A Woman Turned to a Clairvoyant for Advice

Hegumen Nektariy (Morozov)

Question to the priest.

This spring, on the advice of a friend, I turned to a clairvoyant woman. My mental balance was disturbed by the situation at work and life's troubles. This woman is a deeply religious person, but she is a Muslim. She helped me a lot. She began all her sessions with a prayer and asked me to read the Lord's Prayer. She didn’t take any money for the treatment, and answered my requests for help in my affairs: “Ask God.” Is that a sin that I turned to her?

Hegumen Nektariy (Morozov), rector of the Bishops' Church of the icon of the Mother of God "Satisfy my Sorrows" answers.

Don’t you yourself feel the “spiritual illogicality” of what you write about? Aren’t you surprised by the recommendation given by a "deeply believing Muslim woman" to read the Lord's Prayer? Such internal inconsistency is typical for people involved in extrasensory activities, magic, divination and trying to “reconcile” all this with religion. And it serves as an evidence of the delusion in which these people are. The woman whom you visited is also among such misguided ones. It is possible that she really does not have material self-interest, however, without a doubt, there is self-interest of a different order - spiritual. The basis for such a practice is the opinion of oneself as a person of a special kind, pride, leading to that state, which in Orthodox asceticism is called delusion (that is, self-deception that has reached a certain highest degree). A believing person is called a believer because he trusts God, His Providence, and does not boldly seek to penetrate the mystery of the Divine plan for the world and people, does not tempt his Creator in this way. The Lord has revealed and is revealing His will to the righteous, whose life is devoted to serving Him, whose heart has been cleansed of passions through a cruel long-term struggle with them. But He reveals it when He wants. The search for such revelations with force, especially inviting other people to oneself with the promise to "achieve" such a revelation has always been considered sinful, based on pride and "deception" about oneself.

Is it also sinful that you turned to a person engaged in this practice for advice? Certainly yes. You were looking for the truth outside the Church, you were looking for it from a person with a very complex confessional “synthesis”, from a person who, consciously or unconsciously, is in communication with a dark force that is contrary to God. And please try to hear: you must definitely come to an Orthodox church, tell about this situation in confession, repent, so that the terrible power that you yourself let into your life with this recourse does not show very soon the power it has received over you. Tell the priest about the troubles that led you to the "clairvoyant" woman, ask him to explain how to deal with them and your whole life in a Christian way, which, most likely, will save you from many troubles forever.

This article in Russian

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