Demons, Witches & Game of Thrones:
A Christian Testimony

Introduction by Grantley

A woman I regard as a friend e-mails me from time to time. It is obvious that she is devoted to Christ. In fact, although she lives in another country and we have never met in person, she has helped an aspect of this ministry by volunteering huge amounts of time, over several years. Suddenly, however, she sent me an e-mail or two raging against God as if she hated him.

I am very familiar with how an anxiety disorder can cause a good person to suffer intrusive thoughts that are totally out of character and deeply disturb them. The very act of fearfully fighting unwanted thoughts causes people to think even more about the thoughts and so they keep recurring. (If interested, see When a Christian Can’t Stop Thinking Blasphemous Thoughts.) These e-mails were quite different. They were not just unwanted thoughts that disgusted her and came unbidden, but were deliberately written down and sent to me.

I was not taken aback, however, because I am very familiar with multiple personalities (Dissociative Identity Disorder). It occurs when, through having suffered childhood trauma, people bury painful memories in a way that causes one part of them to be isolated from the rest of them. The isolated part is left behind, reeling in unending inner pain and cut off from what the rest of the person learns. Such a part often does not know, for example, that the abuse they fear had ended years ago, and the isolation is so great that they often know nothing about the rest of the person having found God and all the benefits that flowed from it. Although I asked her to read webpages about this, such as Healing your ‘Inner Child’, they struck no chord with her.

I can well understand Christians getting very depressed and lashing out at God, and yet it seems to me that, as with temptation, the devil or his underlings would be contributing to the pressure. Just as everyone – even the best Christian – is tempted, everyone has dealings with demons. “For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places,” says a well-known Scripture (Ephesians 6:12). In fact, although we often talk of the devil tempting us, it is almost always his underlings – demons – doing his dirty work, since the devil does not have God’s unique power of omnipresence (able to be everywhere at once).

As staggering as it sounds, the devil was able to mess with the head of even the Son of God, invading his holy mind with a satanic vision. Scripture declares that the devil somehow compelled the Son of God to physically move from place to place during his forty days of temptation:

Matthew 4:5 Then the devil took him into the holy city. He set him on the pinnacle of the temple . . .

Matthew 4:8 Again, the devil took him to an exceedingly high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory.
(Emphasis mine.)

Not only did the devil somehow get Jesus to the mountain, there is no mountain in the world from which one’s natural eyes can see “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” The devil had managed to thrust a vision into Christ’s very mind.

Although such satanic interference could happen to the greatest Christian, venting against God in a written message and sending it to someone is taking it to a different level, even if it were a cry for help that I was eager to respond to. I wondered if perhaps my dear friend might have been unknowingly doing something that was allowing demons some sort of bridgehead in her life from which they were launching attacks upon her, or if she had allowed something to remain in her life that they were using as an excuse for messing with her head and tormenting her. Without saying anything about my wild guess, I very briefly mentioned Christine’s experience and gave the web address to her story. Here’s her response (shared with her permission because she hopes it might help some readers):

Christine expressed many of my own thoughts perfectly. Whereas she began by thinking of her ‘friends’ as imagination, however, I regarded them as real and considered them to be witches.

The first time I remember reaching out to beings I believed were witches was in early childhood. At the time, my age had prevented me from playing a Halloween game involving jumping over small fires. To my mind, the game honored witches. With tears, I affectionately told these beings about my anger and sadness over being denied the opportunity to honor them.

The next time I recall feeling that witches were watching over me was at the age of thirteen, when life had become unbearable. Like before, I genuinely felt they were there for me, but this time I saw in my mind the witches living in a beautiful castle made of gloomy stones. I felt it was my true home as much as it was theirs. I never pursued this, however, because although I strongly wanted to die, God intervened. So, instead of reaching out to witches or death, I reached out to Christ.

I have often wondered what I would have ended up doing had it not been for God’s intervention. It struck a chord with me when Christine wrote about them telling her to leave this terrible planet and join their fantasy world in death. Even now, I can imagine myself believing that. Thankfully, I believe it was God who impressed upon me years ago the reality of demons, and that knowledge kept me from reaching out to them disguised as my favorite characters, or diving into witchcraft, during very difficult times that lasted until I was twenty.

I had grown up on Harry Potter and later became fascinated with the A Song of Ice and Fire book series that Game of Thrones is based on. Like Christine, I longed to believe in, and belong to, imaginary people. It continued even after I eventually managed to make a few wonderful real-life friends. Christine perfectly captured my reasons for this.

I know fantasy is not real and that my beloved characters are deeply inspired by the occult. To my shame, however, I admit I am deeply attached to the A Song of Ice and Fire book series. I strongly identified with two characters in them, and kept fantasizing about them.

I knew I had to let go of these books and the fantasies they inspired, but it was so hard for me to do. Like Christine, part of me was deeply in love with Christ, but deep down I was faithful to my own world and I wove my web of stupid connections with some characters, and it became my preferred way of coping with stress. I sensed, however, that there was something far more upsetting about it than I was already aware of. So I asked God to show me what it was, thinking it would help me let it go. And he did. I ended up stumbling upon a little-known blog that explained that George R. R. Martin, author of this book series, has a deep knowledge of the occult and his stories are basically about Lucifer.

Then I had a weird experience. I love names. One day, I felt it was time for a new one but I just couldn’t find one that clicked. I was growing frustrated over not finding a suitable one when I recalled the name I loved as a child: Margo. I happily took it and went to sleep. That night I had a disturbing sensual dream. It involved a very feminine lady guiding me to a mansion illuminated by a huge, almost bloody moon. She made me witness explicit things there. Both the moon and the lady radiated the same ominous energy. Although the lady had a friendly smile, I felt we both knew it was fake.

The next day, I thought I should look up the meaning of Margo. I discovered it means pearl. I usually take a quick glance of the meaning of the names I like enough to take, and then move on. This time, however, I thought, “Hey, what does a pearl stand for?” So I looked it up and was amazed to learn that it symbolizes the moon, and that the moon itself stands for human feminine energy (like the lady in the dream). Additionally, as explained by the blog I found, in the books that inspired my fantasies, the character with whom I related deeply takes the symbolic form of both a moon maiden and a Venus figure, and Venus is associated with Lucifer’s feminine energy. I was stunned to realize the extent to which, without even knowing it until after the event, the name I had chosen – a favorite from childhood – was so strongly interconnected with my sexual, occultish dream, my favorite fantasy character from the A Song of Ice and Fire series, and with Lucifer himself. It shocked me into ditching the books and associated fantasies – for a while.

But now, encouraged and sobered by Christine’s story, I have decided that enough is enough. I want no longer to have anything to do with Satan in any shape or form. I have renounced my immersion in such worlds and my interest and desire for occultism, no matter how enticing it sometimes seems. So thank you for sharing Christine’s story.

I don’t know why at age thirteen I started believing again that actual witches could hear me. Probably it was because at the time I desperately hoped for a way of escape when there was none, and neither was there protection. So perhaps this ‘delusion of hope’ was a way of coping. The problem is that if one reaches out to ‘witches’ (demons), they may respond, but as Christine’s story proves, this is nothing to rejoice in.

Only after reading your website for a long time and feeling safer, have I started realizing how much bottled up rage and shame has been inside me.

I think what, until now, has kept me vulnerable to undesirable fantasies and occult things is an abysmally low self-esteem and a deep feeling of shame. But you know what? I don’t care. I have decided to risk it all and draw closer to Christ. Shame can’t kill me, and it doesn’t have to stop me. I don’t need to run away, just because I feel shame squirm inside my stomach whenever I imagine Christ getting closer to me, nor because of other negative things I feel. So what if I feel such things? Why should we avoid dealing with emotions? I want to be mature in my approach to God like Christine. I am truly wasting time on fantasy and stupid, dangerous stories about Lucifer, the biggest loser in the world, just to get a quick fix, instead of choosing to trust and seek out God. I refuse to be that foolish!

Response

In reply, I commended my friend for her determination to push through feelings of shame. I reminded her that shame is a trick of Satan. We Christians can suffer all sorts of groundless feelings but no matter how deceptively strong the feeling, we actually have no godly reason for shame, because, no matter how atrocious our past, the Son of God totally forgives it all, erasing it from heaven’s databanks and making us new.

Recently, I had a small growth on my earlobe. A doctor scraped it off and sent it away to be analyzed. She asked me to return when the wound had healed. When I did, she said the analysis showed it was cancerous but upon examining my ear she declared it completely healed and said there was no need for further treatment. Within two weeks it was back again.

It’s not enough to get rid of 99% of cancer. Completely remove it, and you have nothing to worry about. Let the tiniest trace remain, and it could be fatal.

So it is with the demonic. Completely cut yourself off from it, and you are safe, but it needs to be taken as seriously as cancer. Only a fool thinks removing 99% of it is near enough. I repeat: if you are serious in wanting no compromise with the demonic, you have no cause for alarm, but dabbling even slightly with it is dangerous indeed.

For another woman’s much more revealing and alarming experiences, with surprising twists, significantly different, and yet still having significant similarities to Christine’s testimony, see Lucid Dreaming, Suppressed Memories & Hidden Demons.