Ouija Board, Tarot, Séances, Oh, My!
Halloween | Wicca | Witches
Various essays leading up to Halloween 2022.
My Witch Story | Children’s Books about Witches | Powerful | Ouija Board, Tarot, Séances, Oh, My! | We Attended a Wicca Wedding
The people involved with bringing the Ouija Board to market in the late-19th century include inventor William Fuld (and his family) and patentee Elijah Bond. Both gentlemen were Freemasons. Membership in that secret society was not unusual for prominent businessmen in their day. The parlor game is a board with a planchette that’s moved (somehow) to receive messages from the spirit world. The materials themselves are inanimate, just like tarot cards.
Tarot cards (or tarot decks) originated in the early 1400s in Europe. There are various types of decks, and some practitioners today search for the decks closest to the ancient originals. These decks perpetuate the occult mysteries that the church banned in the 4th century A. D. That ban forced tarot practitioners into secret societies until the openness of the 20th century.
Séances are occult sessions where people try to communicate with those who have died or with specific spirits. During some sessions, the practitioners use a Ouija Board as their communication tool. Spiritualism was formalized in the United States in the 19th century. Mary Todd Lincoln organized séances in the White House in her attempts to receive messages from the Lincoln’s dead son, Willie.
I caution people, especially preteens and teens, not to experiment with Ouija Boards, tarot cards, séances, or other occult practices. They all are devices used by the enemy to open doors to the demonic.
I didn’t own a Ouija Board, a neighbor did. A small group of us neighbor girls would get together and hold sessions with the Ouija Board, trying to summon a spirit to communicate with us. I’m grateful that today I have almost no recollection of specific messages we received (or not). Some of us wondered who moved the planchette: a spirit or one of us girls. Either way, our sessions with the Ouija Board increased my curiosity to explore the occult. A few times, it did seem a spirit was communicating with us, and it scared us. We felt the presence, which was unsettling.
I owned a tarot deck, and I studied how to read the cards. One day, alone in my bedroom, I felt a great fear, and I threw that deck in the trash. Why? It wasn’t what I had read in the cards; it was the strong presence of an unfriendly being that I felt.
As for séances, we neighbor girls also experimented with receiving messages from spirits. We also studied astral projection. Alone in my bed late at night, I could feel myself being drawn deeper into a spiritual connection that started changing my daytime behaviors.
After one incident (that I will keep to myself but that negatively affected another person to where my family sternly punished me), I huddled alone in my bedroom knowing that I stood at a precipice, at a crucial decision point, that would affect the rest of my life. I felt a heavy weight of despair, and as I cried, a mental picture of Jesus Christ on the cross filled my thoughts, and my precious Lord rescued me that afternoon. I repented of my sins and put my trust in Him as my Savior and my Lord.
Everything the faithful adults at my church had taught me about Him, from my earliest years to my teen years, came flooding into my mind, assuring me of God’s forgiveness and His love for me. I renounced the devil and all his works and all his ways, and never looked back. In fact, when sharing my faith, I feel more confident when people bring up the occult because of my experiences.
Christians err when they don’t take seriously that the “parlor games” I’ve mentioned above work as gateways, or open doors, into the dark powers in the spiritual realm. I encourage true believers to keep the children and young people in their lives away from anything related to occult practices, including Halloween, and even “Trunk or Treat” at local churches. I prefer celebrating “All Saints’ Day” events, where you tell your young people about all the brave believers who were martyred for their steadfast faith in Christ Jesus, from the church’s early days to right now. Introduce your young people to Voice of the Martyrs, and teach them to pray regularly for the persecuted church.
During the month of October, true believers need to focus even more on Jesus and on educating the young people in their lives on the spiritual war that wages around us daily. Challenge the teens in your life on why they try to seek knowledge through occult or secret means when they can have all things through Christ Jesus. “All the good things” in the spiritual realm is what God provides to those who follow Him.
And following Him can be quite exciting. I’ll share a few stories next week, in my last installment on Halloween, witches, witchcraft, and Wicca.
Thank you for reading!
#Halloween #Wicca #Wiccans #witches #witchcraft
Soli Deo Gloria.
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Thank you for sharing. It's so important that believers know the truth for ourselves and for our children. 🧡