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Unholy Spirits: Occultism and New Age Humanism

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This is intellectual detective work at its best. The forward alone (The Crisis of Western Rationalism) is just about worth the price of the book. North follows the rationalistic viewpoint to lits logical conclusion, showing why it helps foment occultism. He also shows how orthodox Christianity has the only answer to problems unanswerable by devotees of science or the occult. But it's hardly a sermon. None the likes of which you've heard before. It's a full course meal for the mind on every page. It was through the reading of this book that I was introduced to the writings of Jacques Vallee, because North dedicates some analysis to Vallee's work. He believes that Vallee is on target about UFO's being a control mechanism of deception, but wrong about what they really are. At any rate there is one thing you will not be when reading this book....bored.

(Pardon all the "to be" verbs.)

It's hard not to be impressed by this book. Surpassing 400 pages, North's work details countless facets of the "paranormal" or "occult," all while analyzing them from what can be called a "poor man's" Van Tillian point of view; after all, Mr. North is the ultimate "poor man's philosopher."

The book seems bewildering in places. North has no problem accepting as reality all sorts of things Science vehemently repudiates. Under discussion, among other things, are Spontaneous Human Combustion, ESP, crystals, psychic healing, primitive sorcery, telepathy, telekinesis, talking plants, outright Satanism, precognition, even UFOs. For this reason, this book poses just as many problems to "post-Kantian, mechanistic, impersonalistic, rationalistic, liberal humanistic" Science as it does to occultism. North spends almost as much time debunking the ways Science has "debunked" these phenomena as he does condemning the phenomena themselves as evil.

While judiciously weighing the merits of the claims that make up the book, North still wants to make it very clear to his reader that, in principle, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of such accounts. Many times throughout the book, North will inform the reader that such and such a claim is not trustworthy, or that some other person was exposed as a fraud (through legitimate means). Overall, however, he presents the case that these things are real, for he is just as interested in exposing the rotting foundations of modern science as he is in exposing the evil of the phenomena themselves. For this reason, this book is quite awesome.

The research done for this book is astounding. Some of the longer chapters have upwards of 100 footnotes apiece.

A few words of criticism:

A) In place, the reader wonders how trustworthy some of the stories are when they come from the same sources. In particular, North's account of Cayce (among others) shows itself more thin than some of the rest, because all the information presented in the book comes from the same one to three sources. Minor detail, however.

B) No bibliography. How useful would an annotated bibliography be in a book like this which uses hundreds and hundreds of sources! Argh.

C) Like many of North's book, _Unholy Spirits_ suffers from a little too much repetition. Throughout. To use one example, he calls chapter 10 ("The Escape from Creaturehood") the "heart of the book," but the 50-page chapter doesn't seem to contain anything new in it. Everything in it has already been detailed earlier in the book in extensive detail. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

D) Most importantly, North doesn't seem to do enough analysis in many places, but instead only engages in criticism. For example, North seems content, grounded as he is in presuppositional apologetics, to detail the beliefs of some sect (say the sorcery of don Juan), and then skip right to the criticism: it's demonic or it's evil or it's Gnostic, &c. and it contradicts the Bible here and here. But the reader would benefit greatly from _internal_ criticism here: how does this philosophy kill itself? How does this world-view rationally self-destruct? There is almost none of that in the book.

However, many of the critical sections of the book are absolutely priceless. In particular, North's discussions on the abolition of time, the importance of the orgy in primitivism, the economic consequences of occultism, why primitivism is primitive, &c. are all absolutely essential. It should be understood, though, that these sections are not analytical, but instead critical.

In all, this is one of North's best books. In addition, I know of no other Reformed Christian book written on occultism. I unreservedly recommend it.

Every Christian ought to read Gary North's "Unholy Spirits." Within our context we probably do not encounter too many psychic healings, spontaneous combustions, witch hexings and the like. North assembles an impressive amount of research (his chapter on the sorcerer's world was particularly intriguing) in a convincing fashion. By the end of the book, one should be convinced in the existence and power of evil spirits. North does an excellent job of critiquing the rationalism of modern scientists, who refuse to take seriously the reality of the paranormal. Rationalism, as Cornelius Van Til argued, has a secret treaty with irrationalism, and North proves the existence of this treaty. Both sides (rationalism/irrationalism), although they often have internal squabbles, are against God and His Anointed. History often manifests the oscillation between these two systems of thought, and this is due to man's propensity to refuse to embrace biblical religion. The 1960s and its infatuation with the occult mark a transitory stage into the irrational, Van Til's "integration into the void." Being a man who refuses to fight something with nothing, North offers his readers the only good alternative to the coming (seemingly) world of irrational, chaotic humanism--covenantal obedience to every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. "Unholy Spirits" is a fine read. Be sure to follow North's warnings, however, in your study of this often macabre subject.

Gary Kilgore North (born 1942) is head of the Institute for Christian Economics, and a prominent Christian Reconstructionist, who has written widely on many topics (including postmillennial eschatology).

He wrote in the Introduction to this 1986 book, "The basic theme of the book is simple enough, and has not changed since I wrote it: the rise of occultism as a cultural force in the United States began around 1965, and paralleled the rise of the counter-culture and the breakdown of the older Establishment humanism, the 'can-do' pragmatism which was apotheosized posthumously as Kennedy's 'Camelot'..."

Here are some quotations from the book:

"Furthermore, it is my thesis that modern secular humanism is not only powerless intellectually to call a halt to the occult revival, but that it is in fact one of the primary causes of the revival." (Pg. 39)

"Explicit prohibitions were placed on citizens of Israel against dabbling in the occult arts. These arts were well known. The most comprehensive prohibition appears in Deuteronomy 18:10-12, but there are numerous other outright prohibitions and warnings against the consequences of occult experimentation." (Pg. 65)

"My favorite Jeane Dixon prophecy about politics was announced in (1973)... she prophesied that Watergate 'may not help the President's image now, but it will later.' ... (yet soon) the whole country was united against Nixon, and fifteen months later he resigned in disgrace. Her crystal ball must have been cloudy that day." (Pg. 188)