't mean pure by holy and godly, but in its distilled essence, what is astrology and how did you become a practitioner of it?

And then we'll hear—we probably don't even have time to hear your salvation testimony until tomorrow.

What is astrology and why is it so dangerous? Okay, yes.

Let me say that after this whole thing with Tibetan Buddhism, I did take courses in psychic development and astrology.

That's when I was really deciding to learn something in a structured way.

And astrology is based on the belief that the position of the planets and their relationship to each other reflects events in your life or events in general.

So you can do—for a person, you do the birth chart. So that's based on the time and place of birth, and that shows a picture of where the planets and the sun and the moon were at the time of your birth.

And that is supposed to indicate the path of your life, and it's interpreted by the astrologer.

So that involves all the planets and the sun and the moon in a circle, 360 degrees, and it's divided into 12 pieces or what they're called houses, 12 houses, which are the 12 zodiac signs.

So depending on where you're born, that will be different. The zodiac sign on each house shifts about every two hours.

And the planets, of course, are moving—the closer in planets move faster.

They move by degrees. So being born at 9 o 'clock in the morning, Venus might be 14 degrees of Pisces, and then later that evening, it'll be at another degree.

I can't mathematically calculate it, but it might be at 18 degrees or something. Anyway, so there's a movement going on, but the picture of the time of your birth is frozen in time, and that's supposed to represent your life and the path of your life.

And so the astrologer interprets that. I learned that by taking the astrology courses, but in the city of Atlanta, to practice legally, you had to have a business license.

But to qualify for the business license, you had to be certified, which meant you had to take an exam.

And there was an exam given in Atlanta by the Atlanta Board of Astrology Examiners that was recognized by the city.

The city had actually set it up because they would have to set it up, otherwise you couldn't do it.

And I took that test. It was a seven -hour exam because astrology, like all occult practices, is actually very complicated.

So I took that exam and passed it, and then I was able to go buy my business license and practice legally.

But I wanted the license not just to practice legally but for credibility. And I eventually was taught astrology as well, and I was on the

Board of Astrology Examiners myself later on, and I was chairperson of that board.

So I was very, very involved. There was an Atlanta Astrological Society at the time.

It was very active.

We had 100 members, listed members. Of course, only about maybe 30 to 35 people would come to the meetings, mostly.

But it was a very active organization. So when

I was certified and I bought the business license, I had business cards, and I was passing them out, and I started getting clients.

And that led to more clients, word of mouth kind of thing.

I also was a resident astrologer at a place called the Foundation of Truth, which is where I had taken the psychic development class.

I took a class in numerology. I took a class in past life regression and a few other classes, and I'd taken my first astrology classes there.

Now, I later went somewhere else to a place, a business that was run by two astrologers, and took more advanced astrology classes there.

But I became the resident astrologer there, which means if someone came there and asked for an astrologer, they would call me.

And I would be able to go to that place and do the reading there because I didn't have a business.

I had my place where I lived with my, at the time, my husband and son.

So people either had to come to my home, but since my husband and son were there,

I usually went to people's homes unless we could meet in another place. So my astrology business just grew over time.

I also started writing for astrological and New Age publications, which

I'd already been doing a little bit of, but I did more of it after I became an astrologer. And I was also on the

Speaker's Bureau. So I was speaking to secular groups like Parents Without Partners, the

Lions Club. I spoke to a chapter of the Lions Club on astrology. So I was very, very active, to say the least.

And then I became president of the Astrological Society. And we have to end it right there for now.

And tomorrow you're going to be joining us for part two. I want to make sure that our listeners have your website. It's ChristianAnswersNewAge .com.

Correct. Yes. ChristianAnswersNewAge .com. And please, folks, tune in tomorrow for part two, because we only began to scratch the surface of this fascinating discussion.

And I want all of you to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater