FATHER SERAPHIM ROSE: Re: The Book "The Soul After Death"

Remember that in blessing an object, it is God Who is asked in the blessing prayer to bless, and this impartation of some spiritual energy signature from God, is not all that subjective.

The faith of the one using the blessed object, oil, or water, will play a role, and yet there is an objective reality as well. There is a consciousness also I think that responds to our faith in God.

A lot of strange things as well as objective examination of history and doctrine of The Bible, things often in the latter case overlooked by Protestants, but apparently not the ones who drift into Orthodoxy, brought me to Orthodoxy. The biggest one was the visible superiority of Orthodox Holy Water to RC (or most RC) Holy Water, probably because in Orthodoxy epiklesis rules, God is asked to impart the blessing, while in RC it is somewhat present the whole theory is the priest using power imparted to him. There are effective results but it is weaker and more easily destroyed.

I have been sorting out and fighting off some kind of evil that has run in my family mostly my mother's side for some time now.

There IS a reality, from God not the same as magic, indeed, those who have tried to mix Christianity and witchcraft note, that the energies are contrary to each other, and it is hard to do.

But a properly blessed icon, don't underestimate it.

I have met personally and online people who have an inherited sight like a mutant gene giving sight in IR and UV more than normal humans have. And the description given on the glow that Holy Water has is the same. There are two kinds of clairvoyance, subjective where one sees with the mind, and objective where one sees with the eyes. The former can be learned, the latter not really learned but seems inheritable. Optina Elder Nektary mentioned that some individuals had this ability, neither from God or the devil but as "a natural disposition of the soul," and that it ran in some families around Kiev and Gomel.

One who had seen candles that had been burned to false gods, and those burned to Christian icons, noticed they both acquired a glow in the wax but of a totally different nature.

Anonymous
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Reply:

It is nice your dreams disappeared, but maybe because you feel 'safe' and you have 'faith', that you were missing before? Objects of any kind do not work except for the 'thoughts' we place into them. Like a "rabbit foot"

We know that people are alive and are part of our Earthly church, while in the Spiritual realm, so we can pray to them ( Saints) to intercede for us, etc, and especially to call upon Jesus, but the Icon or any picture is our reminder of them so we do not forget. Magic is not in the Icon, of course.

Another Reply:
 

If this is true of water it is also true of icons also:

St. Basil the Great (died 379) affirms that the blessing of water came to us as a "mystical tradition" (of. On the Holy Spirit, XXVII, 66) and that the water, through the prayer and blessing of the priest, receives a "quickening power of the Holy Spirit." (Ibid, XV, 35) St. Ambrose (died 397) also taught that it was the Holy Spirit Who "consecrated the waters through the prayer of the minister." (cf. On the Holy Spirit, L. I. c. VII, 88) Consequently, in the prayer for the blessing of the water we always find the epiklesis-the invocation of the Holy Spirit.

_http://www.byzantin es.net/feasts/ epiphany. htm_
(http://www.byzantin es.net/feasts/ epiphany. htm)

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