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Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost: Thoughts on  Dark Powers 

I walked into my local supermarket the other day and stopped dead in my tracks. There, stretching the length of an entire aisle, was a celebration of darkness: grotesque masks grinning from the shelves, plastic cauldrons bubbling with fake potions, witches’ wands promising enchantment, and decorations glorifying death. It is presented as harmless fun, a seasonal joke. But if we strip away the marketing gloss, what remains is worship—a worship of demons dressed in cellophane. We like to think ourselves modern and rational, far removed from tribal rituals and voodoo masks. Yet the impulse is the same. We have merely exchanged the drum circle for the shopping trolley.

The Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 6 that our struggle “is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” He wasn’t warning people to avoid Halloween parties; he was revealing the true battlefield of human existence. These dark powers are not relics of a primitive age. They are ancient and active, and they understand human nature better than we understand ourselves. They do not charge the gates with horns and pitchforks. They slip through side doors and windows we have left ajar—our entertainments, our curiosities, our jokes.

Every book we read, every show we watch, every game we play is a window we unlatch or a door we leave on the chain. Through these openings, breezes of beauty can pass… or something colder and harder to name. Why else would we dwell so often on darkness unless dark forces were driving it? Writers, theologians, and psychologists alike have wrestled with this question. C. S. Lewis observed that the devil’s greatest trick is to make people either disbelieve in him or become obsessed with him. Today’s culture often manages both. It trivialises evil by turning it into entertainment—witchcraft and necromancy become comic relief, demons become sympathetic characters. In laughing, we lower our guard. As Lewis implied, mockery can be a lullaby that dulls our spiritual senses.

Tolkien understood how darkness entices. In The Lord of the Rings, the One Ring is not a sword or a bomb but a whisper, promising each bearer the power to set things right—if only they will bend the rules. The Ring does not urge wickedness outright; it tempts with efficiency. So does much of today’s occult-flavoured culture. It tells us we can have outcomes without obedience, knowledge without humility, power without love. Magic, in this sense, is merely accelerated will—“you shall be as gods.” And because we are tired of feeling small, we are enthralled by the offer. But desire is a muscle; what we rehearse becomes what we reach for.

Repeated exposure to darkness also changes us. Psychologists call it desensitisation; Scripture calls it the hardening of the heart. A drop of ink clouds a glass of water. Add a gallon, then a barrel, and eventually the water appears clear again—not because the ink is gone, but because our eyes have adjusted. So it is with the macabre and the occult. What once startled us begins to feel ordinary. And when evil no longer startles, it can start to steer.

Children, whose imaginations are still tender soil, are especially vulnerable. G. K. Chesterton wrote that fairy tales don’t give children their first idea of the bogeyman; they teach them that the bogeyman can be killed. The trouble now is that the bogeyman is rarely slain. He is excused, glamorised, or turned into a mentor. Evil is not overcome; it is adored. We are not letting imaginations soar—we are teaching them to bow.

Irony, too, is part of the spell. We laugh at darkness, call it “just a vibe,” and in the act of laughing our vigilance weakens. Lewis warned against both dismissing devils and obsessing over them. Yet modern culture turns the demonic into a joke and then invites endless sequels. Irony is the anaesthetic that makes the needle easier to bear.

This is not a plea for panic or isolation. The Bible is not afraid to name darkness, because naming it teaches us how to walk in the light. But we must ask ourselves sober questions: What are we becoming by what we behold? Augustine called sin “disordered love”—loving good things in the wrong order. When our stories teach us to love spectacle more than sanctity, curiosity more than obedience, our loves fall out of order. And disordered love draws disordering spirits.

I think of the young man who spends his nights mastering a video game built on summoning rituals. He insists it’s “just pixels,” but prayer now feels slow and pointless, obedience inefficient. I think of the student who fills her life with “witchy” aesthetics to feel powerful after childhood wounds, only to find herself unable to pray, her sleep haunted by a heavy presence she cannot name. Or the young professional who jokes his way through horror marathons and finds, over time, that his compassion has dimmed and his heart has grown cold. The adversary does not always need us to cast spells; sometimes, indifference will do.

Not every story of magic is a sermon on witchcraft. Tolkien and Lewis themselves used the language of enchantment to reveal deeper truths—that humility, courage, and sacrificial love are the strongest magic of all. The question is not about props but about posture. Does the story affirm a moral universe under God, or does it glorify power severed from Him? Does evil remain evil, or is it rebranded as spice?

Paul reminds us that our battle is spiritual, and in our time the front line is attention. Attention is the doorway of the soul. What we attend to shapes what we desire; what we desire shapes who we become. If we leave that door swinging open, we should not be surprised to find our inner garden overrun with weeds. The enemy does not need a siege if the gate is already unlatched.

That is why Paul calls us to put on the full armour of God: truth as our belt, righteousness as our breastplate, readiness from the gospel as our shoes, faith as our shield, salvation as our helmet, the Word as our sword, and prayer as our breath. Notice how ordinary this armour is. It does not promise secret knowledge or arcane power. It calls us to stand, to fasten, to lift, to take up. Evil is a shadow; shadows retreat before light.

It might begin with something as simple as auditing our habits—what we watch when angry, what we read when lonely, what we turn to when we feel small. It might mean fasting from darkness to see what returns—peace, tenderness, prayer. It might mean filling our shelves with stories that make goodness beautiful and courage costly. It might mean praying before we press play: Lord, guard my heart and mind. Let me love what You love, and turn from what dims Your light in me.

If dark powers whisper through our culture, they are whispering to something already in us: our hunger for control, our boredom with goodness, our impatience with God. The gospel meets those longings with a better offer. Christ does not hand us spells; He gives us the Spirit. He does not offer shortcuts; He offers Himself. And in His light, the masquerade loses its glamour.

We become what we behold. If we stare long into darkness, our eyes will adjust to the dark. But if we turn our faces toward the Sun of Righteousness, even the shadows become signposts pointing us home. The world is loud with counterfeits, yet the Shepherd’s voice still carries in the wind: Come into the light. Walk with Me.

Guard the windows. Mind the door. Not in fear, but in hope. For the Day is near, and dawn has a way of making every masquerade look foolish.

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