The book that you are holding in your hands answers the questions of who and how sorcerers "spoil" them, in what other ways a person can be exposed to demonic influence. Spoilage is an extremely multifaceted phenomenon. It is studied by people of different specialties – theologians, religious scholars, doctors, psychologists... Among the works of contemporary Orthodox authors on this topic are the works of Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain "With Pain and Love for Modern Man" (Moscow, 2002), "Spiritual Struggle" (Moscow, 2003), Hegumen Mark "Evil Spirits and Their Influence on People" (Moscow, 2000), Hieromonk Panteleimon (Ledin) "Intrigues of the Demons" (Moscow, 1997), as well as Hieromonk Anatoly (Berestov) and Alevtina Pecherskaya "Under the Mask of Orthodoxy" (Moscow, 2006). These authors talk deeply and succinctly about magic, the evil eye and divination, psychics and parapsychologists, reveal the pseudoscientific manipulations of occultists and offer methods of spiritual security. Deacon Andrei Kuraev in his book "Why Are Orthodox Christians Like ?.." (Moscow, 2006. – Chapter "Why Christians Are Not Afraid of 'Spoilage'?") exposes occult and mystical views on corruption, citing many theological and historical arguments. In the book by K.V. Zorin "What is "hereditary damage". The View of an Orthodox Doctor" (Moscow, 2004) analyzes the medical and genetic aspects of the problem: the impact of original sin and sins of the family on people, the suffering of children for the mortal sins of their parents, as well as the genetic and physiological consequences of smoking, alcoholism, drug addiction, artificial abortion and gluttony.

A modern person experiences many extremely negative influences. He lives under the incessant pressure of stress. His soul is compressed by persistent fears. Fears lead to depression, and in a depressive state, our unfortunate contemporary is forced to swallow handfuls of antidepressants and tranquilizers. I don't know the Russian statistics, but I can say for sure that 60% of Americans can no longer live without them.

What kind of fears have such a strong impact on people? They are very diverse: fear of losing a job, fear of losing a home, fear for one's life or the life of one's child, fear of being uncompetitive in business, fear of losing money in another "default", fear of illness, fear of death and, finally, just fear – for some unknown reason. The latter, by the way, is not so rare.

But among all these fears, another fear has recently begun to grow and gain strength. This fear is very ancient. Probably, he is of the same venerable age as all mankind. When Christ came to earth, this fear receded and hid for a time. It can be said that he himself was afraid of people who confessed Christ and were ready to sacrifice their lives for their faith. He hid himself in the pagan nations and in the dark corners of the consciousness of wavering, faithless Christians.

But at last his time came. Time of apostasy. A time that Western sociologists and political scientists call "post-Christian". It is characterized by the fact that the peoples who once professed Christianity, in their overwhelming majority, practically rejected it. Now they live a completely pagan life and in their ideology, at least moral, do not differ in any way from the ancient Chaldeans, Assyrians or Egyptians. That is why the ancient fear has returned - the fear of witchcraft, the fear of damage and the evil eye. Having rejected Christ, the "post-Christians" have forgotten, of course, the words of the Apostle John: "For this very reason the Son of God was manifested, to destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8). Yes, indeed, he who has rejected Christ is also rejected by Christ, as it is said in the Scriptures: "... the unbeliever is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the Only-begotten Son of God" (John 3:18). If the unbeliever is rejected and condemned, then it is clear that the snares of the devil remain a very real threat to him. Having rejected Christ, he, naturally, cannot count on God's help.

But here is the paradox: even among Orthodox Christians in our time, unfortunately, there is the same (almost pagan) attitude to corruption as among peoples who did not know Christ or "successfully" forgot Him. Some believers, like modern pagans, are extremely afraid of spoilage and the evil eye, trying to blame anyone for all their troubles, but not themselves and not their sins. It is to such people, first of all, that the book that you are holding in your hands is addressed. It attempts to systematize knowledge about the possibility of magical influence on a person with the help of "heavenly spirits", that is, demons. The conditions and properties of human character that open the way for such an impact are analyzed, and methods of protection against it are indicated. After all, to defend means to fight. It is the necessity of this struggle that the Apostle Paul tells all of us: "Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil; for our wrestling (that is, war. – Author) is not against flesh and blood (here we mean people – Author), but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Ephesians 6:11-12).

For many people, including Orthodox Christians, the panic fear of magical influence in the form of the evil eye and spoilage manifests itself as a painful phenomenon, as a consequence of their spiritual illness. In the book, we will try to analyze why this happens, to suggest how to cope with such conditions.

However, there is another extreme. Among the Orthodox, and well-educated people, the opposite, albeit rather superficial opinion is quite widespread, that there is no magical influence capable of causing harm (damage) to a person at all. This view is largely based on assumptions put forward in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by people who had no personal experience with the spirit world. In Russia, from the time of the secular, if not to say atheistic, reforms of Peter I, which continued under Anna Ioannovna and Catherine the Great, a completely Protestant view of the spiritual world was formed, in which there was no place for "spirits of evil in the heavenly places" at all. All those parts of the Holy Scriptures that spoke of possessed (demon-possessed) people were interpreted in a figurative sense, where demons were understood as either sinful passions or physiological diseases.

Such an attitude can hardly be called Orthodox. Both in the past centuries and especially in our days, we see the ever-increasing influence of demonic forces on man – the unprecedented rampant occultism, the growth of seemingly causeless crimes, distinguished by truly inhuman cruelty, the destruction of the moral foundations of many aspects of our life, the emergence of people who, from a very young age, can be called demon-possessed. All this creates the basis for speculation on the fear of an incomprehensible "dark influence" or damage, from which various "healers" have made a real scarecrow. All the troubles of modern man are explained by them exclusively by spoilage. A rare newspaper does not give dozens of ads with offers to "get rid of the curse and the evil eye forever."

So how should an Orthodox person relate to this spiritual phenomenon? Should we neglect it as a kind of superstition, or should we try to understand what the essence of the phenomenon is? It is difficult to understand its roots without analyzing the historical aspect of the problem, without understanding what witchcraft is and how one becomes a sorcerer (conscious or unconscious), without learning about the "mechanisms" of introducing demons into a person, about the reasons for the appearance of "superpowers", about the forms of today's demonization of society and about many other things that will be discussed in this book.

I hope that a detailed consideration and analysis (from the Orthodox point of view) of such an extraordinary and differently perceived phenomenon as spoilage will help readers to cope with false views on it, as well as to get rid of the fear of sorcerers and psychics, who successfully parasitize on the fear of spoilage.