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The Craft of the Crystal Series (1/4)

What-Would-You-Do-With-A-magic-wand.jpgHi Everyone,

This post is Part 1 of a four-part series I’m writing about the craft of the Crystal series.

I get a lot of emails from readers asking me how I know so much about the occult and the ‘craft’. And asking whether I know from personal experience or from extensive research.

I’d like to just say I know very little about the occult, and I’d like to keep things that way 🙂 I did begin to do some research as I wrote Searchlight (Crystal 1), but I got to a point where I didn’t want to know. I was sickened, disgusted, and quite frankly disturbed. So, I made the decision to use my imagination. I’m a Christian. I don’t know enough about God and the Bible. The last thing I want is knowledge about the devil and the occult. Apart from the basic knowledge required to know your enemy so that he doesn’t get the better of you, and so that you can keep him under your feet, I’m not at all interested in deeper knowledge. So, I used the principles of what I know about the occult and what the Bible teaches about our enemy, to create the craft and the laws of the occult in the Crystal series. I also mixed in some things I’ve heard about the occult from other people and I took a lot of creative liberties. After all it’s fiction. The aim was just to show that greater is He within us than He that is in the world (1 John 4:4), not provide a manual on how to get into the occult.

Over this series of blog posts I’ll cover the following points:

  • Terminology
  • Promiscuity
  • Vanity
  • Force
  • SOT Tenets
  • DNA/Genes
  • Centrality of death
  • Energy release
  • Sacrifices
  • Incense
  • SOT Hierarchy vs. other craft within the world of the Crystal series
  • Craft of different nations
  • Robe color
  • Ascension

And I’ll try to explain my reasoning behind them all. Hopefully, these posts will answer all your questions, and whenever someone emails me in future to ask me how I know so much about the occult I can just send them links to these posts 🙂

Terminology

i.e. Craft instead of magic, Practitioners instead of witches and wizards, Kingdom of Enlightenment instead of Kingdom of Darkness, etc.

The occult people in the Crystal series are wealthy. Many of them are celebrities. They consider themselves elite people. Their interpretation of the occult is different to the ‘average’ occultist. They consider themselves more refined. They reject the common stereotypes that most people have about people within the occult. None of them are knobbly cackling old women stirring smoking cauldrons. That’s the media’s depiction of the occult. The craft of the Crystal series is much different. It’s a rich man’s craft. On the outside, the practitioners look so glamorous and their lives look like so much fun. Only when you get in and look closer do you realise that the price they pay for their fame, wealth and success is extremely high. So, I wanted to use different terms to drive home the fact that they reject the common stereotypes about the occult. However, whether you call yourself a witch or a practitioner, whether you call what you do ‘craft’ or ‘magic’, it’s still evil. Rich or poor. ‘Elite’ or ‘normal.’

Promiscuity

Most of the negative feedback I get about the Crystal series is because of all the ‘sexual innuendo’ and promiscuity. However, there is nothing in the Crystal series that the average young adult doesn’t see or hear in their day to day life, or on TV. I wanted to emphasize the evilness of some of the characters, as there’s no point having evil people in the books if they don’t do anything evil, or anything that readers would consider to be wrong. I preferred to highlight their sexual depravity over showing them killing and doing dark rituals all the time. I didn’t want to show Alejandro, Shola, and certain other characters doing rituals, or killing.  For me, emphasizing their promiscuity was a way of showing how depraved they are without the books getting too gory. I wanted to keep the actual ‘on-screen’ gore and killing to a minimum. There are some pretty dark scenes, especially in the earlier books, but I wanted to limit the number of dark scenes.

Also, sexual sin is a form of self-worship and is an abuse of a good gift that God has given us. Excessive sexual sin and perversion can be evidence of demonic influence. That’s why when Alejandro and Shola Cardoso get saved, they change completely in this area. That demonic influence has left their lives. Yay for Jesus 🙂

Vanity

Many of the practitioners in the Crystal series are obsessed with beauty and their physical appearance. Yelissa Neir goes so far as to transmutate (is that the right word?), changing her skin color, hair color, height, body shape, etc. almost daily. The only common thing with each of her disguises is that they’re all beautiful. And I think her beauty adds to her evilness.

Beauty is a requirement for entry into the SOT. Everybody in the SOT, especially those with celebrity careers, is attractive. The Bible talks about the devil being perfect in beauty, and pride is one of his hallmarks. The practitioners in the Crystal series value beauty too, and are prideful and vain. Luke goes so far as to manipulate the genes of his children in order to make sure they’re physically perfect, and are athletic.

So, what do you think? Is there anything in the craft of the Crystal series that you didn’t agree with?

Stay tuned for more 🙂