Here is how the former sorcerer Andrei Shuvalov writes about it in his book: "Yes, the life of a sorcerer, to be honest, is difficult and not at all joyful. There is not a single real sorcerer who would not pay in full for his secret knowledge and his work. The price is cruel: as a rule, loneliness, dislike of people, lack of rest, the inability to stop communicating with the world of spirits. This is an unbearable yoke that he is forced to bear, not knowing peace and tranquility in his soul. Its work does not stop, even if there are no customers today... Many people want to either give up everything or commit suicide. But nevertheless, they do not stop their activities. Why? They cannot do this. They are captives and eternal debtors of the devil, who do not belong to themselves."9 Even Manly P. Hall (1928), a well-known connoisseur of magic and occultism of all kinds, does not conceal the retribution of the sorcerer after his death.

In his encyclopedia, he writes: "It is possible to make an agreement with spirits, by means of which the magician becomes for a time (determined by the agreement) the power over the elemental spirits, after his death the magician becomes the servant of this elemental spirit"10 (naturally, what this author writes about the posthumous fate of sorcerers is not an ecclesiastical point of view).

But Satan is an old liar, and it is not surprising that it is a common misconception among novice magicians to believe, diligently propagated by all the manuals and manuals on this diabolical art, that the magician is obeyed by good spirits, who can do nothing but good to man. However, on the basis of the teaching of the Orthodox Church and the experience of the Holy Fathers, it should be stated categorically: there can be no question of any control of the angels of God – as well as of fallen angels – on the part of man.

This, firstly, is clear from the fact that the lower cannot control the higher. The hierarchy of rational beings is clearly spoken of by St. St. Gregory Palamas: "All beings of intellectual nature, created in the image of the Creator, are our concelebrants (?????????), although they surpass us in honor (???? ??????????), existing outside the body and being closer than we are to the completely incorporeal and uncreated nature, especially those of them who have retained their dignity and strive for the sake for which they were created; although they are our concelebrants. They are higher than us and far superior to us in dignity (???? ?? ????? ????? ??????????)" 11.

Secondly, people who, through many years of ascetic struggle (with their sins), have not attained the maximum possible purity and holiness for them, cannot even hope for free communion with the angels or the souls of the saints. As a result of the general sinfulness of the entire human race, we, people, in our inner qualities, are closer to fallen spirits, that is, demons, with whom alone we can contact quite easily. In any case, they are very eager for this, and if they notice a reciprocal desire in people, they enter into communication with them with great pleasure, gradually and completely subjugating the will of the person.

The general opinion of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church about the possibility of contact with the spiritual spheres was most fully expressed by St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov): "The Holy Spirits avoided communion with people, as with unworthy of such communion; The fallen spirits, who have dragged us into their fall, have mingled with us, and in order to keep us captive more conveniently, they try to make both themselves and their chains invisible to us. If they do reveal themselves, they do so in order to strengthen their dominion over us. All of us, who are in bondage to sin, need to know that communion with the holy angels is not characteristic of us because of our alienation from them by the fall, that it is characteristic of us, for the same reason, communion with outcast spirits, to the category of which we belong in soul, that the spirits that appear sensuously to people who are in sinfulness and fall are demons, and not holy angels. "A defiled soul," said St. Isaac of Syria, "does not enter into the pure kingdom, and is not united with the spirits of the saints." The holy Angels appear only to holy men who have restored communion with God and with them through a holy life."12

Once I had a chance to receive reliable first-hand information about the forces that sorcerers affect both the surrounding nature and man. It was on one of the winter nights of 1992. I received a call from the gatekeeper asking me to see a woman who was shaking with fear and weeping at the monastery gates. No persuasion to come back tomorrow morning had any effect on her. This is what she told me that night:

"In Lukyantsevo lives a grandmother-healer named Maria Ivanovna. Our whole city knows about it. Many people turned to her for help, and as I heard, she helped many people. As a professional therapist, I am well aware of cases when no tests, X-rays, ultrasound and other diagnostic methods help to make a diagnosis. The tests are normal, there is also no pathology on the images. It is not known: what to treat and how to treat the patient. But at the same time, a person really suffers from pain, loses sleep, appetite, dries up before his eyes, some begin to atrophy muscles. And what is the reason is unclear. So I decided that, probably, there are some folk methods of treatment that traditional medicine does not know, but which are preserved by witch doctors. I love my profession and try to constantly update my knowledge in order to help my patients as effectively as possible. For this purpose, after finishing the reception in the clinic, I went to the folk healer Maria Ivanovna. I came to her when it was already getting dark. My grandmother listened to me very attentively and smiled. She really liked my desire to learn new methods of folk medicine. Her senile eyes simply shone with happiness.

"I've been waiting for this for a long time," Granny whispered.

"What?"

"To have a man come to me to whom I will give everything!" I have no relatives left to whom I could pass it on. I like you, daughter. I'll teach you everything.

At these words, I, stupid, almost jumped for joy: what luck!

"It's time for me to die," Granny went on, "and I'm still living." I can't die until I pass it on...

At that moment, I felt a kind of jolt in my chest. My heart suddenly became anxious. Somehow uncomfortable.