Swords and Sorcery (Mostly Sorcery)

Summary

The Lord of Spirits Podcast

Episode: Swords and Sorcery (Mostly Sorcery)

Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick & Fr. Stephen DeYoung
Date: July 12, 2024
Theme: The Seen and Unseen World in Orthodox Christian Tradition – Magic, Sorcery, and the Manipulation of Spiritual Reality

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the reality and history of magic—specifically sorcery—within the ancient world, Scripture, and Christian tradition. The Fathers explain how magic was understood, practiced, and judged, focusing on its distinction from miracle and true spirituality. They also track the fate of magical practices post-Christianization and their echoes in contemporary religion and culture, culminating in tales as bizarre as the "cheese sandwich oracle."

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is Magic in the Ancient World?

• Magic refers to techne (technique/technology): specialized ritual or knowledge to manipulate spiritual entities, not mere stage tricks (05:58–06:06).
• It is “para-religious,” often outside formal priesthood but deals directly with divine or spiritual powers (07:49–08:41).
• Quote (Fr. Stephen, 09:40):

  “At the broadest level, when we’re talking about magic, we’re talking about the manipulation of spirits.”

• Magic is differentiated from priestcraft by accessibility—anyone with the know-how can, theoretically, do it (10:47–11:26).

2. Categories of Magic (Ancient and Biblical World):

• Signs and Wonders/Miracles (15:13–18:34):
  Acts or phenomena that could be miraculous or magical depending on the source and means. The difference is whether the act is through commanding spirits (magic) or God working through a person (miracle).

  • Quote (Fr. Stephen, 16:32):

    “The magical practitioner has power or authority... that allows them to command spirits.”

• Demonology (20:23–22:30):
  The cataloguing, summoning, and commanding of spirits (demons, specifically) by secret means, including knowledge of names and rituals.

• Divination (22:53–26:24):
  Seeking hidden knowledge (future, present, or past) by spiritual means. Methods include augury (bird omens), extispicy (reading entrails), oracles (spirit possession), and more.

• Astrology (30:33–37:37):
  Presumes the stars and planets are gods or divine beings affecting fate; connects to a broader ancient fatalism.

• Alchemy & Magic Objects (37:44–47:49):
  Encompasses production of objects (philosopher's stone) or substances (potions, "pharmakeia", amulets) believed to harness or manipulate spirits. The most common form: the amulet.

3. Magic vs. Science & Religion

• Magic is not primitive science or medicine—the aims, assumptions, and concepts differ fundamentally (38:34–41:02).
  • Quote (Fr. Stephen, 41:02):

    "Magic and all of these things are actually doing something different [from science]."

• The attempt to control the world or spiritual order is what unites all forms of magic.

4. Who Practices Magic?

• Initially restricted to the highly literate or priestly classes (49:09–12:08).
• Later exists in both formal (court magicians, official augurs, etc.) and informal forms (local villagers, "wise women," individuals with reputations) (53:07–54:58).
  • Quote (Fr. Stephen, 54:58):

    “That’s how common a lot of these magical practices were in the ancient world. It was not seen as some kind of big deal… part of their life.”

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Magic in Scripture

1. Old Testament Condemnation

• Exodus 22:18 prohibits allowing a "witch" to live (67:04–67:37).

• Deuteronomy 18:9–14 lists practices forbidden by God (70:31–70:55).

  • Not forbidden because they don’t work, but because they do:

    “He’s telling them not to do this because it works.” (70:55–70:58 Fr. Stephen)

• Necromancy is distinguished from asking for saints’ prayers (72:05–72:57).

• Prophet as Divine Mediator (Deuteronomy 18:15–22):
  God provides prophets so Israel does not need magic (74:37–76:33).

2. Biblical Sorcerers & Examples

• Balaam – Prophet for hire, blending magic and prophecy (81:39–81:54).
• Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28): Not faking; real necromantic ritual (84:45–84:59).
• King Manasseh’s Occultism (2 Chronicles 33): Star worship, fortune-telling, sorcery, necromancy (87:28–89:27).
• Amulets among the Maccabees – use of magical charms among Israelites (89:44–90:15).

3. New Testament Encounters

• Jesus accused of sorcery: People didn’t question if wonders were real, but their source (91:05–92:51).
  • Quote (Fr. Stephen, 92:28):

    "They didn’t accuse him of faking it... They just accuse Jesus of sorcery, essentially."

• Simon Magus (Acts 8): Archetypal magician who wanted to buy apostolic power (99:22–103:04). Later became a cult leader, claiming divinity and engaging in bizarre magical theology (107:20–111:09).
• Ephesus Book Burning (Acts 19): Converts burn valuable magical texts (113:08–115:05).
• Paul’s Letters: Sorcery listed as a “work of the flesh” people must abandon (115:21–116:18).

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The Survival and Transformation of Magic

(from the Christian era to modern times, with the promised "cheese sandwich oracle")

1. Magic after Early Christianity

• Magic becomes “folk” and persists rurally, but is driven out of formal society by Christianity (142:22–144:03).

• Pagans accused Christians of magic (Roman legal charges: “Jewish rituals and magic” (144:27–146:39); Celsus and Porphyry accused Jesus and apostles of magic).

• Church and Imperial Ban:
  Christian emperors banned astrology, magic books, etc. in law (151:09–152:10).
  Pagan elites (Libanius) lamented loss of magic as normal part of life (153:09–153:29).

2. The Cheese Sandwich Oracle (155:33–160:20)

• What happened:
  Sophronius of Tella (5th century bishop) was accused of divination.
  To determine a thief among three suspects, he gave each a cheese sandwich believing the guilty would vomit.
• When that failed, he resorted to more elaborate pagan divination (incantations, a divining cup, a boy as medium). The boy lost his mind (recovered only after being anointed in holy places).
  • Memorable moment (Fr. Andrew, 157:17):

    “Again, we’re not—I swear, we’re not making this up... Look up Sophronius of Tella...and you’ll discover the cheese sandwich oracle story.”

• Moral: Even Christian leaders sometimes resorted to or blended magical practices.

3. Post-Patristic Magic: Hermeticism, Freemasonry, and Spiritualism (162:22–164:56)

• Hermeticism (Hermes Trismegistus) and esoteric “occult” traditions perpetuated magical philosophies, culminating in movements like Freemasonry and later 19th-century spiritualism (Blavatsky, Christian Science, Theosophy).

• 20th century syncretism:
  These traditions (and Jung’s interest in alchemy & Gnosticism) feed into New Age movements and, indirectly, into certain popular charismatic/pseudo-Christian phenomena.

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Modern Echoes: Magic, ‘Christianity,’ and Dangerous Syncretism

1. “Christian” Magic – Word/Faith & Prosperity Preachers (170:08–176:33)

• Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Bethel, etc.:
  The Fathers are blunt: this is not Christianity, but modern sorcery in Christian disguise.

  • Quote (Fr. Stephen, 171:16):

    “It just isn't [Christianity]. It’s a different religion that they’re preaching.”

  • Claims of using faith, words, and thoughts to manipulate reality mirror magical worldviews.

• Oprah, The Secret, New Age “manifesting” are the flip side of this same coin—magic without the Christian labeling.

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Q&A and Notable Moments

1. Miraculous Experiences: Who Gets Them? (121:15–128:13)

• Spiritual experiences are not evenly distributed. God gives what is needed for salvation, and not everyone needs a vision or miracle.
• Danger in pursuing them: pride and delusion.
• More important: Repentance and love of neighbor.

2. New Age and Outreach today (129:29–140:18)

• New Age is “thin gruel” compared to the substance of Christian faith and gifts of the Spirit.
• The Church’s response is not to advertise miracles, but to love, offer transformation, and give spiritual gifts that change lives.

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Notable Quotes

• Fr. Stephen, on the purpose of magic (09:40):

  “When we’re talking about magic, we’re talking about the manipulation of spirits.”

• On miracles and magic (16:32):

  “The magical practitioner has... power or authority that allows them to command spirits.”

• On why magic is forbidden (70:55):

  “He’s telling them not to do these things because it works.”

• On Magician Simon (101:44, Acts 8):

  “He basically approaches... what Philip and Peter and John are doing as magic: ‘This is some technique that if I pay you, you can teach me… then I’ll have the whammy that you guys have.’”

• On pseudo-Christian magic (171:16):

  “It just isn’t [Christianity.] It’s a different religion.”

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“Cheese Sandwich Oracle” – Timestamps

• Set-up and introduction (155:04–157:17)
• Description of the ritual and its failure (157:17–158:05)
• Resorting to more advanced magic and outcome (158:05–160:03)
• Source noted: Encyclopedia entry detailing the events (158:08–159:53)

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Final Reflections: The True Christian Alternative

1. Magic’s Temptation: Control and Pride

• The real draw of magic is control—bending the world to one’s will by technique (179:03–181:38).
• Christianity’s answer: Repentance, humility, love, and letting go of control.
• Saints become holy not by formulas, but by repentance and surrender.

2. Beware Magical Thinking in Church Practice

• The temptation to see sacraments, piety, or church practice as mechanical “magic” is misguided; the core is transformation by grace.

3. Contentment is a Superpower (194:19–198:16)

• Contentment—not having every desire met, but being at peace—is rare in a culture of hungry desire.
  • Quote (Fr. Stephen, 194:24):

    “In our current world, contentment is a superpower. Contentment sets you free... It involves experiencing the lack... but being at peace with it.”

4. The Antidote to Magic

• Repentance, contentment, peace in Christ:
  When you are at peace with what God has given—and not given—magical thinking loses its grip.

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Memorable Moments

• The “Cheese Sandwich Oracle” story (155:04–160:20) – A wild instance of Church history blending folk magic into conflict resolution.
• "If you're going to call Kenneth Copeland your brother in Christ..." (176:55–177:50) – Fr. Stephen’s sharp demarcation of pseudo-Christian movements.
• Simonians and Simon Magus’ wacky gnostic theology (107:28–111:09)
• Miraculous icon testimony (123:34–124:42)

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Useful Timestamps

• Opening explanation & types of magic (00:00–37:37)
• Biblical prohibitions & cases (66:10–115:05)
• Simon Magus & Bible magicians (99:22–111:20)
• Magic’s persistence after Christendom (142:02–144:21)
• Cheese Sandwich Oracle (155:04–160:20)
• Modern magic & “Christian” sorcery (170:08–176:33)
• Final reflections: Magic’s true opposite (178:42–end)

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Conclusion

Magic’s allure is strong—aimed at satisfying desires by bypassing humility and repentance. Christianity instead offers a spiritual path that rejects manipulation and exalts surrender, repentance, contentment, and love. In a world entranced by both “science” and the occult, the true miracle is a contented and repentant heart.

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“When you don’t need anything from anyone else, you’re free to give to all of them. And that’s what actual freedom and joy and peace in the Christian life look like.”
— Fr. Stephen DeYoung (198:07)

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For questions or contact, email: [e-mail]
For resources on Orthodox Christianity: orthodoxintro.org

Transcript

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He will be a staff for the righteous with which for them to stand and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him. And they will praise and bless and celebrate with song the lord of spirits. First Enoch, chapter 48, verses 4 through 5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits, angels, demons and saints. In our time, many yearn to break free of the prison of a flat secular materialism, to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it? Well, how do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung host. This live call in show focused on enchantment in creation, the the union of the seen and unseen as made by God and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.

Hey, good evening giant killers, dragon slayers, dragon tamers. You are listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast. My co Host, Father Stephen DeYoung is with me from Lafayette, Louisiana and I am Father Andrew Stephen Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. And we are live. After a month of pre records, we are live again. And if you are listening to us.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But not for long.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh wait, that's true. We're gonna do another pre record soon. Hey, don't complain you guys. You can either have nothing or pre record.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Trust me, if, if I could stay home and just do live shows, I would.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, summer is a time we gotta travel and stuff. It's just the way that it is. So. But we are live and you can call us at 855-237-2346 and you can talk to us and we're going to get to your calls in the second half of the show and our much beloved Matuska Trudy will be taking your calls tonight. We're going to be talking about the cheese sandwich Oracle in the third half. But first, this episode is sponsored by the Orthodox Studies Institute at St Constantine College which exists to advance the study and application of Orthodox Christianity in faithfulness to holy tradition. OSI is offering online courses this fall, including a five week course on the book of Enoch taught by our very own Father Stephen DeYoung. You can learn about the course. That's true. That's right. You can learn about the courses and [e-mail] Los that's a special link for you Lord of Spirits listeners. Orthodoxstudies.com Los Angeles. And if you register using that link, you will get a free copy of Father Steven's book Apocrypha. An ebook. A free ebook copy from Ancient Faith Publishing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that's a.

Free ebook that you can download without feeling vaguely guilty like you normally do.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know how you people are.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right. It's for research purposes only.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Bootleg books. Working man's out here trying to make a buck, you're off being bloody pirates. That's right, Petty Larson. All over the Internet.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean.

I've tried. See, now I'm suddenly blanking on.

The lead singer of Metallica. Well, whatever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

James Hetfield.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. No, not James Hetfield.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's the lead singer.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That is who it is. Yeah, but. But yeah, see, I was. I was thinking back to you, you know, the days of.

Kaza and.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, you're thinking about Lars Zulric suing everybody.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right. Lars Ulrich suing everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, that's right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Anyways, the Cheese Sandwich Oracle and other means of magical divination. Because this is a special episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast and after.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

School where we tell you not to do drugs. Kids don't do drugs.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It is an episode of the Scurrilousness of Sorcery, the mendacity of magic, the infamy of incantation, the horror of the Haruspex, and the execrableness of the Extispex. Any other alliterations we should add to the list there?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, but I'm glad you stuck the landing on the.

Extispex there at the end.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, Extreme. Very easy to accidentally say Etch A Sketch. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's true. Are Etch A sketches some form of divination? Call in, let us know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I suppose somebody could come to it. Like, you'd have to, like, half shake it. Like, you'd have to draw something, shake it only slightly, and then, like, read the remaining.

Pattern.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Much like, you know, some Middle Eastern women do with upturned cups of Arabic coffee.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. You can kind of do that with an edge of sketch.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or one of those things. I don't even know what were those things called, where they had, like, the. It was a kind of black, kind of rubbery plastic thing, and then there was like a plastic film over it and you'd, like, write on it with a plastic pen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And, like, it would stick to the backing and then you could, like, peel it up and then it would be, like, blank again.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know what you're Talking about. But it's the 80s, had all kinds of cool toys.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. The crude science of the late 70s and early 80s.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, they're all kinds of, like, good high concept things, you know, like that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The light, bright.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Light bright.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which unlocked the magic of colored light.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So, yeah, we've talked about magic before. We've talked about magic before, but we've never dedicated a whole episode to it. So. So this is that episode, boys and girls.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. This is magic in the ancient world. Not prestidigitation or sleight of hand or.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The lyingness of legerdemain.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If you want that, go watch the Prestige.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I've never seen it, but I'm told it's a very good film.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay. I'm almost tempted to send you home.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, well, I mean, the show is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just one big show.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This show is one big monologue from you anyway, so.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, so go watch the Prestige.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's Batman versus Wolverine and their 19th century stage magician.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Maybe I have seen it. I don't remember when it came out. No, I can look that up while you start your monologue.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Some people's children.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's got David Bowie in it playing Nikola Tesla. Like, how can you not want to see this movie?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I have seen this movie.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I have seen it. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's just. I mean, it was 1990. Yeah, well, the. When was the. When did the movie come out? Let's see. Oh, 2006. Ah. See, that was, you know, a whole lifetime ago for some people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You should go watch it again. But since you've seen it before, you could do that on your own time and stop distracting us here at the show. All right, all right. Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Anyway. Magic in the ancient world.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes. Actual magic that doesn't involve my cocaine.

Which is the correct way to pronounce his name.

Yeah. So magic in the ancient world. Broad topic.

Because there's a bunch of sort of subcategories of magic.

This isn't like.

Well, it isn't exactly like.

Like Dungeons and Dragons magic. Right. Where you've got sort of schools of magic and classes of spells. We're not talking about that really.

But there are a variety of phenomena that could be described. In the ancient world really is sort of para religious in the sense that it involves spiritual entities and sometimes even gods and goddesses. But it's something that primarily takes place.

Outside of the formal priesthood.

Those lines blur sometimes. Especially the further you go back, the blurrier those lines get.

Between formal priesthood and.

Magical practitioner. But by the time you get to, for example, the Roman Empire.

These are different categories.

But so we're really talking about a whole bunch of different para religious phenomena that we're grouping together. And so it's not so much.

Here'S the schools of magic as it is here are the different types of phenomena that we're grouping into this one big category. Yeah, yeah. What justifies grouping them all together. Right. Is not that they're used by one class and use one type of spell slots.

What justifies grouping them all together is that there are overarching things we can say about the character of all these phenomena that unite them legitimately into this category. And at the broadest level, when we're talking about magic, we're talking about the manipulation of spirits.

Right. So spiritual beings that have agency and personality.

The manipulation of them by way of certain techniques.

And what's going to primarily distinguish between the different types of phenomena that we talk about in this category is primarily going to be differences of technique.

So these are all ways of interfacing with these spiritual beings.

Which are to some degree outside the general nature of the sacrificial priesthood.

Within these cultures.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. These are sort of like much more kind of occasional sort of things. It's not like the regular sacrifices you'd be offering to gods or, or whatever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And because it's techniques, it's techne. Right.

Because it's these different forms of techne, it's not a role. So the priesthood is a role that a person plays a, within a social construct. Right. It's. It's a role you play with regard to your society and your culture. Whereas because this is a sort of techne, anyone who learns it. Right. Anyone who has access to this knowledge and to these techniques can then at least hypothetically practice it, can practice those techniques.

Which means it's not going to be limited in the same way. And the places where you see the most overlap.

This is the real reason why there's so much overlap between the institutional priesthood, as we might call it magical practitioners early on, like in Sumeria or in very early Egypt, is because of the infinitesimal literacy rate.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. If you don't, if you can't read, then you're not going to be doing this stuff. Probably because you can't read the spell books and stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. You don't have access to this knowledge. Right.

Where education on any kind of broad basis is negligible, where literacy rates are negligible, where literacy is basically confined to a, an institutional priesthood as it was, for example, in the Old Kingdom in Egypt, then those are going to be the only ones who have access to sort of magical stuff. Right. To these, these kind of secrets and techniques.

These also.

In terms of. So the last episode we went and did some review and revisiting of devil figures. We talked about Azazel and therefore touched on the Watcher story, again from the Anakic literature. Because this is why you see their.

Things like sorcery and witchcraft and making of potions and divination in there alongside like metallurgy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, this is all stuff that the Watchers are granting to bad people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, this is all sort of techne. This is a sort of spiritual technology. Right. It's a learning of techniques. And so this was then included in. When the Amorites, for example, claim. Right. The Amuru claim they have the antediluvian knowledge, some of that knowledge is these magical techniques.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To interface with spirit beings. And.

Also because it has that nature of techne, of a technique, of a procedure, that means that it also is always going to have to some extent a ritual nature.

Right. Now when you think of magical ritual, this doesn't mean you're always going to have 50 people in matching robes, right. Wandering around in circles with torches, chanting something. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like it's not like in Dark Dungeons kids.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. Though that's how DND is. That's exactly what it's like to play DND at a frat house.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Otherwise completely inaccurate.

The.

So, but ritual, I mean, an individual person, right, A single person can engage in ritualized behavior.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, of course. I mean.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We all do that every day.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. One person can chant something, one person can make something, one person can draw something. You could do the procedure. Right. As a, as a solo practitioner. So just saying ritual doesn't mean necessarily big elaborate hoo ha, right. Out in the woods or something.

But so there are these ritual elements, there are material elements that get involved as we'll see as we talk about some of these.

Different types of magic. So the first one of these, the first category, sort of broad category we want to talk about is going to strike people as funny right off the bat from a biblical perspective, because they're not used to thinking of it this way. But the first category is really signs and wonders, AKA miracles.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think for Christians, we feel like a miracle is something different. It's something good and holy and from God. And magic is dark and evil and demonic. But is that how the ancient world would have seen it?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. And so thaumaturgy, wonder Working. Right. We have saints who are given the title thaumataros. Right.

Like St. Nicholas. Right. They're wonder working saints.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

St. Gregory the Wonder Worker. I mean, there's a bunch with titles like this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And we're not saying they're wizards.

We're not saying they're Miracle Max. Right. Where.

What designates this when it is magic? Right. When it is, in the context of magic is the idea that.

The practitioner, the magical practitioner has.

Power or authority in the sense of the Greek word exousia. Right. They have this power and authority that allows them to command spirits.

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's not that they have some inherent ability. It's they can tell spirits to do a thing, although it's not really manipulating them. It's more like making them do a thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. So it's not ingratiating yourselves to them or contacting them and asking them questions or. Right, we'll talk about those other things. Yeah, yeah. This is commanding. Right? Now the key difference, right. The key difference from the Jewish and Christian perspective is that the prophets, right, and, and the apostles, those who worked wonders, worked miracles Biblically, that was God acting through the person to do the things, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's not so much that the person is doing, the thing is that God is doing it. And that person is simply the instrument of God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And of course, Christ being God, was doing the things, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep, yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But even he. Even he, you notice the way he talks about his miracles, like in St. John's gospel.

Right? That Christ says he's doing the Father's works.

Right? Because he wants to make clear. We'll talk about this a little more in the second half. The accusation against him when he's working miracles is not that he's faking it.

By his opponents.

The accusation against him regards whose authority and power he's using to do it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so that is why he always makes clear, right, that these are the works of God.

But so that's one type. And there are. We'll talk about this more in the context of the New Testament also. But even outside of that, completely outside of that, you can find in the ancient world plenty of wonder workers and sorcerers and people who are supposed to be able to do this. Right.

Apollonius of Tiana is the one that lots of skeptical New Testament types like to bring up because he was a rough contemporary of Jesus who was supposed to have done a bunch of miracles.

And they think that's going to be a big problem for us. Right. It's like, oh, darn it. Christianity all falls apart because someone other than Jesus did a miracle. What?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, but more on that in a moment.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, we'll get to that. We'll get back to that. But so that's one sort of category, right? These, these figures who, for whatever reason, and there were different reasons why they said so. Some of them, they would say, you know, oh, they were basically partially divine themselves. Right. And so that meant they had this power or authority or.

They had just acquired the ability to do it. They had been empowered in some way that they could do this.

They were just great souled. Right.

And that allowed them to do this. Right. So there are all these different ideas of why it was that someone could do that. Right.

So then another, another category that falls under magic is demonology.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's all just say, that's all those cartoons about people accidentally summoning demons or deliberately summoning demons.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Yeah, it's all about. We'll get into the guy who inspired Faust later.

But so demonology, right. Or, you know, if we're to any of the Greek demonology, right.

Is about. Is the logos regarding spirits. Right.

So the idea here is that this kind of magic involves a direct interaction.

With spiritual forces. Like with a spirit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like you're summoning them or you, you know, their secret name or something like that. And you can make them show up and you talk to them and manipulate them and make them do things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so the kind of knowledge we're talking about here and the kind of texts we're talking about here would be these sort of catalogs.

Of different spirits, what those spirits would do, ways in which you could summon or manipulate them, their names which you could use in some cases to get them to do certain things or to protect yourself from them. All of these kind of things fell into that. That category.

And so there are these sort of catalogs we'll see a lot of when we get to the third half, we're going to be talking about sort of the legacy this. And how a lot of this stuff has stuck around in culture. You can probably already think of ways in which that kind of thing stuck around.

But yeah, so that's what that's about. That's about dealing sort of directly with spirits.

The next category, one of the most popular categories, we're gonna get to another category that's the actual most popular category, but one very major category in the ancient world. More major than those first two. Right. Like wonder workers, you get the occasional wonderworker. Right. It's not like every village had a Miracle guy.

And, you know, not every.

Village had somebody who had cataloged all of these local spirits, but almost every community in the ancient world had somebody who practiced divination.

In some way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Which is this idea that you gain knowledge not just of, like, the future, but it could be about the present or even the past through some kind of spiritual means. So, like information you wouldn't normally get. Right. That you couldn't just learn.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You did some kind of technique, some spiritual technique, and that gave you the information. That's divination.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So we most often think about that, like you said, in terms of the future. Right. Like, what's going to happen in the future? Because I'm worried about it. I'm about to go into battle. Am I going to win?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which is definitely a major piece of what ancient diviners are doing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. But there's also, like, in terms of the present. Right. You could think of people trying to make decisions in the present. What should I do? Or even trying to find someone or something.

Right. Where are they? What are they doing?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Where are the bodies buried?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Did I bury the bodies in a good place?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That is a bigger issue in the ancient world than people might imagine.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But then also the past.

Yeah, right. Also the past. Right. What happened to so and so? Where did this come from? Right. And.

You see, for example, in Isaiah.

The God of Israel says, you know, in comparing him to the other gods, you know, go ahead and ask them about the things that happened in the past or the things that will happen in the future. Right. Because they don't know. Right. Because they're not omniscient. Right.

But so this takes. This takes all Divination takes a whole bunch of forms.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So one very popular one, especially among the Romans, but all around popular was augury, which is looking for omens.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Most popular, watching the flights of birds. Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Lots of this type of bird flying in this direction at this time of day means X. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which happens like if you read the Iliad. Yeah. Eagles going one direction or another. Like, oh, Zeus is saying this. It happens over and over in that book.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. There are birds of ill omen, and not just ravens perched upon your bust of palace.

Nice. But, yeah. So all these kind of things. But it could be. And, you know, legacy stuff of the, you know, black cat. Right. All these kind of things. Right. This is a sign, this is an omen. And so an auger was somebody who was adept at interpreting those things. Right. I saw this in a dream. Right. What does it mean? Right.

And then very popular, especially in Rome.

Where the Senate had official.

Extra species and haruspexes or haruspices. Actually, ecstasy.

Was ecstasy, which was the reading of entrails of sacrifice of sacrificial animals.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, thinking about that, I mean, this is all over, of course, ancient literature, particularly ancient Greek and Roman literature. I always think to myself, who is the first guy who pulled the guts out of some animal and said, ah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It'S a sacrificial animal, so you have to butcher it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So it was probably the first guy who noticed something weird while he was butchering the animal.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah. And maybe, you know, the king or whoever is like, what is that? He's like, oh, that means you will be victorious in battle, my king.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's a big black tumor in here. Yeah. Like, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. And so there are some famous episodes too, in Roman history. Right. There's one where they killed an animal and it didn't have a heart.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that was taken to be an omen of doom.

Now you're saying that's functionally impossible. Well, you know, things happen. You're butchering animals.

But yeah, so this was. This was huge. And we have from even earlier than that. So this goes back way before Rome. We have like, clay livers and spleens, like fired clay with cuneiform inscriptions on them in different places that list different types of markings you could see in different places.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, wow. So it's like those charts on your doctor's office wall.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, it was like your guide to. So you take out the sheep's kidney, right. And you have this correctly sized and even mostly correctly colored sheep kidney made of fire clay with stamped into it in cuneiform, like, oh, if you see a marking here, it means this. If you see one over here, it means this.

To help your newly minted.

Ecstasies to get there, get their feet under them, species.

As they're trying to learn the organs.

This also, though divination also includes oracular activity.

Meaning like oracles, which was a form of possession by spirits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The God or the spirit takes over the body of the oracle and speaks through them.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And has superior knowledge to human knowledge and can impart that Oracle of Delphi, for example, was supposed to be Apollo, who was possessing the person and just had an ironic sense of humor, as far as I could tell from all of Greek literature.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You never gave anyone a straight answer.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know. You go to the oracle of Delphi and he says, x, you're like, oh, I must avoid X. Spends the rest of his life avoiding X. And everything you did to avoid it is what makes you land at X in the end.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So that's. But you know, demons, they have a sense of dark, sense of humor.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. But yeah, I mean, this stuff again, if you read classical literature, but even just the big ones like the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, this stuff is everywhere there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like it happens so much you get bored and start wanting to skip it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. It's really frequent. It's like, it's really. Yeah, exactly. It's like people checking the news. Like that's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's what it is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's that frequent. You know, these are the phones.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They took the entrails of a sheep. Yeah. Yes.

Oh, no, it's an eagle flying left. Really gory Twitter.

And then relatedly, of course, you have the reading of all kinds of other things. Right? Yes.

And eventualities. Right. Which leads us into the next category, which is astrology.

And we've talked about astrology a little bit, especially back in the episode where we talked about Jewish astrology and distinguished it from pagan astrology.

That pagan astrology has the same presupposition actually as Jewish astrology, that the celestial bodies are divine. Right. As we talked about, we won't do the long quote from Philo again because I think we've done it four or five times in different episodes. But.

Philo of Alexandria, in talking about the difference between these two types of astrology, talks about how pagan astrology, they think that the sun, moon and stars are gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Who have power in and of themselves to affect life on on Earth, whereas in Jewish astrology they're understood to be. He still uses the term gods. We would use the term angelic beings, probably because we're squeamish about that kind of thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because we prefer not to use biblical language for some reason.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Gives us the heebie jeebies.

So. Meaning that they're sort of lower ranked members of God's divine administration, but through whom he communicates.

So Jewish astrology was based around the idea that God communicates things to us through the stars. Right. And that's why there was no cognitive dissonance about the magi following the star. To see Jesus from a Jewish perspective, that was like, oh, yeah, God does that. He communicates things through the. Right. The heavens declare the glory of God and all that. We talked about that in that previous episode.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep, yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But so in the pagan sense. Right. This is where the magic comes in the pagan sense.

These are governing what is happening and going to happen on Earth. And so being able to chart these things and find the patterns. Right. Basically gives you another way to predict what is about to happen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like, frankly, it's sort of like tracking the tides, which literally are affected by the moon.

So it's the same concept, really, you know, that there's this sort of influence being projected onto the people of the Earth from all these heavenly bodies. But of course, they don't have the cosmology we do for them. The planets are. And stars and so forth are kind of much closer, much more directly relevant to our lives.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. There's this presumed. Which is a constant within Paganism is a presumed sort of fatalism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. Meaning there's your destiny, Your fate is pretty much written and is controlled by these forces far above and beyond you.

And so that includes the heavenly bodies. But here's the thing we have to remember, Right. Even as we say that.

Because when we hear that today. Right. What you might hear is.

Oh, they were like Calvinists.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just with the Fates or the norns or something being the ones.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Instead of the divine decree. Right. And the problem there is Calvinism is a form of modernism. It emerges in the early modern period.

Meaning individualism is baked into it.

Right. That is for John Calvin, the God who created the universe cares about individual people, at least some of them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Whereas with pagans, the gods don't care about.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Don't care about anybody, really. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's some demigods, whatever, they kind of fond of, but they don't cry too long, even when one of them gets smushed.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. Or a hero or something, you know?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So.

If you're the average person, okay.

You wouldn't go to an astrologer and have them, like, do your chart to tell you that you're gonna find love in the future. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Most of them would be like, and you are.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. The stars of the planets don't care about you finding love. Okay.

That whole thing wasn't even a category. You were already married at age 13. You didn't get to go fall in love.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, I mean, in many parts of the ancient world, love was a sickness that you could get the doctor to come and cure you of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You've already got love at home, and then there's a picture of your love at home.

But.

It wasn't like that. Right. So they're doing this stuff. This is stuff like, think of the Magi Right. A great king has been born. This is the kind of stuff we're working with, like the rise and fall of civilizations, at least cities, Right. We're these huge things right now. These huge happenings obviously affected normal people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sure.

[Callers]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But the fact that they didn't directly control or involve those normal people kind of gave those normal people some wiggle room in terms of that fatalism.

Right? Like, hey, your city's gonna be overrun by invaders from the east. Okay, time to move west, Right. Like you could, hypothetically, right. If you were able to get a hold of this knowledge of what's going on, you could plan. And that's why you would have, you know, kings. Other people would have advisors who were astrologers so that they could be warned of what was going to make preparation. Right. Or just warned in terms of, like, now's not the time to go to war.

Right.

These kind of things. Right. But so even while on the one hand, this presumes a kind of fatalism, that these outside forces are controlling what's going to happen, the fact that you can chart it and map it out and inform someone of it gives some wiggle room to that fatalism. So there's a tension there all the time. Right.

And ultimately, the more important you were, the more doomed you were.

So lots of reasons not to want to be important in the ancient world.

So then.

Probably the most popular form of this magic.

Is actually alchemy. But this is alchemy more broadly considered than you're probably used to thinking about it. If you spend a lot of time thinking about alchemy.

And hey, if you do, cool, I guess.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A little weirder than the people who apparently think about the Roman Empire every day.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I do think about the Roman Empire every day.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are they good thoughts or are they bad thoughts?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Depends. Depends on the day, depends on the context. But pretty much this is my life. Like, at some point every day, the Roman Empire comes up for me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But yeah, alchemy is a little weirder, but so alchemy, probably. So.

Part of the issue with magic is that we've been sort of taught to think of magic as primitive science. Right. This is one of those modernism things again, because if you're a good modernist, science will solve all of our problems. Science can answer every question. Science. Science can be complied, applied to any field of human.

Activity. All of which is ridiculous, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, like, all this science is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Very good at certain things.

And useless for everything else.

But if you're a good modernist, everything is science and therefore think about our 19th century German friends, we have our evolutionary trail. Right. Humans trying to figure things out starts with primitive dir. Right. And ends up with science. Ends up with 19th century German science, which is the pinnacle of all human inquiry. And so alchemy, for example, get. Well, alchemy is a primitive form of chemistry. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's how it's seen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Or.

Astrology is a primitive form of astronomy.

Right. And now we have like the real version and not your bogus, goofy, unscientific version.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Now we have all the science. I don't understand. It's just my job five days a week.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is wrong.

Magic and all of these things are actually doing something different.

Right. So astronomy is fundamentally trying to do something different than what astrology was trying to do.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, in a sense, astronomy is sort of like the bookkeeping of astrology early on anyway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

But fundamentally different questions being asked and being asked in a different way. And the same thing with alchemy and chemistry. Right.

So these aren't. And.

Yes, I know sci fi fans, any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which again is this hypothesis that if magic works, it can't actually be magic. It has to be some kind of science.

Right. Like it just has to be some science we haven't figured out yet. Because science is everything and science explains everything and science does everything.

But anyway, so what are we talking about when we're actually talking about alchemy? What we're actually talking about is we're actually talking about the production of objects and substances.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's sort of power in a thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. That will allow you to manipulate spiritual forces.

So if you hear alchemy, you might think, oh well, they were trying to figure out how to turn lead into gold.

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's one thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. But how were they going to try to do that? They're going to try to do that using the philosopher's stone.

Right. So that's an object that you create, and if you create it, then this object will give you this power over.

The material order. Right. But this also include things like making potions.

Love potion number nine was a real thing. No. I don't know what happened to love potions one through eight. There were probably horrible failures that disfigured people. I don't know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The songs about those were very, very different.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Love potions actually were very common in the ancient world and we're using love there euphemistically. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Seduction potions, as it were.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Love Potions in the sense of, you know, Rohypnol. Right. This is basically.

But that's a substance. Right. It wasn't just that there were, of course, things that were supposed to make you healthy or make you younger. Right. At least make you look that way.

All these sort of things. But these were seen to be manipulating spiritual forces to do this.

Through tinctures and different combinations of things. Pharmakea is also under this. It's often translated sorcery. But primarily that's related to, like, hallucinogens.

Which were discovered very early.

And hallucinogens were used to enter into.

The spiritual world, to enter into the world of dreams and interact there with spiritual beings that they didn't call machine elves at the time because they didn't have machines or elves, but. But probably the same little dudes.

And then.

Amulets, which were probably the most common, if you want the number one most common magical thing, magical practice of the ancient world. It was amulets, which includes pendants, rings.

Other talismans you could wear on your body. And those would either ward off some spirit that you wanted warded off or.

Cause some spirit to protect you from something else. Like arrows. Right. Like if you're going into battle.

And the idea was one of the most common ones in the Greek and Roman worlds were Medusa faces.

They'd not only be worn, but they put them, for example, on shields.

On armor when going into battle.

And Medusa was.

A priestess, we all know what priestess is a euphemism for in the ancient world, who was apparently incredibly beautiful, and a couple of goddesses got jealous of her, and so they cursed her and gave her snakes for hair and made her hideous.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, there's various versions of that. Another one is that she gets raped and punished for being raped. That gets really awful.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So pretty horrible. Right? So it's like, well, why would you put her face on things? Right. Obviously it wasn't turning people to stone. Right. In and of itself. Well, the idea was that the image of her misfortune. Right. Her sort of ultimate misfortune from the gods would ward off misfortune from you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sort of like trying to put the same poles of a magnet together, sort of push bad things away from you through the image of bad things.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sort of. I think it's sort of some of the same theory behind gargoyles, actually. I don't know. Yeah, there's a lot of weird theories about gargoyles, but that's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, they put Medusa heads on buildings too.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But. And this. This was constant in the ancient world. Tons of this. We have these amulets everywhere in archaeological finds.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But also, this was one of the hardest things to sort of fight against in Jewish and Christian communities. We'll talk more about that later. But, yeah, sort of. No, you don't need to wear this thing to protect you. You're a Christian. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Christ does that. You live faithfully.

Right. God protects you. You don't need this. You don't need the whammy.

But my just personal favorite, because I think it's cool.

Sort of magical objects, the ancient world were execration bowls. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which. Execration, boys and girls, is not what you're thinking. It's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, it's a curse.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, it's curse. It's cursing. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

And you should really, you know, when you find something really abhorrent, you should really say, it's execrable.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's a nice way of saying a curse. They're onto us. I hear about anathema.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They figured out what that means. So now we'll have to use execrable execration.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A bowl of execration.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But excavation bowls, you would make a piece of clay pottery. Right. Usually a bowl, a whole bowl, and you would put.

Someone'S name. Right. And some kind of curse you would write in the clay before it was fired. And then after it was fired, you would read it and then smash it on the ground.

To symbolize sort of cursing and smashing that person. Now, I do not recommend you do this.

Because it is a very bad thing to do, and you don't need to be cursing people. And somebody's got to clean that up.

Potsherds are very sharp. Someone could get hurt.

But it's just sort of cool and dramatic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In terms of.

The ancient world. So those are sort of our broad categories.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And there's lots of other. I mean, it's not like this is. These are the category. Right. There's lots of ways you could categorize things. You could move things around. You could put things together. Right. But that's sort of a brief survey of the kinds of phenomena we're talking about when we're talking about magic in the ancient world. So basically something about who the practitioners were.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Who actually did this stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And as I mentioned, when you. When you go back very early.

Right. This is. This is confined to your literate class, especially early on. And so that means it's combined mainly to your sort of. Not even your whole Priesthood, like a subset of your religious priesthood that are lectors, Right. Who know how to read, who are literate and who have access to ancient tablets and scrolls and that kind of thing. But as it develops, right, you get sort of official magical practitioners, what we might call official practitioners, and then unofficial practitioners. And.

This isn't official and unofficial, like dragon age or something, or dragonlance. It's not like you had to have a license to practice magic. Right, Right. Only these people are allowed to do it. You people are not. That's not what we mean by official and unofficial.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's. It's more so like ruling class and not ruling class.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Or formal and informal even.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So when we. Yeah, so when we talk about official practitioner, magical practitioners, we're talking about essentially institutions that develop around this. You see, you're talking about people who are parts of royal or imperial courts who practice these things. Right. Court astrologers, court magicians.

Like I mentioned, the Senate had official haruspices.

And if you were. This actually comes up at one point in the Book of Acts. We won't go into detail right now about it, but in the Book of Acts, it actually comes up at one point that because, like.

Local governors, procurators in.

The Roman Empire didn't have access to the Senate's official haruspices or exorcies.

And so they had to try and employ locals to do their divination and augury.

Because the official guys only worked for the. The Senate. The emperor, right. Yeah, And a few other people in the Patricia class.

So a proconsul would have to, like, either ask his consul, like, hey, can you get the official guy to look at some spleens for me?

But so that tells you. When we say official, that tells you, like, just how institutionalized it was. Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This was completely normal. This is not weird things that people did out in a shack in the bayou.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. This is. Yeah, this is, you know.

In the imperial court or the king's court. Right. There's priests, there's patricians. Right. Noble people, wealthy people.

There's, you know, poets and singers, there's cooks, there's. And there's people who practice different types of magic for the king or emperor.

That's just how it was. It was a very institutionalized thing. It was a department, essentially.

That took care of that. Okay, so then when we're talking about unofficial, we're talking about people who don't occupy those kind of official, institutional positions.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it might be the person that shack out in the bayou, but it also might be.

Somebody you go and pay some money to to do this job for you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So there were people who did this for hire, either on a traveling basis. They kind of bummed around and did this.

Knew how to practice some form of something, of this. Help you find where to dig the well, right. Tell you the augurs, right. Tell you what the omens mean, this kind of thing. And there were people who would just become known for doing it. Yeah, right. You'd read a few omens and whatever you said would actually be right and happen. And so you get this reputation. And so people from the neighboring villages and stuff would come see you when they had questions and pay you something.

To tell them. Right?

And then there were also just people who didn't even take money. Just, you know, there's some old woman in the village, you know, who knows how to do something, right? Knows how to make some poultice that'll make, you know, the guy you're eyeballing.

Decide to sleep with you, right?

Just sort of very informal, right? Sort of practitioners of various forms of this or who knew how to make amulet, would make amulets for people in the village or that kind of thing, right? So it could get very, very informal. And again, there was no, like, rule against it. Like, oh, no, you can't. Again, this is. I know this runs counter to a lot of people's narratives, right, that, like, you know, oh, no, these wise women were persecuted by all the men who. No, it was fine. No one cared.

This was. That's like, you know, who let her cook with potatoes, right? Like, this was. That's how common a lot of these magical practices were in the ancient world. Like, it was not seen as some kind of.

Big deal.

That was part of their. Part of their life.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Everybody did it. I mean, it's just like, you know, just like the way we treat. Frankly, the way we treat medicine today.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And I'm not saying this is primitive medicine. I'm just saying it occupies basically the same kind of place, right? Like, if you've got the money and the power, you can go to the big doctors, you know, at the famous university hospitals. You know, a lot of people are going to urgent care.

And a lot of times, you know, your mom just puts a band aid on you. Like, this is the level where it's sort of pervasive everywhere in society.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Your. Your dad dumps whiskey in the wound, too.

Yeah, yeah. And folk remedies and stuff. Yeah, yeah. Or if you think about, like, nutrition and health, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, everybody's doing it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And everybody believes somebody in the family who's like, no, here's the way you need to eat this, you know, then you'll feel better. You lose weight, you know? Yeah. Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Exactly. All right. Well, that's the first half of this episode on the cheese sandwich oracle.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We're gonna take a deal of bread and cheese.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's like arto tiromancy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Arto tiromanci. Yes. We'll be right back.

Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-234. 6. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The top 10 reasons to attend the Ancient Faith Men's Retreat. Number one, fellowship with other Orthodox Christian men. Two, hearing from four speakers, all priests and one hieromunk. Number three, daily matins and vespers, plus acathist on Friday and divine liturgy on Sunday.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Four, supplication at the relics of St.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Raphael and learning about his life in the Antiochian village museum. Number five, giving back to Antiochian village through a service project. Number six, enjoying the beautiful grounds of Antiochian village, including the meditation trail and hikes. Number seven, football during free time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Eight, delicious breakfast, lunch and dinner.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Number nine, bonfires and s' mores each night.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And number ten, the opportunity to learn and be encouraged in what it means.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

To be a man. August 22, 25th, 2024 at Antiochian Village in Bolivar, Pennsylvania.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

For more information and to register, just.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Click on the banner on the ancient.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Faith website homepage or the lead graphic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

On the AFM app.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We really hope to see you there.

We're back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855, AF radio.

Welcome back, everybody.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, no, no. DND tournament.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know. What kind of a conference is it anyway?

Whatever. I mean, I always think shouldn't top 10 lists, shouldn't they be in reverse order? Shouldn't you, like, start with number 10 and go to number.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, you should go 10 to 1. That is a mistake.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That is a mistake. I know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Also, I gotta say, not a s' mores guy.

The marshmallow.

Yeah, I think marshmallows are kind of garbage. I'm kind of anti marshmallow. But let me. Let me tell you this. Here's the secret from Father Steven's House of Cheapness.

Which I started doing when I was broke. If you want to have a really delicious treat that is super cheap, here's what you do. You go and you buy yourself a box of generic graham crackers, and then you go and buy yourself a little tub of generic cake frosting.

And you make yourself sandwich cookies.

You have like days worth of sandwich cookies right there and it costs almost nothing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Some of that ancient Dutch wisdom that you're passing on to us, huh? Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Try it. I'm telling you.

Yeah, if you've got kids. Right. Like, way cheaper than cookies.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true. Absolutely true. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

Yep. Well, hey, we're actually. We are. I was gonna say we're getting a call in and.

I have no idea actually what this, because Trudy is still typing out. What exactly is it on the phone.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or are you just receiving something?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, no.

I'm receiving something right now. No, actually, this is Joseph, whose phone is from Kentucky, and he's calling about the Urim and Thummim. I knew someone was going to ask about this. So, Joseph, are you there?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm going to ask about both. I've never had a question just about the Urim.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Welcome, Joseph, to the Lord of Spirits podcast. How are you this evening?

[Callers]

I'm doing great, thank you, Fathers.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's good.

[Callers]

So I was curious, related to the Urim and Thummim. I know, you know, obviously that's something that God, you know, told the Israelites to do in the Old Testament. But, like, on a surface level, it almost seems like divination. So, like, how do things. How do you differentiate things like that from, I guess, divination proper? Is it just the fact that God, you know, had them do it?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, these are kind of mysterious objects that I will say do not involve putting your face in your hat.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

As far as you know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It'S not in the Bible, Father. It's not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't think the Old Testament high priest wore a bowler hat. No, indeed. No. I don't think that was a thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or special glasses.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What is up with Urim and Thum? I can never remember if it's Ummim and Thurim or Urim and Thum and Thummim. Urim and Thummim? Yeah. What is up with that? Is it divination?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And by the way, guys, if anybody out there has twins, name them Urim and Thummim. I mean, come on, it's right there. It's biblical.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But then you have to wear it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

On your breastplate, you can call one of them Yuri. You call the other one Thummi. I guess.

What will get the shorter end of the stick there.

Yeah, nice.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm sorry, I just have to recognize that pun. Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What is up with Urim and Thummim?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is actually a good segue.

So the reason the Urim and Thummim are given is precisely to try to stop the Israelites from doing divination.

And so there's sort of this whole process outlined in the Torah of how to determine God's will in terms of what they should do. And sort of. Then the last guests are like, okay, we've done this whole process. We've asked everybody, we're supposed to ask. We've prayed, we've done this, we've done that, we've done all the things, and we're still not sure. Right. Then God says, okay, then throw the Urim and Thummim.

We still don't know exactly how that worked.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, there's. Because it doesn't tell us precise instructions. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There was some way to do that that would then give you the answer. And so the idea was it was sort of an accommodation to human weakness in being able to figure these things out.

But God's saying, okay, when you get to that point, you're still confused. Don't go and start doing any of this other stuff that the nations are doing here. Do this. Right.

And so I would say the reason we don't see anything similar to that.

In the church is that part of what the Holy Spirit does in terms of not just the leadership structures of the church, but the church as a whole is. Right. Write the Torah on our heart. Right. Give us the wisdom of God so that we can figure things out and we don't have to resort to that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And I mean, the only thing I would say within the church that's remotely similar is you get. I mean, there's some casting lots, but it's now it's mainly survives.

Like there's a handful of bishops where casting lots can be an element of it after, you know, a series of votes and whatever sometimes you'll get, then, okay, we'll put the three names into a chalice and someone will pick out the name. You know, that kind of thing. But that's not. That's not the same thing as divination.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And that's that again, that's the sort of last step. Like, we've tried all the ways we normally do this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And for Whatever reason this time, we just can't figure it out. So. Okay.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is sort of a way of letting God. God make the decision. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Rather than trying to discern something written somewhere else and manipulate it. Right. Yep. Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So does that answer your question, Joseph?

[Callers]

It does. Thank you, Fathers.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right. Very much for calling. I'm glad someone actually called in about that because we didn't actually have it in our notes to discuss, believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen.

But, you know, we. We trusted you. We didn't have to divine that you would come up with that question. I just trusted one of you to call about it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

My notes are also just a bizarre series of words and phrases disconnected from anything.

So, yes, Father Andrew tries to render them intelligible, at least to himself.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right. We have to spend hours, hours for me to decipher them. I throw the Urim and through him over and over again. What does he mean.

Ecstaspecy?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What is this cheese sandwich thing all about?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I think people don't think there's gonna be a payoff with the cheese sandwich oracle, but there will be, folks. There will be.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is a real thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's a real thing. I didn't believe it was a real thing until this morning, and now I know. Now I know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And knowing is half the battle.

So. Yeah, so this half, our second half of three.

We'Re going to sort of talk about places where magic and magical practices and this kind of thing show up in the. In the scriptures.

There are some interesting things here along the way, but I don't think anything shocking in the sense that, yes, your impression is correct. When it comes to magic, the Bible's agin it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yes. Ooh, spoiler alert.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

So in broadcast, there might be some interesting things on the way here, though. That bear going through there. So probably. Probably the most famous reference to magic and magical practitioners in the Bible is Exodus 22:18.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. And you. And folks, you cannot beat the King James version of this verse. Thou shalt not permit a witch to live. So not suffer. Is it suffering? I'm sorry.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Thou shalt not suffer a witch.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Problem looking at the ESV is thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

In one lame translation, a female practitioner of sorcery.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Who, you think Sorceress?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, maybe they were a He man fan and they didn't want to say anything bad about the sorceress.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, that seems logical.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

She's a nice bird lady.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know, I miss. I miss the Facebook page. Skeletor is love.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's a great Cobra Commander Twitter account.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, really?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Where he just always posts in character as Cobra Commander.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, I'm a Twitter quitter, but I do occasionally look.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

On Twitter at all. Other than once in a while. Looking to see what Cobra Commander is up to.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm still holding out for your All Professional Wrestling Twitter account.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It may happen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That may happen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So just my musings on. Yeah, don't distract me with that now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thou shalt not suffer a witch.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Start talking about Rhea Ripley coming back on Raw on Monday. Then. What are we gonna do? Anyway.

So. Yeah, well, you don't suffer a witch to live.

And that is. That line comes within a whole set of commandments about pagan sacrifice, pagan ritual.

We won't go into detail, especially because of what the next verse says.

But. But everyone's going and looking it up now. Because I said that. But anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wait, what does it say?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But it's all with this. Within this context of pagan worship and pagan practice that they're not to do. Right.

Because, of course, Exodus is in the process there, chapter 22 of laying out what their religious practice in Israel is going to be. So this is a set of. These are the things you're not going to do. Here now are the things you're going to do.

Then we get a little more detail.

At least in terms of a list of magical phenomena that are to be eschewed in Deuteronomy 18.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. So Deuteronomy 18. I'm going to read verses nine through 14. When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found you found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium or a necromance. One who inquires of the dead. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God, for these nations which you are about to dispossess. Listen to fortune tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. It's worth noting. Right again. We have to clear the modernism out of our heads a little. Right. God isn't telling them not to do these things because they don't work.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He's not telling them not to do these things because they're nonsense and a waste of time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He's telling them not to do this because it works.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's just like when St. Paul says, don't eat pagan sacrifices because it puts you into communing with demons.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. And let me just a note to some of our Protestant friends. Probably none of the ones listening, because these folks wouldn't listen to this show for this long.

But, you know, those of you out there who like to call me a necromancer, first of all, that would be awesome. I would have the coolest army of skeletons. Right. Like, if I actually were a necromancer.

Alas, I have not a single animate.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Skeleton and the Tower of Ul Guldur.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So on one hand we have, for example, what's in the Odyssey where you go and you sacrifice a black goat and pour its blood into a trench and the spirits of the dead come up out of Hades and drink the blood.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep. Actual necromancy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

On the other hand, you have me asking St Stephen to pray for me.

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, necromancy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're not going to convince me that you don't see the difference between those two pictures.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. I mean, necromancy is literally about using magic to manipulate the dead to tell you the future and stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. You're not going to. You can tell the difference between those two pictures. Don't lie.

Okay. You know the difference between these two things?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, and someone standing at the grave of one of their dead family and saying, I miss you, is not practicing necromancy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No.

No.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If you do a ritual to try to return them to life. Yes. They are doing necromancy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Right, Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, inquiring of the dead is not simply speaking with the departed. It's about this. It's about this sort of ritual manipulation of the spirits of dead people to get what you want.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Selling your child to a hag to get a wand to bring your husband back as a zombie, just to choose a random example.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Many such cases.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So that's necromancy. Okay.

Don't call me a necromancer unless I get my army of skeletons. That's the other piece of this.

So, yeah. So all of. All of this is forbidden to Israel.

But this is also one of those things where. So we've talked about, like, how to read the Bible and how to. And not to read the Bible episode. We talked a little bit about the problem of. Right. The whole and the parts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. To understand the whole, you have to understand all the parts, but to understand any of the parts, you kind of have to have an understanding of the whole.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so you have kind of this loop.

But this is a case where a lot of times in the Bible, we read the Bible in sort of these chunks, these thematic chunks, and our English Bibles help us do this by putting in those subheadings.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And dividing it into chunks for us.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Suggesting that it was written that way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Which it won.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so often when you read larger sections, certain things become clear, because what Father Andrew read ended with verse 14 of Deuteronomy 18.

But then what comes next in verse 15 and following is not unrelated.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, Follows. Right on. So I'm going to read verses 15 through 22. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen, just as you desire, the Lord your God. At Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, or see his great fire anymore, lest I die. And the Lord said to me, they are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name, that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. Of course, it says earlier, that same prophet shall die.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And why be afraid of his corpse?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not like there's a necromancer around. So. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So this comes right afterward. Right. So the reason that they are not to engage in any of those practices is that God is going to send them a prophet.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. They don't need to do that other stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're going to have a leader, a guy like this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Could be somebody who sits in Moses seat. Right. Who is going to be there to adjudicate things for them, to give Them advice to declare God's word and God's will to them. Right. And they're to follow that person.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And it's God saying, like, look, I'm offering you a pretty direct relationship with me, with the divine.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Why are you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It would be more direct. But you guys didn't want that direct.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You guys got scared when I tried to do.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. So I have to pick one guy, you know, but like, versus the sort of manipulative around the edges, let me monkey with it myself thing, which is what magic is all about.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. So on the one hand, they have to submit to an authority, which.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A lot of folks don't want to do. But on the other hand. Right. This isn't this person who has no accountability.

Right. Get getting the prophecy thing wrong once and getting stoned to death.

That's accountability. Right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And it also kind of might make some people hesitate to take up the mantle.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes. If they weren't really called by God to do it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's almost like all those saints who didn't want to be made bishops. Right. Like they knew something was going on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. How about that? Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So that's the balance. Right? That's the balance is that this person is. Has the ultimate accountability before God, and this carries over. St. Paul talks about this when he's talking about leaders in the church of the pastoral epistles. Right. How they receive a stricter judgment. Not many of you should presume to be teachers. Right. Which every time you try to start a Sunday school, everybody quotes that back to you.

But.

Because there is this more serious judgment for them, there is that accountability there. But on the other side, then the people are called to obey that accountable authority.

As the person sent by God to lead them, rather than trying to go out and voodoo this stuff sort of on their own cognizance. And I do have to put a note. Sorry, charismatic friends. Okay.

But I think we talked about this a little back in the profit motive episode. But I gotta say it again, because I've heard it recently again, in some charismatic circles, if you're gonna claim you're hearing prophecies from God, you're not allowed to get them wrong.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're especially not allowed to get them wrong. Most of the time.

You'Re getting them wrong. Most of the time, then you're taking ideas that occur to you.

And blaming God for them. I talked about this last time, right.

God is not a liar. God doesn't get things wrong. Okay. So let's just call our own Ideas, our own ideas.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then if the idea turns out to be a brilliant idea that bears a lot of fruit, then give God the credit for it. I'm right there with you. Right, but don't jump the gun.

Right, don't jump the gun. This argument that somehow prophecy now works worse in the New Covenant than it did in the Old Covenant. It makes no sense.

Like everything in the New Covenant is elevated superior to the Old Covenant. That's the whole idea of the New Covenant. And you're saying, well, yeah, except prophecy now is like hit or miss.

Not how that works. So let's just call our ideas our ideas. And like I said, if they bear fruit, then give God the credit, give God the glory for it, then we'll all be happy.

And you won't feel dumb. Right? I know there's a whole bunch of. I know there's a whole bunch of people, right, just chomping at the bit, hoping that this current election goes in a certain way so they can claim their prophecies four years ago weren't actually wrong. I know there's a bunch of them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I have to say though, I love how every election, one of the candidates is the Lord's anointed and another one is the Antichrist, and then it all fades away and they're off the map and suddenly the Antichrist Christ isn't that important anymore and the Lord's anointed wasn't that big of a deal. There's no exit strategy for these pronouncements.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

And I don't know, I think the current version of the Antichrist, you need a necromancer to be able to get him to do anything all that evil. But anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We'Ll leave it to the reader as to who that might be.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, I think people can figure out.

So, yeah, so we went into the prophet motive episode. We talked a lot about Balaam son of Beor. You can go back there, but just refer to him here. He's an example of one of those practitioners for hire, a prophet. For hire a prophet for profit, as it were. A for profit prophet, speaking of tax exempt status.

And we know that because he of course gets hired to go and curse Israel.

And this is apparently a thing, a thing that he does.

Probably the most famous, at least in the Old Testament episode of magic or sorcery or witchcraft, is of course the witch of Endor.

Father Andrew's not at the ball. I was waiting for him to do the Ewok joke, but I don't know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm still you know, traumatized. No, just kidding.

Yes. The Witch of Endor. Necromancers get armies of skeletons, but the Witch of Endor.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't blame you for experiencing trauma thinking about the election. Armies of Ewoks.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, you know, one of our commenters on YouTube just endorsed vermin Supreme.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, that's fair.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I want my pony. Yeah, Pony based economy. Yeah, that's fair.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So the mandated teeth brushing. Yeah, I mean, these are important issues.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know. I don't know. I might be too libertarian to vote for him on that toothbrushing thing. And I'm not a libertarian, but just, you know, you can't tell me what to do.

Anyway, who wins in a fight? My army of skeletons as a necromancer or an army of Ewoks?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow. Right now someone is setting up a totally accurate battle simulator scenario.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Send us that video of Skeletons vs Ewoks. Skeletons vs Skeleton army vs Ewoks.

I want that video, people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. You know, I think I give it to the skeletons. Here's why. Ewoks primarily use spears piercing weapons. No good against skeletons.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, that is true. Oh, but they do have some siege weapon type things. Like there is the logs that slam together.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, that's true. That's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we have to take terrain and preparation into account.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But anyway, we just got an endorsement for Jimmy McMillan.

Isn't that. That's his name, right? Jimmy McMillan, the one who talks about the rent.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if he's running this year.

I actually signed up to be an elector for a third. Anyway, I'm not going to say who says, but I actually signed up to be an elector for a third party candidate who's not going to win just because I want to try and get on a zoom call with the candidate in question.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Please film that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Anyway, Witch of Endor who actually does engages of necromancy, but no army of skeletons.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Actual necromancy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Magic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, and this, this is an interesting story because if you. If again, if you. If you read the whole story of the context, right?

This is.

Saul's life is circling the drain at this point. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Holy Spirit has left him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. He's got an unholy spirit now hanging.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Out with him, tormenting him. He kind of had Samuel the Prophet to kind of rely on, even though most of what Samuel told him was bad news.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Especially there at the end. But Samuel dies.

And so he decides he's going to resort to divination regarding the battle he's about to go into because he's sort of plagued. He thinks he's gonna die. Spoilers. He is.

Right? But so he says, okay, I'm gonna. I'm gonna go find a diviner. I'm gonna go find somebody to do this for me. And then he has a basic problem, which is he killed all the magical practitioners.

At least in the territory of Benjamin and Judah.

So he had to go find one. And then there's in 1st Samuel 28, where sort of the encounter unfolds. When she sees him, she sort of freaks out because, like, oh, yeah, you went killed everybody else who did this.

But then he convinces her and she decides to do her thing, which is.

A form of divination via sort of demonology, summoning up spirits from the underworld to give her knowledge. Right. In this case, of what's going to happen in the battle that Saul is about to engage in. Instead, Samuel shows up.

In person and tells Saul that he and his whole family are doomed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Doctor.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. But notice even in this case.

Even in this case, remember what we talked about with Wiggle room?

What could Saul have done right there and then.

Repented. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He could have said, stop, stop, I'm sorry, Prophet Samuel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, he could have repented. Right. But of course he didn't. Right, he didn't.

Speaking of repentance, a better example.

Manasseh.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Before he repented.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, this is before he repented. This is what he had to repent of.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right? Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is why you may remember the prayer of Manasseh if he went to.

Compline during lent.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So 2 Chronicles, chapter 33, verses 5 and 6. And he built altars for all the hosts of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. So that's star worship, by the way, everybody. And he burned his sons as an offering in the valley of the son of Hinnom and used fortune telling and omens and sorcery and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord provoking him to anger. It's pretty bad. And I mean, you remember when he released his midget medium and there was a small medium at large.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think midget is a politically incorrect term now.

Oh.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

See, I'm going to get canceled now.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think you should have said dwarf. Yeah, you're the live on the show, man. Why am I having to tell you?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's what the kids say.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I've got you trapped, man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because you're totally based. You have no choice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm over here trying to be based. You're over here dropping slurs. I know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So Manasseh had to repent of all that stuff. I mean it's pretty. That's pretty bad. He's in.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's a pretty bad list of stuff.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like that's not like, oh, he, he lied and he stole some stuff. Like burning your children is pagan sacrifices.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Occult king. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Building altars to pagan gods and God's temple and then going and dealing with necromancers and mediums. That's kind of top tier sinning right there. That's.

Definitely top tier.

So another example that people may not know as well or they may for certain reasons is in First Maccabees at a certain point after one of the battles of the Maccabean revolt.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. They start checking all the bodies.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Of the. Their side. Right. They're not like looting the other side. They're checking their guys and they find that a bunch of their guys are wearing like pagan amulets.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which apparently did work so well, clearly since they're dead.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

By the way, kids, you don't need to wear blue beads or the mati or anything like that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Turns out that's not Christian.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

But now you're canceled. Greece has just canceled you and Turkey. And yes, Greek dwarves especially are upset at you after this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And much of the Middle east, ye. Pretty much the whole Mediterranean world is kind of into the blue beads.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But so when they find these, they go. They offer sacrifices for those dead soldiers. Right. Due to the sin they had committed. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, Their.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Their death.

So then as promised. Right. As we mentioned.

Once we get into the New Testament, when people saw Christ doing miracles.

They didn't accuse him of faking it.

Right. They didn't like debunk whether the miracle happened.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean people in the ancient world accepted that this kind of stuff was normal and real.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. That at least could happen. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that there were certain special people, special for various reasons, who could do these kinds of things.

Now some of the things that Jesus did went beyond what they thought people could do. Right. Like, and you see that in the text of the Gospels.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like when he heals the man born blind.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Like no one's ever heard of that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Like some of them were like sort of pushing the limit. Right. And raising the dead was one of those limits that like.

Normally we're on, you know.

But when they see these things, they don't say, oh, that never happened. Right. Or try to debunk it or try to come up with some kind of other explanation. They just accuse Jesus of sorcery, essentially. Right. And one of the forms that takes is, for example, in Mark, chapter 3, verses 22 through 27, where they accuse him of using the power of Beelzebub.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Not you're a fake, but rather you're using demons.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You're baal. Yeah, basically.

And so.

Christ, of course, condemns that. No, in certain terms. First he says that makes no sense. Why would the Prince of demons cast out demons?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But then also points out that's where he talks about the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Right. Because they're calling the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God.

A demon.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which is blasphemy and not good.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But so obviously.

We hold that Christ's miracles were legitimate miracles. The apostles. Right. Obviously the prophets and the miracles they worked in the Old Testament, these wonders through Moses, all that we think are God working through those people. Right. But.

What this shows is that there are miracles that are done.

By people through demons.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It is a thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's not only. And it's not only that, that is actually a thing. It's that one should not take some kind of miracle or what you might think of as a supernatural event and say, oh, this means that the person who did this or who seems to be the instrument of this, that we should follow them and everything they do is the real is, is good and holy. Right. Like a lot of different, not just Christian groups have miracles going on in them, but there are plenty of testimonies to non Christian religions of our own era.

Miraculous things happening. And the idea that you could point to one of those and say, ah, we are correct, you know, no, that's not how you do it. And I mean, it's notable that while people can have their faith.

Inspired or encouraged or whatever by experiencing something miraculous in the Orthodox church, the church does not like, put up a big billboard.

To a miracle. I mean, there is, for instance, not too far from where I live, there is a mer streaming icon. And they actually forbid taking photographs in the church. I mean, they could probably make money off of that if they wanted to. Right. You know, and attract as many people as possible, get the, you know, to put a lot of money in the, in the basket. But they don't, because that's not how the orthodox faith works. So even real, even miracles that are from God are not used as.

You know, some kind of proof. Aha.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because that comes from Christ. Right, right. But they ask Christ to do a sign for that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, to believe what he's saying. He never does. Right, right. In fact, he says, cursed are you who ask for a sign.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Again, like. Like, you know, it's interesting in. In St. Luke's Gospel, it's faith. You know, that a miracle usually kind of follows faith. And then in John's gospel, it's the opposite order. But the point is that neither one is. In neither case is it used as a kind of proof, like, look what I just did.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Therefore, you must believe me. It can't be.

Because there are false signs and wonders.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. And not false in the sense of it didn't happen. But false is. In the sense of it's from false gods. Gods who are not really rulers.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. At exhibit A. And we've talked about this even fairly recently, I think, on the show in second Thessalonians 2, verses 7 through 10, where St. Paul's talking about the man of lawlessness. Right. He talks about him working false. Working these signs and miracles through the energies of Satan. Yeah, right. Like, literally, this is the energies of Satan. So, I mean, this is something that St. Paul. Yes, this happens. Right. And so the fact that someone does those things doesn't prove anything in and of it itself. Right. Now, we're also not saying that you should be credulous.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sure. Yeah. There are fakes out there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There are people faking things. Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We don't need to burn David Blaine at the stake. Okay. Like, he's not really doing that stuff.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But, like, if you've ever seen Leap of Faith with Steve Martin, that's based on a real. A real faker.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, that's based on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. No, no, no, no, no.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He followed Benny Hinn around. I can show you the interview where he talks about it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Benny Hinn Crusades.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's actually based on a couple of different. Of these faith healers, but there's one guy in particular who used the earpieces and that stuff. I can't remember his name right now, but.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But yeah, yeah. So, yeah, there's one, and I think it's Todd White who goes around with the leg straightening thing. Like, that's an old gimmick thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I love the dude. Is it. Is he the one who punches people in the stomach to heal their demon possessions? I don't know. I don't think so. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But, yeah, so, yeah, there's a lot of phony baloney nonsense. Right. And it's okay to call it out as phony baloney nonsense and stop being a modernist. Right.

The.

But there also. Right. Is the reality that there are demonic forces in the world. Right. And so, you know, we shouldn't be scientific materialists with things bracketed off. Right. We should be open to the fact that it could be that or somebody could be faking something. Right?

Yeah. So we shouldn't just be naive.

And credulous. But especially we should keep in mind that even if someone does something like that.

And there's not sort of an easy debunk, that doesn't mean that what they did came from God or had anything to do with God. Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It doesn't justify whatever it is they're teaching or preaching or whatever. Right. Yep.

So now the probably the most famous.

Magician in the Bible.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Simon Magus.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep. Simon Magus himself. The guy for whom Simony is named.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. So Simon Magus.

I think.

Many, if not most of our listeners are probably at least vaguely familiar with the place where he appears in the Book of Acts, which we're going to read here in a minute.

But there's actually a lot of contours to this. We actually know a lot more about this person from other sources outside the Bible. And a lot of the things we know about him.

Are sort of.

Alluded to and pointed to by the text in Acts. In fact, if you know this other stuff about him, a lot of the things this text in Acts says about him that might seem a little weird, like, make sense.

[Callers]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But. So we'll start with. Here's where he shows up in the Book of Acts in Scripture.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So this is Acts, chapter 8, starting with verse 9. But there was a man named Simon who had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he himself was somebody great. They all paid attention to him, from the least to the greatest, saying this man is the power of God that is called great. And they paid attention to him because for a long time he'd amazed them with his magic. But when they believed Philip, as he preached the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself believed. And after being baptized, he continued with Philip and seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed. Now, when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles hands, he offered them money saying, give me this power also so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit. But Peter said to him, may your silver perish with you because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money. You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours. And pray to the Lord that if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity. And Simon answered, pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.

So that's what's in Acts 8.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So that's. Yeah, that's what's in Acts 8. You can see how he basically approaches what Philip and Peter and John are doing as magic. Right. This is some technique that if I pay you, you can teach me.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I can do the Holy Spirit thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And then I'll have the whammy that you guys have. Just teach me how to do it.

And when it says, you know, he's going around amazing them with his magic and the things he's doing and the wonders and things he's doing, and they're calling him the divine power, the great divine power. Right. He's not like going and pulling quarters out from behind people's ears, Right. This is like cool card tricks, Right. He's doing signs and wonders, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then he sees Philip and he's like, wow, this guy's way better than me. I got to learn how he does this. Right. Like that's his whole approach to this. Right. Is this issue of technique. Right. And he doesn't fool St. Peter, who tells him to buzz off.

So who is this guy? Well, we know from.

Saint Justin Martyr, Saint Justin, the philosopher who lived there in.

Palestine in Samaria, that he is a fellow who was known as Simon of Gitta.

Gitta being a village.

In Samaria.

Who.

According to St. Justin, did this stuff, was like a. This major figure in Samaria. Remember, St. Justin is in the second century.

So he's less than 100 years after this. This is still a person whose name was well known right. In that area for having done all these miracles and wonders and stuff. And he had started sort of a little cult following who were named after him called the Simonians. Right. Like basically the party of Simon. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He had this group of followers who sort of continued after him. We also know from different Church fathers that he wrote at least three different works.

One entitled the Great Declaration, one entitled the Four Corners of the World, and one entitled Sermons of the Refuter.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's a great name.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And a couple of these are quoted by Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion, the bread box. Yeah.

In order to sort of refute.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Simonians.

He'S referred to in the Apostolic constitutions as the lawless one. So, like the Antichrist language that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, that's sort of belial stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

And we actually know about his death from a whole bunch of sources that disagree on the details, but have the same general idea. And that general idea is he went to Rome after this episode enacts, he encountered at least St. Peter, again, possibly also St. Paul, and they had another.

Negative encounter which involved.

Simon being able to levitate.

And him falling to his death and getting mangled.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Huh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So the details of this vary, but there's like a dozen versions of this from the Acts of Peter to Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, mentions it in his catechetical lectures. Like it's just all over the place in Church fathers and early writings.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which strongly suggests that he was a big deal.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, his followers were still around, as I recall. Like St. Justin says, like all the Samaritans follow this guy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And the fact that that death story, even though, again, the details are different, whether it was just St. Peter he ran into or whether it was Saints Peter and Paul, you know, some of them have him just levitating, some of them have him flying around over the city. Right. So there's. There's detailed differences, but the kernel of truth is that he fell to his death in Rome.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

After some other kind of encounter with St. Peter. Right. The fact that that's constant through all these different versions of the story means I would argue there's. You know, it's hard to argue. There's not a historical kernel there. Right. That of. Of how he died. Of course, you know, if you rule out miracles and stuff, you know, he wasn't levitating.

So what did he and his followers believe? Well, we actually know because of those quotes.

From.

Epiphanius of Salamis, his quotes from Simon's writings. So they had this core story. This is sort of their main core story that they believed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And this is wild. People this is wild stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So. And there's some quasi gnostic elements of it. For example, they have sort of God who's the, you know, true one, apophatic kind of vaguely Platonic God.

And then he has this emanation, which is his first thought.

And his first thought is female.

And so this female first thought.

Goes to create the angels. Right. Who are going to be like the next step down.

From this female first thought. But when she creates the angels, the angels rebel against her.

And the angels go and create the material world and imprison her in it.

And she's imprisoned in the material world in a cycle of reincarnation.

So she keeps being born, living and dying, over and over and over again. And she was Helen of Troy, most famously. But in the first century A.D. she was Helen, a Phoenician prostitute.

Who Simon met. So where does Simon Magus fit into this? Well, Simon proclaimed that he was God.

Whose first thought she was, who had been incarnate as Simon in the world.

To go and rescue her.

And so Simon's followers thought. Well, by becoming his followers and doing what he asked us to do, when he escapes from this material world with her, he'll take us with him.

Right. So that's what they were teaching. So you could see why they would look at him a. As an Antichrist figure. Yeah, right.

You can see what's being referred to when they talk about him saying that he himself was somebody great. Right. And the people saying this man is the power of God. That is called great.

Right.

That's what that's alluding to. Right. That's alluding to that story. Right. So, yes, Simon Magus, crazy cult leader of the first century A.D. declared that he was God. And his Phoenician prostitute girlfriend was the first thought that emanated forth from the divine mind in prehistory.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Who are now going to escape from the material world with whoever. I mean, all you need is the Hale Bob comet and like, right up to date, some Nikes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Everything old is new again.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So wacky.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yes, there's some more info on Simon Magus.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And what was up with that guy?

So then to sort of finish out, you know, our sort of magic in the New Testament.

Another, a little later in the Book of Acts, when.

St. Paul is on his missionary journeys, there's this scene that unfolds in ephesus in Acts 19.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. This is.

This is kind of a weird. A weird moment too. Okay. Acts 19. Well, that's what this show is about. I Guess. Starting with verse 13, then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists. How do you get that?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Job.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, I adore you by the name. By the Jesus whom Paul proclaims. Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this, but the evil spirit answered them. Jesus I know. And Paul I recognize, but who are you? And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all. And the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled Also. Many of those who were now believers came confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to 50,000 pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So.

Wandering Jewish exorcists.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But notice what they're trying to do. They're trying to use the name Jesus.

Right. In this demonological way. Right, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

By the Jesus whom Paul proposed.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I have this name. I'm going to use that guy. Yeah. To control and cast out demons. That's not how it works.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So the seven sons of Scaeva get thrash.

And. Yeah, I just. I just picture this scene of like the, the. The guys, you know, fleeing the house and then that Grand Theft Auto wasted, like, comes up on the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I have never played that game.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

But, so they get. They get taken out. Right. But then this gets around.

Right? This gets around. And notice the response. The response is all of these people giving up their magical practices.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Because what do they see? They see that there's something superior about the way of life that St. Paul is preaching to. The kind of power and manipulation and that kind of thing that they've been seeking through those practices.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And note how many, like how extensive this is. Like, this is so many books and probably a lot of different people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That apparently it's worth 50,000 pieces of silver. I don't know exactly how much that would be in 20, $24, but probably a lot.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. That's like 2,500 gold pieces in standard Dungeons and Dragons conversion.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's a lot of money. Yes.

So then one last bit. When St. Paul is writing, as he does in Galatians 5, for example, to.

Former pagans, now Christians, and talking to them about the transformation of their life and their way of life. Right. These magical practices are so common and so ingrained in the way of life of common people that he has to sort of include that. Mention that as something that needs to be put off.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. So in Galatians 5, verses 19 through 21, he tells these ex pagans, now, the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

That's quite the list.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. But you notice things like sorcery have to be thrown in there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Like, don't do that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And so again, if we're thinking to start with, like, really, there's, you know, a bunch of sorcerers, it's like. Well, it's not that there are a bunch of, like, professional sorcerers.

You know, in the church is in Galatia. Right. Galatia is a region.

It's that there were lots of people practicing these various things that were essentially sorcery, that were magical practices. Right. Yeah. And those two had to be.

Put off.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, and again, not to belabor this point too much, but in our day where we're so affected by.

Philosophical materialism, we think of people who engage in this kind of stuff as weird out there, fringe, marginal. And they are. Right? They are in our world. But multiple times in the New Testament, there's whole bunches of people that have to burn their books and be told not to do this stuff and so forth. So it's. It's simply much more prevalent because no one's a philosophical materialist in the first century. It's just not. Not a thing. You know, people believe in magic. They practice magic. They wouldn't do it if they didn't believe that they were getting some kind of results. And they were all indications that they were getting results. You know, they're not dumb.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. If they tried this stuff and it legit never worked, they'd stop.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Yeah. Yeah. So. All right, well, we're going to take our second break on this episode about the bread and cheese oracle.

Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part. The of the Lord of spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855 AF radio.

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[Father Stephen DeYoung]

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We'Re back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855 AF radio.

Hey, welcome back, everybody. Can you believe it? Trudy cut me off right in the middle.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Middle of, I don't know, off stage, like it's the Oscars or something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know, man. No, love.

It's all good. It's all good. It's all good. But we do have some callers, actually.

So we're going to go ahead and talk with some people. So first we've got Bethany on the line. Bethany, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast. What is up?

[Callers]

Hi. So first I want to say that this podcast has got me to do things like volunteer at my local homeless shelter once a month, twice during fast season, make food, prepare for that when I go out to lunch with people. Pick up the tab. But my question has to do with experiencing a supernatural reality. So, Father Andrew, you just mentioned a murder bearing icon down the street and you previously mentioned many other examples of murdering icons as well as venerating the incorrupt hand of St. Mary Magdalene.

I have several friends who've had mystical experiences and encountered nurbank icons. And.

I have friends who aren't even religious and have claimed to have seen spirits. And I have another friend, well, coworker, who will admit to being a pure materialist and has told me he has seen ghosts. And then when I reminded me that he was a serialist, he said it was really weird because he doesn't believe in ghosts. Now, yes, many of these experiences come from different sources. Clearly the merving icons are from God spirit. Probably not, but I feel like I live in a purely material reality. So why is it that some people have these miraculous experiences and others do not at all? Does it have to do with the news?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. I think there's multiple things that one could say.

So one of the things that I'll say is that.

God gives different experiences in life to different people for his purposes. Right. Each one of us is given everything that we need to repent and become a saint.

So there's just variation in life. Right. But also I will say that I think people actually have spiritual experiences way more than they may realize, you know, because our culture has taught us to discount, to dismiss this sort of thing. So we're desensitized to it. We're much more likely to write it off to say, you know, it's a bit of. Of mustard or undigested beef. Right. That kind of thing. So I think all of those things are potentially in play. Definitely some people have experiences that are much more palpable than others. Most people's experiences that they describe out loud tend to be.

You know, on the edge of something. You know, like on the edge of perception or that sort of thing. That's been my sort of anecdotal experience in that regard. So not as much kind of just blatant in your face sort of stuff. But that stuff does happen. It definitely does happen. I mean, it's not only like, in testimony of the lives of saints or we see in scripture, But I mean, I've talked to people who have definitely had some of those kinds of experiences. And as I mentioned, you know, some of the experiences that I've had are really like when you watch, like, one of the MER streaming icons. Actually two different MER streaming icons that I've encountered. Not only did the icon itself stream mer, right? Which, like, if someone was a super duper skeptic, they could be like, well, that thing is made of wood, and it can be sort of rigged, blah, blah, blah. Okay, sure, if you want to put that on there. But the one that I don't get how you could possibly rig it is in both cases of these icons, the case, the wooden case that they were in, not only itself was.

Sort of sweating myrrh. Like, the case was sweating it on the outside, but the glass on the front, it's not just that it dripped down from the top, which you could say, oh, well, there's some kind of squirter in there, but actually it formed in the middle of the glass and then dripped down. I don't know how you make that happen. Like, how you fake that, I can't imagine. I don't know. Maybe someone knows, But I can't imagine how you do that. But I Watched it form so much that we had to continually mop it up. And I watched it get faster during a church service and then slow down at the end. So, I mean, this stuff to me is pretty unmistakable. I mean, it wasn't, like, spectacular in the sense of, like, there were flashing lights or big music or whatever. It was just like, oh, wow, it's streaming. Mir. How about that? You know, that's the experience. And of course, had this amazing fragrance. And, yeah, there's a lot of. A lot of testimonies of people being healed as well. So. I don't know. Father Stephen, what do you think about her question? Why is it that some people seem to have these kinds of experiences and some seem not to?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I mean, ultimately, it's like you said, it's. God.

Gives different people different experiences according to his knowledge. There's. Because, I mean, there. There are saints who have had, you know, sort of the pinnacle of that experience that you can have in this life is to behold, have the vision of Christ in his uncreated glory. There have been saints who have had that experience once.

Relatively early in their life. And never again.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In their earthly life. Never again.

And that's sort of its own cross of. Right. Like having had that and.

Not being able to sort of get it back. Right. Even though it's not something you can get.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's something God gives.

And there have been lots of saints. I mean, people who are saints, pious and devoted to, who spent their whole life, you know, in noetic prayer and never had that experience in this life.

We don't. We don't always know.

Part of it is we have to remember that God knows us better than we know ourselves.

We have a way that we think we would react to that kind of thing, but God knows how we would actually react to that kind of thing. And I don't just mean fear.

I mean, that fear is an issue, right? Like, a lot of people are not up for having a dead loved one, like, appear and talk to them. Right. Like, they would just as soon not have that ever happen. Right. But beyond fear, like, there's a danger of pride.

There's a danger of developing.

Spiritual delusion. Right. That can come from experiences. We all tell. We all will say, oh, no, I wouldn't do that. Right. But God knows whether we do that.

God knows whether we'd find, like, with a dead loved one, if we find it comforting or terrifying, you know. Right. All these things. Right. He knows. And so we have to kind of trust his judgment in terms of what he allows us to experience and when in our earthly lives, and that he knows sort of what's. What's best in that regard.

But it sounds to me from the beginning of your question.

Like you're doing the right kinds of things.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There's also a danger that sort of pursuing those kinds of.

Experiences, we get so involved in that pursuit that we neglect the life in this world that God has called us to while we're in this world. And it sounds like you're spending your time pursuing the things that God has called you to in this world, which means you're doing the right things. And I think that means while you're doing that, you can trust in God that he'll give you the experiences you need to have and give them to you as gifts when and how and in his timing, you know, in terms of when you need them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Does that make sense? Bethany?

[Callers]

Yeah.

I know I don't need this. No palatiotope who appear to be to have faith. Would you say the same applies to the negative spiritual experiences? Like the people who have spiritual experiences that aren't coming forgotten from God? I should probably also mention for the sake of intellectual. Well, maybe not intellectual honesty, but spiritual honesty of this podcast. I'm actually one of your Eastern Catholic friends.

But would the same applies like the negative experiences?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, I think God knows how you would react to a negative experience. There's some people who would just be terrorized by it, and there's some people who it might bring to repentance, you know.

And so God knows which that is. Right, because remember we've talked about on the show how God kind of has the demons on a leash, right? And they just want to destroy us, but he uses even their evil for our good. Yep, yep, yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Alrighty. Thank you very much, Bethany, for calling.

All right, now we've got Ron calling from Muncie, Indiana. Ron, welcome to the Lord of Spirits podcast.

[Callers]

Oh, father and father, longtime listener, first time caller. All right, so first off, thank you so much for taking my call. You guys have helped me out a lot.

I am Jewish. I was new age, and at a hippie music festival, I heard the gospel. And shortly after that, I had a. An Acts Chapter 9 kind of moment between me and God. I got zapped with a new heart, and I do a lot of work with kids. My question for you is, I see New age just ramping up like mad. I also was a Zen Buddhist for about 15 years, and I'm seeing an insurgence in mindfulness. New age tarot card, crystals, just everything you. You were talking about.

My question would be how can the body of Christ in general.

Operate in more power? And I don't want to say to attract people, but just to use what God has given to the body. I don't know if this is making sense. I was healed and delivered from drugs and demonic oppression. And.

And I see that my. This is just my opinion. And I'm asking how do you think the gifts of the Spirit can be in better use?

I guess I'm saying to attract people, to understand who God is in a real way. And if I'm wrong about saying it that way, I'm, you know, I'll take the correction. I was just. That's my opinion and question to you, both of you. So what do you think?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, I mean, I think.

I think that the.

I'm trying to think of the best way to put this. I may just. I guess I'll just be blunt so I don't have to think too long. So I think that. That using what you're describing as the gifts of the spirit to attract people, I don't think is the right way to go in the sense of, hey, look at what we've got. We've got miracles and stuff.

You know, I don't know if that's what you mean, but. But I'm definitely against that, however. I mean, certainly when you see.

The gifts of the Spirit described in the New Testament, it's not only. I mean, I know a lot of people who have Pentecostal and charismatic background and experience. They think of the gifts of the spirits in terms of things like speaking in tongues and faith healing and all this kind of stuff that sort of seems to be supernatural or whatever.

But. But actually, like, there's much more important things like love. You know, love is. Love is much higher than even raising the dead. Right. And I mean, I think one of our saints even says that repenting of your sins is a greater miracle than raising the dead.

[Callers]

Right, Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And so I would say that the. The key to.

Re. Outreach with regards to the gifts of the Spirit, Right. Is. Is repentance on our own part, which is not just sort of this internal thing. Repentance involves, like, some of the stuff that our previous caller was talking about. Bethany, you know, was saying, I'm. I've been inspired to do this and this and this. And it was all stuff about sort of ministering to the people around her. Right. And that's, that's what we see turns the empire upside down in the first Few centuries of the church is people are really noticed. Like Julian the apostate is mad that Christians are willing to minister to non Christians. And he's like, why can't pagans be like this? He wants pagans to have Christian ethics is his problem. You know, and, and many cases, like there's plagues sweeping through the empire and it was the Christians who went and took care of people even while everyone else was running off to the countryside to avoid the plague, you know, so certainly, I mean, certainly if God gives to a person.

A gift of wonder working, right. Although it's not like it's a possession of that person, it's God doing it. If God decides to do that stuff through that person, that's what's needed at that moment for that person. But God's will for all of us in terms of our fellow humans around us is pretty straightforward. Love your neighbor as yourself.

[Callers]

Right? I agree with you totally.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's God's will for my life, for your life, for Father Steven's life, everybody's life.

[Callers]

May I quickly amend my question? Just.

What I see is New Age just ramping up. And it's not so much that I want to advertise Jesus with miracles, signs and wonders, but I, I, because I've been healed and emotionally set free and got a new heart like you were talking about. I just, I, I don't know if I, I do agree with you. It's the love and ministering that makes it shines a light.

What do you think is the proper place of the gifts in the body?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What do you think, Father?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, well, so I think part of the, part of the thing here is that.

New Age spirituality is pretty thin gruel.

Yeah. If you've got a generation of young people who are starving because they were raised in a flat, gray, meaningless world with no spirituality whatsoever, it's attractive because at least it's something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But.

Right now in America, getting into the New Age stuff is this transitory phase into getting into all kinds of other things.

There's a whole phenomenon of conspirituality now where a lot of the people getting involved in things like Qanon and stuff are coming out of the New Age movement.

[Callers]

Okay, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which you wouldn't. It's not intuitive. Right. But.

People are going through the day to other places. The advantage we have when it comes to spirituality is that we have the real deal.

If New Age spirituality is thin gruel, then we're serving steak. Right?

And.

So, and that's on all levels. That's on the level of explaining people's spiritual experiences, that's in terms of meaning in the world.

That's in terms of.

As. As Father Andrew said, the, you know, the greatest miracle being the conversion and repentance of a person.

One of the. One of the things. So very early on, when I was coming into the orthodox church.

20 odd years ago now.

One thing that really impressed me is I remember I went and I looked up on some website about a mer streaming icon like Father Andrew was talking about with the previous caller, this miraculous icon that had mer streaming from it. And there were sort of these testimonials.

Of people who had come to see it and come there and prayed. And what impressed me was half the testimonials didn't have anything to do with healing or anything like that. Half the testimonials were talking about, you know, for example, this was in one of the major and especially violent urban areas of the US A grandmother bringing her grandson there who was in a gang.

And he repented and left the gang and started coming to church with her and, you know, became a follower of Christ. Like that. That's listed there as. Look at this miracle that happened.

[Callers]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, yeah. Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that super impressed me, you know, when I was. When I was first coming into the church, because I was like, that's.

That's it, right? Like, yeah, that's the whole thing there. And so I think.

A big part that we neglect when we think about the role of all of the gifts that St. Paul talks about, the greatest of which, as Father Andrew said, is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Love.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Is that part of that gifting is the gifting that comes to the people who are coming in.

Right.

[Callers]

Part of that gifting, when someone comes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Into the community, when they come into the church.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

When they receive the Holy Spirit, they receive gifts.

[Callers]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, gotcha.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And I don't think those of us who are older.

Have fully realized the sense of meaninglessness and purposelessness that a lot of young people.

[Callers]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What it's like to just feel like you're not good at anything.

There'S nothing special about you. You have nothing to contribute.

You know, you have no purpose.

[Callers]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And coming into a community where now you have something to contribute.

Unique to you, and you have a place and a purpose and a role in that community, I think that is incredibly powerful now in our present cultural moment for people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And that's something that, like, New Age spirituality can't give you.

[Callers]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Remotely.

[Callers]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right. Well, I hope that's helpful to you, Ron. Thank you very much for calling.

[Callers]

That was great. Seriously, thanks so much for. You know, I. I've been. I've been Watched all your stuff, so. And I'm gonna steal it and then I'll give you a footnote somewhere, and you guys really have been champs and like. And then now I get to go talk about giants to all my friends and I'll go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

People get excited when you talk about giants.

[Callers]

Thanks again. And if I sound too informal, I'm sorry. But, fellas, thanks a bunch. I. I do appreciate it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

God bless you, Ron. Thanks. All right, well, where's the cheese?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Father Steve, my only problem with Feliz is that he assumed my gender, but.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If you're a lady, I don't know what reality I'm in, so I don't know what to tell you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm definitely not a lady. I can tell you that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So, all right, it's the third half, and we promised people the cheese sandwich oracle, and we'll get.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We're not jumping straight there in a few minutes. Yes, yes. We're not jumping straight. No, no, no, no.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's funny on the YouTubes, people are like, when's the cheese? Have they gotten to the cheese yet? Did I miss the cheese? Cheese sandwich. Not just cheese people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The cheese stands alone.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And not grilled cheese. No one said it was grilled cheese. We don't know that it was grilled cheese.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We don't know that it was grilled cheese. I'd like to think it was grilled cheese.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, that would be nice. I do love a good grilled cheese, but.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, so what's left? What's left now?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So this is our third half where now we will explain to you the scientific basis of the whammy.

So what we're going to talk about now is, you know, so we've talked now about magic in the ancient world a little bit. We've talked a little bit about how that butts up against the scriptures in the Old and New Testaments. Now we're going to talk about post scriptures.

What happens to all of this? To all of this magic? Right. To these practices.

And spoilers. They don't just vanish and go away.

Now, the primary place where they're going to survive pretty much everywhere is going to be on the level of folk magic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This is a blanket thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

This again, is the shack out in the bayou kind of thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not that I'm trying to.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, or just. Just rural people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A swamp. Yeah, right, right, exactly. Yeah. And the reason for this is that Christianity has been fairly successful at driving.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

These practices out of the community in urban places. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's no longer front and center the way that it. The way that it used to be, but.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So things that were sort of magical practices integrated somewhat with pagan religion just sort of become folk traditions. Yeah, right. Even though they're separated from the religion that sort of bore them. Right.

The sort of formal religious practices that bore them, but they kind of stick around and they linger around all. I mean, and. And there's variations on this, but there's versions of this everywhere up until this present day.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yep, yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. You've got German folk magic. You've got. Right. I mean, all. All over the place.

But so that's sort of, on an informal level, that's sort of a constant just about anywhere you go. Right.

Anytime in history. But now we're going to talk about some more particular and official sort of interactions and forms that these magical practices and traditions have taken over the course of the last couple of millennia.

So we have to start out with the fact that.

From a Roman perspective, from the earliest Roman perspective on Christianity. So we're talking the end of the first century A.D.

The Romans believed that the Christians were practicing magic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, that's what they said about them. So they believe that they.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Jewish magic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, they were. They were doing real stuff, but, you know, not. Not their pagan. Real stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So. And exhibit A of this is at the end of the very end of the first century.

During Domitian's persecutions. Right. This is the. These are the. This is the first major imperial, Roman. Imperial persecution of Christians. This is when St. John.

The Evangelist ends up on Patmos.

Right. During that Domitian's persecution. We have trial records.

Of some prominent Roman Christians, very prominent, wealthy, patrician Roman Christians, when Acilius Glabrio and Titius Flavius Clemens. I mean, those are some awesome Roman names right there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It is hard to get more Roman names than those.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

Those two were executed.

By beheading.

And Clemens wife, Flavia Domitilla, who was the Emperor Vespasian's granddaughter. So important noble person, so descended from the imperial family. These are important noble people. Because of her being the granddaughter of a former emperor, she was just exiled instead of being executed.

And the two men were executed and she was exiled for participating in Jewish rituals and magic.

Which was the formal way that Christians were charged by the Roman imperial government.

And this is not just sort of the Romans trying to figure out where in Roman law they could Come up with an excuse for executing Christians. Right. Say it's witchcraft. Right. This was their view. So when you get to. In the middle of the second century, Celsus. Right. Who famously, Origen responded to in contra Celsus. Yeah.

Kelsis says that when he's giving his counter narrative. Right. Of to attack Christianity. And Kelsus's attack on Christianity in the second century was considered the greatest pagan sort of polemic against Christianity. That's why Origen responded to it. Other people responded to it.

Kelsa says that when Jesus fled to Egypt, he learned magic there.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

As a toddler, he learned sorcery. And so that's how he came back and did all of these wonders is that he had learned Egyptian sorcery.

Porphyry.

So we're moving ahead not quite another century.

Porphyry, who along with Plotinus is kind of the founder of Neoplatonism.

Virulently anti Christian. People forget Neoplatonism was a deliberately anti Christian philosophical movement. It was an attempt to sort of vaguely Christianize and religiositize, I guess.

Platonic philosophy to compete with Christianity in the third century as Christianity was spreading in the Roman Empire. But Porphyry argues that not just Jesus, but the apostles were all sorcerers who he taught magic to. And that's why the apostles worked. Could work miracles.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Because, I mean, if you're a pagan.

Right. I mean, you see this religious group, they're doing miracles or whatever. That's, that's, that's the easy frame to put on it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And then for him, it has no religious significance. Yeah. They just learned these techniques and went and did sorcery. That doesn't mean you should listen to what they say. Right, right.

That's why they considered it a counter argument.

You also have within Gnostic sex.

Sects, they, they absorb a lot of pagan magical practices.

Even as Christianity is reputing them. These Gnostic sects sort of absorb them in terms of some of their taxonomies absorbing. You know, they have the, the Ogdoad and all that.

You have all these taxonomies of spiritual emanations and divine emanations. A lot of that is taken over from pagan demonologies.

They take over a lot of names that get named and named over people in initiation rituals and things.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, and it makes sense too, Right. Because Gnosticism is so focused on kind of like achievement. Right. So, you know, give them some techniques to do where they can reach high and become truly spiritual and slough off this mortal coil, you know, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then.

When we get to the 4th century, we get to the 4th century, we got one more century to go. And then we're at the cheese sandwich. Get ready.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's happening.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

People, gather around your radio.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The oracular cheese sandwich.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm pretending someone is listening to this show on one of those big upright radios from the 1940s, like with the lounge chairs.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Send us a photo of you and your family doing it. Everybody we want to see.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So in the 4th century, we have sort of three sources that tell us interesting things about how magic is doing in the 4th century. So this is. We're now into the era of Constantine.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So one of those sources is Ammianus Marcellinus, who writes a history and talks about sort of the post Constantinian bands on different magical practices.

And then, of course, we have the. The Codex Theodosianus. Right. Theodosians code.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which has laws banning things like astrology, divination, amulets, and the possession of quote, unquote, secret books.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Secret books. It's interesting. I mean, pagan rulers don't do this kind of thing. They don't ban all that stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah.

And then the third source is kind of interesting because it's. So Libanius of Antioch is an important figure in the fourth century. He's the. He was the teacher of St. John Chrysostom in rhetoric.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But remained a pagan his whole life. Yeah. But part of the reason why things have survived from him is the high respect that St. John and others held him in, despite him being a pagan.

And he was. He. So he's the most important figure of that last generation of pagans in the mid 4th century and was incredibly learned at the time, obviously, and wrote an autobiography about his life. And in terms of what we're talking about tonight, what's relevant there is that even though he's this sort of super philosophical advanced pagan.

Would never do something so, you know, petty and rustic as sacrifice an animal. Right. Like, completely believes that magic works. Completely believes that all that stuff works.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And expresses worry. Expresses worry that with the Christian bands on these things. Right. That he and others might be in danger if they can't have their amulets and do divination and things. Right. That they're going to be in trouble.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Because remember, again, like, this was seen by pagans kind of on the level of, like. I'm not saying it replaced medicine. They had doctors too. But that's the level of integration it was into people's lives. So he was, like, concerned like, wait a minute, they're taking away this important, important part of life.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, well, it's sort of like people to people today. Right. Well, I was gonna say today that I was gonna mention a newspaper, but what's a newspaper? Yeah, exactly. But people will get up and they'll look at the weather.

Forecast, right. For the next few days, and they'll look at, you know, if they're not broke, like me, they'll look at, like, how the markets are trending.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They'll try to get all of this information so they can plan things right. Over the next few days. Right. And that's sort of how they viewed things like ambulance and divination. Right. You.

You got to keep track of what's going on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right? Yeah, exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You got to be prepared for what's coming, you know?

Yeah. So.

Yeah. He expresses some difficulty. So now, finally, friends, the moment has arrived. We come to the man himself, Sophronius of Tella.

The story of the cheese sandwich oracle.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Again. This morning, I did not believe that this was real, and now I know that it is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The ordeal of bread and cheese is about to begin.

That's what it says in the Source.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Is the ordeal of bread and cheese.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. So Freudius was the bishop of Tella. He wasn't from Tella. He was the bishop of Tella, which.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I think is like, in roughly kind of southeastern Turkey now.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, he was a historian.

Not in the sense of his beliefs. We don't have that good of a window in his beliefs. Apparently he believed in some wacky stuff, we're about to find out.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But he was, like, literally friends with.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The story, is right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like friends with the guy himself. And it kind of stuck up for him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not enough to get exiled with him, but it kind of stuck up for him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, he shows, and he shows up at the Robber Council of 445, right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

449.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, 449. And then. And then also shows up at Calcutta, you know, a couple years later. But it's the robber council where this. The cheese and bread thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So when he shows up at the robber council, so he goes to both the robber council and the ecumenical council. So as you can see what exactly he believed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But when he showed up at the robber council, someone brought charges against him.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Clergy from his own diocese.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, Cabet brought charges.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It seems that some money had been stolen from him. And so he was trying to. He had three possible suspects, so he was trying to figure out who's the guilty part.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He knew one of them did it, yes, but not which one. So first he did something that seems like something maybe a bishop might do. He had each of them come and swear an oath on the gospel book that they did not do it. Because he figured, hey, whoever did it, they're not going to come and swear a false oath before God on the gospel book. Right? So this will get him to admit it. But all three of them swore the oath. None of them admitted it. And so then he said, we must use the cheese sandwich oracle.

So he erected a small stand.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Again, we're not. I swear, we're not making this up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We're not making this up.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Look up Sophronius of Tella T E L L A and you will discover the cheese sandwich oracle story.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He erected a small stand. Now, imagine your bishop did this and you were going and telling the council about. Anyway.

They gave a straight face. He sets up a small stand and he lays out on the stand three cheese sandwiches.

Breaded cheese.

Prepared in a certain manner.

And invited the three to come and eat the sandwiches in the belief that because of how he had prepared the sandwiches, the guilty party would not be able to eat.

And would vomit up the sandwich.

But in fact, we are told, not only did all three eat the sandwiches, they ate them quite ravenously.

So apparently it was not much of an ordeal. The bread and the cheese. So then he moved to the nuclear option.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right. Yeah. The funny thing is, the bread and cheese oracle is not actually sort of the climax of this story. So I'm going to read now to you a passage that is from the early 20th century Catholic Encyclopedia, which, which sort of summarizes what happens. So this not succeeding. That is to say, the cheese sandwich oracle. This not succeeding. He had recourse to the divining cup. He used the son of one of his servants as a medium and with two others. Again, this is a bishop, you guys. And with two others, after some incantations place the youth before a vessel containing oil and water. In this mixture, the youth first saw flames of fire. Then a man sitting on a throne of gold and clad in purple and a crown upon his head.

After this, they put the oil and water in a hole near the door. And the medium saw the bishop's son, Habib, who was returning home from Constantinople, seated on a black maremule that is blindfolded, and behind him two men on foot. The lad confessed these and other like things on oath. He was haunted by seven men dressed in white and lost his reason and was with difficulty cured by being Brought into holy places and anointed with oil. What is going on in Tallah?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But apparently this vision revealed who the guilty party was.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, apparently, apparently.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And caused the poor kid who he used as a medium to lose his mind.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. He had to be taken to holy places and anointed with oil. With difficulty cured.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The seven men dressed in white were hunting him. They were the anti Nazgul.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So there you are, everybody. That is the cheese sandwich oracle. And then the weird divining cup, oil and water.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's a pretty advanced pagan magical practice.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's still around. Being done by this.

Somewhat shifty bishop or.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or at least, I mean, like, of the fifth century.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

From what I read. It was never, like, clear whether he was, like, convicted of this stuff, but this is what his clergy said about him, you know, weirdly specific.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Made to make a bunch of denunciations and stuff at the Council of Chalcedon.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. You better profess Chalcedon or take a beating. Sophronius of Tella.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

Yeah. Anyway, so even in circles like this, this kind of stuff was still around in the fifth century, and we know that there were still problems with it even later. One example, John Mamiconian, who is a saint in the Armenian church.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Wrote what's called the letter on Devilish Sorceries and the Godless Conjurations.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which is interesting because this is, yeah. 7th century Armenia. I mean, it's. It's. It's a very Christian country by that point. I mean, in fact, it's the first officially Christian country. Armenia. Right. Yeah. So that kind of stuff is still around. And so as a result, you need, you know, churchmen are writing. Writing things against it. You know, you don't. You don't see rules made against things that no one's doing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Somebody grab the album titled Devilish Sorceries and the Godless Conjurations.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Pretty solid. That could also be the name of a tour, a band tour. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So now moving, you know, moving through history a little more.

The.

There is what comes to be called the esoteric tradition.

Which involves a whole bunch of different things, but a lot of it is the continuation of a lot of these sort of magical traditions and practices. You find this in Hermeticism, which is, of course named after Hermes Trimagistus, Thrice Blessed Hermes, who is not as ancient as they thought he was, but. Yeah, right. But that Hermetic tradition in the medieval period.

Takes some pretty firm root in various places.

That sort of flowers through the Renaissance and Enlightenment. And you end up with the early stages of Freemasonry.

I am not a person controversial. I'm not a person who gets super hot and bothered about freemasonry. Currently.

I'm not afraid of old men in small cars.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm haunted by seven old men in small cars wearing robes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And, you know, I've never met a Mason under 50, which means we won't have to worry about them for much longer.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, they're kind of going away.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. But especially the early phases. They're definitely a repository for a lot of these traditions. Traditions, right. Yeah. And I think in those early phases especially, they took a lot more of the ritual stuff they do, let's say a lot more seriously than the average Shriner in 2024 does.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're also probably sober most of the time.

But then you really see this when you get into the late 19th and early 20th century in spiritualism.

Madame Blavatsky. Right. All of the new thought religious groups and the groups that spin out of it, like Christian Science.

Christian Science is the grape nuts of religion. Because grape nuts has no grapes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Neither grapes nor nuts. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And Christian Science is neither Christian nor scientific.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it's, it's interesting. Like the, the 19th century, there's this whole, you know, new thought movement which kind of has at its base the idea that either that the material world is not real or that it's really subject to something called mind, you know, or some of both. Right.

Yeah. It sprouted some, some really curious, Curious stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. But you get, again, mediums, you get a lot of this, these phenomena. Right. Of magic, mediums contacting spirits, demonology, all of these things popping up again and having sort of a cultural moment.

At the time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, a number of elites were really into this kind of stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And a brave guy like Houdini going around and debunking them and messing with them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Fun.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then we have to, we have to mention Carl Jung.

Who very much makes a study of all of this tradition. So he has multiple books he wrote on the Hermetic tradition. He has a two volume work on alchemy.

Right. So he deeply immerses himself in this stuff. Before we found the Nag Hammadi library, all of the surviving Gnostic texts that we had were collected in what was called the Jung Codex, because he collected them.

Right. So he was very interested in this whole tradition.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Studying it for the most part. He took it in a psychological direction like he did with everything else.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wasn't he just a weird psychologist it's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sort of structures of consciousness and that kind of thing. But on the other hand, he had a weird personal life.

Which included him starting a cult in his house. And during their quote unquote meetings, he would walk around naked wearing a lion head and referring to himself as the Aryan Christ.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, that's pretty normal for a psychologist. Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

When I say a lion head, I don't mean like he had a furry lion head made. I mean like a taxidermied lion head.

Just so you get the full portrait here. Wow.

Interesting cat.

Pun intended.

And then as we were talking about with the most recent caller, a lot of this then trickles out into various new age stuff. Although by that point it's awfully watered down. Although.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, and it's super eclectic.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And you do get full blown people doing full blown medium stuff. Full blown. Right. So there is some sort of full blown versions of this within that. But a lot of it is very thinned out.

And deliberately so for a couple of reasons. Number one, so, you know, capitalism, so it could be bought and so, you know, buy your crystals and. Right. So it could be bought and sold and marketed. And also because.

That kind of spirituality was aimed at an America.

Going through the 60s that was averse to religions that demanded things of you.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, this is all about religions. They're going to do something for you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And so it was very. Choose your own adventure. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Although I have to say, I think my favorite encounter with someone who is, you know, not just like a shopper at a new age bookstore, but, you know, I think it was, I don't know, might have been a proprietor. I was walking along the street and someone at one of these places, I mean, I wasn't going into this place, I don't go to such places. But someone came out and invited me and the people that were with us, they said, hey, you want to come in? We're going to be channeling the Archangel Michael later. I was like, I hope for your sake that he doesn't show up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Somebody might show up and say, that's who it is. But.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That will not go well with you, my friend.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Either way. Yeah. It's funny because.

Why would you even say that? If you actually had a clear biblical view of the Archangel Michael.

Leader of the heavenly host, the guy who tosses the dragon out of heaven, like the reaper of souls, like, really? You're gonna invite him to your house? You know. No, no. Summon the archangel Michael. Anyway.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So now it's my turn to get people mad. At me.

Or at least in the past, people have gotten mad at me. I found that there's a segment of the audience, at least, that doesn't like it when I take somebody who goes around calling themselves a Christian and I point out that they're not one.

But I'm about to do that again.

Kenneth Copeland, not a Christian.

Biblical term, should probably be stoned to death.

I'm not suggesting we stone him to death. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, no.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

By no means. You know, going by the Torah, I was disrespectful to my father, so you'd have to stone me first to be fair. Exactly right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We've all done.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We've all been there. But.

Calling for violence here, people.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, it says in the Scripture, again, like, you made this point earlier, like, if someone's prophecy doesn't turn out once, even that means they're not a real prophet. And yeah, the Torah talks about what to do with false prophets.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

His track record's not so hot.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But you're Kenneth Copeland, your Benny Hinn, their ilk, your Bethel folks, Bethel School.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Of Supernatural Ministry, your prosperity Gospel people, your word faith people.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. All of these folks together. Okay?

Not Christians. That's not Christianity.

It just isn't a different religion.

That they're preaching.

Benny Hinn in particular has no excuse. He's an apostate.

We don't need to go into that anymore. But.

Because what they're preaching is. Is magic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's. It's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're claiming magical powers.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And what's interesting is, like, especially some of the early word faith people were actually reading and mingling with some of the new thought types.

And their texts that come out of the late 19th century. So there's actually this direct connection with some of this theosophist, spiritualist stuff of that period. And what they have in common is this idea that you can use language and thought to manipulate reality. Right. And the way that word faith, guys, packages is they'll say, well, words are like containers, you know, and faith is this substance that, you know, they use that language from the Bible, you know, the faith, the substance of things hoped for or whatever. But, like, faith is a substance, like, it's a thing that makes things happen in the world. And so that's why, like, if you just decree and declare and really believe and everybody believe with me, then. Then things will happen that you want to happen, whether it's wealth or. Or miraculous healing or whatever it might be, you know, and you get like, the watered down affirmations of people like Joel Osteen and that kind of stuff. And it's all about, like, using language and thoughts to create physical effects. And that's what magic is, people. I'm sorry. That's what magic is.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Someone who preaches Christianity preaches repentance and faithfulness to Jesus Christ. And that's not what they're preaching.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They're preaching that you are equal to Jesus. You are just like Jesus. You have all the powers Jesus had.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, some of them even say.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, Jesus, you know, if you embrace them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. That he was able to do this because he's man, and so you can, too.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. There's no repentance involved. Nothing about repentance.

Nothing about sin.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

God doesn't want you to suffer, ever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

This isn't Christian.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Despite all that stuff from the Lord about, in this world, you will have trouble.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And if we want to say the pseudo, meaning false brethren. Right. The false Christians we're talking about, they are not Christians.

Right. If.

If they're sort of. If we want to use these terms from the French Revolution that we use for everything now, if they represent the right end of this, right. Because they're making a pretense to evangelical Christianity, evangelical Protestantism.

Then the left side of this is Oprah Winfrey.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And the secret.

Yeah, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Look that up, everybody. And there's also, like, there's this thing called A Course in Miracles.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Which a woman claims she channeled Jesus.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And wrote it while in a trance.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. I. If you're interested in some of the, you know, at least understanding some of this kind of stuff.

I do happen to have written it into one of my. Some of it into one of my books. It's Orthodoxy and heterodoxy. So some of that is covered there. Like, if you're interested in the connection between worth, faith and new thought. But also some of these other odd things that you get over the last 100 or 200 years. It's. It's in there as well. But, yeah, it's. I don't know. It's. It's. It's a wacky temptation.

Not wacky in the sense of rare, sadly, but really weird that Christians, people call themselves Christians, would go after this. This stuff, you know?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, and it's. It's. The allure is, oh, you can have everything you want. The very dark side of it, whether we're talking about a Kenneth Copeland or an Oprah Winfrey, is that.

If your life then isn't wonderful and perfect. It's all your fault.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because you don't have enough faith and you spoke negativity into the world and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

Wasn't it Kenneth Hagin that said that he never was sick past a certain point or whatever?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, there's a lot of that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's. And it's hideous. Right. When you see it from that side. Right. But the most hideous thing about it. Right. And I mean, I think even Oprah Winfrey and some of these secret people, like Course in Miracles supposedly was channeled from Jesus. Right. Even they are putting this veneer of, like, liberal Protestant Christianity on it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The most hideous and obscene thing about this is that it's being put forward as if it were Christianity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so not only is the name of our Lord Jesus Christ being drugged through the mud by these people, by these false prophets and false teachers.

But.

But people are being.

Given promises and told these horrible things that then when they're burned out and they realize, you know, the horror of this, they want nothing to do with Christianity because this is what they think Christianity is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's why I'm being so clear that this is not Christianity. Yep. Right. And I'm at the point with this stuff, frankly, where, like, if you're going to call somebody like Kenneth Copeland or Benny Hinn, your brother in Christ. Right. If you're not willing to say that they're not a Christian, then, you know, I have to follow what the New Testament says, and I can't have any fellowship with you either.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Like, we have to be clear about this. The apostles told us we have to be clear about this.

Identifying false teachers. Okay. This isn't. And you listeners, you know, I don't talk this way about, like, regular Protestants.

I don't talk this way about the Pope or regular Roman Catholics. Okay.

I reserve this kind of stuff for the really heinous.

These are the people who St. John is talking about in First John. These are the people who St. Paul is talking about over and over again. These are the wolves that Christ said would come.

And we have to be completely, completely clear about that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

All right. Well, to wrap up our. Our episode on magic.

I think. I think that this is very relevant. It's not. Again, you know, this is not just, oh, look, here's some weird esoteric stuff. I mean, you know, cheese sandwich oracles and all.

As fun as it is to kind of look at stories like that.

I think that especially for people living in the culture that Father Stephen and I Live in, you know, 21st century America. And maybe this applies to some people because I know we have people all over the world listening to us. So hello everybody else. We're so glad you're here. If this applies to your culture too, then I hope that this is helpful. If not, you can just pray for Americans, if you don't mind.

I think that this temptation to magic is actually endemic because what is magic about? It's about doing the thing that you need to do in order to get the thing that you want. And especially with a sense that you can control your world.

Right? And the fact that we have this technological mastery of our world that we think we have.

Although, I mean, I think about the poor people right now, I mean, a lot of suffering all over the world. But I think about, for instance, about the poor people in Texas who, a lot of them, a lot of them just lost power because of a hurricane. And there's also incredible heat going on right now that's very dangerous, that combination, because there's not air conditioning to keep, keep people safe. It's not just about comfort safe in extreme heat. You know, we don't really have mastery of the world. We could still definitely be interrupted and overcome even. But I think this temptation of magic is about this sense of mastery, right? And think about Simon Magus. What is it he's trying to do?

He's trying to control. He wants the power.

So he's willing to pay for it. Probably with a thought to, hey, I can get paid too. You know.

This is, this is real pride. This is, this is the attitude that it, this life is about me, what I want. I mean, honestly, this is also what's behind cancel culture. What is cancel culture? At its base? It's. I should not ever have to be exposed to anything that I disagree with.

Right? Because I need the ultimate control. I should be able to click a button and everything be just fine. That is the temptation to magic.

That is a temptation to magic.

You know, and it's no surprise to me that as the, as Christian culture collapses, as the meta narrative of Western culture collapses, that there should now be an increase not just of magic in the metaphorical sense or even just the technological sense, but in the actual literal sense. There's people doing rituals to try to make things happen. But whether using a ritual or not, this sort of illusion of control, this desire for control, it's about pride, it's about lust.

It, it's really, it's. It's that that is the sin.

And you know, we talked at the end about.

Prosperity, preachers, the word, faith, and, you know, kind of Oprah spirituality and this stuff.

And I, I, as we were talking about that.

I.

I thought about the example of the saints because here are people that.

Not only did not look for control.

Right? It wasn't about being tough and about being, you know, in command of the world. And the opposite, right? The opposite. It was about.

Repentance. About repentance. And.

What is repentance? Repentance is to be faithful to Christ, to live according to the way that he commanded.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's what repentance is. And if, like in our culture we taught, you know, you should, you should try to change the world, like, everyone can grow up and change the world, number one, I.

Most of us are not that important. We're not. Like, you can't go out and change the world. I'm sorry, it's just not true. Like, that's, most people in history will be forgotten. That is the reality, right? Most people are forgotten by the world. They don't change the world. They get forgotten by the world. And it's not because they didn't try hard of. But if you really actually want to change the world, like if you want to, want to actually make the world better, if you want to bring it closer into the justice and the beauty and the order of God, then.

The place you start is to repent. A holy person affects everyone around them, but they didn't get holy by doing some formula. They got holy by living humbly. They got holy by repenting of their sins. They got holy by serving other people, by putting themselves last.

Right? And you know, it's funny, like, there's even this temptation of magic that exists. I mean, this might sound a little esoteric to some people, and if you've never heard any of this, God bless you, I envy you. But there's even temptation to magic that exists amongst some orthodox, like on the Internet, where they'll try to pick apart sacraments, for instance. And unless.

There'S a specific formula or whatever it might be to say nothing about the Church's tradition and history about these things. But like, no, no, no. It's this one model that could, it must do this way or else you're not orthodox or you're not whatever, you know. And people especially apply this to baptism, frankly, and especially the way that people are received into the church.

And that just is a profoundly ignorant view when you look at the actual whole history of the way the Church has dealt with these things. Because the Church is not a Magic factory.

The church is a place for people to repent. The church is a place for people to become like Christ. And it gets people to that point in a lot of different ways, even though ultimately the path of repentance is the same.

If you focus on these formulas.

I'm not saying that the way that services are done does not matter. The way the sacraments are done does not matter. It matters, right? It needs to be done in obedience to the church, according to the tradition of the church, all that kind of stuff. I am by no means a reformer, innovator, or any of that stuff. I'm not interested in that. I didn't become orthodox for that.

But if you become fixated on a kind of mechanistic understanding, a magical understanding of life in the church, and it doesn't just have to be sacraments. I mean, there are people who have this idea of like, oh, you have to do your piety in this particular way, and church services must be done only in this particular way. And whatever it might be like, all this kind of focus on particular details like this.

As though that it's the details themselves that make it happen. That's magical thinking. That's magical thinking. And it's all about distraction from real repentance.

And you can tell that because the spirit that goes along with that magical thinking is usually very harsh, very hard.

And does not inspire anyone to actually meet Christ and to repent and to become like him, to love their fellow humans, to put others in front of them, to sacrifice themselves. It doesn't. It doesn't. I've been around long enough to say that I've never seen it work that way. So what is the opposite of magic? Repentance. Repentance is the opposite of magic. Repentance is to let go of control. Repentance is to surrender yourself to Christ and to do his will and not seek to exert your will over other people. All right, rant over.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Stealing my bit.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, I didn't know that you were going to rant in that particular way, but, you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No, no, just ranting in general. Oh, okay. No.

So on three separate occasions, I have won the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Did someone show up at your door or did you just get it in the mail?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You've seen one of the checks. I sent you a picture.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Twice I won five dollars. Hey. The third time, I won the princely sum of ten American dollars.

Dropping Hamiltons like Aaron Burr.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

What folks may not know because they're not elderly like me is that you can put in multiple entries to the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes on their website every day for free. You just have to scroll through a bunch of ads.

And so this may be a slight overshare, but I generally do this in the morning in the bathroom on my phone.

But I don't actually think I'm gonna win a large sum of money.

Like, it'd be cool to win $10 million or $5,000 a week for life.

But ain't gonna happen, right?

And I don't go and do the entry. I do that to waste time and. Because I got five bucks a couple of times. Why not, right? I'm not doing it because I seriously think. And I'm putting some kind of hope investment in receiving this kind of.

There are folks who have been bamboozled by grifters like Benny Hinn into giving him money in the hopes that they're going to.

Really magically, not so much miraculously as magically have money show up in their bank accounts or.

Somehow get some kind of help.

They've been told to really believe that's true, and then if it doesn't happen, it's because you didn't believe it hard enough.

And.

I blame the grifter, obviously. I don't so much blame the person, because the person's been caught up in a trend in modern life that really.

Has a lot of its roots in Freud.

Who, through Freudian psychology that's filtered down to all of us, has sort of redefined what a human being is.

To a human being being a desiring thing.

It'S just a thing that has desires.

If you've read any Lacan, you know those desires are always unmet.

They can never be met.

And so, having defined ourselves in this way and understanding ourselves as these desiring things.

We have all of these things that we want, that we desire.

And those desires and the futile quest to fulfill them just drives us through our whole lives.

And if we stop and think, we think about what are the things I think of as problems in my life? What are the things I complain about?

What are the things I think would fix everything? If I just had or just this happened, then everything would be perfect.

Pretty much every case.

It'S some desire I have that isn't met.

And I think that if it were met, if it could just be met, then everything would be fine. The problem is this unfulfilled desire.

And that unfulfilled desire and us seeing it as our problem.

Inevitably twists and distorts us in different ways.

To a lot of especially young men.

In our culture, the desire for sex, or in some cases a little more wholesomely, the desire for marriage.

For having a woman to be a partner, a companion in their life, a wife.

That desire not being met twists them until they turn into some kind of weird goblin on the Internet.

There are people whose resentment of not having as much money, not having the material things they think they deserve.

Twists them, destroys their relationships, destroys marriages, destroys families.

There are people who so desire success being looked at in a certain way. They pursue their careers and offer their families up on the altar of success.

No matter how hard we pursue any of those things, in fact, the harder we pursue a lot of them, the more we realize that we're always going to be lacking and that's never going to be fulfilled.

And what that makes is, it makes one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit one of the things we can only truly find through Christ. It makes it a superpower.

And that's contentment.

In our current world, contentment is a superpower.

Contentment sets you free.

Because contentment isn't having all your desires fulfilled.

Contentment involves experiencing the lack.

Experiencing the fact that there are all these desires you have that are unfulfilled.

But being at peace with it.

Being at peace with it.

That peace brings freedom.

And contentment is something we have to practice. It's like patience.

We have to practice it over and over and over again, and we get better at it. Meaning we get more and more at peace with not having everything.

With not always gratifying our desires.

That peace grows over time.

And because our society is so oriented the other way, let me tell you, when you try to practice contentment.

No one will understand it. You will not be praised for it.

If you start to practice contentment, you will be called unambitious.

Unmotivated.

Lazy.

Right?

Something's wrong with you that you're just content to live like that.

Right.

But the people who will say that those things about you are the people who are still enslaved by their drives and desires that they're still out there in that futile quest to fulfill.

And so seeing you living another way will sort of confuse them, maybe even frighten them.

That maybe they're wasting their life because they kind of are.

So while I'm not disagreeing with Father Andrew about repentance being the opposite of magic, I think if we practice contentment, we get serious about it. About practicing contentment.

Being at peace with the things we lack.

In being at peace with the gifts we have and the gifts we don't.

Being at peace with where God has put us in our life and the life that God has given us.

Maybe even experiencing some joy over all those things.

If we practice that, we won't feel any need for magical thinking.

We won't feel the need to engage in any esoteric secrets or anything else.

To try to chase after fulfilling those needs.

But again, that that contentment and that peace can only come through Christ because that's the place we can rest.

We can rest because there's nothing else we have to sort of achieve.

There's no desire of ours that has to be fulfilled.

We can be free to do good, to love.

When you don't need anything from anyone else, you're free to give to all of them.

And that's what actual freedom and joy and peace in the Christian life look like.

So that's my anti magic rant. It was less ranty than I was earlier.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, amen. That is our show for tonight. Thank you very much everyone for listening. If you didn't happen to contact us live, we'd still like to hear from you. You can email us at LordOfSpirits and AncientFaith.com you can message us through our Facebook page. You can also leave us a [e-mail] LordOfSpirits and if you have basic questions about Orthodox Christianity or you need help to find a parish, head over to orthodoxintro.org join us for our live broadcast.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

On the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific Pacific. Winter nights we sang in tune played inside the months of moon. Never think of nether, Never let this spell last forever.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

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[Father Stephen DeYoung]

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[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Thank you, good night and may God bless you and keep you.

You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and Blessing. Revelation, chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.