The Spiritual Realm Has Many Branches

Everyday I read three newspapers on line and one daily delivered to my condo. The one with the largest number of Christian contributors is the Fargo Forum. It also has four writers with different religious views and one is left with the impression Fargo, and places like it, are dominated by Christian thinking.

That's why it is educational to read columns by natives of the U.S. who have no background in Christianity and who seem to be oblivious to its presence in the country. I'm sure there are many such pockets and people.  I don't know where they are nor would I know how to get acquainted with these people. I wish I could.

I came across a long piece in the New York Times by a female writer who grew up in an occult community in Florida. She wrote there is a sizable group near the site of the Daytona 500. It is near DeLand where I visited on an economic development project years ago. The larger community is very conservative Christian.

Having grown up in an occult environment, the author had always felt the pull of it into her adult life. For some reason she did not shake grief about a friend who had died a few years ago. She had not seen the fellow for several years before he died. An advertisement about an occult gathering back near her childhood area in Florida opened to her the possibility of talking to her dead friend. She calls herself a "skeptical believer" in matters of witchcraft and other branches of the occult.

I have experienced a couple of gatherings not altogether unlike what her weekend was like. One was a Native American Sweat and the other an intense racial tolerance gathering that I was asked to leave because I missed a session or two. 

The author's weekend was filled with intense conversations with other participants and leaders about feeling "energy" and being in the presence of spiritual objects, rocks and carvings, which gave off spiritual powers. Her goal she told each person helping her was to find and visit with her long dead friend.

Her article gives a vivid description of visits with many people there. Each had some different way to channel back in time or channel her friend. She came closer as the weekend moved along and then did ultimately have a short visit with him.

Superman's powers came from Kryptonite. Paul in the Bible had several visits with Jesus long after Jesus was dead.  

The powers of Kryptonite, Paul's and the link author's visits with dead people are beyond my understanding. They all make up the spiritual world.