Many, many issues emerge for me as I read you, including ones to do with my own autobiography.

As someone who participated in the New Age movement intensively, it is hardly surprising that over the years I received certain kinds of work – intended as healing – on my “subtle, inner anatomy” as you put it.

While I would agree with you that the fact of such an inner anatomy is not one precluded by the dogmas of the Church, my own autobiography – too extensive for a comment box! – suggests to me that the Church is not without legitimate intent in the kind of caution it generates around these issues in the faithful.

I do feel my “inner anatomy” was manipulated by people who did not know what they were doing and that real danger exists here. I have in fact come to suspect that some of the de-christianisation we see in the West today – particularly in the New Age movement – is being aided and abetted by manipulations of “inner anatomy”, again as you put it.

I feel there is something we must take very seriously and gravely in your own words:

“Some people report that certain practices led to an infestation of evil through the inner anatomy.”

I have a sense of people playing with a fire that is very rarely if ever sufficiently understood …

I want to stress that I use the words and phrases above like “feel” and “suspect” “have a sense” very advisedly. I am well aware that many will accuse me of becoming paranoid and polarising – “branding” evil, projecting my own darkness onto things and more.

These things are not easy. I just try to be as prudent as I can, examining and re-examining …

As for superstition in traditionalists. Well, yes. Superstition it seems to me is everywhere. The New Age is very superstitious. The scientism of people like Richard Dawkins is filled with superstition. (I trust for example that epiphenomenalism will one day be seen as the height of superstition i.e. a hasty conclusion based on self-protectiveness against perceived threat …)

Few if any of us, escape superstition. The only means of escape I see is through prayer and rigourous examination in light of minds – and ultimately saints – far greater than oneself. A true traditionalism orients oneself I think to such effort in the presence of the geniuses of the tradition – which geniuses are not simply intellectual, but geniuses of holiness, as well.

But undoubtedly, traditionalism frequently degenerates into less than such a lofty goal. Where as you say, things are often too “hastily accepted” without such rigour and prayer. We are all very, very fallen and given to being very limited and prejudiced.

Still in light of the darkness I intimate above – whether I am paranoid or prudent only God knows – I join with the cautiousness of traditionalists regarding “inner anatomy”. Although at the same time, this is hardly the same as advocating a simplistic tarring with the same brush a whole cluster of things as evil – simply because they sometimes appear in association with the term “New Age”.

Having read your comment several times, I am aware of much else in it, as well. And it will continue in my thoughts and prayers …

This leads to another point. Spiritual knowledge exists that is not part of Dogma in a formal way. If this is so the question becomes what is the relation of this knowledge to the truths enshrined in Dogma? We can be a little inclined to brand evil that which we don’t find in dogma. On the other shoe, we might be to accepting of everything we hear.
Some spiritual or esoteric knowledge may lead one to evil, some may be neutral or irrelevant, some may lead one to the Good. Also, certain things may be neutral in themselves and it depends what one does with it. The subtle, inner anatomy is case in point. Some people report that certain practices led to an infestation of evil through the inner anatomy. But it is also true, that the inner anatomy can be irradiated by the True Sun, of the highest energy and light of the Holy Trinity, the Fruit of the Tree of Life, the Bread of Heaven.