"What I learned in secret is now everywhere," said Peter, a former occultist.[1] In a recent telephone conversation, he explained how today's children and youth explore occult worlds and experience magical thrills that seem harmless. The lure of secret powers -- especially when experienced through role-playing games that immerse players in mythical worlds and virtual experiences -- stir obsessive curiosity about forbidden forces. And, as they captivate their young fans, they fast erode the traditional values that built safe boundaries and brought warnings of danger.

Peter knows this all too well. He was active in occult work for about 30 years. As an occultist he was initiated to the level of a 10o-1o, and was a Temple Master in the "Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn"[2] best known for its most infamous member, Aleister Crowley. Peter studied and mastered a number of other systems of ritual magick.

"I did everything God considers an abomination in Deuteronomy 18" he told me. Then he described the enticing power of today's occult games and entertainment that are blinding our children to truth and actual reality.

Why would our nation, so richly blessed by God, embrace the occult? What caused this amazing change in values? How could it happen so fast!

Actually, our nation had already been "softened up" by the 1960s when the rising rebellion against God erupted into public view. The century-old pursuit of social solidarity based on Georg Hegel's occult philosophy and consensus process had been an effective tool for change.

Hegel's pattern for "group thinking" denied God's absolute truths and trained people to adapt to "continual change" and group consensus. By year 2000, it had been embraced by schools, corporations, community organizations, mainline churches and political structures across America. Through the global media, people around the world have caught Hegel's vision of spiritual synthesis --an enticing blend of spiritual illusions and practices that appeal to our capricious human nature.

Hegel studied alchemy, Kabbalah (caballa, kaballa, etc.) and theosophy. He "read widely on Mesmerism, psychic phenomena, dowsing, precognition and sorcery. He publicly associated himself with known occultists.... He believed in an Earth Spirit and corresponded with colleagues about the nature of magic.... He aligned himself, informally, with 'Hermetic' societies such as the Freemasons and the Rosicrucians" and embraced their symbolic systems of sacred circles, mystical triangles and astrological signs.[3]

Considering Hegel's occult connections, it's not surprising that his teachings would undermine Biblical faith and all opposing facts. Nor is it strange that the postmodern generation has been largely immunized against genuine Christianity. After all, Hegel's revolutionary dialectic process was the center-piece of Soviet brainwashing. It effectively purged God's unchanging truths and filled the vacuum with evolving "truths" and enticing dreams.

While Communist leaders embraced Hegel's process, they ignored his occult beliefs. In contrast, the Western world began to restore those pagan roots long before revolutionary baby-boomers began shouting their demands for sensual freedom and earth-centered spirituality. In other words, the sixties didn't initiate this radical change; the turmoil of the sixties was the result of the psycho-social program of "re-learning" which had begun to transform America decades earlier.

[An excerpt from " Role-Playing Games & Popular Occultism" www.crossroad.to/articles2/2003/occult-rpg.htm

Endnotes:

1. Not his real name. For his safety, we are calling him Peter. If you have any questions, you can write to him at this email address: askpeter_bba@yahoo.com

2. "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was an English expression of the Nineteenth-Century occult revival in Europe. Dedicated to such practices as ceremonial magic and divination, it valued these more as gateways to true understanding of reality than for their intrinsic merit." www.tolkiensociety.org/1992/ tcc_ab09.html

3. Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001, pages 1-3. This Hermetic Tradition originated in Egypt. According to The Gnostic Society, "The Hermetic tradition is usually understood as a form of "pagan Gnosticism", developing in Egypt during the same historical period that saw the flowering of the Christian Gnostic tradition."