It’s not uncommon for conservative Christians to attack anything outside of their religious beliefs as “demonic,” especially anything smacking of “new age.”
For example, in a recent video, conservative commentator Michael Knowles interviewed an “ex-psychic” by the name of Jenn Nizza.
Is Nizza correct in her characterization of all psychic phenomena being demonic?
In case you want an overview, here is an AI generated bulleted list of points from the video, which I recommend skimming:
The guest, Jenn, is a psychic medium who grew up in New York.
She was exposed to paranormal activity at a young age, including Ouija board experiences.
Jenn explains that Ouija boards are occult toys used to communicate with spirits by moving a dial over letters and numbers.
She shares a story about a girl who asked the Ouija board if she would die, and tragically, the girl took her own life a few weeks later.
Jenn discusses the existence of demons and their ability to observe and influence people.
She mentions her own experiences with psychic attacks, seeing scary things, and being touched by demons.
Jenn talks about her journey as a psychic medium and how she started doing tarot card readings.
She explains that she would channel information while reading tarot cards and would often receive accurate information that resonated with the client.
Jenn shares her experiences with automatic writing and how she would receive names, dates, and other information about people during readings.
She talks about the seductive nature of being a psychic medium and how it can appeal to pride and give a false sense of power.
Jenn discusses the use of tools like crystals, sage smudging, and white light visualization for protection against demonic influences during readings.
She mentions participating in divination groups and practicing various forms of divination, including palm reading, numerology, astrology, and witchcraft spells.
Jenn explains the concept of chakras and Kundalini energy, which she believes can be manipulated through new age practices.
She emphasizes that these practices often intermingle and lead to deeper involvement in occult activities.
Jenn talks about the addictive nature of psychic readings and how clients keep coming back for more guidance and answers.
She discusses the dangers of deceptive practices that use religious language and prayers but are actually demonic in nature.
Jenn mentions attending psychic university and teaching divination classes to like-minded individuals.
She shares a personal experience where she unknowingly channeled a demon pretending to be someone's deceased uncle during a reading.
Jenn talks about the importance of discerning between genuine psychic abilities and demonic influences in the spiritual realm.
She highlights the negative impact of relying on psychics for guidance instead of seeking God's wisdom and truth.
Jenn mentions the phenomenon of sleep paralysis and how she experienced frightening encounters with demonic entities during these episodes.
She discusses her struggle with trying to find solutions within the new age practices but ultimately realizing the need to turn back to her Christian faith.
Jenn acknowledges instances where psychics have been enlisted by government agencies to assist in finding missing persons, but she emphasizes the immoral means used by demons to provide information.
She concludes by stating that she believes in the reality of psychic abilities and the existence of demons but encourages people to seek God's guidance rather than relying on psychics.
The summary really misses really the key point of the video, which is to scare people that anything that doesn’t follow conservative Christian beliefs is demonic in origin.
For a foul-mouthed rebuttal to this video (with a lot of swearing), you can also view anti-woke activist Karlyn Borsyenko’s take here on Rumble, as she gives commentary while the original video plays:
(Karlyn considers herself a spiritualist and she does not believe in the Bible whatsoever. In fact, she doesn’t believe demons are real but are constructs of the human mind. Karlyn does believe in God, however, and considers Jesus to be an “Ascended Master.” I don’t fully agree with Karlyn but she makes some good points in her acerbic commentary.)
So I’ll just share a few thoughts here on the subject, which really deserves a more cohesive article. But it’s a start:
One, I actually do think demons and negative entities are real outside of the human mind, and in the Sufi world, we can add jinn (djinn) to the list of energetic beings we can’t normally see. Jinn, unlike demons, can be either good or bad, and some Sufis believe that what Christians think of as demons are just bad jinn. Or perhaps we can call bad jinn “demons.”
I’m not sure if this distinction of demon vs. jinn is really important; the bottom line is that we have bad negative entities that feed off of human energy.
But I disagree with Jenn, who seems to think that all psychic stuff comes from evil beings. For example, I do think ghosts are often just confused human spirits. And some spirit guides really are trying to help - but you have to be careful who and what you are connecting to.
Charismatic Christians Are Psychics
The reality is that modern charismatic Christians are constantly engaged in psychic activity. They just call these things by different names. Instead of a psychic reading, they’ll call it a “prophetic word.” Instead of saying they got an “intuitive hit” on someone, they’ll say they have a “word of knowledge” for them.
I’ve had Christians give me psychic readings, they just didn’t call them that. They have predicted things for me, mostly positive. They have used their powers of intuition (aka psychic powers) to tell me what they are hearing from the Holy Spirit.
The main difference between a psychic and a Christian “psychic” is that the Christian is typically or should be getting their info from the Holy Spirit or maybe Jesus.
A psychic could be getting their information from anywhere.
Good psychics are careful and only get information from positive sources, ultimately connecting to the “divine” or God.
Bad psychics get their information from negative entities and have no clue they are spreading bad info.
I have had readings from both good and bad psychics. I never went to psychics that frequently, but once in a while just out of curiosity. Then I stopped. Why?
I once had a reading from a bad psychic. In retrospect, he was channeling some really nasty entities out to get me. He gave me a halfway accurate reading that ended up causing tremendous pain and humiliation in my life, because I believed the false part of it - this is a story for later - but the bottom line is, that reading really messed me up.
I was told later by someone (who was getting better intuitive information) that said psychic was being used by demons to attack me.
I should have known - this guy was arrogant and crazy. I did his website for him and ended up firing him as a client because he was so negative and difficult. He certainly had a “gift” but he was a nasty person. I should have thrown what he said out the window, but it stuck in my mind and heart because it told me what I wanted to hear.
I should have been smarter than this but I was being very, very stupid.
I don’t get psychic readings to predict my future now, because they can end up becoming terrible disappointments or self-fulfilling prophecies, and unless you are getting a really pure reading, you could be setting yourself up for a lot of confusion and spiritual misdirection. I believe this is why fortune telling is banned in many major religions.
Fortune telling can take your power away but also disconnect you from seeking guidance from God within.
Be that as it may, I do not agree with the ex-psychic above that all things “woo” are scary and demonic - and the interviewer, Michael Knowles, shows his absolute ignorance when he tries to equate Reiki energy healing with “spirit cooking,” which is creepy performance art by controversial artist Marina Abramovic.
Marina Abramovic is not a healer but someone who makes money by offending people and stirring the pot - whether she actually believes in her pseudo-occult nonsense, I cannot say. But Reiki it is not.
At any rate, Jenn Nizza strikes me as someone who got sucked into a lot of occult stuff that she didn’t properly train in before putting herself out there as a paid psychic. She’s fairly ignorant about basic things and based on her interview, gets her knowledge about new age spirituality from quick Google searches.
There are some things she said that could be addressed - for example, she mentioned that saging her house and visualizing herself surrounded with white light didn’t keep the negative energy off of her. However, it’s not white light in your imagination that keeps the dark away - the white light is simply a metaphor for calling in the divine light (i.e., God’s light). If you just think a color is protecting you, you’ve missed the whole point.
So Nizza wasn’t apparently connected to God’s light while being a psychic, and now falsely presumes no-one else is.
Although, we can all agree Ouija boards are bad and stay away from them.
Ultimately, I think it’s better to seek spiritual guidance and counseling than have someone predict things for you. Does this mean all tarot cards are bad? Well, I think it’s how you use them.
If you have an oracle deck and use it as a meditation tool, asking God/the divine to help guide you, and then you pick a card…well, that’s a very different intention than obsessively playing around with tarot cards and psychic readings because you are desperate to hear that your knight in shining armor is finally going to show up and rescue you from your mess of a life.
Christians mistakenly believe that they have the monopoly on truth because they misunderstand that it is the act of believing itself which creates the magic (not the object of the belief). You could swap christ for Peter Pan and the outcomes would be the same . Faith is key, not where your faith lies. I spent time living with sufis in the 1980s and making a documentary with them in Egypt and learned so much from these amazing people . But back in England I got possessed demons and my article here goes onto depth about djinn and their origins https://open.substack.com/pub/callystarforth/p/demons-from-the-depths?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1eq51l