Nice post, Mutt. Very nice.
There's more than crystals, rings and sage in the care package I'm sending you home with, too. Wait and see.

I am afraid I don't understand well those matters about visiting cemeteries to solve a problem or to find a relieve, or the usage of stones. I never hide I am catholic. My advice, of course you can take it or leave it which is needless to say, is to go back to Christ, which also implies a surrender, prayer, the frequency of sacraments, mass, especially confession, is always very helpful for that kind of problems. Now I feel like I was an attorney LOL. Just an advice. Maybe I have not got the real sense of your post. Wishing you get rid of that barrier you describes.

I try hard not to discount anything. If I'm going to try to label myself according to belief in faith I think I would have hard time doing it.
When I attend regular church services they're Christian services.
I've been a member of the Mormon church (LDS), but no longer.
I wear a hematite cross every day, it never comes off. It was blessed by a Catholic Bishop, who is a renowned exorcist (which is how I encountered him, though the work I do in the paranormal field).
I also wear a St. Michael medal, which also never comes off, and was also blessed by the Bishop.
I'm an ordained minister (non-denominational - also something that came to be because of the work in the paranormal). I do not have a church, nor is that in my plans. I can, and do practice the serving of communion, and have a small group of people I take it to in their homes since they are unable to leave their homes for one reason or another.
I also believe in the great powers that exist right here on Earth (though I believe that they were all set in motion by our creator) - I believe in healing through touch, the laying on of hands, the use of crystals and other stones, metals and minerals. For example, I sleep with an enormous amethyst hanging from my bedpost, and the amethyst is to help remain open and receptive emotionally. I have southwest native American "kachinas" on my desk and filing cabinet at work, and have dreamcatchers hung in my office.
I burn sage and "smudge" homes and people and use different incense to clear out negative energy or calm restless spirits.
I have many friends who are practicing wiccans or pagans, and I learn so much from them. I think there's so much value in the combination of practices - as long as they are positive, uplifting, healing and include love at the heart of them.

Hi Tracy.

We believe that it's natural that men have curisity for the natural events, those that have a scientific explanation, and for other events that have not, the paranormal events. However, we also believe that the people that starts to study those fenomeni must be very careful too, because they can go from being a researcher to be the studied object, without even noticing. You said you knew a catholic exorcist and I am sure he had warned you about this risk. And that's the matter I want to warn about. This process: researcher ---> wizard ---> warlock ---> satanist. (I have doubts about the words wizard and warlock, I don't know if I am translating well).

A researcher tries to investigate some hidden forces, but his interest is merely scientific, and in the course of his studies or he does not find anything interesting, leaving that matter, or descovers the magical character of them. If he continues he will become a wizard, someone that tries to use those forces. Later he can become a warlock, someone that knows, after descovering it, that those "forces" are in fact evil personal beings that he wants to use (and it happens the contrary, those evil personal beings use him). At the end that warlock becomes a satanist, someone that worships Satan with full conscience, knowing what he's doing.

We, catholics, organise the events that can happen in 1. natural events: that happen in nature, and men can make 2. praeternatural events (paranormal): we always believe those events have it's cause in invisible beings: angels (following the order from God) or devils (following their own evil will), no more options. We distingish them by their effects. 3. supernatural events: those made exclusively by God, like miracles.

We also belive that God freely can give certain gifts to some men, commonly from birth. And here we apply the same rule to distingish a divine origin or a diabolic origin, the effects.

So for us, those paranormal events that bring bad, sickness, terror, madness, sadness, depression, even posession, etc, have always its cause in the devil. We also believe the devil, since cannot show himself, because if men saw evil, him, AS IT IS, would never follow him, has to use lie, other ways to bring men to worship him. For the devil it does not matter if he gets men worshipping trees, or stones or animals or "spirits" or "winter solstices", all he wants is having men worshipping anything but God, to keep men far from God, to keep men in constant error. So he, being an excellent liar, he inveted lie, he lied by the very first time, knows how to fuddle men making them belive they are testing with "forces" or talking to a "dead man" or talking to "Napoleon".

Of course, we believe those wiccans worship Satan, depending on each case, some knowing and some for ignorance. So we also believe that when a "medium" talks, the devil talks through him, though he says he's "the dead brother" of a guest to that show, or even a "extraterrestrial being". All is lie in the land of Satan. And we are awared that Satan is a very clever being, he can lie using very sophisticate knots. A normal man cannot resist that attack if it wasn't for the help of God. And that's why we believe we must practise sacraments, especially confession, as a shield. We go more beyond, we believe all that is behind that "New Age" or that "Neo Paganism" is the devil.  Anyways, we don't acept an irrational threat to the devil, we believe Christ defeated him, and that he's waiting for judgement-- and meanwhile has some freedom to cause bad, of course, we overunderstand that if the devil was totally free, he would destroy all creation, he would kill all men--. Like all the rest of souls, that are in hell, purgatory or heaven, never in a cemetery. If there's something in a cemetery, we of course believe that it has its cause in the devil. So that's the reason of my worry. Just to warn you about this, and ask you to be careful with those matters. I would like to add a testimony of a "paranormal events" researcher, that without noticing, without wanting, he was "going beyond the line" and suffered the consecuences, but I don't find that book now, from the general exorcist of Rome.

Thanks.

Great post, Alva!

While our thinking/beliefs aren't exactly the same on some points, I definitely will say that I agree there is a huge danger in paranormal investigation. There is a line that I don't believe should be crossed. We caution people all the time about the dangers of practicing in the occult. For example, many of the problems we've encountered have been because people use Ouija boards in their homes and "invite" something into their homes and into their lives that they really didn't want. I do believe in Satan, I do believe in demonic forces, an I do believe that they can destroy lives, entering through trickery and deception. We caution people against "playing" with the occult and the spirit world all the time, and often clean up the consequences of people not abiding those cautionary warnings.

I forgot to reply ... Tonight I have more time.

We agree. If you take a look to the general opinion from exorcists, they all agree that the main cause of those events that can end in possesion is playing with the occult, especially ouija/spiritism. We do not only consider that those "games" are a sin (lol, yes we believe sin exists unlike that New Age) against the 1st. Commandament, but also a way of entering in the land of Satan, where he and the ones that did follow him, are the kings. There's no need to say that the great most of the people that practise that do not even know, and fall in the trap: they believe they are talking to dead people, or to extraterrestrial beings, or to spirits ... lol ... all lie, yes, the devil seems to have a great imagination, a good actor. Here I repeat the same I said in a past post, if the devil (or devils, in plural, if you prefer) reveals himself, no normal man would follow him, so he has to lie, to invent anything, because though he would belove having human beings worshipping him, he knows he can't, so at least he gets happy having people worshipping anything but God, through lie, and pulling them towards sin, to disobbey God that forbade the practise of the occult. Other way is if he cannot do men practise the occult, at least to worshipp themselves, like he did worship himself. "If you research inside you, you will descover a huge potential, a positive energy, you are God" (New Age) "I will even say to you how to do it, with a sorcerer manual". Very sadly many men fall in the trap of all these false promises, and end doing what Satan wants: the removal of moral. "There's no any sin","There's no any objetive reality", "There's nothing stable", Moral Relativism.

Other sophisticate knot is the sincretism: having men mixing all religions, having a dozen of incompatible philosophies dancing all together in their minds. (New Age). For example, having many christians also acepting incompatible and opposed ideas with christianity, like reencarnation or that Ying and Yang, that oriental absurd philosophy. (We have demonstrated logically that an anti-God cannot exist). And not only mixing, but also picking, like a restaurant menu, the things one like of any religion, removing of course moral: picking only the things one find convenient at any time. Or having many christians worshipping an "Architect of the Universe". We can expect anything.

His first lie against humankind was to promise men that "you would be like God if you disobbey Him" (as if sin was something God invented to keep men in ignorance and to not remove Him out of his chair, to not let them realise that they are gods), to pull men to execute the same sin he did, bringing the same results that brought to him: man fell.

Of course, we believe the main job the devil (the devils) does is temptation (then, more rarely they can also go beyond that: infection, obsession, possession, commonly as result of practising with the occult). In a first step we have no way to distingish the origin of the temptations men suffer, some come from the world, others from flesh and others from the devil/s. We only can have some suspices, never 100%, that those temptations come from the devil when they are very strong, almost constant, during a long time and about matters that come suddenly, not from the normal behaviour or ambient of a man. For example, today we know that Teresa of Calcuta suffered the temptation from the devil, when still girl, from the day after she became nun, she started to suffer very heavy temptations against the existence of God, and never abandoned her.

The devil can also attack saints, injecting a "false mysticism", he even dares to take a "corporal image" of Christ. And by the way, the mysticism of New Age has nothing to do with Christian mysticism, they use the same word, but are contrary. New Age says a man that he can get the "level of union" by himself, simply efforting or making some sorcerer job, or taking drugs that "open the mind, and let energy flow", really seriously damaging those men. Christian mysticism to the contrary ensures that a man can only get that level of prayer (union) if God wants, if God gives him, no matter what that man does, and of course, a man cannot force God to do anything. Very sadly many men also fall into this sophisticate trap.

And of course, the devil (now I want to let clear, that we, catholics, when say "devil" in singular also mean the plural) tempts to do those practises of the occult, to stablish a "contact with him" that naturally have a serious risk and many times if not stopped in time ends in a disaster for men. He can only bring to men pain (in different ways), that's the only he has to give.