First off, those of us in Christ Jesus do not have be afraid of these things, for Lord Jesus gave His servants power over all the enemy (Luke 10:17-20). The only way the devil and his can influence us is IF... we allow it. So if you feel an evil presence around you, cast it away, back to the pit, in the Name of Jesus Christ. And they have to leave you alone, for they cannot stand the Power of Jesus' Name.
Journey's in the Occult don't just happen by chance. One has to INVITE that influence from another source, usually someone close who is associated with the Occult. The temptation is about having a power to influence the events in one's life at will, and is advertised as a natural ability that all people are naturally born with, but lies dormant in the soul, and has to be awakened.
The Rosicrucian Order (AMORC) has a student manual book, and I read through it one time at my university library. In the higher Rosicrucian degrees, they said the reason they taught Astral Projection is so as to meet the Hidden Masters that dwell on the Astral Plane, and receive higher teachings from them. In reality, those are familiar spirits per God's Word.
What those Occult secret societies do is prey on new initiates thinking, that there has been a secret knowledge all along that man can access, and master himself and the universe with, and basically become his own god. In the higher degrees is when they start throwing out the 'Jesus didn't really die on the cross' routine, and claim Jesus was one of them, etc. Thus it is very late when the occult student finally learns that the devil himself is behind all of it, if... the person ever comes to his own senses.
But if a person is led to that dark side right off the bat, looking for it, and senses that the devil is behind it and doesn't care, then that person likely belongs to the devil as one of his elect anyway, one of the "many antichrists" or "children of darkness."
When I get near someone who has been dabbling in the Occult, The Holy Spirit in me reacts and I can 'feel' that occult person's evil spirit. With some it happens just with eye contact at a distance. With others it's when I get within a radius of about five feet or so. And those of them I get close to, like in a store checkout line, they feel The Holy Spirit presence in me too, and some of them have actually got stirred up red in the face ready to lash out at me.
