What Should I Do If I Have Been Involved in the Occult?

Question 08103

If you are carrying past occult involvement and wondering what to do about it, I want to say the most important thing at the very start. Jesus is enough. Whatever you did, however deeply you went in, the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin, and there is no category of sin marked out as beyond it.

People who come to Christ out of that world often carry a particular kind of fear, a sense that they are different from other converts and that something is still attached to them. I have sat with a number of them over the years, and what follows is what I would say across a table.

Begin With Christ, Not With Ritual

The first question is not what you did but where you now stand. Have you actually come to Jesus? Not attended, not agreed, not felt something, but genuinely trusted him to save you. Everything else follows from that, and nothing else works without it.

Jesus warned about the house swept clean and left empty, into which seven worse spirits eventually move, and the state of that man is worse than the first. That warning is aimed precisely at people who try to clear the occult involvement out without receiving Christ, and it is why I never begin with the past. An empty house invites worse occupants. A house occupied by the Holy Spirit is a different matter entirely.

So if you are unsure, settle that first. Come to Jesus honestly and ask him to save you, and he will. That is not a formula. It is the whole gospel, and it is available to you as much as to anyone who has never touched any of this.

Confess It Specifically

Then bring the occult involvement to God by name. Not in general terms, but specifically: the seances, the readings, the boards, the spells, the pacts, whatever it actually was. There is something clarifying about naming a thing out loud in prayer.

John’s promise covers it completely: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Notice the two verbs. Forgive, which deals with the guilt, and cleanse, which deals with the defilement. Both are promised, and both rest on his faithfulness rather than on the quality of your repentance.

Manasseh is the case study I would point anyone to. He used divination, dealt with mediums and necromancers, and burned his own sons in the fire. Scripture says he did more evil than the nations the LORD had destroyed. And when he humbled himself and prayed, God heard him and brought him back. If Manasseh could be restored, so can you.

Get Rid of the Material

Follow Ephesus here. The believers there brought their books together and burned them publicly, at enormous financial cost, and Luke plainly approves. Whatever you still own that belongs to your occult involvement should go, and I would not sell it on to somebody else.

I want to be careful about the reasoning. Objects do not carry demons in the way folk religion imagines, and I do not want anyone becoming frightened of their own possessions. The reason to destroy the material is simpler and more human. It is a decisive break, it removes the possibility of drifting back, and it puts a marker in the ground that you can look back at.

Do it with another believer present if any of it has a hold on you. That is not because you need protection, but because company makes a hard thing considerably easier and there is a witness to what you have done. I have written more in my answer on whether demons can attach to objects or places.

Tell Someone

Occult involvement thrives on secrecy, and so does the shame that follows it. Find one mature believer, ideally your pastor, and tell them the truth. Not the whole congregation, not a testimony meeting where the details become entertainment, but one person who will pray with you and stay with you.

James tells us to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another, that we may be healed. There is a healing that comes through being fully known by another Christian and not rejected, and people who have come out of the occult often need that more than they need anything else. Occult involvement isolates people long before it does anything else to them, and being genuinely known again is a large part of the recovery.

Be careful who you tell, though. Avoid anyone who becomes visibly excited by the subject, and avoid ministries that specialise in dramatic deliverance. You need someone steady, not someone thrilled. The difference is usually obvious within about five minutes.

Why Occult Involvement Leaves Lingering Guilt

There is a particular reason past occult involvement produces a guilt that outlasts other sins, and it is worth naming so that you can see it for what it is. Most sins are things we did against God. This one feels like a thing we did with someone else, deliberately, on the other side. That sense of having crossed a line and made a connection is what keeps people awake.

The accuser exploits that relentlessly. Revelation calls him the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them day and night before our God, and his most effective work with a Christian is not temptation but accusation after the fact. He will tell you that this particular sin has a different status. He is lying, and he knows he is lying, and the cross is the reason he has to lie about it.

Paul’s list to the Corinthians is worth reading slowly at this point. Sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, theft, greed, drunkenness, swindling. And then, “such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” Were. Past tense, and the washing is described as complete.

What You Do Not Need

You do not need an elaborate ceremony. There is no prescribed liturgy in Scripture for renouncing a past, no formula of words that must be recited correctly, and nobody who can do for you something Jesus has not already done.

You do not need a deliverance session either, and I would be cautious about anyone who tells you otherwise. If you belong to Jesus, you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and cannot be possessed. Whatever pressure you are experiencing comes from outside, and it is answered the way all such pressure is answered: submit to God, resist the devil, and stand.

And you do not need to keep confessing the same occult involvement every week for the rest of your life. Confess it once, properly, and then believe the promise. Returning to it repeatedly is not humility; it is a quiet refusal to accept that the cross was sufficient.

Dealing With the Aftermath

Some people find that images, memories or fears persist for a long time afterwards. That is not evidence of demonic ownership. Minds are formed by what has passed through them, and things that were seen and done leave marks that take time and renewal to fade.

The remedy is the renewing of the mind, which is slow, ordinary work. Scripture read consistently. Prayer that keeps going even when it feels flat. The company of other believers. Sleep and medical help where they are needed, and no shame attached to either. Past occult involvement does not make you exempt from ordinary human needs. If the distress is severe, please speak to your doctor as well as your pastor.

And be patient with yourself. A field that has been used for one crop for years does not change overnight, but it does change. See also my answers on whether curses can affect Christians and whether we should be afraid of Satan and demons.

So, now what?

Do the plain things in order. Make sure of Christ. Name the occult involvement before God and receive his forgiveness. Clear the house. Tell one trustworthy believer. Then get on with following Jesus, and do not let this become the defining fact of your Christian life, because it is not.

The people God has used most powerfully have very often come from the most unpromising places. Paul held the coats while Stephen was stoned. You are not damaged goods and you are not a special case. You are a Christian, with the same Saviour and the same Spirit and the same promises as everybody else in the room.

What would change for you if you actually believed that this had been dealt with, completely, at the cross? Not hoped, not half believed on a good day, but settled.

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Colossians 1:13 to 14 (ESV)