AUGUST 2, 2015

TESTIMONY OF A FORMER OCCULTIST – 01

Carla Smith

Blessings Michael.

The information on your web site is timely and much needed. I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian who by the grace and mercy of Christ Jesus was saved from the occult. I was deeply involved and can attest to the things you have shared.

I was led to your site today and had no idea about the dangers of homeopathy. Thank you for your obedience to our Lord.  Keep up the Faith and the good fight. 

I am an African/Native American woman. Our family were nominal Christians. I attended Catholic schools but we weren’t Catholic. Ever since I can remember I was always afraid, I now realize that somewhere in my family history there was occultism and this left the door wide open for me to be oppressed by demons. I also must say my father and mother were divorced, I had been molested as a child and my mother was in an affair with a married man. The sins of the ancestors and parents do infect/affect the children if there is no repentance and submission to Christ. I could “see” spirits and was petrified every night. 

Every time our school took us to Mass my mind would be filled with sexual thoughts. I was no more than ten years old. I felt so much shame, I was very sexual with my girlfriends since the age of six and by the time I was 11 was smoking marijuana and drinking beer to numb my pain. I was a compulsive liar and was spoiled and filled with anger and rage. I started having sex at 12 and had over 40 partners some women but mostly men by the age of 22. 

When I was 13, I realized there had to be more to life than this. I became interested in healthy living and became a vegetarian and began studying alternative medicine.  I knew that there was a spiritual realm because of my experiences as a child but didn’t believe in Christ and was attracted to Native American shamanism and eventually traditional African religion. I was mostly just reading and doing magic from books at home until I began University. I majored in African Studies and eventually became a Black Nationalist. Most in my environment were completely anti-christ. We believed that Christianity was the “white man’s” religion used as a tool for slavery and colonization of people of color all across the globe. This is when I got more serious and began meeting priest and priestesses in various African traditions: voodoo, ifa, egyptian/kemetic mystery systems, santeria, and akan. This, coupled with all things new-age and health-oriented, led me deep into the occult. I must say that my intentions were truly to serve God. I felt that as a black American, slavery had cut me off from my true spiritual identity. I thought as a priestess I could help heal some of the ills of my community spiritually through the deities I began to serve, and physically as an herbalist and healthy food advocate. 

I took yoga classes, astrology, reiki, visited shamans from the Amazon, and Shinto priests. I was game for anything EXCEPT the Bible and Islam. I was now married and my husband and I both became initiates, first with a voodoo Catholic priestess and then with an Egyptian religious group. This is where I began to doubt if we were actually in a cult. Our “guru” was controlling us. We were allowed only raw foods (raw fruit and vegetables) and would have to stay up for hours praying and meditating. We carried shrines in our homes to our specific deities that were determined by divination and astrology. 

I have a strong personality and always cared a lot about others, and I began to question our guru’s character.

She was supposedly evolved, but she was often mean to others and EVERYTHING involved a fee. We had a ceremony we were to perform at a professor’s land in another state. The professor was having difficulties in her home because some Native American spirits were unsettled. My role was that of a medium. I was to invite the spirits inside me so they could communicate what they needed to be at peace. On this particular occasion we were going to invite an Egyptian deity to dwell within me permanently to be my guide and help others. Supposedly we were opening a portal to another dimension so she could enter earth and reside within me. Well I had already been questioning this woman’s integrity and part of my training was to be hypnotized and have past life regression. Every time she would try to regress me I wouldn’t get hypnotized, part of the visualization was my going down circular stairs. I would always encounter an old man with a long white beard who would block my descent. I would then be fully conscious and so she could never hypnotize me. 

When I was younger, I thought it was a guru name Bawa Muhaiyadeen a Sufi mystic, but since coming to Christ and understanding the Saints I think it might have been Saint Paisios, a monk from Greece. Anyway she was upset with me for not doing a job she had assigned me and the day before our trip she said “You better get your act together or you won’t make it through sekmet (the deity’s) portal”. 

We were told never to discuss our training outside our group but I did that day. I visited my former herbal/radionics teacher and he went into trance and with tears said “she is evil”. I left her a message that I was through and went home with my infant son, my husband came home and thought I was wrong and as he left for priesthood training I began to hear strange sounds from the altars we had in the next room. Even though I left her, I still was going to serve these Egyptian gods but they started to turn on me. My home began filling with darkness and shadow beings began flying through the house. I ran in my room with my baby and hid under the covers. Books began flying off the walls and I just kept praying. I was so scared. After my husband returned he told me all the ugly things she had said and we both began to question why I had such a crazy experience. Well my husband had met a high priest who had given him his number and after this experience we wanted help so we called him. This led us into the West African religion of the Yoruba people. 

He divined that we were very spiritual people and had great abilities, this is why so many gurus wanted us as their initiates. He was very nice and sincere in his beliefs but unfortunately was deceived by Satan. His religion practiced animal sacrifice and we now were involved in that. As a vegetarian I was very uncomfortable with that and kept wondering why so many rituals. Why serve these deities if there was one God. Everybody said you’ll understand after this initiation or that ritual. I had a dream that we were at his home and he was surrounded by his spiritual children, my husband was to the side and I was by a door with our son. I opened it and ran until I reached a house that I knew to be my home. I felt like this was a message to leave this faith and we did. 

Shortly after we moved to a rural state, we had wanted our son out of the city and moved to another state where we didn’t know anyone. Our landlord was a Wiccan witch and into kabbala she rented us the place because of my native background and spiritual vibes. We were now more new age/native shamanism because the African practices were just too scary.  Though these faiths say you should have good character, it was more about ritual than conversion of heart and repentance of sin. Hence from my inherited sin from Adam to my own from a life of depravity I was a mess. I now was possessed and my thoughts were not my own. I often thought of death and was still addicted to marijuana, I had major sexual issues and couldn’t perform marital relations. I felt justified by my sense of self-importance and my embodiment as the “goddess” energies. 

This facade all began to crumble when one day while praying to a tree or rock I heard a voice from within say “I don’t require this from you, you don’t need to do these things”. I then began to have dreams about Christ, I would be having a nightmare and would call his name and be delivered from danger, instantly. He began encouraging me to read Scripture and to fast and pray. He gave me a list of things to do to heal our marriage but within a couple of weeks I disobeyed and loudly proclaimed “I will NEVER be a Christian”. Well our life became hell, after we fell back into deep sin everything bad that could happen did. We lost our home, car, job, my husband lost his scholarship for grad school and we had to move back to the city and live in my childhood home where all my scary nights began. 

I was like a shell, was always afraid and wouldn’t leave the house without divination. The demons tormented me nonstop.  My thoughts were erratic and NEVER at peace. Once I was waiting for the bus with my husband and son and this old white man who looked homeless came to me and grabbed my hand, it was like time stood still. He started preaching Christ and telling me all these things from the Lord, personal stuff only God could have told him. He said the Lord loved me and just wanted me to come home to him. I still resisted, this was contrary to my whole belief system. 

Well we were pregnant with our second child and I was still under oppression and very unstable, my husband and I were always fighting and I could barely take care of our son. He was always having nightmares and I knew I was to blame but didn’t know the answers. One day in our downtown area my husband and I were arguing in front of a Catholic Church, this old black woman saw us and came to me and hugged me she said she knew we were homeless (staying with family) and that I needed to pray to Jesus and his mother and walked away. Later that day I went back by myself to that Church and saw her. She knew so much about my life and pointed to my belly and said Satan wants my baby’s soul.  She prayed for me and said to wait for her. When she returned, she gave me $300 dollars, a hundred each for the Trinity. I asked her name and she said ‘the lady who loves Jesus’. Well after this I remembered as a child one night I awoke and saw a woman standing at the foot of my bed; she had on a long sky blue dress and a darker blue veil. She just stared at me, I wasn’t scared but closed my eyes and when I opened them she was gone. I told our school priest I thought I saw Mary and he said I was dreaming. 

Well after a couple of years of God sending people, I finally surrendered my life to Him and joined a Protestant Church. To be honest at first it was out of fear from the demons that were tormenting me, as I knew from my dreams that they were scared of Christ. Not for a while did I really began to love and trust him. Just playing hymns calmed our spirits, my sons nightmares stopped and I began to believe I could really be healed and not just have band aids patching me up. 

Well I was still full of unclean spirits, the Church we were in had NO idea about deliverance or spiritual warfare. 

I met someone online and traveled over 100 miles to their home. They were white and had a home church. The night before they were attacked while praying for me, their roof was hit with lightning and the Lord told them the demon that did it. When I arrived it had been a spirit that I had made an offering to for my first pregnancy – his symbol is a lightning bolt.  Well they prayed for me and called things out, I began vomiting and manifesting spirits. Afterwards we all knew I needed more deliverance and realized God’s grace to send me, the former Black Nationalist to three white Christians for deliverance. This began my road to healing and recovery. I left EVERYONE I used to know. I kept two friends from this time in my life one was a backsliding Christian (praise God she returned to him after seeing my journey) and another who wasn’t an occultist, just cultural. My mate and I were well known in our area and to others it seemed we just disappeared. The Lord opened a door for us to live in a Quaker community for a year with our two children, this was a time of testing because we didn’t know most Quakers aren’t Christian anymore and a lot are gay but he prevailed and in 2007 we had a Christian wedding (our first was a voodoo one). 

Well things were looking up, we both got jobs in S. Korea at the YMCA but found out I was pregnant and decided not to go. We hadn’t made plans for anything else so found ourselves staying with a friend looking for work and a home. We decided to move to California (a friend had a guest house) I went first and my husband was to follow. I didn’t know my friend was a dabbler in the occult so we encountered demons in our home, very angry that we had left the fold. Until a friend showed me the authority I have in Christ Jesus. The problem was while my husband had returned to his hometown in preparation to moving to California he connected with a family who he was close with and became a Muslim. He said he didn’t care if I was Christian but this is what he was doing, he wanted us to come back and he would enroll the children in an Islamic school. We move with my mom and he was 2 hours away working, I was due in about a month when he got a job offer to be a teacher in a Muslim school in the Caribbean. We moved within a week and I gave birth two weeks later. 

Because the island was small and his was a visible position I dressed islamically out of respect for him. I knew no one but the Muslims and was very isolated. Our children attended the school and seemed happy but my son secretly told me he didn’t like the prayers and didn’t believe this way. I told him to pretend to do the prayers but to really talk to God on his own. The Muslims were 98% Palestinians but most teachers were black. Everyone encouraged me to convert and shared passages from Quran extolling Jesus and Mary. I found a journal my husband wrote on how he really wanted a Muslim wife and why wouldn’t I convert and he now wanted two wives, more specifically the family from his childhood’s daughter (we had always had this struggle, I used to want it as a black nationalist. I thought it could help single moms and then with my sexual issues I thought I owed him that). Anyway within a couple of months I had a dream in which Jesus had his back to me. I secretly renounced Islam and began visiting Churches. Even though it was a US island the community had their own code of justice, so I was nervous about openly renouncing Islam. I would pray to Jesus if I was with others when it was prayer time or act like it was my woman’s monthly in order to avoid the prayer. My husband was upset but I was adamant after my dream. Well I began to make friends outside of the Muslims which made it a little easier. I began to realize some of my experiences that I thought were occultic weren’t; they didn’t fit with Protestantism but they weren’t evil. I now knew that the Lord had always been looking out for me, that there were angels watching over me and that Saint Mary had visited me as a child, helped me through my second pregnancy and was real. I made a friend with a Catholic woman from Texas, she was a Godsend; she helped me want to receive the Sacraments and was a great friend. Well my husband began to question the racism against blacks, why a lot of the Muslim-owned stores sold alcohol, cigarettes and pornography. He became the imam of the school, and delved deeper into the Quran and Hadiths and wondered why some were so explicit on Jesus not being God’s Son. Even though he was now Muslim he KNEW that it was Christ who brought us out of darkness, his confusion was about the Godhead. After years of worshiping demons he was scared of doing the wrong thing. Ultimately it was a dream that led him home, he dreamed it was the rapture and Jesus had his hand pulling him up and then let go. He awoke a changed man with no doubt JESUS is LORD. He resigned and we were unemployed and stuck on the island. We were cared for by the hand of God and caring Christians who literally fed us, we returned to the States pregnant with our fourth child and no money, home or car. 

We went to live with my mom and slowly began rebuilding. As we visited Churches, it seemed most Pastors were either prosperity-centered, homosexual, secret occultist or gay.  I may be wrong but I am pretty discerning. My husband was through with the Church and we worshiped at home. Yet I longed for the fellowship and then for communion, St. Mary and liturgy. After much prayer and turmoil we were baptized in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Our priest actually was going to Chrismate us but we specifically requested baptism. Thank God and Praise his Holy name. 

I know this was very long, and to be honest this is the first time I wrote it all down. Any part you want to use is okay. 

We now have 5 children, I am a stay-at-home mom, and home-school. Please pray for us.

It does help reading the lives of the Saints and having their intercession. What we Orthodox call the Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner,” helps me to be in a continual state of prayer and to calm the storms in my mind. 

I am such a different person and have been delivered from most of the bondage of my youth. I have concerns about how much occult stuff fills the TV and airwaves and I am very clear that there is no grey area. 

It’s truly black or white, hot or cold, God or Satan. I choose Christ Jesus. God bless you and yours.

Carla

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