“Dark spirits manifested in front of me but that only encouraged me more to commit myself to Jesus. I threw out all of my new age tools, trinkets and books. God was delivering me.”
My Christian Upbringing
My Dad grew up Pentecostal. Benny Hinn even preached at his Church in the 70s, so his worldview carried a very pretribulation rapture and prosperity gospel variety of Protestantism. My mom converted when she was 16 to the same variety.
When my parents started their own family, they began attending an Evangelical Missionary Church, moving away from a Pentecostal perspective. We attended this church until my parents divorced when I was 13.
Here are some points of hope from my upbringing:
As a young child, my mom led me through the sinner's prayer. I felt Jesus truly penetrate my heart and I knew I was a child of God.
I loved Jesus dearly. I read my Bible front to back many times and enjoyed Sunday school throughout my early years. I felt God's presence in my life.
The Other Side: Atheism and Cultural Indoctrination
On the other hand, there were some things that went sideways in my life that negatively impacted my faith walk.
Points where things went wrong:
When my parents divorced, we stopped going to church and we stopped talking about God entirely. My Dad quickly became angry with God and then atheist. My mom just did not discuss faith whatsoever.
My mom, a now single mother, decided to put a TV in each of my and my siblings' bedrooms, and thus began my indoctrination into modern culture. I was desperately seeking good role models in my life, especially Christians. I wanted to know what it meant to be a Christian.
I had always believed in the supernatural and had quite a few supernatural experiences in my teenage years; I had felt God's presence in prayer, had fallen into prayer for hours spontaneously, I had heard God's voice, I had prophetic dreams, I had seen a ghost, and I had wrestled with a demon. So I was not at all open to atheism. I was, however, open to “spirituality” and all its various forms.
My TV role models quickly became Oprah, Sylvia Browne, Long Island medium, and the like. They all claimed to be Christian. I didn’t know it then but I know it now, they were teaching many new age beliefs and practices. I was hooked. My life became more and more oriented around the new age/Gnostic version of spirituality that Oprah peddled. And yet I still wanted to know God and obey him. I still read my Bible.
Health Issues Leading to Alternative Health
I had also been struggling with various health issues and this opened a path for me to study alternative medicine and perspectives on health. By the time I was 16, I really liked reading content from occultists who were medical mediums and “healers” like Edgar Cayce and Caroline Myss, who both claimed to be Christian.
Examples of what they taught about alternative health that appealed to me:
Edgar Cayce: He encouraged psychic experiences and hypnosis to reveal solutions to health concerns. This gave me hope that things could be resolved quickly. He also spoke about reincarnation which gave me a sense of understanding and justice. My health could be causing me problems if a past life had caused a spiritual disruption.
Caroline Myss: She was a Catholic who claimed to be gifted with the ability to see and heal people's health issues. She claimed to be able to teach others how to heal themselves. She used the Chakra system and frequently blended world religions together in order to heal based on a symbolic and archetypal understanding of the world. This appealed to my sense of mystery and gave me hope to heal myself completely.
Oprah regularly talked about many paths to God and all sorts of self-help, new age, and pseudo-Christian guests appeared on her show. For example, Carolyn Myss, Eckhart Tolle, Wayne Dyer, and Marianne Williamson, to name a few.
I absorbed it all.
Occult Threads: Syncretism and the New Age
When The Secret by Rhonda Byrne came out in 2006, I accepted it readily as truth because it quoted the Bible and the logic of it seemed to make sense to my unformed brain. By that time I had largely adopted the notion of reincarnation, psychic abilities, and channeling.
Many of my friends came from non-Christian backgrounds and my best friend in high school was even a part of the Swedenborgian Christian cult. They believed that Emmanuel Swedenborg was a prophet and he was contacted by an angel of God that revealed to him a new truth about the cosmos and the Bible. Many of their beliefs revolve around angelic beings and layers of Heaven and Hell. I agreed that angels could reveal new information to us.
By the end of high school, my beliefs in Christianity were so watered down they weren’t even Christian. And yet God was with me and I loved Him and I could tell He was moving in my life and protecting me in ways I still don’t fully comprehend. For example, God gave me a dream that my friends were going to give me drugs. It was such a powerful dream that when I woke up I was certain it was God. I immediately left this friend group and stopped hanging out entirely. Years later I can see that this terrible prediction would have come to pass. I was in such a vulnerable place since my parent's divorce, I would have gone down a difficult path if not for that intervention. However, I was still confused.
I realized much later that I was in the midst of a syncretic worldview that sought to blend Christianity with threads of the new age and occult. Here at Spirit Sanctified, we call this “The Blend.”
Catholicism: A False Religion?
When I was 18, I fell in love with my now husband. He came from a nice Catholic family. Even though I was certain that Catholicism was a false religion, I still trusted their perspective on faith. I trusted that they loved God and I could tell their family had blessings and testimonials of God moving in their lives. However, I didn't see his family living out the tenets of the faith fully and I had the impression that Catholicism as a whole was elitist and corrupted.
Further, influential Catholics in my life were into Reiki energy healing, meditation, and Oprah, so I concluded that it was very much okay for Christianity and new age spirituality to blend.
Occult Snapping: Diving Deeper into the Occult
By age 19, I was interacting with various psychics, energy healers, and occult material. I had no idea this was outside God's will.
When I was married at age 23 in the Catholic Church, I remember the priest telling me that I wasn't a Christian. He briefly explained that it was because I wasn't baptized yet. I was so angry with him. In my mind baptism occurs when you choose a Church you want to go to. I didn't understand how he could tell me that I wasn't Christian even though I loved Jesus!
It was also at this time that I experienced occult snapping. This term refers to the experience of supernatural activity and confirmation from spirits that what you are experiencing is true and snaps you into an occult perspective. I've noticed this often happens the FIRST time you attempt a practice. For example, a psychic tells you extremely accurate information or after you attempt a yoga pose you are healed of a pesky health problem suddenly. These are absolutely demonic signs and wonders and they are deception. This leads you to believe there is truth and value in the occult and so you follow those signs deeper into the occult.
Read More: The Deliverance Roadmap
Occult snapping happened to me after we were married. I was trained as a Reiki energy healer myself. During this training, I received an attunement that snapped me into this deception fully. From then on I bought into the new age narrative. I believed that God was real, but I could somehow, through my own powers, control His energy toward my own agenda and will.
Throughout all of this, I still loved Jesus, but was searching for truth in all the wrong places.
Down The Rabbit Hole: A “Christian Witch”
My husband and I started going to a non-denominational Church. This was the first time I had gone to church since I was a child, and it felt like home there. Everyone was so friendly and the community held us. We welcomed 3 children into the world while attending this church for over 10 years, they held us in prayer during difficult times and good. BUT they never spoke about what sin was and they didn't mind that I called myself a Christian witch.
In 2018, I rededicated myself to new age thinking and went on a quest of self-healing. I began regularly and with fervor:
meditating (every day 10 minutes to 1 hour),
seeing various energy healers,
doing past life regressions,
seeing psychics and mediums,
using tarot cards, yoga, Chakra healings, and breath work, and
trying to channel various spirits.
Nothing could ever satisfy the hunger, the striving, and just trying to reach the next level of spiritual awakening. When I would achieve another level of “gnosis” or understanding it felt euphoric. I felt my normal life couldn't compare to the high I would get participating in the occult. I felt superior.
Dark Spirits: Demonic Attacks Due to Occult Involvement
The interesting thing about this time was that I was being demonically attacked constantly, yet unable to recognize this was what was happening.
Some of the demonic attacks I experienced:
I had spirits pulling on my body during meditations
Occasionally I would experience excruciating pain
I would be unable to bring my consciousness back to my body at times
I had nightmares every single night
I could tell some spirits were evil and watching me
I justified it all because the people I was friends with also experienced those things and explained them away. On a certain level, I knew something was wrong with what I was doing, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.
I reached out to my pastor one summer and asked for help because I wanted to know a Christian perspective on all the things I had been experiencing. Unfortunately, he didn’t see the danger as seriously as he should have and I left that conversation just as confused. I began praying out to God to lead me to what was right and true. I repeated that prayer hundreds of times over and over for months and years.
God’s Intervention: Spontaneous New Age Aversion During Pregnancy
In October 2020, I had just completed a particularly powerful meditation and it was as if God said ENOUGH. I woke up the next morning and I knew I was pregnant. It was just a feeling, but I knew. This was very unplanned and we did not aim to have more children. Very quickly I became unbearably nauseous. It was all day long, unrelenting and torturous. I cried every day with how painful this was.
The nausea was so terrible that I was unable to meditate. I was unable to take any new age courses or do any of my normal energy healing practices. I was completely stripped of all the tools I had built up over the years. I was extremely depressed.
I started noticing that listening to certain new age YouTubers or following certain new age influencers would trigger my nausea so I began deleting and turning away from everything that made me nauseous. I couldn't even talk to my best friend who was an energy healer. We would joke about it, but I told her that talking about spiritual things made me nauseous. By the end of my pregnancy, there were almost no new age influences over my life and yet I still tried to force it back in my life.
I wasn't ready to see what God was doing.
Giving Birth: Further Signs of New Age Aversion
By the end of my pregnancy, I hired a Jewish mystic Reiki Master as my doula. I was still nauseous at 40 weeks pregnant and was still deceived in my new age thinking.
Before my doula arrived that night, just at the start of my labour, I was in my room and the most amazing thing happened. I began hearing the Edelweiss prayer sung aloud in my mind. It filled the room and I didn't know what it was. I listened for a while and then sang it to my husband who recognized it as the prayer his Grandma and Catholic family sang at Christmas before dinner. She had passed away a couple of years earlier and I'm certain she was interceding for me at that moment as the spiritual battle over my soul was waging that night.
When my doula arrived, my labour began going very wrong. It was the most excruciating pain I've ever felt in my life. This was my third baby. I thought I should be pretty good at this by now. I could barely stand it. I suffered for hours and descended into a terrible head space. I began having suicidal thoughts and felt I wanted to escape my life at any cost. I very suddenly decided I wanted to go to the hospital, which was not my plan, and everyone agreed. As soon as I left the presence of my doula, I felt much better and the suicidal thoughts were gone.
My birth went well but we got news from the doctors that my son had meningitis and was very seriously sick. We thought he was fighting for his life. Our church community prayed for us and we were flooded with supportive messages and prayers. A day later there were zero signs of sickness at all. My baby was perfectly healthy and we were sent home.
The Breaking Point: My “Gig Is Up” Moment
A couple of days after my son was born, I was on YouTube and the algorithm suggested a video about spiritual warfare. I had never heard the term, or at least hadn't seriously thought about it before because I didn't believe evil or sin existed. When I watched that video on spiritual warfare, from a Christian perspective, it was as if God just opened my eyes. In a moment my life was completely changed. I knew Christianity was fully true, I knew Jesus was God and he lived and died for us. I knew there was a spiritual battle and I had been on the wrong side.
Related: How to Get Out of the Occult
Over the next few months, the Holy Spirit convicted me of my sin and I fully committed my life to Christ. Yes, there was an intense spiritual battle and I needed to do a lot of repenting and rebuking spirits. I spent hours in prayer and repentance. Dark spirits manifested in front of me but that only encouraged me more to commit myself to Jesus. I threw out all of my new age tools, trinkets, and books. God was delivering me.
I started listening to pastors and worship music all day long. I began being mentored by someone at my church and searching for what it means to be a Christian. I quickly discerned I wasn't going to continue attending the church I had been at for the last 10 years because I did not believe they had sound theology. We had already experienced two church splits and questionable pastoral activity. Our church and many Protestant churches, in my experience, run like cults of personality. I did not want to experience that again. I began looking into every denomination (except Catholic) and church hopping every Sunday. Number one on my list was governance structure/accountability and number two was spiritual warfare.
A Holy Spirit Call During The Moment of Baptism
At almost the 1 year mark since my conversion of heart, the Holy Spirit gave me a desperate and urgent desire to get baptized. And I obeyed.
The week of my baptism was difficult. Five of my very best girlfriends messaged me that my new self was triggering them and it was difficult to be my friend. I knew I was under attack.
The day I was baptized, I confessed all my past sins to the congregation. I apologized for trying to lead others into the new age and declared that I was ready to obey God fully.
The second I was baptized, my heart softened towards the Catholic Church. A friend casually made a joke about Catholics while I was standing there sopping wet after being dunked in a baptismal tank. I immediately felt defensive of my Catholic brothers and sisters. Uh oh.
My Catholic Conversion: “Whom Shall I Send?”
Catholicism was by far the most inconvenient denomination for me to land on.
Why?
My husband didn’t like Catholicism
My family was atheist or Pentecostal
Most of my friends were new agers who believed that Catholicism was infiltrated by the Illuminati
But my journey had already begun and my heart desired Catholicism. I knew this was a Holy Spirit conviction. I had been feeling this so clearly the last year and this was no different. I had to obey where God was leading me.
A few months earlier, my son had been playing with my Bible. I was reading through Isaiah and had marked my page, but he lost my place. I didn't know where I was so I picked somewhere near the beginning, but not quite. I began reading Isaiah 6 out loud. Once I was finished I went to go do some cooking and turned on the TV. A pastor was preaching and he began with Isaiah 6. He read word for word out loud the words I had just spoken. I dropped to my knees sobbing and telling the Lord that I was listening.
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” “Here I am,” I said; “send me!”
- Isaiah 6:8
Later that summer, an old friend lent me a Scott Hahn book called Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots. At some point in the book, when explaining the Mass, Scott Hahn began reading Isaiah 6.
There are so many reasons I am Catholic today. I adore every aspect of the theology and the liturgy. The richness is unending. We have the best spiritual warfare beliefs and practices of any denomination out there and we armour up like no one else. The governance is top notch and this Church runs like the kingdom Christ established. But I am Catholic because God opened the eyes of my heart and sent me. Here I am, Lord.
ABOUT CHELSEA MALLECK
Chelsea Malleck, a staff writer for Spirit Sanctified, sparks a fire of logic and intellect in the hearts and minds of faithful Christians questioning the merits of new age thinking. During the pregnancy of her third baby, God stripped her of the ability to participate in the new age and gave her the opportunity to say ‘yes’ to obedience and the freedom that only our Saviour Jesus Christ can offer. God gives us a sound mind, and during her deliverance from occult bondage, Chelsea experienced a profound renewal of her mind and intellect. As grace filled her life, she found liberation from the confusion and susceptibility to new belief systems.
Hailing from Ontario, Canada, with a degree in research psychology and certification as a doula, Chelsea brings a unique perspective to the intersection of faith, science, and wellness. She is an avid reader with keen interests in science, birth, parenting, and, most importantly, our Catholic faith.
St. Irenaeus, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Bonaventure pray for us.
ABOUT SPIRIT SANCTIFIED
Spirit Sanctified educates Christians on spiritual warfare through multi-media productions and products. We comprise advocates and creators who work together to help Christians stand against occult worldviews by purifying their beliefs and practices.
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