2.9 How Spirits Influence Our Lives

The Reading of Our Thoughts by Spirits

Spirits can see what human beings do, but not in the sense of an unbroken, indiscriminate surveillance. Human beings are continually surrounded by spirits, and spirits may perceive what happens around them; yet they attend only to what draws their interest. What does not concern them does not hold their attention.

Our most secret thoughts are often known to them. Not only outward actions, but even thoughts may be visible to spirits, including thoughts a person would prefer to hide not only from others, but from oneself. What seems concealed in earthly life is not hidden in the spiritual world.

For that reason, it is easier to hide something from a living person than from spirits. Even when someone believes they are completely alone and unseen, they may in fact be in the presence of many spirits who are observing them.

What spirits think when they observe us depends on the kind of spirit involved.

Frivolous spirits may take pleasure in small disturbances. They laugh at the irritation they provoke and mock the impatience they uncover.

Serious spirits respond very differently. They regard human weakness with compassion. They pity our imperfections and seek to help us overcome them.

The Concealed Influence of Spirits on Our Thoughts and Actions

Spirits influence human thoughts and actions more than most people imagine. Very often, they help direct the course a person follows.

The human soul thinks for itself, yet the mind is not always occupied by ideas that arise from itself alone. Many thoughts can appear at once about the same subject, and they often contradict one another. This inner conflict comes from a mixture of personal ideas and those suggested by other spirits. That is why hesitation and uncertainty are so common: several currents of thought may be struggling within the same consciousness.

Distinguishing exactly which thoughts are one’s own and which are suggested from outside is not always necessary. A suggested thought may feel like an inward voice, while one’s own thought often appears in the first impulse. Even so, too much concern with separating them can be unhelpful. Human freedom is preserved precisely in the fact that one must choose. If the choice is good, it is embraced more willingly; if it is bad, responsibility remains fully one’s own.

For the same reason, no clear and constant faculty has been given to separate personal thoughts from suggested ones in every case. If such a distinction were always useful, it would be as plain as the difference between day and night. When it remains indistinct, that very uncertainty serves a purpose.

Inspiration and Intelligence

Intelligence and genius do not draw exclusively from an isolated inner source. Some ideas arise from the person’s own spirit, but many are suggested by other spirits who judge the individual capable of understanding them and worthy of passing them on.

When people feel unable to find ideas within themselves and seek inspiration, they may be appealing for spiritual assistance without realizing it. In that sense, they make a kind of unconscious evocation.

The First Impulse and Moral Discernment

It is sometimes said that the first impulse is always the best. That is not universally true. The first impulse may be good or bad according to the nature of the incarnate spirit. It is always good only for the one who is receptive to good inspirations.

The way to judge a suggestion is moral, not merely psychological. Good spirits give good counsel. The character of the advice reveals its source. A thought that leads toward kindness, honesty, peace, humility, and duty bears a different mark from one that excites vanity, resentment, selfishness, or wrongdoing.

Why Imperfect Spirits Incite Evil

Imperfect spirits seek to draw human beings toward evil because they themselves suffer, and they want others to suffer as they do. Envy moves them. Seeing beings happier and more advanced than themselves, they try to involve others in the same misery that comes from moral inferiority and distance from God.

Yet their action does not take away human freedom. Their influence serves as a trial of faithfulness and perseverance in the good. Through the experience of resisting evil, the spirit incarnate in human life gains strength, clarity, and progress.

These harmful influences do not act in a vacuum. A person calls them by desire, inclination, and consent. Spirits of a lower order attach themselves to those whose tendencies attract them. If someone nourishes violent, selfish, or corrupt intentions, there will be spirits ready to sustain those impulses. But alongside them, there are also good influences urging restraint, justice, and right action. The balance remains, and the person stays master of the choice.

God permits this struggle but does not command evil. Spirits are never given a mission to do wrong. When they act wrongly, they do so by their own will and must bear the consequences. Their power to tempt becomes one of the conditions through which moral firmness is tested, but the duty to resist remains with the individual.

How Evil Influence Is Repelled

People can avoid the influence of spirits who incite evil. Such spirits attach themselves only to those who invite them by desire or attract them by habitual thought.

When their influence is firmly rejected, they withdraw. Having nothing to gain, they leave, though they may continue to watch for a favorable moment with patience and cunning.

The most effective defense is moral. Doing good, trusting in God, and refusing harmful suggestions weakens their hold and destroys the power they seek to exercise. Special caution is needed toward spirits who excite evil thoughts, stir up discord, awaken base passions, or flatter pride. Flattery is especially dangerous because it attacks a person at a vulnerable point. Humility, prayer, and sincere effort toward what is right are powerful safeguards.

Hidden Communications and Inner States

Not every feeling of anxiety, anguish, or inward satisfaction comes solely from bodily causes. Such states often arise from unnoticed communication with spirits. A person may be affected by spiritual contact without being aware of it in waking life, or by impressions received during sleep.

This helps explain why certain emotions or moral impressions sometimes appear without any obvious external cause. The invisible world is not absent from ordinary experience. It often touches the mind through subtle influences, impressions, and inclinations.

Spirits and Circumstances

Spirits do not merely take advantage of existing circumstances; they may also help bring them about. They do this by directing attention, prompting movement, and leading a person toward situations that correspond to desire or ambition.

A simple example makes the process clear. A person finds a sum of money on the road. Spirits did not place it there, but they may have suggested the path that led to it. Then one influence urges the person to keep it, while another inspires the return of it to its rightful owner. The same pattern appears in many temptations. Circumstances present the occasion, but opposite suggestions arise around it, and the individual remains free to choose.

Human life unfolds amid these concealed influences. Thoughts are not always solitary productions of the self, and moral conflict is often intensified by unseen intelligences. Yet freedom is never abolished. Good and evil suggestions may both approach the mind, but assent belongs to the person. The true safeguard lies in vigilance, humility, love of the good, and trust in God.

The Possessed

What is commonly called possession does not mean that one spirit enters a living body and takes the place of the incarnate spirit.

A spirit does not enter a body as one enters a house. It joins itself to an incarnate spirit whose defects and tendencies are similar to its own, and the two act together. Even in such a case, the incarnate spirit remains united to the body and is always the one who acts upon matter through its own organism and according to its own will. No spirit can replace the one who is incarnated, because the bond between spirit and body remains until the appointed end of bodily life.

Possession as Subjugation

If possession is understood as the cohabitation of two spirits in the same body, it does not exist. But a person may become dependent on another spirit to such a degree that the person feels subjugated or obsessed, and the will may seem almost paralyzed.

This is the condition truly meant when speaking of the possessed. Such domination never occurs without some participation from the one who suffers it, whether through weakness, moral vulnerability, or a desire that opens the way. The suffering is real, but it is not the displacement of the incarnate spirit by another.

Many conditions once attributed to possession belong instead to illness. Epileptics and those with mental disorders often need a physician rather than an exorcist.

In ordinary speech, possession usually assumes the existence of demons as a separate race of beings created for evil, dwelling within a person alongside the soul. Since there are no demons in that sense, and since two spirits cannot inhabit the same body at once, possession in that popular meaning must be rejected. What remains is the idea of a soul brought into near-complete dependence upon an imperfect spirit that has subjugated it.

Freedom and Resistance

No domination is absolute where firm will is present.

Any burden can be cast off when the person truly wills it. Liberation depends first on the inner decision to resist. However strong an obsessing influence may appear, it cannot endure indefinitely against sincere and steady determination.

A person may sometimes fail to recognize the influence at work. In such cases, help from another may be useful, but only under certain conditions. Someone who is morally upright may strengthen the sufferer’s will by calling upon the cooperation of good spirits. The more moral a person is, the greater that person’s power to repel imperfect spirits and to attract good ones.

Yet no third party can accomplish this alone. If the subjugated individual does not cooperate, outside assistance remains powerless. Some even cling to the dependence because it flatters their inclinations or satisfies hidden desires. Where the heart is not purified, no true influence can be exercised: good spirits withdraw, and evil spirits are not intimidated.

Exorcism, Patience, and Prayer

Formulas of exorcism have no power by themselves.

Imperfect spirits are not driven away by words treated as magical instruments. When they see such formulas taken seriously in that manner, they mock them and persist.

The most effective means of freeing oneself from obsessing spirits is often to wear out their patience. Their suggestions must be ignored. They must be shown that they are wasting their time. When they see that they can accomplish nothing, they withdraw.

Prayer is also a powerful aid, but not as a mechanical recitation. It is not enough to mutter a few words in the hope of obtaining immediate deliverance. Divine help supports those who act, not those who only ask. A person suffering from obsession must work to destroy within themselves the very causes that attract evil spirits. Prayer strengthens this effort, but does not replace it.

The Meaning of Expelling Demons

Accounts of the expulsion of demons must be understood according to the meaning given to the word.

If a demon means an evil spirit exercising subjugating influence over a person, then removing that influence truly is an expulsion. If an illness has been attributed to a demon, then curing the illness may also be described in that way. Whether the statement is true or false depends on the sense in which the words are taken.

Many of the greatest truths appear absurd when only the outer form is considered and allegory is mistaken for literal fact. Clear understanding depends on looking beyond the wording to the reality intended.

Convulsionaries

Spirits do play a role in the phenomena observed among people called convulsionaries, and that role may be considerable. Magnetism is the primary source involved, while spirits often act in connection with it. At the same time, many such manifestations have been exaggerated or exploited by fraud, which has made them appear absurd and has surrounded them with confusion.

The spirits that take part in these phenomena are generally little evolved. More advanced spirits are not drawn to displays of this kind.

Collective Extension of the Phenomenon

An abnormal state like that seen in convulsionaries and hysterical persons can suddenly spread through an entire group by sympathetic effect. Mental dispositions are, in some circumstances, communicated with great ease. Magnetism helps make this understandable, and certain spirits also contribute through their affinity with those who first produce the condition.

Among the remarkable faculties observed in convulsionaries, several are recognizable from somnambulism and mesmerism. Physical insensitivity, mind reading, and the sympathetic transmission of pain belong to this order of effects. Such individuals in crisis may be understood as being in a kind of waking somnambulistic state, produced by the influence they exert on one another. In this condition, they act at once as magnetizers and as magnetized persons, often without knowing it.

Physical Insensitivity

The physical insensitivity displayed by some convulsionaries, and also by certain persons subjected to extreme suffering, can arise from more than one cause.

In some cases, it is an exclusively magnetic effect acting upon the nervous system, much as certain substances do. In others, an intense exaltation of thought dulls bodily sensitivity because life seems, so to speak, to withdraw from the body and become concentrated in the spirit. When the spirit is powerfully absorbed in something, the body may no longer feel, hear, or see in the usual way.

Fanatical exaltation and enthusiasm sometimes produce a striking calmness and coolness in the face of acute pain. Such endurance is difficult to understand unless sensitivity has been neutralized by something like an anesthetic effect. A similar thing is seen in combat, where a serious wound may pass unnoticed in the heat of action, while under ordinary conditions a slight scratch might provoke tears.

The Role of Authorities

Because these phenomena depend on a physical cause along with the action of certain spirits, it may seem surprising that public authorities have sometimes been able to put a stop to them. The explanation is simple: the action of spirits in such cases is secondary. They merely take advantage of a natural disposition.

What authorities suppress is not the disposition itself, but the cause that maintains, excites, and spreads it. In that way, what was active can become latent. Such intervention may be justified when the phenomenon gives rise to abuse or scandal.

This also shows an important distinction. When the action of spirits is direct and spontaneous, external intervention has no real power over it.

The Affection of Certain Spirits for Certain Persons

Spirits do not relate to all people in the same way.

There is a real affinity between certain spirits and certain individuals, and that affinity follows moral resemblance. Good spirits are drawn to those who are upright, or at least sincerely capable of improving themselves. Spirits of a lower order are drawn to those whose tendencies resemble their own, especially where there is selfishness, corruption, or a readiness to fall into wrongdoing. Their attachment reflects a similarity of sentiment.

True affection among spirits is never carnal. It belongs to a moral bond, not to physical desire. Yet not every attachment a spirit forms is pure affection. Some spirits still carry traces of the passions they knew during earthly life, and these memories can influence the way they attach themselves to particular persons.

Good spirits do all the good they can. They rejoice in human happiness, and they are not indifferent to suffering. Even so, they view affliction differently from those still immersed in bodily life. They are especially concerned when suffering is met with revolt, bitterness, or despair, because in that case the trial fails to produce its proper benefit. A painful experience can serve as a remedy, but only if it is accepted in a way that allows it to heal.

Physical Afflictions and Moral Afflictions

Spirits are less troubled by physical hardships than by the moral causes that keep a soul in a lower condition.

Selfishness and hardness of heart weigh more heavily than bodily pain. From these moral defects many other troubles arise. For that reason, spirits often look with a certain calm upon the imagined miseries that come from pride, vanity, or wounded ambition. Such sufferings belong largely to temporary earthly illusions.

By contrast, they take serious interest in trials that can shorten the duration of moral wandering and help the soul advance. Because they know bodily life is brief, and that its tribulations can prepare a better state, they judge earthly sorrow from a wider horizon. Misfortunes that touch only worldly ideas seem to them much as the small griefs of childhood appear to adults: real enough to the one who suffers them, but minor when seen in a larger perspective.

Spirits who understand the purpose of life’s afflictions see them as passing crises that can restore spiritual health. They feel compassion for human pain, just as one feels compassion for a suffering friend, but they do not always share human alarm. Good spirits seek to strengthen courage for the sake of the future. Lower spirits do the opposite: they encourage discouragement, exaggerate suffering, and try to turn trial into ruin.

The Sympathy of Relatives and Friends

Spirits who were once our relatives and friends usually retain a more particular sympathy for us than spirits who were strangers in earthly life.

They often protect those they loved, as far as their power allows. The bonds of affection are not destroyed by death. When the attachment was sincere, it continues in spiritual life and may become even more attentive and devoted.

They are also sensitive to the affection still felt for them on earth. Remembrance reaches them. Loving thought is not lost. Yet memory and affection call forth response most naturally where they are mutual. Those who are forgotten, in turn, cease to be remembered in the same way.

Guardian Angels: Protector, Familiar and Sympathetic Spirits

Spirits may attach themselves to particular individuals in order to protect and guide them. These are spirit friends—good spirits, often called guardian spirits or guardian angels.

A guardian angel is a protector spirit of a high order. Its role resembles that of a parent toward a child: to guide the person along the path of the good, to offer counsel, to bring consolation in affliction, and to sustain courage during the trials of earthly life.

This protection is not momentary. It extends from birth to death, and often beyond death into spirit life. It may even continue across multiple bodily existences, since incarnate lives are only brief phases within the longer life of the spirit.

A protector spirit accepts this mission freely, yet once accepted it becomes a duty. Such a spirit may choose beings with whom it feels affinity. For some spirits the task is a joy; for others, a responsibility faithfully fulfilled. Their care is not necessarily exclusive. A spirit especially linked to one person may still assist others, though less directly.

At times a protector spirit may be called away to another assignment. In such cases, it is replaced.

The Action of Protector Spirits

Protector spirits do not abandon their wards simply because those wards ignore good advice. They may withdraw when they see that their counsels are refused and that the person deliberately submits to the influence of less-evolved spirits. Even then, they do not completely forsake the individual. They continue trying to make themselves heard. If the link seems broken, it is because the person has shut their ears. The protector returns as soon as it is sincerely called.

The thought that each person is accompanied by beings more advanced than themselves is deeply consoling. Such spirits remain near in every condition of life: in suffering, confinement, illness, moral confusion, solitude, and danger. Nothing truly separates a person from this invisible friend. The soul receives gentle impulses from it and wise counsels within conscience.

To live with this awareness is to gain strength in moments of crisis. It helps resist harmful influences and recalls the voice of truth when falsehood tries to persuade. Nothing can be hidden from such spirits. They see under a higher law, and they urge each person toward progress, courage, and sincerity.

Their care is not hindered by physical distance. To spirits, space does not present the obstacle it does to embodied beings. Even if they dwell on another world, they can remain connected to those under their protection. Thought passes through the universal fluid that links worlds together, just as sound travels through air. What seems remote to human senses is not remote to them.

Withdrawal, Freedom, and Responsibility

Good spirits never do evil. If a protector spirit withdraws and another influence gains ground, the harm comes from spirits of a lower order and from the person’s own moral weakness, carelessness, or pride. Evil spirits have no irresistible power. Their influence depends on the consent, negligence, or passivity of the person they approach.

Protector spirits may allow their wards to undergo struggles and even temporary falls, not because they are powerless, but because growth requires real trial. They support through counsel, through inward inspirations, and through good thoughts. If these are ignored, the responsibility remains human. Resistance to evil must be exercised freely.

A protector spirit is not constantly required to remain visibly or perceptibly beside the one it guards. There are moments when its immediate presence is not necessary.

A time does come when a spirit no longer needs a guardian in the same way. As a student eventually no longer needs a master, so an advanced spirit comes to guide itself. Yet this state is not reached during earthly life.

The action of good spirits remains largely hidden for a reason. If human beings could always see their support openly, they would lean on it too much and fail to act for themselves. The spirit must gain experience through its own efforts. Freedom and responsibility are essential to progress. Guidance is given without suppressing initiative.

The Merit and Feeling of Protector Spirits

When protector spirits succeed in helping someone remain on the path of the good, they experience joy. Their success is a merit that contributes to their own advancement and happiness. It is like the gladness of a mentor seeing a disciple flourish.

When their efforts are unsuccessful, they are not held at fault if they have done all they could. They do suffer from the moral failings of those they guide, and they pity them; but their sorrow is not the anguished despair known in earthly life. They know that no failure is final and that what is not achieved today may be achieved later.

Names, Recognition, and Identity

People often wish to know the name of their guardian angel, but names in the earthly sense are not essential in spirit relationships. One may invoke the protector by any revered or uplifting name associated with a high and noble spirit. Good spirits are united in sympathy and mutual assistance, and a protector can answer through such an invocation.

When spirits use well-known names, they are not always the very individuals once known by those names. Sometimes they are spirits connected with them in sympathy or acting under their influence. A name may simply serve as a trustworthy sign suited to human understanding.

After returning to spirit life, one recognizes one’s protector spirit. Very often this spirit was already known before incarnation.

Who Can Be a Protector Spirit?

Protector spirits belong to a more elevated order than those they protect. Protection requires a certain advancement and a degree of power or moral authority granted by God.

A father, for example, may protect a child after death, but if he does so, he may himself be assisted by a more evolved spirit. Likewise, those who leave earthly life in good conditions may continue watching over those they loved, though their power depends on their own state and is not always complete.

All human beings have a protector spirit, even those in primitive conditions or deep moral impurity. Yet the nature of the protector’s mission is relative to the needs of the person. One does not assign a teacher of philosophy to a child who is only learning to read. The progress of the familiar or guiding spirit is proportioned to that of the spirit being guided. A more advanced person may, in turn, become protector to one less advanced, and the good accomplished in that role contributes to further personal advancement.

If a protecting spirit reincarnates, it can no longer devote itself in the same way while bound by a material body. During moments of freedom it may still ask that a sympathetic spirit assist in the task. Spirits accept only missions they can complete. On more material worlds, incarnate beings are too constrained by bodily life to care fully for others from the invisible side, which is why more advanced disincarnate spirits often take over when needed.

Evil Spirits and the Struggle of Influence

An evil spirit is not assigned to each person as an official counterpart to the guardian spirit. Yet evil spirits do seek opportunities to draw individuals away from the moral path. If one attaches itself to someone, it does so on its own initiative and in the hope of being heard.

This creates a struggle between good and evil influences. The one that prevails is the one to which the individual listens.

No one is ever forced to yield. Evil spirits remain only insofar as they find access. The individual is always free to resist or repel them.

Some people seem to exercise an almost irresistible influence over others, whether for good or for harm. When such influence serves evil, it can indeed involve wicked spirits acting through them in order to subjugate others more effectively. Such situations may be permitted as a trial.

At times, a good or evil spirit may even incarnate in order to accompany a person more directly in earthly life. More often, however, such work is entrusted to incarnate spirits who are sympathetic to the same influence.

Multiple Spiritual Relationships

A person may have not only a protector spirit but also several sympathetic spirits. Individuals are often surrounded by spirits who are more or less advanced, who care for them with affection and interest. There are also spirits who aid them in evil.

Sympathetic spirits are drawn by likeness of thoughts, tastes, and feelings. They may be good or bad, because human beings attract spirits according to their own character.

Familiar spirits are related but not identical to protector spirits. There are many gradations of protection and sympathy. A familiar spirit is usually a friendly spirit especially connected with the details of a person’s daily life.

From these distinctions, four broad categories emerge.

Protector spirits, guardian angels, or good spirits

These spirits follow a person through life in order to help them progress. They are always more advanced than the one they guard.

Familiar spirits

These spirits attach themselves to certain persons for varying lengths of time in order to help them within the limits of their power, which may be quite modest. They are good spirits, but they may be only slightly advanced and sometimes even somewhat frivolous. They willingly concern themselves with the details of personal life and act only with the permission, or under the direction, of protector spirits.

Sympathetic spirits

These are spirits attracted through personal affection and similarity of sentiment, taste, and thought, whether for good or for evil. The duration of their relationship depends largely on circumstances.

Evil spirits

These are imperfect or wicked spirits who attach themselves to people in order to divert them from the good. They do not act by assigned mission, but by their own impulse. Their persistence depends on how easy or difficult a person makes access to themselves. The individual remains free to listen or to resist.

Family, Groups, Cities, and Nations

Spiritual protection is not limited to individuals. Some spirits attach themselves to an entire family whose members live together and are united by affection. This should not be confused with ideas of racial privilege or collective superiority.

Spirits are also drawn to groups of people, societies, cities, and nations. They prefer places where they encounter dispositions like their own, because there they are more at ease and more likely to be heard. Human tendencies attract corresponding spirits, whether in individuals or in larger communities.

For this reason, societies, cities, and nations are assisted by spirits of greater or lesser advancement according to their character and the passions that dominate them. Imperfect spirits withdraw from places that resist them. Moral purity in a community, just as in a person, tends to repel evil spirits and attract good ones. Good spirits awaken and sustain collective tendencies toward justice and goodness, while inferior spirits may inflame destructive passions.

Groups of people can therefore be understood as collective individualities moving toward a shared objective. Because of this, they too require higher direction and have protector spirits suited to their level of advancement.

The quality of these protector spirits remains relative. More advanced groups draw more elevated influences, just as more advanced individuals do.

Protectors of the Arts and Special Activities

There are also special protector spirits who aid the progress of the arts and sciences and who assist those who invoke them worthily. Such assistance does not replace effort, discipline, or genuine capacity. They do not grant vision to the blind or hearing to the deaf. They support what is sincere and real; they do not sustain vanity.

Older traditions personified such protecting spirits as deities. The Muses may be understood as symbolic representations of protector spirits of the arts and sciences. Household protector spirits were known under other ancient names. In more recent language, arts, industries, cities, and countries may all be said to have their patrons or protectors—high order spirits working under different names.

Collective Moral Atmosphere and Invisible Influence

Since every person attracts sympathetic spirits according to their tendencies, the same is true of collective bodies. The general quality of the sympathetic spirits surrounding a group corresponds to the general quality of the individuals composing it. Outside spirits are drawn there by similarity of thought and taste.

Nations especially attract spirits according to their customs, habits, dominant character, and above all their laws. A nation’s laws express its moral character. When justice is upheld, the influence of evil spirits is resisted. When laws consecrate injustice and violate humanity, good spirits become fewer and evil influences multiply, reinforcing harmful ideas and stifling better inspirations.

In such conditions, noble influences may be present, but they are often overwhelmed by the surrounding moral disorder. By observing the customs, laws, and habits of a people—or of any human group—one may form a clear idea of the unseen population of spirits that takes part in its thoughts and actions.

Living in Communion with Good Spirits

Communication with one’s protector and familiar spirits is natural. In this sense, every individual is a medium, even if most are unaware of it. The bond may become more conscious as spiritual understanding deepens.

There is no need to fear burdening good spirits by turning to them. Continual inward contact with them brings strength, clarity, and encouragement. They inspire perseverance, moral renewal, and confidence in the future.

Human intelligence, knowledge, and talent are also part of this network of assistance and responsibility. Those who teach, guide, create, and uplift others often participate—knowingly or not—in a larger work of moral progress. What is given is meant to be shared. In helping others advance toward truth and goodness, one cooperates with a universal order of charity, growth, and blessedness.

Presentiments

A presentiment is not always only a warning sent by a protector spirit, though it may be that.

It can be the inward and discreet counsel of a spirit who wishes a person well. It may also arise from something even deeper: an intuition linked to choices made before incarnation. In that sense, presentiment is connected with instinct.

Before incarnating, a spirit knows the principal phases of the life it is about to undergo, especially the kinds of trials that will mark its path. When some of these trials are especially significant, the spirit retains an impression of them in its inner consciousness. When the appointed moment approaches, that hidden impression stirs and awakens. What is felt at that moment is a presentiment.

Because presentiments and instinctive impressions are usually vague, uncertainty often remains. In such moments, the right response is recollection and prayer. One may ask for the help of a good spirit, or pray to God, the supreme Creator, to send wise assistance.

These warnings are not limited to moral questions alone. Protecting spirits seek to help human beings live as well as possible in every respect. Their concern includes conduct, choices, and the circumstances of private life. Yet their guidance is often ignored, and much unhappiness follows from refusing the good counsels that were offered.

Protector spirits ordinarily assist through the voice of conscience, making their counsel resonate within the inner being. Since that interior guidance is not always given the attention it deserves, help may also come more outwardly through the people around us. Advice, cautions, impressions, and timely words may all serve as channels for spiritual guidance.

Anyone who reflects carefully on the happier and more painful episodes of life may recognize how often such counsels were received. Many troubles could have been avoided by listening to them.

The Influence of Spirits on the Events of Life

Spirits do influence the events of human life, most often through the thoughts they suggest.

Their action is not limited to inward counsel. They may also contribute to the unfolding of events, but never by violating natural law. Their intervention does not suspend the order of the world or replace it with miracles. It remains hidden within ordinary causes, so that events appear entirely natural.

A meeting that seems accidental may have been prepared through their influence. A person may suddenly feel drawn to go to a certain place, notice a particular detail, or choose one path rather than another, and this may help bring about an outcome toward which spirits are working. Yet human freedom remains intact. People still act by their own will, even when influenced by unseen suggestions.

Spirits and Natural Causes

Spirits can act upon matter, but always in harmony with the laws that govern the world.

If someone dies in a fall because a ladder breaks, the break does not result from a miraculous interruption of nature. The ladder gives way because it is rotten or too weak. If that manner of death belongs to the person’s appointed course, the spirit influence lies in the thought that leads him to climb the ladder at that moment. The event takes place through ordinary causes.

The same is true in other circumstances. If a man takes shelter under a tree and is struck when lightning falls there, the lightning was not specially created or redirected in defiance of natural law because he stood beneath it. The storm followed its own course. The influence lay in the impulse that led him to seek refuge in the very place where the strike would occur.

Spirit action is therefore real without being magical. Natural events remain natural events.

Protection and Its Limits

A benevolent spirit may help someone avoid danger, but this help also works through natural means.

If a person is not meant to be struck by a bullet, a good spirit may inspire him to move aside in time, or may disturb the attacker’s aim so that the shot misses. But once the bullet has been fired, it follows its course according to physical law. Protection does not mean that material effects cease to obey the rules of the material world.

Stories of enchanted or unfailing bullets belong to imagination. People often long for the marvelous while failing to recognize the wonders already present in nature.

Opposing Influences

Spirits may have conflicting intentions, but what God wills must come to pass.

If there is delay, hindrance, or struggle between influences, that too belongs to the divine order. No spirit can overturn the higher will.

Petty Troubles of Life

Frivolous and mocking spirits may indeed cause the small annoyances that disturb plans and upset calculations.

They take pleasure in producing these minor vexations, partly because such disturbances can serve as trials of patience. Yet they withdraw when they see that nothing comes of their efforts. Calm endurance deprives them of satisfaction.

Still, it would be a mistake to blame spirits for every inconvenience. Human carelessness is very often the true cause. A broken dish is usually due more to clumsiness than to spirit interference. Many frustrations arise from one’s own imprudence, disorder, or poor judgment.

These troublesome spirits may act from simple malice, attacking whoever is at hand, but they may also be driven by a more personal motive. At times they are enemies from the present life or from a previous one.

Persevering Hatred and the Remedy for It

The resentment of those who have harmed us on earth does not always end with bodily death.

Some come to recognize the wrong they have done. Others, if permitted, continue to pursue the objects of their hatred, and their persecution may become another trial to endure.

The way to end such hostility is not retaliation, but moral elevation. Prayer for such spirits, and returning good for evil, gradually leads them to see their own error. When they realize that their schemes produce nothing, they abandon them. The more a person rises above their attacks, the less power they retain.

Such persistence may continue from one existence to another. Wrongs done to others are not erased merely by the passing of time. Sooner or later, their consequences must be repaired.

Misfortune, Prosperity, and Human Responsibility

Spirits cannot completely ward off all misfortunes, nor can they bestow prosperity at will.

Some sufferings belong to the designs of Providence and cannot simply be removed. Yet spirits can lessen pain by inspiring patience and resignation. They can also help people avoid or soften many troubles by suggesting wise and beneficial thoughts.

This help does not replace personal effort. Human beings have been given intelligence so that they may use it. Spirits assist those who help themselves. Much that is called misfortune could be prevented or reduced through foresight, prudence, and right action.

What appears to be misfortune is not always such in reality. A greater good often comes from it, though this is hard to perceive when one sees only the present moment or judges only from a personal point of view.

Requests for Fortune

Spirits may sometimes help a person obtain wealth or worldly advantages when asked, but this is often permitted only as a trial.

More often, serious spirits refuse such requests, just as a wise person refuses the reckless demand of a child. When such favors are granted, they may come from good spirits or bad ones according to the intention involved, but they are often connected with spirits who seek to lead people into moral danger. Prosperity and pleasure can easily become instruments of seduction.

Failed Projects and Self-Created Difficulties

When plans repeatedly fail, spirit influence may sometimes be involved, but more often the cause lies in the person.

Poor judgment, unsuitable ambitions, lack of preparation, temperament, and character all play a large part. If someone stubbornly follows a path unsuited to his condition or abilities, he should not attribute the result to spirits. In such cases, one becomes one’s own evil spirit by creating the very causes of failure.

Gratitude for Favorable Events

When something fortunate happens, gratitude should be directed first to God, since nothing occurs without divine permission.

Thanks may also be offered to the good spirits who acted as instruments of that higher will. Failing to thank them does not change what has taken place, but it reveals ingratitude.

Some people neither pray nor give thanks, and yet for a time everything seems to prosper for them. Such success is not proof that gratitude is unnecessary. Temporary advantages that are not rightly used will have their reckoning. The more one has received, the greater the responsibility to answer for it.

The Action of Spirits on the Phenomena of Nature

The great phenomena of nature are not without cause.

What may appear to human beings as disorder in the elements is never outside divine permission. Everything has a reason for being. Nothing occurs by chance in the absolute sense.

These events do not always have humankind as their immediate objective. At times they affect human life directly, but often their purpose is to restore the balance and harmony of the physical forces of nature. What seems destructive or disruptive from a limited point of view may belong to a wider order that preserves the whole.

Spirits as Agents in the Natural World

Spirits can act upon matter.

Since they are instruments of the divine will, some of them take part in stirring, calming, or directing the elements. The government of nature is not carried out by direct intervention at every point, but through devoted agents distributed across every degree of the scale of worlds.

Ancient traditions, which imagined beings presiding over winds, lightning, vegetation, and other powers of nature, were not entirely without foundation. Their error lay in treating such beings as gods. The underlying intuition was closer to the truth: there are spiritual intelligences connected with natural processes, each acting according to particular functions or attributes.

The same applies to geological phenomena. There are not spirits literally dwelling within the earth as local divinities, yet there are spirits who preside over and direct such events according to the role entrusted to them.

The Condition of the Spirits Who Preside Over Nature

The spirits involved in natural phenomena are not a separate order of beings outside the common destiny of spirits.

They are spirits who either have been incarnated like us or will be. Their participation in the workings of nature does not place them outside the universal law of progress.

Their rank varies according to the kind of role they perform. Where the task is more material, the spirits engaged in it are of a lower order. Where it is more intelligent and directive, the spirits are more advanced. Some command, and others execute. Those who carry out the more material functions occupy a lower place in the hierarchy, just as among human beings the more mechanical tasks are generally entrusted to less developed capacities.

Collective Action in Great Events

In certain phenomena, such as storms, action is not ordinarily the work of a single spirit.

Spirits gather and act in immense numbers. Large natural events are often the result of collective operations carried out by vast spiritual groups, each contributing according to its degree and function.

Instinct, Will, and Providence

Not all spirits act in the same way.

Some work with awareness and by a more developed exercise of will. Others act almost instinctively, without understanding the full scope of what they do. Both kinds may serve providential ends.

A helpful comparison can be found in the countless small creatures that gradually build islands and archipelagos in the ocean. They act to meet their own needs, without any understanding of the larger transformation to which they contribute. Yet their labor serves a necessary purpose in the harmony of the globe.

So it is with the least advanced spirits. Before reaching full self-awareness and mature freedom, they already contribute to the general order. While they are, in a sense, preparing for life, they act upon certain phenomena as unconscious instruments.

At first, they execute. Later, as their intelligence unfolds, they command and direct the affairs of the material world. Later still, they take part in directing the things of the moral world.

Universal Harmony and Gradual Ascent

Nothing in creation is useless.

Everything in nature is linked together, from the most primitive element to the highest spirit. The same law of harmony embraces the atom, the elemental forces, living beings, developing spirits, and the most elevated intelligences. Even the archangel had a beginning.

Natural phenomena, spiritual action, and moral development are not separate domains. They belong to one continuous order, governed by wisdom and directed toward balance, progress, and universal harmony.

Spirits during Battle

Spirits take part in human conflicts just as they influence other areas of life.

During battle, there are spirits who attach themselves to the opposing sides and stimulate the courage of those who fight. This helps explain the ancient image of divine beings taking the side of one people against another. What earlier ages represented as gods were often spirits described through symbolic figures.

Spirits and the Cause of War

The presence of spirits in war does not mean that they always support what is just.

In any war, justice can only be on one side, yet there are spirits who care little for justice. Some seek discord, violence, and destruction for their own sake. For such spirits, war itself is enough. They are drawn not by the righteousness of a cause, but by the turmoil, hatred, and devastation it produces.

This is consistent with the wider moral condition of spirits. Those who remain attached to lower impulses are naturally attracted to scenes where those impulses can act freely.

Influence on Military Leaders

Spirits can influence generals in the formation of their plans, just as they can influence human thought in other matters.

A commander may receive impressions, ideas, or sudden convictions that affect strategic decisions. These influences are not always good. Harmful spirits may suggest faulty plans in the hope of leading a leader into error and defeat. Yet this does not remove human responsibility. Generals retain free will. If their judgment is too weak to distinguish a sound idea from a deceptive one, they bear the consequences. One who cannot govern wisely would do better to obey than to command.

There are also cases in which a military leader seems to foresee the outcome of a strategy with unusual clarity. This kind of intuitive perception, sometimes called inspiration, often appears in people of genius. It gives them a form of certainty in action. Such inspiration comes from guiding spirits, who make use of the faculties already present in the person they assist.

The Condition of Spirits After Death in Battle

Those who die in combat do not all enter immediately into calm lucidity.

Some remain absorbed in the struggle for a time, while others withdraw from it. Violent death often leaves the spirit at first surprised and confused. Many do not believe they are dead. They imagine they are still participating in the action, and only gradually does the reality of their new condition become clear.

This bewilderment resembles what occurs in other sudden and violent deaths. The separation from bodily life is not always understood at once. Consciousness returns by degrees, and with it comes the recognition that earthly combat has ended for them.

Former Enemies After Death

Spirits who fought one another while alive may at first retain their hostility after death.

In the first moments following combat, they are not calm. They may still hate the enemy they had just faced and may even continue to pursue that enemy in spirit. But as they recover composure, they begin to understand that their animosity no longer has a real object. The motive for hatred fades when earthly conditions are left behind.

Even so, traces of that hostility may remain for a longer or shorter time, according to the spirit’s character. Strong passions do not disappear equally quickly in all beings.

They also continue to perceive the noise and confusion of battle. The din is still heard distinctly, which helps explain why some remain caught for a time in the mental atmosphere of the conflict.

How the Separation Appears to Spirits

Spirits who observe a battle can witness the disengagement of the spirit from the body, but the process is not usually as abrupt as people imagine.

Very few deaths are truly instantaneous. In most cases, when a body receives a mortal wound, the spirit does not immediately realize what has happened. Only as consciousness begins to return does the spirit appear beside the body it has just left.

To observing spirits, this appearance is natural. The body lying on the ground does not necessarily draw their attention in the strongest way, because life has already withdrawn from it. Their attention turns instead to the spirit, now the true center of conscious existence. It is with that spirit that they communicate, and to that spirit that they may speak or even give directions.

The scene makes visible a truth that is often hidden during earthly life: the body is only the temporary instrument of the incarnate being, while the spirit remains the living and enduring self.

Pacts

No literal pact is formed with evil spirits in the ordinary sense of a formal agreement. What exists instead is a kind of affinity. A person inclined toward evil places themselves in harmony with spirits of a similar nature.

When someone wishes to harm another and seeks means to do so, they may attract low order spirits who also delight in evil. These spirits lend their influence because the person’s intentions resemble their own. In return, they draw that person further into their designs. The bond is real, but it is not a contract made by fixed stipulations. It is a relationship created by shared intention and mutual cooperation in wrongdoing.

Such influence is never irresistible. A person oppressed by these spirits may be freed through an opposing appeal and through the strength of the will. Evil spirits attach themselves where they find consent, whether open or hidden. When that consent is withdrawn, and when better influences are sincerely sought, their hold can be broken.

Dependence on low spirits arises because a person surrenders to the evil thoughts they inspire. The so-called pact is therefore an allegory. It represents the agreement of an evil nature with spirits who are equally corrupt.

Selling the Soul to Satan

Stories of people selling their soul to Satan in exchange for wealth, power, or special favors are not literal transactions. They are fables containing a moral teaching, and their meaning is symbolic.

Their meaning is clear: anyone who calls on evil spirits to gain fortune or earthly advantage rebels against Providence. Such a person rejects the mission entrusted to them and refuses the trials appointed for their growth in this world. By seeking unlawful help for material success, they choose immediate satisfaction over spiritual progress.

The consequence is not eternal condemnation, but deeper entanglement in matter. Instead of freeing themselves from material attachment, they sink more fully into it. The pleasures they preferred during earthly life will no longer be available to them after death. Then comes the need to repair the wrong through new trials, which may be heavier and more painful than those they had tried to escape.

Out of attachment to material pleasures, they place themselves under the influence of impure spirits. In that sense, a tacit mutual pact is formed. It leads toward suffering and ruin because each side supports the other in what is base and degrading.

Even so, this bond is never beyond remedy. It can always be broken with the help of good spirits, provided the person truly and firmly wills to change. Sincere desire for the good is stronger than any alliance formed through evil inclination.

Occult Power, Talismans, Sorcerers

Evil people cannot, through devotion to evil spirits, receive permission to harm others at will. Such power is not granted.

Many beliefs about spells, magical operations, and hidden forces come from ignorance of the true laws of nature. Certain individuals may possess strong magnetic power, and if their moral condition is poor, they may use that faculty badly and attract the cooperation of inferior spirits. But this is very different from the imaginary magical power attributed by superstition to rites, objects, and secret practices.

What people often take for supernatural action is frequently nothing more than natural phenomena badly observed and badly understood.

Talismans, Formulas, and So-Called Spellcasting

Formulas, ritual acts, cabalistic signs, and talismans have no power in themselves over spirits.

There is no sacred phrase, no mysterious arrangement of symbols, and no material object capable of compelling spiritual beings. Spirits are influenced by thought, intention, and moral affinity, not by outward things.

Those who claim to govern spirits through such means either deceive themselves or deceive others. If they are sincere, they make themselves ridiculous through their error. If they knowingly mislead, they are practicing fraud.

It is true that some spirits may suggest strange words, odd signs, or bizarre acts. When that happens, it is not proof of hidden science. Inferior spirits often amuse themselves by feeding human credulity, encouraging practices they know to be empty.

The Role of Thought and Intention

Confidence in a talisman may sometimes help a person concentrate thought, and thought does have an effect in attracting spirits. Yet the object itself does nothing. It serves only as a support for the imagination.

The kind of spirit attracted depends on the purity of the intention and the quality of the feelings involved. A morally elevated purpose attracts better influences; narrow, selfish, or material aims open the way to imperfect and mocking spirits.

For that reason, attachment to talismans usually reveals a weak and overly material cast of mind. Instead of raising the soul, it often exposes it to deception.

Sorcerers and Supposed Supernatural Powers

Those called sorcerers are often, when acting in good faith, simply people who possess unusual faculties, such as magnetic power or second sight. Because others do not understand what they do, they imagine supernatural powers where there are only natural abilities.

Ignorance has always turned the unfamiliar into the marvelous. Even learned people, in other times, have been taken for sorcerers by those unable to grasp the causes of what they observed.

A sound understanding of magnetism and spiritual phenomena helps dispel these illusions. Such knowledge shows what is real, what is possible, and what remains within the order of nature. It also exposes the exaggerations produced by fear, imagination, and superstition.

Clear understanding is the best safeguard against false occultism.

Healing by Touch

Some individuals do in fact possess the ability to help heal through touch. Their magnetic power can act in this way, especially when it is joined to purity of intention and a sincere desire to do good. In such cases, good spirits may assist them.

Even here, caution is necessary. Enthusiastic or overly gullible people are quick to mistake ordinary effects for miracles. Reports of marvelous cures are often amplified in the telling.

It is especially wise to distrust anyone who turns such claims into a means of profit. Wherever credulity is exploited for personal gain, deception is never far away.

True spiritual help is not found in magical objects, secret formulas, or theatrical displays. It is found in moral intention, clear understanding, and the lawful action of natural and spiritual forces.

Blessings and Curses

Blessings and curses do not possess an independent power that can overturn divine justice.

An unjust curse is not heard by God, and the one who utters it bears responsibility for that act. Malice directed toward another does not create a right over that person, nor can it compel a harmful result by mere force of intention.

Human life, however, unfolds amid opposing influences of good and evil. Because of that, there may sometimes be a temporary effect associated with such acts, even in relation to material circumstances. Yet nothing of this kind occurs outside God’s permission. When it does occur, it belongs to the order of trial and serves as part of the testing permitted for the person concerned.

Even then, blessings and curses do not redirect Providence. Divine justice is not altered by human wishes, whether benevolent or hostile. Providence does not strike someone simply because others curse them, but only where wrongdoing makes suffering just. In the same way, divine protection is not secured merely because others pronounce blessings, but is joined to moral worthiness.

In ordinary life, curses are most often aimed at those already considered wicked, while blessings are directed toward those recognized as upright. But neither praise nor hostility from others changes the law of justice. What matters is not the words spoken over a person, but the person’s true moral condition before God.