Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick: Welcome to The Lord of Spirits podcast. I am Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and with me is my co-host, Fr. Stephen De Young, in Lafayette, Louisiana, and if you are listening to us live, you can call in at 855-AF-RADIO; that’s 855-237-2346. We’re going to get your calls in the second part of today’s show, God willing.

Every year Christians argue about Halloween. Is it participation in the occult, cavorting with demons that we should be running away from, or is it harmless dressing up and candy? Some more traditionally minded say it’s not about demons; it’s about the feast of All Saints. And some non-Christians will say that their fall holiday of Samhain, spelled S-a-m-h-a-i-n, is greatly misunderstood, what’s been maybe co-opted by Christians or slandered by them or others. One thing is for sure. People have opinions about Halloween.

We say that Halloween really is about demons, and for those that have been listening to this program since we premiered in September, that will not surprise you in the least. And it would surprise our long-time listeners even less to learn that we say we’re okay with running right towards those demons. Now, we very likely have a whole lot of new listeners tuning in right now who have never heard one episode of The Lord of Spirits podcast before tonight. If that’s you, and if our assertion that Halloween is about demons gets you mad, or if our willingness to be involved with demons gets you mad—before you tune out, at least listen to the first part of the show, because this is almost certainly not going to be what you think.

To help get all of you new listeners a sense of what our deal is here on this show, I’m not going to tell you to go back and listen to our first four episodes before this one, although if you’re listening to this recorded, why don’t you just pause and go back and listen to those first? [Laughter] You should definitely check them out, either way. But I’m going to ask my co-host, Fr. Stephen, to give you a very quick summary of what exactly this program is about. So, Fr. Stephen, let’s give a quick orientation for all of our new listeners.

Fr. Stephen De Young: Sure. So what we’re about here is recovering a sense of the full-orbed reality of the universe that we live in. The cosmos that we live in includes not only material reality, which we’re very comfortable with, but spiritual reality, which we as contemporary modern people are not comfortable with, if we even believe it exists. And the truth is that when you look at ancient people, whether we’re talking about ancient pagans or we’re talking about ancient Israelites or we’re talking about Second Temple Judaism or we’re talking about early Christianity, they all, based on their own experience of spiritual reality, had a shared understanding of the contours of that reality, of the geography of that reality, of the inhabitants of that reality. And along the way, over the last five centuries or so, give or take, our culture, our Western culture, has sort of made a bargain, and that bargain was to trade away that ancient spiritual wisdom and to trade it for an ever-deepening and ever more technologically applied understanding of the material world.

We gave up our spiritual understanding to gain a greater scientific and technological and material understanding of that element of the world around us. And that’s created—while people are maybe aware of it, starting in the ‘60s, they know about the Beatles or somebody going to yogis and people dabbling in Buddhism and the rise of New Age spirituality and various forms of reconstructed neo-paganism. It goes back much further than that. I mean, you can go to Emerson. We can go way back into the 18th and 19th centuries where Western people, realizing this gap, have tried to reach out to other, non-Western traditions to try to recover that spiritual wisdom and that spiritual sense. That’s not just true in the world in general; it’s true of Christianity. Along the way, Christianity decided to trade its inheritance for a mess of pottage, essentially, and sideline that spiritual inheritance in order to become modern people.

So what we’re really about in this show is about taking the journey back into the ground of Christianity, back into the understanding of this spiritual reality that our fathers and forefathers had and that we gave up, to try to recover it, not giving up any of the technology or the understanding of the material world we have now, but adding to it that spiritual wisdom that otherwise might have been lost, that will allow us to navigate our modern, contemporary, material, and technological world more successfully with that spiritual wisdom.

Fr. Andrew: Okay. Well, just to lay out a few ground-rules of sorts for this particular episode, I just want to say our purpose tonight is not what probably a lot of people think that this show, this episode, is about. It’s not to say where Halloween really comes from so that we can slap down a label of “okay” or “forbidden” on the thing. Why? Why are we not addressing that? Well, it’s because there are a lot of things going by the name of “Halloween.” The name itself is Christian in origin, actually, and it’s short for “All Hallows’ Eve,” that is, the evening before All Saints’ Day, which is a holiday that’s celebrated on November 1 in the Western Christian churches, but in the early summer by most Orthodox Christians like us. It moves around a little bit for us, since it’s always on a Sunday. And there was actually, at one point in history, even a May 13 date for All Saints.

All Saints is a feast celebrated all over the Christian world in various ways, but Halloween is a name that, for a lot of people, just means dressing up in costumes and collecting candy from the neighbors, with accompanying spooky parties and decorations and themes. For some people, it means getting together and using Ouija boards to divine information from spirits. Others might hold a séance, trying to summon spirits directly. Others might celebrate a modern reconstruction of the ancient Celtic pagan Samhain, a celebration for which we have no manuals from pre-Christian times, which means that modern reconstructions are reconstructions. So for as many people who celebrate Samhain, you can get that many celebrations on what it’s really supposed to be and what it means.

Identifying what all of those things come from is not the purpose of our program tonight. What we are going to talk about tonight is about what people actually do and what those things they do—rituals—what they actually accomplish. Of course, that’s going to include some history, and of course we’ll also be speaking from an unabashedly Orthodox Christian point of view because that’s who we are: we’re not going to make any apologies about that.

But in order for any of that to make any sense, we first have to begin with the spiritual landscape. As we’ve been talking about for the past four episodes of this show, there are indeed spiritual beings in the world aside from the Holy Trinity. There are angels, there are demons, and the demons were angels who rebelled against God, and the primary way that they rebelled was by accepting worship that should be given to God alone. And they’re still in rebellion. So that’s the basic conflict.

So let’s go back to the earliest interactions of human beings with those rebels. How did ancient people understand these beings that they worshiped? Let’s begin. And, Fr. Stephen, I know you have in our notes here we’re going to actually begin by talking about the way that pagans understood the gods whom they interacted with, which, again, from a Christian point of view—and we’ve covered this in previous episodes—these gods the pagans worshiped are fallen angels, also known as demons. So let’s talk about the way that pagans understood their gods. So why don’t you go ahead and begin for us, Father.

Fr. Stephen: Sure. And the reason it’s important to start here and to address this is because we’re used to thinking about—if we ever think about—Greek religion or Roman religion or Babylonian religion or Celtic religion—pick your culture’s original religious beliefs—we’re used to thinking about that in terms of mythology. So we’ve got: here’s our list of gods, and they’re sort of like the Justice League. There’s the guy who runs real fast and the guy who throws the lightning bolts. And we’re approaching it in that way, and that of course is not how the people experienced and approached their religious life who actually lived this in the ancient world. They didn’t view it as—obviously, not as fictional characters or as characters at all. These were spirits whom they experienced and interacted with.

I’ve got a couple of quotes from Plato that I’m going to read to kind of summarize this. This is how Plato, as an Athenian in the Classical Period—so this is sort of our peak of high Greek culture, we could say—how he understood where the gods came from and their relationship to the people of particular cities and nations and their relationship to the earth and the ground in those places, the physical place and physical territory.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, right, the geography.

Fr. Stephen: And so the first of these is from his dialogue, Critias, and if you want to look this up later, this is lines 109 b-c, if you want to fully nerd out like I do. But otherwise, here’s what Plato says.

In the days of old, the gods had the whole earth distributed among them by allotment. There was no quarreling, for you cannot rightly suppose that the gods did not know what was proper for each of them to have, or, knowing this, that they would seek to procure for themselves by contention that which more properly belonged to others. They all of them by just appointment obtained what they wanted and peopled their own districts, and when they had peopled them, they tended us, their nurselings and possessions, as shepherds tend their flocks, excepting only that they did not use blows and bodily force as shepherds do, but governed us like pilots from the stem of the vessel, which is an easy way of guiding animals, holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion, according to their own pleasure. Thus did they guide all mortal creatures.

Now, different gods had their allotments in different places, which they set in order. Hephaestus and Athene, who were brother and sister and sprang from the same father, having a common nature, being united also in the love of philosophy and art, both obtained as their common portion this land (meaning Athens) which was naturally adapted for wisdom and virtue, and there they implanted brave children of the soil and put into their minds the order of government. Their names are preserved, but their actions have disappeared by reason of the destruction of those who received the tradition and the lapse of ages. For when there any survivors, as I have already said, there were men who dwelt in the mountains, and they were ignorant of the art of writing, and had heard only the names of the chiefs of the land but very little about their actions.

The names they were willing enough to give to their children, but the virtues and the laws of their predecessors they knew only by obscure traditions, and as they themselves and their children lacked for many generations the necessities of life, they directed their attention to the supply of their wants and of them they conversed, to the neglect of events that had happened in times long past. For mythology and the inquiry into antiquity are first introduced into cities when they begin to have leisure and when they see that the necessities of life have already been provided, but not before.

So Plato is saying that all of the gods had assigned to them—the gods and the council of the gods had assigned to them these different places and different territories. Hephaestus and Athene had Athens and its surrounding assigned to them, and they brought for the people of Athens from the soil of Athens. So there was a connection for Plato and these other ancient peoples between themselves and the soil that they came out of, and themselves and their gods, who they believed had been assigned to them.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of a long passage, but I think it’s a really interesting point to make that here is an ancient pagan describing exactly his understanding of what the pagan landscape looked like, that these gods live in various territories. I mean, they’re territorial. And they interact frequently with the people that worship them, and provide for them and so forth. That essentially everybody just kind of has their local deity, and of course he paints… I mean, it’s a pretty happy picture. Of course, he’s saying it was just this way at the beginning, and he starts out by saying that there was no quarreling, and you have to say—yet. [Laughter] Because supposedly they were each territorial, and they just hung out in their particular territory.

I think it’s notable that this is contrary to the way that modern people tend to look at ancient paganism, that they basically say, “Well, pagans just sort of saw things they couldn’t explain, so they figured maybe there was some sort of divine being behind that.” But here’s an ancient pagan saying, “No, this is what’s going on in our experience.” This is what he understands pagan life to be like.

Fr. Stephen: It’s important to emphasize, as you mention, the second part of that quote. That Plato sees that there was this period where they were these gentle shepherds, right after they were assigned, but something has changed, something has happened, something has been lost. The bit about the mountains there—I didn’t want to make the quote any longer, but Plato’s really talking about the flood. He’s talking about the sinking of Atlantis. So the only people who survive are these rustics who live on high mountains. So he attributes that to the place where these things were lost, because he understands that those same gods behave differently now.

Fr. Andrew: Well, do we want to… I see we’ve got more here, talking about this ancient pagan view. Do want to continue?

Fr. Stephen: Let me summarize it instead of reading it.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, let’s summarize that.

Fr. Stephen: And if someone does want to look it up and read it, again, if you want to fully nerd out, this is from Plato’s On the Laws, line 713 c-e. I’m using the universal line numbers, so that way I don’t have to worry about what translation you pick up.

Basically, in this section he repeats essentially a lot of what we just read, but the important additional part here is that he identifies Kronos, the father of Zeus, as the one who did the allotting. For Plato here, in that early age, there was this most high god: Cronos, whose son, Zeus, presided in the council of the gods, and of course in a previous episode we talked about what’s called the succession myth, that Zeus kills Cronos and takes over. But the pattern here, this is a pattern that… I’m using this as representative of every—you can find this in every form of pagan religion on earth, that there is this idea of a most high god, who is above the council of gods, and who did this allotting and separation and gave them places, their assigned deities, to govern them.

Fr. Andrew: Right. Let’s then talk about the biblical version of this. We talked about this a bit in our previous episode which was about the five(ish) falls of angels, and that’s the tower of Babel. I’m not going to read this to you, but this is in Deuteronomy 32 and also Deuteronomy—is that 4?

Fr. Stephen: Deuteronomy 32:8 says that when the Most High divided the nations, he numbered them according to the sons of God. So it has Yahweh, the Most High God, being the one who assigns these angelic beings to govern the nations.

Fr. Andrew: Right. So what happens at Babel is that mankind attempts to worship the one true God by means of idolatry, and God says, “No, that’s not going to be,” and he withdraws himself; he scatters the nations for one thing, and he withdraws himself so that mankind’s wickedness will not destroy him in the presence of God, and allots the nations to these various angelic beings. This is where you get Plato talking about early on, the gods were… everything was great; there was no quarreling and so forth, everything was great. But something changed, and from the biblical, Christian point of view, what changes is that the gods begin to accept worship for themselves, so that these angels fall by means of setting themselves up as gods to be worshiped. So there is this alteration in the way that human beings experience the gods, that is, these angels who become fallen angels, or, as we would call them, demons.

And by the way, just a word about that word, “demon.” Now when we use the word “demon,” we have this idea of this evil, dark, horrible spirit, and we should, but in the ancient world, “demon” or “daemon” just meant a spirit. Even Socrates claimed that a daemon spoke to him and that’s where he got his wisdom from. Obviously, he wasn’t saying that was a bad thing, that he was in league with demons, as we might put it now. So when we talk about demons, the word in the ancient world just simply means a spiritual being of some kind, but eventually in the Christian context it becomes very negative, but it’s neutral in the ancient world.

These demons, these fallen angels, these gods, begin to accept worship, and they begin to oppress mankind, and it’s in that act in particular that they are rebelling against Yahweh the Most High God who created all of them and who appointed them to govern the nations. So this sets up a conflict, right? Now, from the pagan point of view, the gods are all fighting with each other; from the Christian point of view, these fallen angels are rebelling against the one true God, and that’s the origin of this conflict. Obviously, those are two different takes on what’s going on. As Christians, we’re taking the Christian take. We’re not going to apologize for accepting that as being the truth.

But I know that, Fr. Stephen, in some of your research here you have a really interesting passage from an anthropologist who, if I remember correctly, this anthropologist is not even particularly any kind of religious person himself. He’s just kind of analyzing the ancient world and its religion. I thought this was another interesting angle on exactly this same narrative that we’re talking about, of early on these divine beings governing mankind and doing so in a way that seems peaceful and good, and then there’s this change that happens. Why don’t you go ahead and tell us about this passage that you’ve found in some of your research from an anthropologist.

Fr. Stephen: This is from—I’ll give the reference again, for people who want to nerd—it’s Andrew Lang’s book, The Making of Religion. This is a religious anthropology text, and this is from pages 281-282. He’s talking about the transition from the worship of a most high god to the worship of a whole series of lesser gods and sort of the dying away of direct worship of that most high god in pretty much, essentially all pagan cultures, as a historical event that happens in their religious development. He says:

A moral creator in no need of gifts, and opposed to lust and mischief, will not help men with love-spells, or with malevolent sending of disease by witchcraft; will not favor one man above his neighbor, or one tribe above its rivals, as reward for sacrifice, which he does not accept, or as constrained by charms, which do not touch his omnipotence. Ghosts and ghost-gods, on the other hand, in need of food and blood, afraid of spells and binding charms, are a corrupt, but, to man, a useful constituency. Man being what he is, man was certain to go a whoring after practically useful ghouls, ghosts, ghost-gods and fetishes, which he could keep in his wallet or medicine bag. For these he was sure, in the long run, first to neglect his idea of his creator; next, perhaps, to reckon him as only one, if the highest, of the venal rabble of spirits or deities, and to sacrifice to him as to them. And this is exactly what happened.

So the Most High God, the reason he becomes sort of irrelevant to worshipers is that he doesn’t need anything, he’s not going to be swayed by anything…

Fr. Andrew: So there’s no deal they can make.

Fr. Stephen: Right. “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” and God, as the Old Testament says, does not delight in the blood of bulls and goats. Well, if I want to get someone to fall in love with me or if I want to curse my enemy, or if I want to get somebody on my side so that I can defeat my neighboring tribe in war—there’s nothing I can do with the Most High God. But if we have our own god and they have theirs, maybe I can bribe theirs into coming over onto our side and letting us win, or maybe I can get this or that spirit of the woods to do what I want in terms of making this person fall in love with me, or cursing this person. So it becomes sort of more pragmatically useful to shift one’s devotion and attention to these gods with whom you think you might be able to set up a quid pro quo of some sort.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and it’s interesting, you know… I think often people think about religions as being basically equal. “Well, everyone has different views, and everyone worships in their own way, and they’re all basically trying to accomplish the same thing.” But what this anthropologist is basically saying is: No, if your deity doesn’t need anything from you, then that is a different kind of religion than one that needs you somehow, because one where you can make deals with him and get whatever it is you want from him, precisely because you’re doing particular things, then that creates a different kind of morality. It certainly creates a different kind of worship. Whereas a deity that’s above everything and doesn’t need anything and is outside of everything, he can command universal loyalty. He can set universal moral principles that are good because they’re good and because he himself is the definition of the good.

So one of the things that this points out… And it’s going to become clear why we’re setting things up this way when we’re talking about Halloween, so just bear with us. One of the things that this points out is that the one true God, the Most High God, is a very different kind of being than these gods that are being worshiped by ancient pagan peoples, that from the Christian point of view start out as angels governing on behalf of God the nations, and then fall because they begin to receive worship and become wicked and rebellious, and of course fighting with one another. It’s a very different kind of thing.

Sometimes the atheist will say to the Christian, “Well, the only difference between me and you is that I just believe in one fewer god than you do,” to say that Christians don’t believe in other gods; they just believe in their one God. But if you listen to this show, you’ll know that we believe that there are multiple divine beings, but only One is worthy of worship, and not only is he the only one worthy of worship, he’s quite different from the rest. “Who among the gods is like unto thou, O Lord?” We see that kind of thing over and over again in Scripture.

So before we go to break, which we’re going to in just a minute here, let’s… I wanted to read a passage here that is from Galatians 4. This is following on what we were just talking about, where there is this slavery that happens between mankind and these various gods that they begin to worship and all of these vicious animal sacrifices and even human sacrifice. The morality of the ancient world is about the strong dominating the weak. No one in those days, when this came to be, would have said that all people are valuable. There is no sense that everybody is created equal.

Fr. Stephen: That is clear when we are talking about paganism, the reality of paganism. Paganism can be—

Fr. Andrew: All right. We’re going to go ahead and take a break. We’re having some sound issues with Fr. Stephen there, but we will be back in just a minute.

Fr. Andrew: All right. Well, we’re back. We got Fr. Stephen switched over to another audio source, there, thank God, although I hear your dog in the background there, Fr. Stephen. Is that one of your dogs?

Fr. Stephen: One of them probably was making his presence known.

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] Okay! So we were just talking about morality especially in the ancient world, that resulted in the way that these fallen angels, these fallen gods, interacted with human beings. Did you want to add anything else to that before we talk about this little passage from Galatians 4?

Fr. Stephen: I’m not sure when exactly I got cut out, but I was just attempting to make the point that when you look at the nature of the gods who were being worshiped, with whom these quid pro quos were being formed, and you have, for example, Zeus; when you believe that the god who presides over the council of the gods is essentially a serial rapist—and that’s what he is; if there’s anybody who needed to be a #metoo, it was Zeus—what does that do to shape your view of manhood and masculinity in your culture? And when your view of womanhood is shaped around his wife, Hera, who is constantly being abused and aggrieved and then taking vengeance in her anger and jealousy, and the actual Gaia from Greek religion, who had her children taken from her and so just brings forth monsters to take revenge, what view of womanhood does that give to your culture?

While we’re talking about ancient paganism and not the modern stripe, the result of that is, as we saw historically, brutal caste systems, slavery, and that’s the cost of this sort of quid pro quo that was set up with these spirits to get them to do these vindictive and petty things that the worshipers wanted them to do.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah. Again, religions are not all the same; they don’t have the same effect on people. Theology matters. What you’re worshiping matters. You become like what you worship, because that deity becomes part of your community, and you become part of its community. So that leads us, then, to Galatians 4:3, and we’re also going to bracket it with verse 9, which reads like this:

In the same way, we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.

Listen to that: “We were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.”

But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?

What St. Paul is saying there, if you’ve been listening to everything we’ve just been saying, is: Look, back in the day you were enslaved to these false gods. They were associated with, as he calls them, the elementary principles of the world. That’s what he’s talking about. He doesn’t mean that you were enslaved to carbon and oxygen; that’s not what “the elementary principles of the world” is. They don’t think in those terms. He’s talking about spiritual beings. And then he’s saying: Now that you know the one true God, why would you want to go back there? Why would you want to be subject to them again? Again, we’re talking about this conflict that comes about because of the fall of these angelic beings, becoming demons, becoming the gods of paganism.

That’s the basic set-up for the spiritual landscape that we’re talking about, and it’s what’s really important when we’re talking about Halloween. Some of you, I am sure, are probably on the edge of your seats, like: “When are they actually going to talk about Halloween? This is the Halloween episode.” But the truth is that we’re so used to thinking about religion and about rituals and about customs and practices in ways that kind of assume that most of the world is not spiritual or, for some people, it’s not at all. So we have to kind of reconstruct, at least within our minds, the way that the world really is, the way that the world is depicted by the Scriptures, the way that the world is depicted in the Tradition of the Orthodox Church. Again, bear with us, because it takes… I myself had to kind of go through some of this process and sort of unlearn the things I had learned and relearn, to learn a new way of looking at the world, which actually is the old way in a lot of ways.

The last thing I think we should say about this—I’m going to let you say it, Fr. Stephen—is that there’s a difference between—you kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier—the way that ancient pagans described what their experience was with their gods and the way that modern people who describe themselves as pagans or neo-pagans do. What’s the difference there between those things?

Fr. Stephen: Right, and this is important, because your Wiccan neighbor down the road is not doing any human sacrifices and does not believe in a brutally oppressive caste system, does not believe that women are subhuman. None of those things is true of them. In a way, you could almost describe modern neo-paganism, these reconstructed paganisms, as sort of Protestant paganism. I mean that in the sense that it’s a reconstruction, not just trying to go back to that rather dark world of actual ancient paganism, but taking elements of it, but formed along the lines of a general sort of northern European cultural sensibility and morality which is the same kind of cultural factors that have influenced a lot of northern European and American Protestantism. We’re not accusing any of those people of any of these things that I just talked about happening in the ancient world.

Fr. Andrew: Exactly. There’s a big difference between that kind of religion and what it is that people are practicing now. Before we move on, I’d like to take a call. We have Jacob calling from Chicago. Jacob, can you hear me?

Jacob: Yes, Father, I can.

Fr. Andrew: All right. Well, Jacob, welcome to The Lord of Spirits Halloween Special episode. What’s your question or comment, Jacob?

Jacob: Thanks so much! My question is, and I’ll try to be as quick as possible and succinct as possible: When you, as a believer or an Orthodox Christian, have an experience where you have felt like an evil presence surrounds you or oppresses you, specifically when you’re alone or in the evening time, like, for example, a dream, and something like that happens, what does that mean and what would you do in response? For example, I actually had a personal experience recently where I woke up in the middle of the night, and I had a terrible dream. It was pretty evil, and I felt that presence around me still. So I went to my prayer corner, and I read the Vespers, but it wasn’t even until I got to the Creed where I started to feel better, and then it lifted, and then I’m like: Okay, I’m normal now. It’s 1:45 in the morning. [Laughter] I can go back to sleep now.

But it struck me, and I think there’s meaning behind it. There’s a reason God obviously allows these things to happen, and they’re rare and distinct. But the reason I’m asking is because my father has had similar experiences, and he’s not and Orthodox Christian, but he’s interested, so I’m just kind of curious as to what this kind of… What your take on this would be.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, so you’re having… Let me see if I can summarize what you’re saying. There’s a sense of an evil presence in dreams, right? Is that right?

Jacob: Yeah, correct, and in waking, that carries over from the dream.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, and how do you understand that. You know, part of the difficulty, of course, in responding to stuff like that is that it’s hard to speak generally about specific experiences. I can’t say, for instance, that there’s definitely a demon affecting you or—you said it was your father, is that right?

Jacob: That is correct.

Fr. Andrew: But certainly that is possible. I can say that, generally speaking, that it is possible that that is the case. The thing to do about that, of course, is that if… as a Christian or as an Orthodox Christian, to make the sign of the cross and to pray for God’s protection. As an Orthodox Christian, you can anoint yourself with holy water. Any negative experience that we have should be an opportunity for repentance for us.

This underlines beautifully the difference between the Orthodox Christian understanding of repentance and maybe some other Christians’ understanding of repentance, that, for the Orthodox Christian, repentance is not only “I did something bad and therefore I need to make up for it or say I’m sorry or whatever,” but rather it’s moving towards Christ; it’s becoming more like Christ. I can repent even if I’ve not done anything particular bad, and why? Because I’m not perfect yet. I’m not completely like Christ yet, so repentance is to move towards him, to turn towards him again, even if there’s not some specific evil deed I’ve committed. Even when a righteous person experiences suffering, whether it’s directly from a demonic affliction or something else, he uses that for repentance. In other words, he uses it to become even more like Christ. Even though he’s righteous, he can become more righteous.

For Orthodox Christians, we have a lot of tools for this. Other Christians may not have the same kind of understanding, but certainly they can use that disturbance as a way to draw near to God, even if the only way that they’re doing it is maybe to ask for his protection or for his love or for his healing. I don’t know; Fr. Stephen, did you want to add anything to that?

Fr. Stephen: Well, just in the general sense. Again, obviously we can’t go into this particular case, but it is said in our Orthodox evening prayers that we ask for protection from the fantasies of Satan which come in the night, and that’s talking about dreams. The key is that if you are in Christ, there’s not a demon out there that you need to be afraid of. [Inaudible]—being sort of beings of chaos and destruction is trying to sow fear and confusion and this sort of thing. Being afraid is the exact opposite of what you should do. Those prayers, even if they don’t take away whatever particular dream experience it is, will help you, again, to become more confident in not giving into that kind of fear and confusion that it’s trying to sow.

Fr. Andrew: Does that make sense to you there, Jacob?

Jacob: It makes perfect sense.

Fr. Andrew: Awesome.

Jacob: I kind of felt like that was the way that we were going… that was the kind of conclusion that we were going to get at. [Laughter] I think that’s really encouraging. Thank you so much, Fathers.

Fr. Andrew: Yep, absolutely. Thank you for calling, Jacob. All right, well, let’s continue on in what we’re talking about. We’ve set up this basic kind of conflict between the false gods, the fallen angels, and God and his righteous ones on the other side. Obviously, this is a problem that needs to be solved, and the one to do that is Yahweh the Most High God.

So let’s talk about that. Fr. Stephen, I see that you’ve got here something from one of our favorite psalms, which is Psalm 82. [Laughter] I think you’re going to hear about Psalm 82 maybe on every episode here; I don’t know! But let’s talk Psalm 82. This is such an important psalm, people, so if you’ve got your Bible, open it up and take a look at Psalm 82.

Fr. Stephen: Or Psalm 81 if you’re using an Orthodox Study Bible. Building off of what we read in Galatians, St. Paul’s whole take on paganism when he’s talking to pagans—you can go to Acts 17 in the Areopagus, which I know is a passage near and dear to Fr. Andrew’s heart—

Fr. Andrew: Oh yes, absolutely.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] What Paul’s approach is: that Most High God, whom you haven’t known and whom you haven’t been known by, as he says in Galatians, is now coming to take you back. Not that he tossed you aside—St. Paul is clear about that, too: he’s never tossed you aside; he’s always wanted you back—but now he is taking you back. That action of taking back the people of the nations, who are sometimes translated in English as Gentiles, is related to an event that’s prophesied in the Old Testament, and that event, based on Psalm 82 (or 81 if you’re in an Orthodox Study Bible with the Greek numbering) is called the “Death of the Gods.”

Fr. Andrew: Yep. “Death of Gods.”

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Yes, so I’ll just read the whole thing, because Psalm 82 is not long.

God has taken his place in the council of the gods;
     in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly
     and show partiality to the wicked?
Give justice to the weak and to the fatherless;
     maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
     deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
They have neither knowledge nor understanding,
     they walk about in darkness;
     all the foundations of the earth are shaken.
I said, “You are gods,
     sons of the Most High, all of you;
     nevertheless, like men you shall die,
     and fall like any prince.”
Arise, O God, judge the earth;
     for shall inherit all the nations!

So this is describing a scene in which Yahweh, the God of Israel who presides in the council of the gods, the sons of God, these divine or angelic beings, comes into their midst, and he renders judgment, because he assigned something to them, and that’s the basis of this judgment, and what is that? To represent the cause of the orphan and the widow, to care for the weak and the poor. To be that kind of gentle shepherd that Plato was describing in the quote that we read.

Fr. Andrew: Right, the gods as they were.

Fr. Stephen: And that’s not who they’ve been, as we were just talking about; that’s not who they’ve been for all the nations to whom they were assigned. And so they’re getting killed. [Laughter] The true God is killing them, is driving them out, and he is taking back as an inheritance to himself, he is taking back those nations and those peoples to whom he had assigned them after rendering judgment against them.

Fr. Andrew: Right. This is—and hopefully this blows some people’s minds here a little bit, because it blew my mind when I realized it—this is, in fact, what the whole Bible is about. Right? Would you agree with me on that?

Fr. Stephen: Yes, yeah…

Fr. Andrew: Overall, yeah. Not every single verse, but it’s what’s going on in the Bible. And for Orthodox Christians, it’s what’s going on as Christians, that God is taking back what belongs to him. And we belong to him. We belong to him! That’s what it means for us to be saved. Saved from what? Saved from this malevolent, domineering, oppressing influence of these fallen angels who rebelled against him. The last part of that psalm, “Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations”—as Orthodox Christians, we sing that on Holy Saturday, and Holy Saturday being the day before Pascha (or Easter), on which we believe, we ritually connect with the resurrection of Christ: “Arise, O God, and judge.”

So he’s arising from death and laying down judgment on these fallen gods. This is why we are able to be saved from… That’s what we’re being saved from. We’re not just being saved for kind of a personal, moral failing. The personal, moral failings come as a result of cooperation with these beings. Whether you know it or not, every time you sin, you’re cooperating with them, just as every time you do something good and holy, you’re cooperating with the one true God, with Yahweh. Like I said, that blew my mind when I first realized—wait, there is a war on, and I’m caught in the cross-fire here! Right?

Fr. Stephen: And I don’t want to go too far down the Greek-nerd rabbit-hole, but in case some people… We actually sing the whole psalm, because we do the other verses of the psalm as stichera, as verses, in between that last verse that we sing as a chorus on Holy Saturday. Some people may think, “Yeah, well, it says ‘arise.’ That’s not about Jesus rising from the dead.” You’ll get that. So just to briefly mention that the verb there, anasti in Greek, in the Greek version of this psalm, is a different verb than what’s used in the New Testament to talk about Christ rising from the dead, which is usually aeiro. Aeiro is the word used to—when it’s said “Christ rises from the dead,” which is literally to stand up again, to take a stand, to judge.

So when you see an icon for Holy Saturday, of the harrowing of hell, or when St. Paul refers not to Christ’s rising but to “the resurrection, the anastasis,” he’s not just talking about Christ rising from the dead; he’s saying that Christ rising from the dead is the anastasis: it is this judgment. It is this event. So this isn’t just sort of an analogy, or, hey, here’s a word that’s similar. This is a theological point that the New Testament makes.

Fr. Andrew: It’s Christ coming into his judgment, Christ standing up to judge the fallen gods. We’ve got a couple more lines from the Old Testament, from Isaiah 24:21, which basically says the same thing:

In that day, Yahweh will punish the host of heaven in the heavens and the kings of the earth on the earth.

Obviously, that’s not talking about the angels that are obedient; why would he do that to them? This is talking… “the host of heaven”: it’s clearly identifying that these are fallen angels. “The kings of the earth, on the earth”: that these are the rulers over the earth, these spiritual rulers over the earth. It’s not talking about presidents and politicians and princes and kings in that sense. This is a spiritual war that’s on, and then also, then, as we begin to sing, not just on Holy Saturday, but on Pascha itself, on Easter itself, Psalm 68, one of my favorite hymns: “Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered, and let them that hate flee from before his face.” It’s such a stunning thing to say. Who are the enemies that are being scattered? These are not unbelievers, these are not members of other religions—that’s not what it’s talking about. It’s talking about these rebellious angelic beings, the demons. Those are the enemies of God.

That’s such an important point to make, and I just want to pause a second and really emphasize this, because sometimes Christians—and even Orthodox Christians, too; we’re no better about this—we act like the enemies of God are other people. They are not. They are not. They may sometimes act in a way to oppose themselves to God, if they cooperate with the enemies of God, but they are not the enemies of God. The enemies of God are these angelic beings who, from of old, declared war on him by taking from him what belonged to him, namely, worship and humanity; that they rebelled. They are the enemies of God.

So let God arise and let his enemies be scattered; let them that hate him flee from before his face. That’s what happens when Jesus rises from the dead. There is this conflict. There is not peaceful coexistence! [Laughter] It is a war. It’s not like “Well, if Zeus wants to be worshiped over here, then we’re going to let him do this.” God is absolutely not accepting that. There is a war on. Absolutely, there’s a war. Anyway, I just wanted to emphasize that, because I think it’s a really, really important point, and because it loosens us up to not have to be hateful to other people, even if they are absolutely opposed to us. We don’t have to. They’re not the enemies of God. They might be enslaved to the enemies of God, but you don’t treat your enemy’s slave badly because of the way he’s being enslaved. I just wanted to double-down on that. I think it was a really, really important point.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, and that’s the attitude of God himself toward these people.

Fr. Andrew: Right!

Fr. Stephen: God doesn’t say, “You filthy pagans, you can go to hell with the demons you worship,” right?

Fr. Andrew: No! No!

Fr. Stephen: The whole thing—I mean, Christ becomes man, suffers, and dies, and rises again in order to set those people free and bring them back to their Creator because their Creator loves them. So, yeah, God does not hate those people; he is trying to redeem them. It’s also important that, once again, these beings whom God assigned to govern the nation, whom he assigned and created to govern the aspects of the physical and material creation, these angelic beings, it’s not that God needed them, like he couldn’t handle it all on his own. [Laughter]

Fr. Andrew: No, it’s his love having them participate in it.

Fr. Stephen: Right, he loves them, and so he shares his rule and his authority and his creation with them, but when Christ arises in victory, when the anastasis happens and these gods get killed, that leaves a bunch of job openings.

Fr. Andrew: Well, there you go. [Laughter] On that note, then, let’s go ahead and take another break, and when we come back, we will talk about those job openings. [Laughter] We’ll get to Halloween. It’s about Halloween, I promise. All right, let’s go to break.

Fr. Stephen: And how you can apply for those job openings!

Fr. Andrew: There you go. [Laughter]

Fr. Andrew: When we completed our last segment, Fr. Stephen put out a job advertisement. [Laughter] Well, we’re just sort of like head-hunters over here. We’re just letting people know that there are some positions available, because the heavenly hosts are a bit depleted as a result of the rebellion of these fallen angels. So what do you mean by that, Fr. Stephen?

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Well, God’s love hasn’t changed, and his desire to share his creation and his rule and his authority and his eternal, divine life with his creations hasn’t changed. So there is now this room, there is this space, for others to come in. What we find very quickly in the New Testament is that a lot of the terminology that’s used to describe these angelic beings in what we called the Old Testament, in the Hebrew Bible, starts right off the bat getting applied to humans who are in Christ. So we talked about some of that language, the “sons of God” language that was used for these angelic leaders and authorities. But probably the even more common one is the word that’s translated as “saints,” which literally means both in Hebrew and in Greek, holy ones.

Fr. Andrew: Before we elaborate on that too much, I wanted to take a call from Myla. I’m not sure if it’s My-la or Mee-la; it’s spelled M-y-l-a. So, Myla, are you there? Can you hear me? Myla, are you on the other end of the line there? All right, well, I’m not sure where Myla is, but my note says that Myla asked… Myla, are you there? Yes, are you there? What’s your question, Myla?

Myla: Yes? Yes?

Fr. Andrew: All right, well. My understanding is that Myla is one of our young people.

Fr. Stephen: Okay.

Fr. Andrew: Okay. Well, Myla’s question in my notes is—she asked, “Is Satan an angel?” Is Satan an angel? Go ahead, Father.

Fr. Stephen: Well, I was just going to say the answer to that is: He was.

Fr. Andrew: He was, exactly, right. He rebelled, so he lost that job. He didn’t do what he was supposed to do, Myla, so Satan was an angel, and he rebelled against God who gave him that task of being an angel, and now he serves himself. So he was, but he lost it, because he was bad. He permanently left, left it behind. So, Myla, I’m not sure if you can hear us, but I hope that answers your question. All right, well, I’m not sure we actually got her on the line, but I hope we answered her question there.

Well, Father, you were talking about the saints, right? We’ve talked about that a lot in previous episodes, especially the immediately previous one, that the saints are the holy ones of God and initially, in the Old Testament, that term applies to the obedient angels, God’s obedient servants. And we’ve talked about the various ranks of angels and so forth, so if you want to know about that, you have to go back and listen to those previous episodes. But obviously, as you said, it’s not that God is incapable of fighting this war himself or of taking care of the universe himself. He’s capable, but it’s his love that wants other beings to participate in this, and so this is given initially to the heavenly hosts.

But, then, as we’ve heard several times on this show, that is opened, then, to human beings, that God is drawing in human beings to become part of the heavenly hosts as well. Does that mean that we become a different species, Fr. Stephen?

Fr. Stephen: No. [Laughter]

Fr. Andrew: “No”: short answer.

Fr. Stephen: Yes, the short answer is No. [Laughter] Again, it’s not about becoming… even saying “becoming angels” is kind of technically incorrect, because as we talked about before, “angel” is sort of a job description.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, it’s not a species.

Fr. Stephen: “Angel” is: you’re a messenger; that’s what you do. So, in a sense, humans can become angels in the sense that a human can serve as the messenger of God. But in the sense of we don’t cease to be a human person in this new job and this new role and these new gifts, the adoption of sons that we talked about last time, being made a holy one does not change the “one.” A holy man is still a man; he’s just now holy.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, because he’s filled with the presence of God who changes the way he exists, and gives him, frankly, abilities that he may not otherwise have had.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and so he shares in God’s holiness. I had in the notes—I’m not going to read all this in the notes, but just one representative passage from the Old Testament where this term, “holy ones,” is used in the same kind of way we’ve been talking. It’s in Psalm 89:5, 7:

Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Yahweh,
     your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones

In the council of the holy ones, God is greatly feared;
     he is more awesome than all who surround him.

And I didn’t read the whole psalm, but it’s very clear in the psalm he’s talking about in the heavens, so this isn’t talking about holy people on earth yet, because they’re not up in the sky. And then, I’m definitely not going to read all these, but if you talk about the word that we translate “saints, holy ones,” being applied to humans in the New Testament, I listed probably two dozen verse references just from St. Paul.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, we can’t list those off, but it’s over and over again. Basically this word, this phrase that’s used—well, it’s a single word in Greek, anyway; I don’t know if it is in Hebrew as well, but—

Fr. Stephen: Yes.

Fr. Andrew: But that gets used, then, for human beings, this word that’s for angels, for God’s holy ones, gets applied for human beings.

One of the things that’s fascinating to me, for instance, is that there are these other references in the New Testament, such as in Revelation 20, where you’ve got these elders, these 24 elders, and there’s references to a third of the stars falling from heaven. What does that have to do with anything? Well, as we talked about before, the stars are associated closely with divine beings, and we know that a number of these divine beings rebel against God. So it is appropriate, then, to describe them as falling from heaven, and there is this traditional number of 70 or 72 nations.

Fr. Stephen: Right, 72 elders of Israel.

Fr. Andrew: 72 elders of Israel, so if you eliminate a third of those, the number you get is 24. And, what do you know, there are 24 elders, human beings, redeemed human beings, in the book of Revelation that surround the throne of God and offer up prayer and worship to him and the prayers of the saints, as it says there, in the Scripture. Why the number 24? They’re not saying that only 24 people get saved; that’s not what that means. It is a symbolic third. In other words, the point is not that only a certain number of people can be redeemed; it’s that the fallen angels leave this space open. Like you said, there’s some openings. You know, a position is being advertised. Human beings take the place of these fallen divine beings and do the service that they do. So they replace, they absolutely replace these fallen beings.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and you have, in Revelation 20:4, the souls of the martyrs, those who were slain for Christ, which come alive and rule and reign with Christ. He shares his rule and his reign and authority with them. We’ve referenced this before, but Matthew 19:28, where Christ says to his disciples, “You’ll sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel.” That’s an ongoing thing. They’re going to rule over the twelve tribes of Israel. Just as an aside, when he said that, Judas was one of the Twelve standing there. Judas did not get that throne—sorry, Calvinists. That’s a slot and a jump. [Laughter]

Fr. Andrew: Oh! Maybe we’ll explain that joke sometime in the future, yeah.

Fr. Stephen: But so you see that sometimes I think we have weird views of the life of the world to come, of eternal life. We think, well, some people think we’ll be up, sitting on a cloud, playing a harp, hanging out with angels, or they just think it’s going to be like an earthly paradise and everything’s going to be wonderful.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, like a resort, a resort where everything sparkles.

Fr. Stephen: A never-ending vacation, right? But that’s not the picture. The picture is that we’re going to be part of God’s council and we’re going to be administering and ruling and reigning over his creation.

Fr. Andrew: Right. We have jobs to do.

We had a caller in earlier, and it looks like he came off the line, but we had a call from Gary. Gary asked, quite outright—Gary from Texas, he asked outright: “Should we even celebrate Halloween?” So I’m mentioning Gary’s [Laughter]—yeah, right, exactly—I’m mentioning Gary’s call here. So I’m sorry, Gary, if you dropped off—I hope you’re still listening. I’m mentioning Gary’s call here, because this is the point now where, having set up all of that—I think it’s really important, right?—having set up all of that, now we’re going to actually talk about this.

So not only are human beings being invited into the divine council to assist God in blessing the earth, in serving as messengers and doing all these beautiful, positive things, but they are also being recruited—recruited into an army. We should make a note of this. I think that we should do an episode just on the service of baptism. We should just dedicate a whole episode to baptism, I think. But I’m just going to mention it here briefly. So if you look at the service of baptism in the Orthodox Church—and I can’t speak for other traditions, but if you look at the service of baptism in the Orthodox Church as it’s celebrated in the Byzantine Rite, it mentions demons and foul spirits and aerial phantoms over and over—and dragons—over and over again. Not only at the beginning is there an exorcism of these foul spirits from this person, an exorcism of these spirits from the water that they’re about to be baptized in, but then there are also prayers specifically asking that they be assigned a guardian angel, and specifically asking that they be equipped to fight against these spirits.

If you ever go to an Orthodox baptismal service, you will hear what I’m talking about. This person is being recruited into an army and given his armor and weapons to fight against evil spirits, to fight in this war that is going on. It’s not a metaphor. Not a metaphor, and again we’re not talking about peaceful coexistence. But again, I should say, we do peacefully coexist with our fellow human beings, but we do not peacefully coexist with demons. We give them everything we’ve got. If you’ve been watching our Lord of Spirits Facebook page over the last week, you’ll have seen that we posted a couple of images of saints taking hammers—there’s a famous one of St. Marina (or Margaret) of Antioch, hammering a demon in the head. And there’s another one of St. Nikitas the Goth also taking hold of a demon and giving him what for. That’s because they’re doing exactly what they were baptized to do.

This is our task. As baptized Christians, not only are demons exorcised from us—like: get out; this one belongs to Christ—but also you’re being given weapons and armor to engage in this battle. It’s not just sort of a nice initiation into Church membership, it’s not just a nice thing that we do with kids—baptism is about recruitment into an army. Into an army! So this, this is what Halloween, in the traditional Christian understanding, is for. That’s what it’s for.

Now, I know there’s a lot of things—and I said this at the beginning—there’s a lot of things that people do that go by the name of Halloween, but from the Orthodox Christian point of view, and particularly this feast of All Saints, there is a purpose for this feast, and it’s not just to say, “All of these saints, aren’t they great? Isn’t it nice we have saint?” [Laughter] Like, “Look at these wonderfully moral people.” No! No no no no. This is a military parade! That is what All Saints is. It’s a military parade, and it’s also lining up the troops to get them to go and do battle.

Let’s talk about this, Fr. Stephen. [Laughter] Now… And I hope that all of you who have followed us all the way to this, you’ll understand why it took everything we just said in order to begin to say this. We can’t just start out— Like, if someone tuned in saying, “Are they going to tell me if I can go trick-or-treating?” that’s not— [Laughter] That’s not the point of this at all. But, welcome, now. Welcome to the Halloween episode. Take us further in, Fr. Stephen!

Fr. Stephen: What we’ve just been saying, we’ve just been talking about this battle that just sort of happened with the death of gods, that happened with the death and resurrection of Christ, but if you’ve read any military history—and to all the dads out there, I know you have—you know that the decisive battle isn’t the end of the war. D-Day was not the end of World War II; it was the beginning of the end of World War II. In the same way, Christ’s victory that he won, that is the decisive battle, but there are still battles to be fought before this war fully comes to an end. So the Gospel—what the Gospel is, what the word “Gospel,” frankly, means—is the report of a military victory. So what we proclaim when we go and we evangelize, we are proclaiming the victory that Christ has won, this decisive victory, and we’re recruiting people for the final push. We’re announcing to the people who have been liberated by Christ that they’re now liberated, and encouraging them now to take up arms against their former oppressors.

And this is what happens—you were talking about baptism. When you get to the very end of the gospel of Matthew, this is the send-off at the end of the gospel of Matthew before Christ ascends into heaven, is the Great Commission, where he says, “All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me,” so Christ has taken it back from these spiritual powers who abused it, and he says: Therefore, because that’s true: “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Now you can go out to those nations, “baptizing them…”

Fr. Andrew: I think about that phrase, “the Great Commission.” I think we should think about that more in military terms. You’re being commissioned as officers, as soldiers. That’s what’s happening. Therefore, go out and baptize all nations.

Fr. Stephen: “Teach them all that I have commanded you.” Give them their orders.

Fr. Andrew: Train them. So related to what you said about turning away from those false spirits and joining this army, we have Brett, who has been very patiently waiting on the line, from Indiana, who called in almost at the beginning of the show, and he’s been waiting the whole time. Brett, this is your opportunity. Welcome to The Lord of Spirits podcast.

Brett: Hey, Fathers, how are you guys doing?

Fr. Andrew: Great! Great to hear from you. What’s your question or your comment, Brett?

Brett: My question is, if somebody was a former neo-pagan, participated in various pagan rituals, offered libations to pagan gods, how would they spiritually recover from that and right themselves on a path of Orthodox Christianity?

Fr. Andrew: That’s a great question, excellent question. I would say, number one, be baptized. Number one, be baptized, because just think about everything we just said that baptism is and does. But there’s more I think that can be done. Fr. Stephen, what would you add to that, to repent and be baptized—what else?

Fr. Stephen: At the very beginning of the Orthodox baptismal service, there’s a change of allegiance.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, exactly.

Fr. Stephen: Where you reject your former allegiance and actually, at least symbolically—hopefully they don’t do this literally if it’s inside the church building—spit on the devil.

Fr. Andrew: Or, in my understanding, the more ancient ritual is simply an exhaling, a breathing out, which is an exorcistic act.

Fr. Stephen: Right, to breathe. And then pledging their allegiance to Christ. When a person who has been in this kind of slavery is then brought into Christ, they’re set free from that to live a new and different life, and this is where St. Paul’s metaphors are aimed, that that person who was a slave before, that person who did whatever they did, that person is now dead, and a new person has come to life, a new person who is characterized by all of these things we’ve been saying—who is a son of God, who is a holy one of God—all of these things are true of them and will be increasingly true of them as they follow Christ. This is an absolute setting-free, and I think someone who’s been in that kind of background who then comes to Christ, I think they experience that very literally in a way that a lot of other people who may come into the Church from other kind of background or some other church background may not experience it quite so literally as liberation.

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, I think one of the biggest thing to understand is that there is this switching of loyalties and that Christian faith is Christian faithfulness. It’s really obvious if you’re a pagan in the ancient world: you stop going to the temple of Zeus or Athena or Ares and offering sacrifices and eating them, and now you go only to the temple of the one true God, where again there is a sacrifice that is offered, and you eat it. But the same thing applies to a modern neo-pagan. Stop worshiping: you stop worshiping those other gods; you stop doing that thing.

Now, there might be feelings and all of that kind of—thoughts and so forth that still have to be wrestled with—but the key thing to do is the faithfulness: to go and to worship Yahweh and to make prayers to him every day. It is about this continually going back. Just like, for instance, if someone commits adultery, they have to turn away from that paramour and turn back to their spouse and only go toward the spouse. That’s what’s going on. And then doing that gradually builds the trust and the oneness. Does that make sense, Brett?

Brett: Yes, sir, it does.

Fr. Andrew: Excellent. All right. Go ahead, Father.

Fr. Stephen: One last little note, and this is particularly intense if you’re talking to someone who’s still in an environment where essentially ancient paganism still applies. If you’re talking to someone from India or southeast Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, who’s in that kind of situation and who is coming now to Christ, often they’ll be afraid that the spirit they’ve been worshiping, the god that they’ve been worshiping, is going to kill them if they do. This idea of a quid pro quo and having made bargains and deals is very real and experiential. That setting-free from that, the deliverance from that, and the salvation that comes in Christ, and the protection, then, that comes from Christ against those powers, is also very real for them.

Fr. Andrew: Right, and maybe something to add is that, while someone who is going from paganism or something like that into Orthodox Christianity, that baptism is the obvious door for them to walk through. It’s possible, we were talking sometimes about Christians who fall into that and then come back from apostasy from Christ. It depends on what they did while they were away and where they were before that, but still there are ways to receive that person and exorcistic acts that can be done with them. I hope that helps. It’s not an easy thing to deal with thoughts. You might still have thoughts that are connected to your former way of life, but the key is to fight against them and to be faithful to Christ.

So we’re going to talk now about some of the specific ways that Christians, saints, do battle, and what exactly that has to do with Halloween. But I have to say, Fr. Stephen, I was super intrigued by an example you gave that is in December rather than October/November, because I thought this was a cool way of getting into this thing about Halloween in particular, and that’s because in the Christian calendar December 6 is the feast of St. Nicholas, who’s the beloved Santa Claus, but actually an ancient Christian saint, a bishop in what is now Turkey, and one of the most popular saints in the world, probably the best-known in the world after the Virgin Mary, maybe. But there is this tradition amongst Germanic peoples in northern Europe of something the night before. So what is that, Fr. Stephen?

Fr. Stephen: The Eve of St. Nicholas. Well, I believe the way I broke it to you was I messaged you and said, “Hey, what do you know about Krampusnacht?”

Fr. Andrew: Right! Krampusnacht! [Laughter] As soon as I saw that I thought: nothing, but the name is really bringing me in! Krampus—nacht, of course is German for night or evening…

Fr. Stephen: Right. So the night of Krampus! [Laughter]

Fr. Andrew: Krampus-night.

Fr. Stephen: And this is the eve of St. Nicholas Day as it’s celebrated in… Krampus is primarily Austria, Germany, the German lands, but there are sort of variations of this in the Netherlands where my ancestors are from, and in other Germanic countries. But Krampus, who is now labeled as a demon, was a demon in the other sense before the coming of Christianity to the Germanic lands.

Fr. Andrew: Right. He was a local god, and a forest god, right?

Fr. Stephen: Yes. He was a pagan forest spirit who was worshiped by the people there, and in current practice Krampus is, at St. Nicholas Day, that eve, he is enslaved and overpowered by St. Nicholas.

Fr. Andrew: Again, we’re not talking peaceable coexistence here.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Right! And St. Nicholas sort of overpowers him and enslaves him and takes control of him, but sort of allows him to afflict the wicked. The people who have been bad, especially the children who have been bad, over the past year, are— in a lot of cases, it’s being beaten with birch rods. I don’t know that birch rods are the worst things to be beaten with, but apparently they are in Germany.

Fr. Andrew: When we were talking about this, of course, for fans of The Office, that comedy TV show from NBC, which takes place actually just north of where I live, not too far, up in Scranton: there is a character there named Dwight, who introduces one Christmas a figure named Belsnickel. If I’m not mistaken, Belsnickel is essentially a very similar kind of figure, but what’s interesting is that some of the— We’ve got this naughty and nice idea with Santa Claus, and Belsnickel has this kind of naughty and nice, although the way Dwight puts it is: “Have you been admirable or impish?” [Laughter] But if you’ve been impish, he beats you with—what have you said?—with birch rods?

Fr. Stephen: Yes. Well, the “impish” is actually very kind of telling, because in all of these traditions—Krampus, or Black Peter as he’s called in the Netherlands, or Belsnickel—are assisted by these assistants. Krampus’s assistants are imps. They’re sort of little Krampi.

Fr. Andrew: So what’s happening with these customs? And sometimes people put on costumes and they dress up as Krampus and they get dragged along by a St. Nicholas figure. He’s been enslaved. The point of this is it’s a ritual participation in the defeat of demonic beings so that we essentially can do the same kind of thing, connected with these Christian feast days. And so, having painted that picture now, we can understand where some of the customs for Halloween come from.

Now, again, people have a lot of opinions and you can find a gazillion websites out there telling you the “truth about Halloween,” but a lot of what’s going on on Halloween is exactly this kind of mocking and defeat of death and of demonic beings. That’s part of what’s happening. Even in the Orthodox Church… So the Orthodox Church, I sometimes will say, “Happy Halloween” to that Saturday before All Saints which is usually in June, and people kind of laugh nervously, like: Why is Fr. Andrew saying, “Happy Halloween” in June? [Laughter] But the reason is that the feast of All Saints in the Orthodox Church, for instance, has this hymn. I’m just going to read a part of it. This is from Vespers of All Saints. So at Vespers of All Saints would literally be “hallow e’en’ in the Orthodox Church: it’s the night before All Saints, the night before All Hallows. So it includes this hymn, and it’s speaking to the saints.

In deeds, ye have fulfilled the sayings of the Savior, for through you the gates of Hades, opened against the Church, have been closed, and your shed blood dried up the libations of idols. And having nourished the perfection of believers through your slaughter, you dazzled the incorporeals (that’s the angels), standing before Christ wearing your crowns. Wherefore intercede ye ceaselessly with him for our souls.

In other words, it says that the saints ended the worship of idols, ended the worship of these gods, and that they obeyed the sayings of Christ, and that they even amazed the angels, and that they stand before Christ, wearing their crowns, and they intercede with Christ just as the angels, the angelic beings, do with us. Again, it’s about this defeat [of] demonic powers, the saints defeating demonic powers, and we participate in that.

We don’t participate just by dressing up and doing these things where you see St. Nicholas with Krampus being dragged after him in a train. That’s not the only thing. It’s not only this sort of costumed act. We also defeat the demons in a lot of other ways. We talked about, of course, baptism. In January, in the Orthodox Church, we have our homes—our churches and our homes and anywhere else that the priest is let in—blessed. The priest comes in with holy water and throws it around everywhere. This is an exorcistic act. It’s an exorcistic act.

I just want to add here—I know I’m kind of on a roll here, but I just want to add that when we do these, these are all the same act. It’s all about driving out and defeating demons. When we do these things, it’s because this is real. There is a war on. If you understand that that’s the case, it would never be the case… I was a pastor for eleven years, and I would have people occasionally say, “Oh, Father, you know. You know, let’s just wait. Let’s just do the house blessing next year. I can’t get it clean or there’s not a convenient time,” or whatever, whatever, whatever. Like, so you’re saying let’s just delay driving out the demons for a year? Are you really okay with that!? If you understand that that’s what’s happening, then you would never just make it a “oh, well, we could take care of that later,” right?

But if you think about it, then, also your prayers at home. No, today we’re not going to just say, “Well, tomorrow we’ll drive out demons from our home.” Doesn’t it just change the whole way you understand the Christian life is about? I said in one of our places online, “Every house is haunted. Change my mind.” Well, you’re not going to change my mind! Every house is haunted; every place is haunted, because these evil forces are present, in every place, and it’s our job as Christians to go and to drive them out.

And that’s why I was kind of so frustrated when we started talking about this episode. There was one person even just the other day who was kind of demanding of me on Twitter, like: “Well, do you bless your parishioners to go trick-or-treating? Do you take your children out trick-or-treating?” Like that’s what they wanted to talk about. I’m like, you know what? If that’s what you think that is really important, God bless you, but it’s super not. [Laughter] Really. Really. For the record, my kids don’t go trick-or-treating, but that’s not because I believe that collecting candy from your neighbors is participation in an occult ritual. It’s because it’s just kind of too gruesome out there on the streets on that night for me to want my kids out there. I mean, I have small kids; that’s really what it comes down to for us. I don’t know; that’s kind of a monologue. Anyway.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] To re-orient us a little…

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, sorry.

Fr. Stephen: Not that I disagree with anything you just said, but…

Fr. Andrew: Oh, thank God! [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: I’m not going to “um, actually” you.

Fr. Andrew: We’re going to go to break here in just a second, but go ahead and say what you’re going to say.

Fr. Stephen: Okay. To re-orient us as to how the early Christians saw what they were doing. Christ has accomplished D-Day. The victory has happened. The war is effectively over, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. Now he sends out his disciples, and they send out their disciples, and they send out their disciples, into the world in order to rout the enemy, to chase him down, to push him out of every stronghold and every place that he has. As that happens, our fathers in the faith come into Europe; they come into pagan Europe, and when they come to pagan Europe, they find these people who, just like the pagan Romans centuries before, are enslaved by these demonic spirits, and so they come and they proclaim the victory of Christ. They bring these people over [Inaudible] —they set free.

And then the rap that you hear, the rap that you hear all over the place is: Well, the Christians were basically selling Amway; they’re basically recruiting. [Laughter] It’s not this spiritual warfare, but they’re just recruiting. So they decided it would be easier for them to get pagan recruits if they let them keep [Inaudible]. And they’ll even try to attribute this to the letter of St. Gregory the Dialogist, St. Gregory the Great, the Bishop of Rome, sent to St. Augustine (the one in England, not the one in Hippo), like, oh, this will just make it easier for them. That’s a complete misread of what happened and of that letter.

Fr. Andrew: Right.

Fr. Stephen: Here’s what actually happened. That first generation of pagans experienced, just like we’ve been saying, being set free by Christ, having their lives transformed and being set free, and the defeat of those demonic powers who had enslaved them. And so the Church in her wisdom says, “Future generations need to celebrate this liberation. They need to celebrate and ritually participate themselves in the defeat of those powers that enslaved them, in their freedom from that bondage and that slavery.”

And it is in a way just like the Jewish Passover in which Yahweh judges the gods of Egypt—that’s what he says he’s about to do—judges the gods of Egypt, frees his people. That generation experienced it literally; future generations experience by ritual participation in eating the Passover. So these holidays like Krampusnacht, like All Hallows’ Eve, all of these, are essentially little European Passovers where, if properly understood, if you don’t forget about the All Saints part and just go trick-or-treating for Halloween, if you don’t forget about who St. Nicholas was and have a really metal winter celebration in your Krampus outfit with the chains, if you don’t do that, you can experience that freedom that your ancestors experienced when the saints came and defeated these spirits and set them free.

Fr. Andrew: And the mistake that some people make is they essentially go join the other side again! That’s what Ouija boards and séances and that kind of thing are about. They’re taking it, they’re reversing it for themselves. They’re going back to Egypt and being enslaved by those gods again.

Fr. Stephen: Right, and that’s exactly what St. Paul said, as we read in Galatians, “Why do you want to go back now into slavery?”

Fr. Andrew: Exactly. Exactly. All right, we are going to go now for our final break, and then when we come back we are going to take your questions, and then we are going to wrap up. So we’ll see you back in just a minute.

Fr. Andrew: Welcome back, everybody! Now for the final segment of our special, mega, mondo, bonus Halloween episode—

Fr. Stephen: The fourth half!

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] Yeah, the fourth half of this show, exactly! The initial conception of this show when we first started, the idea was it would be about an hour long. We’ve never gone just an hour! [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: No!

Fr. Andrew: But that’s okay. We know you love it! And I should also say, I’ve heard sometimes people will say, “Why do you guys laugh when you’re talking about demons and stuff?” It’s not because we think that they’re a joke, like that they don’t exist or they don’t matter; it’s really, I mean, if I could just put it this way, it’s kind of the joy of battle, honestly. It really kind of is. We are very serious about all this.

All right. We’ve got a call from Anthony who is calling from West Virginia. Anthony, can you hear me? Anthony, are you there?

Anthony: I can hear you. I’m here.

Fr. Andrew: All right!

Anthony: Father, bless!

Fr. Andrew: God bless you! Welcome to Lord of Spirits. I’m glad you finally got through after waiting on the line for over an hour.

Anthony: That’s okay. I was just listening to the podcast, so there wasn’t any time wasted.

Fr. Andrew: Thank God.

Anthony: Sorry I’m a little out of breath. I had to take the dog out, and I was hoping I wouldn’t miss the call!

Fr. Andrew: [Laughter] You made it!

Anthony: I did, just barely. I got back in just as you were saying my name, actually.

Fr. Andrew: Oh man! Well, what’s your question or comment there, Anthony?

Anthony: My question—sorry it’s not very Halloween-related—but in the book of Tobit, toward the beginning there, you meet Sarah, and she has this demon that—it’s been a little while since I read the book, so I can’t remember exactly the phrase, but I feel like it says something like this demon is in love with her, but he’s definitely attached himself to her in some way, and she’s tormented by this demon for quite a while until Tobias comes and does the whole incense thing that St. Raphael told him to do with the fish and everything. So the question is: What is that relationship that the demon thinks… Like, what is he getting out of that relationship with being attached to Sarah? And how often does that sort of thing happen? Is that a common thing, or—? Does that make sense?

Fr. Andrew: Yeah. Well, Fr. Stephen, I’m going to let you take that one, because I think you’d probably know this a lot better than I do.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Yeah, okay. In fact, that demon in the book of Tobit is murdering all of her suitors, in the book of Tobit. The reality is that this kind of paganism, this kind of demonolatry, demon-worship, is a relationship, not a religion, in a lot of ways. What we’ve been calling a quid pro quo are these agreements entered into—that’s a real thing. The bondage and slavery we’re talking about is a real, personal thing. It’s not just… Sometimes I think when we say that, people are taking “bondage” metaphorically, like we’re talking about “bad ideas” or something, that are making you depressed or not achieve your full potential. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about literal slavery and oppression.

Usually when you have that kind of demonic activity—and it’s not always spelled out in the Bible, like, we don’t find out how Legion got into that man, what exactly he did—but it’s not that people, very pious people who are seeking to follow Christ, are walking down the street one day and suddenly they get demon-possessed. This is something that takes place over time, through a series of interactions and trade-offs and relationships. People really are enslaved and bonded and attached to this kind of spirit, and it’s not a pleasant thing. It may seem that way at the beginning, because otherwise no one would do it, but once you’re down that road, it is oppressive, and you are tormented as she was in Tobit. You long to be free of it, and this is the experience I was talking about, with people you’ll find in India or in southeast Asia, in sub-Saharan Africa, where they think that if they try to break this connection now, the demon will kill them, the spirit will kill them, or the god they’ve been worshiping will murder them or their family or something.

This is power that a person has given to that spirit, tacitly.

Fr. Andrew: Right, important point.

Fr. Stephen: And then the thrust, of course, of Tobit is that Tobias comes and St. Raphael comes and set her free, set her free from it. I won’t go further than that in terms of connection to baptism and other things that take place there in the cleansing of incense, but I’ve got Bible studies on Tobit somewhere that you can listen to. More of that.

Fr. Andrew: There you go. Does that help, Anthony?

Anthony: It does, but if I can, to clarify: the story in Tobit, we kind of are only getting the last half of that story. There must have been something before there, for her to invite that sort of thing is what you’re saying. Am I correct? Okay.

Fr. Andrew: Right, yep.

Fr. Stephen: Right.

Fr. Andrew: All right. Well, thank you very much for that, Anthony. We’re going to take one more call. Linda, you are our final caller. Linda from Georgia, can you hear me?

Linda: Yes, I can hear you, Father.

Fr. Andrew: All right. Linda, what is your question or comment? Welcome to The Lord of Spirits.

Fr. Stephen: Thank you for taking my call. I’m a history buff, and I have listened to you both before. I was looking at something the other night, a history magazine that I subscribe to, on medieval history, and it actually mentioned—and it was the feast day of St. Demetrios the Great Martyr—it was actually talking about Demetrios and how he is celebrated, at least in some countries, it’s with the change of the seasons around this time. I guess in ancient times it had to do with the wrapping up of the military campaigns for the summer and fall, winter was coming. Then I started thinking about the name “Demetrios,” and I thought, Wait. Demeter, the Greek goddess, and the changing of seasons with her, the whole story about her daughter, Persephone, being abducted, winter, spring coming. And so I started thinking about, you know, if you look at some of our saints, if you scratch just below the surface, there’s a connection, dare I say, with paganism? I’m trying not to be… [Laughter] I mean, I’m Orthodox, but I’m…

Fr. Andrew: Yeah, I think I know what you’re saying, Linda, and I would say—and I’m sure that Father will have a bunch of things to add to this [Laughter]—but I would say that, just like Krampusnacht or Halloween or all these other things, this is not a connection in the sense of, like: Well, pagans are doing this thing and we want to try to recruit them, so instead of Demeter, we’re going to give them St. Demetrios. Yeah, we’re going to invent a saint that—wow!—as a name that’s very similar, and we’ll do kind of the same kind of things but they’ll be Christian versions. That’s not what’s happening. There is a deliberate defeat of those spiritual beings by the saints.

So St. Demetrios now is clearly the person whom God has assigned to the city of Thessaloniki in Greece as its protector. On his feast day—I mean, he’s a real person; he’s not a story—they take out his actual relics, his actual body. I’ve visited and venerated, actually, a couple years ago. They take out his body, and they carry it in procession around Thessaloniki as an act of exorcism and protection. Again, this is not just sort of adapting in something pagan; this is about stomping on something pagan! It’s very deliberate. Demetrios is a real martyr who was put to death in the early years of the Church and now is the spiritual protector of the city of Thessaloniki, which is why they love him there so much. I don’t know, Fr. Stephen; did you want to add anything to that?

Fr. Stephen: Well, yeah. With names, we have to always sort of take into account the fact that a lot of these early Christian saints and martyrs were converts to Christianity, so they would have been given pagan names by their parents. I mean, St. Dionysios the Areopagite would be Exhibit A, who’s named after the god Dionysios. But we have saints with pretty much every pagan god name that there is.

Fr. Andrew: Almost.

Fr. Stephen: There’s even a St. Plato who was named after the philosopher but then became a Christian and became a saint. So we can’t read too much into the names. Plus, if I really want to nerd out, the mysteries of Demeter were centered in Corinth rather than Thessaloniki, but Thessaloniki had a spirit that was worshiped under the name Aphrodite that dominated it. And through his victorious martyrdom, St. Demetrios defeated her and booted her out and took her place as the person in Christ’s administration who is sharing in his rule and reign over the city of Thessaloniki and became its patron.

And this is a really good segue to what we’re going to talk about on the next show in two weeks. You’re tracking with us. You’re tracking with us there in Georgia! [Laughter]

Fr. Andrew: And it’s not just a storm that tracked from Louisiana through Georgia.

Linda: There was just a connection that I kind of saw, and they talked about it in that article, Demetrios even riding a horse, and that’s riding into the otherworldly aspects, I guess, of things. And then I thought about Demetrios Saturday and all of this stuff at this time, at Halloween. So thank you!

Fr. Andrew: You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Thank you very much, everyone, for calling. We just want to take a minute to give some summary remarks, and I’m going to ask my co-host, Fr. Stephen, to go first.

Fr. Stephen: I think the core of what we’ve wanted to get across and talk about tonight is that, contrary to what sometimes our Protestant friends will say about the traditional Christian view of the saints, where they’ll say, “Well, this is a pastiche for paganism. They’re just sort of replacing the pagan gods in popular worship. There’s just sort of this shift of ideas, and the veneration of the saints must just be worship the same way that the pagan gods were worshiped.” Over against that, we’re saying that the replacement of the pagan gods by the saints is not an intellectual flip or some kind of change of doctrine, but is a historical event that happened in history just as surely as any other historical event: the battles in World War II that I mentioned, it is just as real as those. That St. Demetrios replaced the spirit that was worshiped as Aphrodite.

And just as the angelic beings to whom God assigned governance over his creation as sort of vice-regents were not to be worshiped, but they were to serve and to guide and to shepherd people to the true and living God, the Holy Trinity, in the same way, the saints now, those righteous men and women who have gone before us, who have been adopted as sons of God, who have become holy ones of God and part of God’s divine council, are now governing the earth. And they are not worshiped, but they assist God in bringing us to him and to the true worship of the Most High God, the Holy Trinity.

Fr. Andrew: Well, for my closing comment, I wanted to expand a bit on something I said a bit earlier. I talked about having the priest come to your home to bless it in January, which we in the Orthodox Church do, in connection with the feast of Theophany, the baptism of Christ. In Theophany, of course, you see in many Theophany icons, Christ stepping on dragons in the water, or sometimes water gods, or sometimes both. This is his defeat of those spiritual beings, and we participate in that by being baptized, but by also taking that holy water and spreading it throughout creation, including in our homes, everywhere that we can—outdoors, indoors, wherever—because the thing that Fr. Stephen was just describing, the saints defeating these demonic powers, that’s we’re supposed to be doing ourselves. That is our job. That is our commission. It’s not…

Christianity is not a spectator sport! We are here to trample upon the false powers, the demons, the fallen angels. And if you understand that that’s what the Christian life is, when you say your prayers in the morning and at night, when you say prayers over the things that you eat, when you have the priest come to your home to bless it, when you are baptized and your children are baptized, when you come to church and receive the very body and blood of Christ into yourself, when you turn away from the sins that are participation in the works of the evil one—when you do any of those things, you are driving out the influence of these foul spirits, and they are as afraid of it as they are the mightiest of saints, because you’re not invoking your own power—it’s not your power—you are invoking the power of Christ and his cross. And when they see that sign of the cross, they flee.

Some people ask, “What do you do if you encounter a demon? What do you do if you encounter the feeling of an evil presence? What do you do?” Right? There’s a lot of things you could do. All the things I just mentioned, but in the moment especially you make the sign of the cross, and you give praise and worship to Christ, because that is the worship that they have attempted to steal for themselves, and they cannot stand to be in the presence of the worship of the one who is worthy of worship. There is only one worthy of worship, and that is Jesus Christ, our one and true God.

So my prayer is that, whatever it is that you in your wisdom choose to do related to this American celebration of Halloween, but more importantly all of the other things that we do as Christians, that you do it in an exorcistic way, that you are there to do battle with these real demons, understanding that that is the Christian life. You have been recruited into an army, so get out there and fight. You’re not alone. You’re not alone; you have the power of Christ, if you are faithful to him and you invoke him continuously.

Thank you so much, everybody, for joining us for this special episode of The Lord of Spirits. That is our show for today. If you didn’t get a chance to call in during the live broadcast, we’d love to hear from you, either via email at lordofspirits@ancientfaith.com, or you can message us at our Lord of Spirits podcast Facebook page. We read everything, but we can’t respond to everything because we get a whole lot, and we do save what you send for possible use in future episodes.

Fr. Stephen: Join us for our live broadcasts on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, 4:00 p.m. Pacific. And don’t forget to like our Lord of Spirits podcast Facebook page while you’re at it, join our Facebook group, and while you’re at it, leave a recommendation and invite your friends.

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Fr. Andrew: Thank you and may God bless you, and the angels and saints stand beside you.