Submitted by Now What on
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The Facts:
Doreen Virtue, once a prominent figure in the New Age movement, has now turned to Christianity and warns of the dangers of all things New Age.
Reflect On:
Can we see that a 'certainty' about the rightness about one's own belief, and a corresponding 'certainty' about the wrongness of any other beliefs that don't align with it, is this the real deception?
Most people who have dabbled in New Age circles will recognize the name Doreen Virtue. She was a well-known channeler of what she considered Angelic entities, and was an author of many books and oracle/divination cards.
Virtue had an experience of Jesus in an Episcopal church in early 2017, and says she has given up the angels, divination cards and has turned away from the New Age movement itself. She is no longer promoting or selling her earlier books via her website, and has had her name removed from products like angel cards as much as possible. These cards are still being sold by online outlets such as her former publisher Hay House.
A-Z List Of New Age Practices To Avoid
Virtue’s newly reconfigured website now espouses Christianity as the true path, Jesus as the only true savior, and the Bible as the incontestable authority of truth itself in the spiritual realm. In a post on her website from earlier this year entitled ‘An A-Z List of New Age Practices to Avoid, and Why,’ Virtue takes it upon herself to explain the hidden dangers of practices that she attributes to the New Age and why we should stop practicing them.
Encyclopedia of New Age Practices to Avoid
The New Age promises secret and hidden wisdom, healing, higher self-esteem, love, financial success, and inner peace. The New Age teaches that we are all “little gods” who can manifest whatever and whomever we want. The reality however, is that you never arrive at the point of true and lasting happiness, so you keep addictively seeking and searching.
We have found that many people are unaware that they’re involved with spiritually dangerous New Age practices. We understand, because the same thing happened to us in the past.
We made this list to help you identify and avoid these deceptive practices. We wish someone would have made and shown us a similar list many years ago! We’re not “being negative” or “fear-based” with this list. We’re also not hating on anyone, or judging anyone. In fact, it would hateful of us if we didn’t warn you about the dangers of the new age. We love and care about you and everyone!
An examination of the list has Doreen Virtue warning about everything she attributes to the New Age, including many revered ancient practices such as meditation, drumming circles, and Feng Shui. While she says that she is not being ‘fear-based’, her proclamations reveal otherwise. Warning of any practice that is not aligned with Christianity and the dictates of the Bible is grounded in the fear of influence by so-called demonic entities. To me, there is a fundamentalist bias here rooted in a shallow understanding of the nature and purpose of ‘good’ and ‘evil.’
What I have enjoyed in some of the teachings of the so-called ‘New Age’ movement was the recognition that the good/evil polarity provides a context for our journey of growth and evolution, but that this polarity is not the ultimate foundation of the universe, as I discuss in great depth in my Lucifer Series.
It takes humility and wisdom to recognize that there are many paths to the One, which support the kind of personal growth and evolution that we are looking for. Different individuals will benefit from different paths, Christianity certainly being one of them. But believing one’s own practice is the only true path to salvation is dangerous; indeed, this belief is the foundation of most of the world’s major conflicts.
The Lure Of Certainty
There was a time when Doreen Virtue was certain that she was channeling benevolent angels and sharing the ultimate truth about the spiritual world through divinely inspired angel cards. Now here is what she says about them:
Angel Cards – Demons disguise themselves as angels, and can give amazingly accurate predictions which tangle you up in a satanic web of deceit. The demons will give you a mixture of truth and lies, to hook you in and lead you to deception.
One would think that this experience would demonstrate to Doreen Virtue that a naive certainty about her beliefs founded on her spiritual experience should be tempered with discernment. However, all she has changed is the belief itself. She remains certain that she is in touch with the truth about the spiritual world, now through Jesus and Christianity. Her certainty is founded on a spiritual experience she had of Jesus. Her certainty about angels was also founded on spiritual experiences she had. So why is she not questioning her newfound certainty on the basis of how wrong she says her past perception turned out to be?
Blaming The New Age
It is a question of personal responsibility. Doreen Virtue does not seem to acknowledge that she is responsible for what she has created in her life. She does not seem to connect the level of vibration of the entities she was contacting with her own level of vibration. She is not looking within herself to see why things have not worked out the way she wanted, preferring to say that ‘The New Age left me broke and broken, and I don’t want anyone to repeat these mistakes that come from the devil’s deceptions!’
In the above quote she is pointing the finger claiming that the New Age is responsible for her ending up ‘broke and broken,’ not her own creations, choices, or lack of discernment. In essence, she does not take personal responsibility for her life being as it is, preferring to blame her fate on the demons she was fooled by. And now, she continues to reach outside herself for personal salvation, believing that the only path to salvation is an adherence to the Bible.
There is a lot of nuance here that is worthy of continued discussion. No doubt there are people who employ so-called new age practices in a very superficial way, for the purposes of ego gratification and self-aggrandizement. There is also no doubt that for some devout Christians, the practice of their faith is a significant catalyst for their spiritual growth. Understanding and respecting the common principles that underlie all successful spiritual practices is what brings us together.
Richard Enos