e light of the heart.
- St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Second Catechetical Lecture
Ouija boards are considered by many to be something not to be dabbled with - should these really be sold in toy stores ?
Some believe ouija boards can be used to contact the dead or to summon demons but toy stores around the world still sell them to children as young as 8. Should stores stop selling them as toys or are they as harmless as they seem ?
Ouija Board a Controversial Toy for Tots
Toys R Us is selling Ouija boards, promoting them as acceptable for children as young as eight years old.
The pink edition of the Ouija board is listed for girls eight-years-old and up while the regular version is designated for all children eight and up. Stephen Phelan, communications manager of Human Life International, checked the website and reports that the findings are disturbing.
"It is just troubling that these things are treated as casually as any other game, like Monopoly or anything else on this Toys R Us site -- and I think it's something Christians should be aware of and really not support," he states.
He further believes that Christians have an obligation to fight against it. "If you go to the comments section on the Toys R Us [web]site, you'll read comments from people who talk about being obsessed with it, talk about missing school for it, talk about the spirits they spoke to on the other side and how creepy it was," Phelan describes.
The communications manager adds that the primary groups that deny the evils of the Ouija board are the ones who deny the spirit world entirely. He goes on to say Christians have a biblical mandate.
"We're supposed to deal with the truth only," he notes. "We're supposed to have nothing to do with dark spirits. We're not supposed to dabble in anything that would compromise our souls, and that's exactly what this does."
The manufacturer of the product is Hasbro.
For an introduction on who Benjamin Creme is, I quote this section from Wikipedia along with links:
Benjamin Creme (b. Dec 5 1922 Scotland) is an artist, author, self proclaimed esotericist, and owner of Share International magazine (his regular newsletter and website).
He asserts that the second coming prophesied by many religions will come in the form of "Maitreya". Maitreya is the name Buddhists use for the future Buddha, but Creme claims that Maitreya is the teacher that all religions point towards and hope for . Other names for him, according to Creme, are the Christ, the Imam Mahdi, Krishna, and the Messiah. Creme says Maitreya is the "Avatar for the Aquarian Age" and is currently living in London.
Creme has made a number of predictions and announcement for the imminent appearance of Maitreya based on his claims of receiving telepathic messages. These have failed to come true, leading to him being considered a figure of amusement in the press.
In Internet Era, an Unwilling Lord for New Age Followers
By SCOTT JAMES
February 4, 2010
New York Times
Raj Patel’s desk sits in a dusty, cement-floored nook in his garage, just beyond a parked gray Prius, near the washer and dryer. They are humble surroundings for a god.
“It is absurd to be put in this position, when I’m just some bloke,” Mr. Patel said.
A native of London now living on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, Mr. Patel suddenly finds himself an unlikely object of worship, proclaimed the messiah Maitreya by followers of the New Age religious sect Share International.
He was raised as a Hindu and had never heard of the group. He has no desire for deification. But he may not have a choice.
Mr. Patel’s journey from ordinary person to unwilling lord is a case of having the wrong résumé at the wrong moment in history. For this is a time when human yearning to find a magical cure for the world’s woes can be harnessed to the digital age’s instant access to a vast treasure-trove of personal information.
I have known Mr. Patel for four years — he keeps an office down the hall from mine. He is charming, and as a graduate of Oxford, Cornell University and the London School of Economics, he is considered brilliant, al