Christian Necromancy

If there was ever any doubt that Charismatic Christianity constitutes a school of magick, this should set it to rest. Apparently, the Word of Faith charismatic movement has adopted a practice dubbed "grave-sucking" that appears to be a form of straight-up necromancy. The idea is that by lying on top of a believer's grave and and performing certain prayers, a living person can absorb the powers and blessings that said believer accrued in life. As this article from Youth Apologetics Training points out, there is no real Biblical support for this practice and in many ways it runs counter to mainstream Christian theology.

Maybe that believer had a gift of healing. Maybe they were an apostle, prophet or evangelist. This of course assumes that they were actually empowered in these ways which I have serious doubts. Whatever the case, now God’s plans for that particular anointing are placed on hold. How does God correct this and get his plans back on track? We as believers must find a way to retrieve the mantle or anointing from the rotting corpse six feet under. Only then can we get God’s plans back on track. This is achieved by placing our hands on the gravestone of the deceased or lying on top of the grave. Sometimes a prayer will be offered to God to aid in this perceived power transfer.

I kid you not! Some people actually believe this. God’s plan has in fact been frustrated and now God needs us to seek out His lost anointing so we can bale God and His plans out. They believe that by laying there on the grave they will be able to pull the anointing from the dead. It’s as if they believe the Holy Spirit is lost and doesn’t seem to realize that the person they empowered is dead and is no longer able to minister in this empowered way. Suddenly the Holy Spirit senses someone is lying on the dirt six feet above His head. The Holy Spirit, apparently not caring who is laying up there decides to jump into the new body giving them the supernatural abilities that the dearly departed once had. Again this assumes that the person in the grave was in fact empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Not only does this sound just like necromancy as practiced by some occultists, it also displays an incredible amount of concretizing on the part of practitioners. It treats the Holy Spirit as a sort of substance that can be accumulated and remains in the bones of the deceased, rather than the unfolding of metanoia or enlightenment within the consciousness of the individual believer. Likewise, Word of Faith follows the green or prosperity gospel, which teaches that God wants you to be rich and only the unrighteous are poor - in direct contradiction to the teachings of Jesus.

So in case you were wondering where the warped teachings of the green gospel eventually lead, here you go - follow it long enough and you'll find yourself skulking around graveyards, seeking out remaining bits of embodied Holy Spirit to absorb from the dead. That's incredibly creepy.