This Week in Witchcraft (S1 E21)

Welcome to this week in witchcraft The elements have been conquered with intense heat and witchcraft has become more cosmopolitan.

Can you spot it out in the wild? I'm dylan hamilton and with me are michael derham david casson today

We have some witchcraft that's been given to us from one of our listeners and we're going to read the question now

It reads I was recently engaged in a conversation with a co -worker Who was asking me what they thought about the law of attraction or what

I thought about the law of attraction? My initial response was that god is the one who dictates reality and not our thoughts slash emotions at the same time

I agree that what we think and say matters and does affect us to some extent How would you respond to a person who believes this type of paganism?

What are the roots of the law of attraction? David you got a definition worked up for us Yeah, so this

What we call the law of attraction is well one. It's nothing new

But if you just do a couple of quick google searches wikipedia searches and stuff you can come up with a basic Basic definition, but it's a law of attraction or a new thought.

It's a spiritual belief that You can manifest Positive or negative in your life based upon your thought patterns

You are manifesting reality based upon positive thinking

And this kind of thoughts and and it is pure energy the more intense

Your will and your faith in this the more you will attract those kinds of people around you that you want

You will manifest the kind of life that you want Some people call it the power of positive thinking some people would just you know, call it you pick your pagan poison

But it is essentially taking the role of god Into your own hands because you are god you can create your own reality purely by your own thought

Yeah, so this is a good definition. It's good Survey of the ideas here of the law of attraction

Uh, one of the part of the question that dylan read for us was about what are the roots of this pagan thought?

so again, this is very easy to look up but You look it up you find the things that the ingredients of this law of attraction include things like Hermeticism which comes out of the renaissance and the ideas of alchemy

So when we think of alchemy we're thinking of changing one thing into another thing by the combining of elements and so on This is intrinsically part of witchcraft wherein you're bringing two things together that ought not be together

Which is sorcery wherein you're trying to change one thing into another by way of magic

In this case just by using words or thoughts or ideas and so forth. It's also based out of the

Transcendentalist movement you ever heard the expression mind over matter? That's yep. That's what that is and obviously

Eastern pantheistic monism is a part of this which means hinduism buddhism

All of that what we find with this is that there is a real effort to Draw from various authorities and an attempt to Create a way of thinking of spiritualism that is greater than any religion and so they draw on various traditions and they try to Make it sound like yeah, this teaching this idea is is latent within all religions within all worship

And and this is really the the true essence of what? Religion is all about what spiritualism is all about Is that you are to?

Manifest the world in which you want to live and to bring that about in your life So this is a very dangerous form of witchcraft in that it places you

As the center it makes you god, right? In fact many people who push this type of thinking such as on tbn anything from like tbn the more christian versions of Of the law of attraction that they'll actually, you know say that we are gods, you know, so on and so forth

Why are they saying that because you're the one who's creating the world in which you live you're speaking it into existence

You're manifesting it. You're designing it. You're in control of it bad things happening in your life

It's because of you you you're manifesting that in your life and you need to manifest other things in your life.

And so for a lot of people They gravitate to it because um, they're trying to find some sort of a structure some sort of Organization for what to do with their life

And they think that if I just think positive things then i'll do positive things If I think positive things positive things will happen in my life and i'm going to focus on that and then they find that If they take initiative and do things they get things done and they think they've discovered

You know the power of positive thinking You know if bad things happen to you

That's because you manifested negativity in your life and you got to rid yourselves of those negative thoughts. Yeah, exactly

So in some sense the effect is not much more different than jordan peterson's clean your room

Self -fulfilling prophecy type stuff. Yeah exactly, but the witchcraft involved in it is something where it elevates the self and it takes things in god's world and begins to Rename them and mix them and so on and so forth into this kind of menagerie of various religions all put together

We said that this is actually nothing Nothing new this repeats itself throughout history

You can see things things like this and in other religions I hadn't thought about this book in a while, but there's there's a book called think and grow rich by napoleon hill very

Popular book in the 1930s. It's along that theme. So this law of attraction, you know

It's basically just secret knowledge You know, it's appropriating, you know authority that you don't have but ancient gnosticism is just repackaged but if you have the ability to manifest your own

Destiny because of your own thought patterns so you can create the world that centers around you

You just want to be you know god You know, that's nothing new that's not exactly innovative

So as far as the law of attraction goes and I love that that word they have to Redefine law because they have no no lawgiver unless unless it's you unless you become a law and end up yourselves

Yeah, that's what it is Autonomy, it's a it's a web of works righteousness and it's a continually ever -changing law that you're setting up because You're you're basically doing a trial and error law, right?

Like we're okay I've thought this way so it must be good because good things are happening Um, right or i've i've driven this route to work and good things happen on days that I drive this route

So I must do it from now on until that fails and now we have to have a new law You can see the superstition that's involved with a lot of this thinking can't we this is a demonic appropriation of alternate authority?

In that this is a deceit It's a lie and it places the self as the ultimate authority and it is navigated by the hermeneutic of experience

And like dylan just said if I do this this and this and I experience this then this is the new authority

This is the new way that I do this but this this witchcraft I think about how it manifests and the practical implications of it if By positive thinking and my law of attraction.

I'm only going to manifest positive things about you know who i'm with About the kind of people that are going to be in my life

Kind of things that i'm going to have in my life and so on what if somebody comes along? Let's say they're somewhat negative, you know, and um they don't agree with your positive assessment about how everything's going to go and they

They say, you know when it comes to you know, making a billion dollars Maybe you need to learn something about finance, you know,

I don't think you really understand What it means to be an influential person

What if somebody? Brings negative vibes into your life. You don't want that What do you do?

Well, you manifest them right out of your life, don't you right? What does this do to marriages?

What does this do to families? Right? What does this do to relationships? What does it do to people who?

You thought oh, you know, my workplace was just a negative vibe. I had to move to something more positive and affirming right

Until you create an echo chamber and a safe space in which you live So you can only ever positively manifest what you want to manifest and then where does that lead sounds incredibly lonely

You know, it's funny you look back in history and you see this from these royal families that would only breed among themselves

Things got pretty ugly pretty fast, right? That happens with people with their thought life when all of their thoughts are inbred

It gets really ugly. I'll give you a practical example, and I don't know this for sure but there was a woman who was brought into a um,

I think it was a white house press briefing and No, no. No, it wasn't white house. It was a it was a sheriff's department.

It was a sheriff's department I think it was in florida wasn't as often as florida, man, you know But anyway, so she comes in and very very important topics were being discussed and the public needed to know and the sheriff is explaining how

What was going on and their policies and so on and she's over to the side and she's doing sign language Okay, so that the deaf people will be able to understand what the sheriff is saying

She does not know a lick About sign language and she's just making all these funky

You know motions And it looks like maybe she knows what she's doing, but she does not know what she is doing.

How did she get there? She is dead serious believing that she is communicating to the deaf accurately

She just manifested that right Maybe she was even spiritual. Maybe she was very religious maybe even in a christian type of tradition where you know

The lord's gonna you know, i'm gonna i'm gonna speak in tongues and they're gonna understand or whatever it was You just manifest this nobody got in her way.

Nobody said no, you can't do that. No, you don't have the qualifications No, you don't know what you're doing. You know, why not?

This is an example of you know, and who knows what the situation was But that kind of thing will happen to people who go down this uh, this uh, this rabbit hole of a false religion

You know, i'm only going to manifest positively. There's you know, there's nothing going to stop me you have this echo chamber.

I'm speaking Things into existence and that is essentially what we have calling one thing another

We have that that is The modern transgender movement. Yes, it is

You just speak it into existence and you gather people around you that will echo your words

And those that those voices that disagree The those hateful voices for the greater good must be

Silenced it doesn't matter if it's true or not. You say it's true Therefore we're going to treat it as true and we're all going to tell each other

The same lie and it's okay that we don't believe it because ultimately it's for the greater Good, that's the echo chamber and you can you can make that into anything including

I hate to use words like this But are you talking about pedophilia and bestiality? And you have don't you mean minor attractive people?

I do not do not It just degenerates, you know And the things that that it just it keeps going spiraling spiraling down And if you have that echo chamber

Even if the echo chamber gets a little bit smaller a little bit smaller as you cut people out They're no longer willing to believe or echo your lie.

That is essentially what you just described. You're manifesting the reality that you want and If anybody disagrees with you the problem is with them and your reality be damned

If you apply this to government, where do you go? What is it? What does it end with? Right, like so I mean the way what we're seeing is actually it is being applied to government right now, right?

Like so if you say 9 .1 inflation enough everyone ought to believe it, right? It better not we better not check into how the cpi

Actually is is dealt with or if we say that what we're doing is for the good of democracy

We better keep doing what we're doing in order to preserve democracy I listened to a representative for the white house council economic affairs literally two days ago

They're talking to him about investors. Like no the economy is actually very strong, right? He didn't he actually couldn't support it.

It was hysterical because of unemployment, right? Like he just kept saying it over and over Yeah, and let's not let's not think about the job projections of everybody just being laid off here in the next 6 to 12 months

Or whatever, but yeah, it's trying to manifest The outcome right so it's like peak pragmatism applied to Governance, which is basically what you get with communism, right?

Like marxism is is trying to speak into existence your own reality in order to get the desired outcome

Live not by lies. Yes Yeah, so you see that in order to maintain various deceptions you have to have this type of witchcraft where only in group form this positive manifestation

Is maintained at all costs in order to forward that project I think david you've mentioned an article earlier about a government funded echo chamber for grooming children

Into the lgbtq Whatever funded by this. Yeah Funding the cdc run by the cdc grooming them into perversion in the name of health, right?

Grooming them into a life full of disease and disaster and death in the name of health And then nobody can speak otherwise against it and then again like what dylan is saying words are used terms are used

Changed and new definitions, but everybody must say the new thing or else

You're excluded from the conversation. So the cdc changed the definition of that of a vaccine so they could create a shot

The shot that they created the that they've approved was outside of that definition It was outside the definition of the vaccine the early one so they changed the definition

So now we can now call this shot a vaccine when it was before never considered that they do the same thing with uh inflation

Right. They do the same thing with recession Oh, this used to be the definition of the term makes us look bad

We just simply changed the definition of the term and now everybody must affirm the new definition, which is depression originally, right?

so what we have here is A several clear expressions of paganism wherein the civil government itself

Is engaging in the law of attraction wherein they're insisting that things are good until they are good

It's a very much a pagan religion and they and they believe that the more that they can positively manifest it the more it'll be

So so just like the lady who was signing but can't sign they're governing but can't govern

Right because they're not basing their their work upon anything objective so example from the scriptures example from the scriptures is from first kings verse 20 chapter 22 and the the background of the story is that Jehoshaphat comes up to ahab in Israel and they're gathering together to decide whether or not they're going to combine their forces to go attack syria

All right. They got a big decision to make as these governing authorities And they get together and Jehoshaphat says, you know, we really ought to inquire the lord whether we should do this or not

And they have says no problem. Let me call up my prophets. He's got 400 prophets on his payroll 400

Experts all come together and they say exactly what the king wants to hear right? Oh, yeah, go up.

You'll win You're strong. You're mighty success raw And uh, jehoshaphat smells a rat

Is uh Could we get a real? You know a real word from the lord here

You know somebody who is willing to say things as it is Obviously somebody you don't have on your payroll that you've created this echo chamber.

You've positively manifested the will of the lord here But uh, I want an actual word of the lord and king of israel said there is still one man

Micaiah the son of imlah by whom we may inquire of the lord, but I hate him Yeah, because he does not prophesy good concerning me but evil

Um, you know, there's nothing new under the sun right and so they do bring micaiah and when they get to micaiah

They're like look everybody else all the other experts have said that this this mission is a go we're going to win the day

And micaiah says as the lord lives, whatever the lord says to me that I will speak Well, he gets before the king and obviously he understands what the expectation is

And so the king says I says micaiah shall we go to war against ramoth gilead or shall we refrain and then micaiah

Is very sarcastic and he says go and prosper for the lord will deliver it into the hand of the king

And so the king said him how many times shall I make you swear that you shall tell me nothing? But the truth in the name of the lord

Even ahab knows his experts are lying to him Even ahab gets it and micaiah does tell him the truth.

And of course the king hates it and he punishes micaiah And uh, ahab goes off and he dies chasing that white.

Well, uh, yes. Yeah captain. They have Chases and he he dies, uh, because he only wanted to positive a manifest what was positive right and this is a

This is an excellent warning from the word of god. It's funny how you see parallels today with increasing condensing of Those experts down to the ones that just tell me the lies that I need

I want to hear so bad you Actually have a lowering in competency all the way down and with each press secretary that we have

That comes in there's a lowering of the bar every single time and i'm wondering what they're going to come up with next

It's amazing. So you have my clearly delineated and we've I think we've discussed, you know clearly and defined the law of attraction versus what the scriptures say, you know that the reality as defined by god versus the new reality that we wanted to find by our

Own words and our own will and that the story that you cite perfect example Of how no matter how positive your vibes are reality is what it is so What do you say to the person to the christian who has?

Started to go into this into this world a little bit and wants to you know Think you know positively and and and wants to you know, hey, let's let's try to you know plan for the worst

But you know hope for the best and let's try to plan ahead and and you know Get our harvest and and if somebody is just oh everything is is e or ho hum

Nothing is ever going to work in you know Then there's they're not going to be willing to be productive at all.

So the the christian who cites Mark 11 prayer, I guess we can just go ahead and read it taken out of context granted

Therefore I tell you whatever you ask in prayer believe that you have received it and it will be yours

James 1 6, you know ask faith and it shall be Granted to you

So these people are asking in faith. They are Manifesting that reality they are they want to it really?

Health wealth prosperity kind of gospel stuff, but they're putting a christian spin on it and they're just trying to Follow what the bible says, how can you respond to them and says no no

No, no what you are what you're doing is actually paganism. How is how is that?

How is the bible different when it talks about the power of prayer? Asking and receiving asking with faith.

Yeah, you know, it's important to remember that in the scriptures faith has a shape Right faith has a shape and the shape is christ when we think of the christian virtues of faith and hope and love

And how they uh interact together the faith is the shape Of the christian life and it's shaped around christ the person in the work of christ his his excellence his preeminence

Uh his person in work as a son of god and our creator The author and the finisher of our faith as the image of the invisible god when we think about faith

Faith in the scriptures faith has a shape and the shape is christ and that is irrefutable throughout the scriptures

So again, as you pointed out taking that verse out of context people will just think of faith in faith or believe in yourself correct, but you know faith has a shape like the shape of a river and the river being filled up with water is like love

Love filling up the the shape of our faith. But what about hope right? What about what's ahead believing that there's something great ahead.

There's a movement towards something that is correct um, but even as You know faith is is in the shape of christ and love to the fullness of christ hope is in the direction of christ

So what is what is ahead of us is not more of me not an exaltation of me

But an elevation of christ and in all this so that in all things He has the preeminence of all things being reconciled to him.

So yeah, there's a direction. There's good ahead of us There's light ahead of us for sure But everything is about our our savior and sovereign jesus christ

A really good example of somebody in the bible who really believed, you know and believed in himself would be herod um and having acquired his echo chamber where they said

Oh the voice of a god and not of a man. I mean how positive is that right? And then he was eaten by worms and died

Because he did not give the glory to god. So it's not believe in yourself You believe in yourself you get eaten by worms and die

It's about believing in christ And it is indeed victory the victory that overcomes the world is faith faith in christ in him.

We are overcomers so we can have confidence That we are going in a good direction, but that direction is

His direction correct thy kingdom come they will be done on earth as it is in heaven Not my will be done not my kingdom come thy will be done thy kingdom come

Right. So you're laying out a teleology you're laying out like an end and a purpose for these things Like the the first question of the catechism

Really out of ring home there so In that context the context that you guys just described

Persecution then makes sense right enduring that persecution You didn't manifest something bad happening to you and in your life because you surrounded yourself with negative people

And now you're being you're on the verge of martyrdom actually really christ -like and you might be martyred alongside him if you

Truly falling after christ and they hated him christ promises that They will hate you as well

In this world, you will have trouble but take courage. I have overcome the world.

So your direction is good Because it's it's his direction. He's he's the one that's directing it and he is that goal you're being directed towards Him and that momentary light affliction by comparison is creating an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison

So persecution and trial and suffering in this context Makes a lot more sense than in the context of law of attraction or health wealth and prosperity

Yeah, because how else are you going to account for it? I mean latimer was not burned at the stake clutching his signed copy of your best life now

Yeah, yeah, I mean it really wow it really makes sense of The quotes like play the man.

Mr. Ridley like that we have at saints martyrdoms They're not despairing and they know what's happening.

Isn't a positive but past it is the ultimate positive Yeah, and as an example, we have his christ for the joy set before him he endured the cross.

Yeah Amen. Well, I think that wraps up that witchcraft michael What do you have to recommend as far as content goes as far as content goes

I would recommend reading if you can

After a fashion read read something from herman bavinck. I Really have benefited from reading through his reformed dogmatics but that is four volumes and there's a lot of footnotes and so on and so forth, but there is a one volume

Summary of that. I think my my brother has a copy of that. He's really enjoyed that as well But if you could um, just look up something by herman bavinck and read

I think that you'll be blessed by his warmth His faith in the lord is rejoicing in the truth of the scripture and a very informed stalwart defense against false teachers at every level and he did his battles at the end of the 1800s beginning of the 1900s in the netherlands and Addressed almost all the issues in his day that we have

In our day, so that's one of the reasons why it's so relevant. So that's that'll be my recommendation.

All right, david I'm going to recommend This is an ancient work and I say ancient early church

It's the first epistle of clement to the corinthians. I read this Years ago, we're talking maybe 20 years ago

And just in the last couple of weeks the guys at the particular baptist podcast did an exposition of it

Actually read it like the first half. I think it may have been a two or three part series But then they they read his entirety and then they commented on it clement of rome

Who was he well in the most reliable list of the bishops of rome and the list of popes? He was number four

So you have something very very early. We're talking like early second century like 110 and this is maybe 25 pages long

So we just talked about uh epistle to you know, corinthians in the you know, the bible.

So this is just a letter to The church of corinth just a few decades after paul wrote them the reason i'm commending this if you have a pet doctrine

Chances are you could find an early church father that believed it, you know, it's it's don't look for the early early church as you in in toto for your standard of orthodoxy, right because Whatever you kind of want you can sort of find

Yeah, I say that with a little bit of a smile because the early church fathers are not our standard right

Yeah, the bible is yeah, of course, but I gotta say This guy's amazing in 25 pages.

He goes through and he talks about election He does not put himself in the place of the apostles and doesn't speak with their authority

I thought he was a pope talks about the trinity and this is 110 when originally

Oh, no, when christ became god that was actually the council of nicaea in the 300s. Well, no, he actually talks about it here

We're talking 110. He quotes isaiah 53. He quotes proverbs. He quotes.

This is Saturated with old testament at psalm 51 Again, just over and over with the with the trinity and then the divinity of christ how you can be sure of your salvation faith leads

To acts of righteousness But you were saved by grace through faith It actually says earning our justification by deeds not by words a couple other a couple other things that he puts in there

But that's really um his sanctification, you know What cost our father abraham to be blessed was not his faith which prompted him to acts of righteousness and truth

So that sanctification follows faith and he just goes on and on and I found it to be

It was nice to find an early church father that you can just go amen. Okay. Amen.

Gosh, this guy reads like a protestant I mean it was really interesting and I really enjoyed it and it's not long and if you've never read anything by an early church father

Clement of rome his epistle to the corinthians and if you want a little bit more Background on it.

You can listen to the particular baptist podcast. You don't have to have to do it But it's it's it's an easy read and um,

I hope you'll enjoy it Now when I first read clement's letter it immediately Was affirming in two ways it fell so flat compared to scripture

But then again, he wasn't making any claims that he was writing scripture And so it only affirmed the word of god, especially as he was doing he was laboring to upbraid the christians in corinth

To the word that they had already received right, you know, and he's like look this is our authority guys

Yeah, it was so It is refreshing. Yeah to read. Yeah, if you can't find it on the particular baptist one,

I know dr White has gone through the letter at different times He's gone through different portions because he had to deal with roma catholicism obviously on some of these points

So he just goes back to church history and nails away at him that way But there's a lot of richness there that you can you can mine

My recommendation is not to consume any content but to create it I Recommend you find a form of poetry and yes find a form don't just start thinking you have poetry when you're writing an out and free verse but find a form and try to Create a poem in any particular form that you either enjoy to read or enjoy to write or think you might enjoy writing

And try and write the best poem you can and see how much of a mental exercise that is and how much of a fun