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HALLOWEEN, THE RISE OF THE OCCULT AND CHASING THE DARKNESS

Fr Billy Swan


For the past few years in the run up to Halloween, RTE has advertised the PUCA festival that takes place in Athboy, Drogheda and Trim Co. Meath from 31st October to 2nd November. ‘Mischief comes calling’ is the repeated slogan to attract our interest in a festival that traces its origins to the ancient Celtic tradition of Samhain – the old Irish for summer’s end. It is interesting to note how the official website for the PUCA Festival also promotes a procession with fires, masks and communion with the spirits of the dead. So, what do we make of all this? Is it all a bit of harmless fun or is the popularity of the festival a symptom of a more sinister change in our culture?


For a long time, it was assumed that the decline of Christianity in the West would be replaced with the absence of belief altogether. However, this is not exactly the way things are turning out because out of the void that Christianity is leaving behind has come a range of alternative belief systems including paganism and witchcraft. For example, here in Wexford, at least one shop in the town trades in items associated with Wicca – a form of paganism inspired by ancient druidry and earth-worship.


In Spring this year, Ireland’s entry to the Eurovision song contest was by an artist who goes by the name of Bambi Thug who uses they/them pronouns and identifies as a ‘goth gremlin witch’. Bambi Thug labels her music as ‘ouija pop’ and claims it is imbued with magic spells. The performance of this artist was celebrated by the mainstream media with any reservations about Ireland being represented by all of this being off limits.


On the global stage, there is increasing evidence of the appeal of the occult. Online, there is a virtual subculture known as WitchTok. Content with the hashtag WitchTok now has a staggering 30 billion views, consisting mostly of young people teaching their followers how to perform various magic rituals.


What all this amounts to is that the collapse of Christianity in Ireland and in the West in recent decades is leaving a dangerous vacuum that is not being left vacant but being filled with other forms of pagan spiritualty, religion and worship. In other words, there is evidence that Ireland is ‘re-paganising’ or reverting to the worship of false gods like it did before we accepted the Christian faith back in the fifth century. This regression is testified by St Patrick himself in his Confessio where he talks about the transformation of the Irish by their acceptance of the Gospel that coincided with their abandonment of false gods:


‘Ireland where they never had knowledge of God-and until now they celebrated only idols and unclean things. Yet recently, what a change: they have become a prepared people of the Lord, and they are now called the sons of God. And the Irish leaders’ sons and daughters are seen to become the monks and virgins of Christ’ (Confessio, 41).


It is no coincidence that before our conversion to Christianity when we courted pagan gods, the Irish had a well-earned reputation for being savage, uncivilized war mongers. According to an old adage, we become what we worship. Research shows that all the pagan empires of the world with false deities propping them up, became controlling of their subjects and brutal in the extreme. The Roman Empire is the best example with all their gods who demanded allegiance and whose appeasement was closely followed by obedience to the Emperor and those in power.


Ireland has experimented with paganism and superstition before. Moving away from the light of Christ and into darkness again is inevitably leading to a breakdown of civilization, the family and society in general. It leads to confusion about what is true and false, what is right and wrong and a bleaker future for our youth who are struggling to find hope. The way things are going, far from it being the established order to rebel against, traditional Christian faith is becoming the last countercultural force that has the confidence and resolve to resist this slide into darkness and chaos.


The drama of this drift towards paganism should not come as a surprise given what we find in Scripture. In God’s Word, what we find are two categories of people – those who believe in and worship the living God and those who believe in and worship false gods. Contrary to what we might expect, the division is not between those who believe and those who don’t but rather the God or gods we worship. Despite the protests of hardened atheists who deny they believe in any god, all of us have some highest good, a summum bonum that we pursue, that we value most of all and that directs our choices and actions. We all bow down before some ultimate good greater than ourselves whether that be money, power, honour or pleasure (the classic four substitutes for God according to St Thomas Aquinas) or the One, true and living God Creator of heaven and earth and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the words of the late Archbishop Fulton Sheen, if we don’t worship at the altar of God we will create ourselves one. This is precisely what the Jews did with their worship of the golden calf constructed on an altar of their own making.


In the Gospels, a crucial aspect of Jesus's ministry was exorcism - driving out the spirits of darkness, evil, sin and corruption and replacing them with the Holy Spirit of peace, right order, harmony and justice. In n Matthew 12:43-45 he suggests that once demons are driven out by him, they can easily return to their own haunts where they tear asunder the lives of those they possess. If you doubt this ask any reformed alcoholic or drug addict on how easy it is to regress and return back to old habits.


In a recent lecture entitled ‘Christ the King and the Return of the Dark gods’ (posted below), convert to Catholicism and former Anglican bishop Gavin Ashenden warns that when it comes to the battle with good and evil, there is no neutral ground. He said:


‘Tragically over the last 150 years our culture has been slowly and methodically emptied of Christ's presence. Christ has been driven out of the schools, driven out of the instruments of government, driven out of the media driven out of the professions, driven out of the public square, driven out of our literature, driven out of our imaginations. There is nowhere they have not sought to drive Christ out.  And what have they left? They have left an emptiness’.


This emptiness does not remain empty for long. As we have seen with the popularity of the PUCA festival, WitchTok and an exaggerated celebration of Halloween even in Catholic schools, there are now worrying signs that the momentum is moving in the wrong direction with many experimenting with or consciously embracing forms of paganism. There is evidence that a swing towards a cultural paganism is now taking place. This is a new challenge that the Christian Churches are now facing - a challenge wholly different to atheism or complete indifference towards spiritual matters.


Make no mistake about it, this is a spiritual battle we are involved in and denial of this fact is handing victory to the enemy before we even begin. This not an option for us who care about each other, the innocence of our children, the family, the future and the civilization that keeps us together. It is not a question of picking fights at every corner or always being on the defensive. Rather it is a call to have the courage of our convictions, to boldly proclaim Christ as the Way, the Truth and the Life and his kingdom whose light chases the darkness. For as St Paul reminds us: ‘For it is not against human enemies that we have to struggle but against the principalities and the ruling forces who are masters of the darkness in this world, the spirits of evil in the heavens’ (Eph. 6:11-12).


The truth of Paul’s words is seen in all the great movements of our time, be they social, cultural or political. There is always a spiritual undercurrent, good or bad, that drives them. Maud Gonne, the English-woman and convert to both Catholicism and Nationalism, wrote in 1938:


‘I believe every political movement on earth has its counterpart in the spirit world and the battles we fight here have perhaps been already fought out on another plane and great leaders often draw their unexplained power from this. I cannot conceive a material movement that has not a spiritual basis. It was this that drew me so powerfully towards the Catholic Church’

(Cited in A.N. Jeffares – A. MacBride White, eds., ‘A Servant of the Queen: the Autobiography of Maud Gonne’, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1995, p.336).


For us Catholic Christians who are sent on mission and whose vocation is to evangelise the culture, our task is to place our finger on the pulse of these spiritual movements that are driving the changes in our culture and to evaluate them in the light of the Gospel and the movement of the Spirit of God. One question we need to ask is whether we are possessed by an idea or whether we are lead not just by an idea but by the truth. Gavin Ashenden spoke about this in his talk mentioned above, how Western culture that has embraced abortion, euthanasia, gender theory have done so by ‘ideological possession’ whereby an idea becomes so dominant and powerful that it is pushed through at all costs with little allowance for critique or objection. In this scenario, ideas possess people which is a form of slavery, blindness and possession by the spirit of darkness.


This culture of ‘ideological possession’ is what Catholic Christians must resist, armed with the spirit of faith, love and truth. We must not be complacent in the struggle against evil and constantly remind ourselves that Christ’s coming is accompanied by the giving way of darkness, evil and sin. That is why is was so heartening to see a strong pushback from parents against objectionable content to SPHE programmes that was uncovered thanks to a former SPHE teacher who uncovered the inappropriate and destructive ideologies that are now being pushed and imposed on the youth. While this will not be the last battle fought, it gives us hope that parents in particular are mobilising in saying 'No' to a vision of sexuality in order to say 'Yes' to something more respectful, loving and beautiful.


I conclude with recent words of Pope Francis who said: ‘Our secularized world is teeming with magicians, occultism, spiritism, astrologers and satanic sects. If we kick the devil out the door, he tries to return through the window. If we overcome him with faith, he seeks to return through superstition’. As we mark Halloween, may all forms of darkness, evil, deceit and worship of false gods be dispelled by the true light of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead for ‘Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but have the light of life’ (John 8:12).




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