Why is it so important? Because Honey Child, you are going to need this. You’ll need it like you need to breathe.
You'll need it in church. You’ll need it in meetings. You’ll need it as you counsel. You'll need it in worship. You’ll need it every time you consider a change. You'll need it as you sift through your inbox, and as you read through the blogs you feed and the endless chatter on the interwebs.
Evil is out there, it is, and if you miss it and let it slip by you, it'll destroy everything you're working towards as you walk the Way we've chosen. It tears the heart out of communities. It shatters relationships. It creates hostile and oppressive environments. It destroys the souls of those you love. It’ll destroy you, too.
If you can’t detect the predators and the bullies, the toxic whisperers and the confidence men, your work will fall apart.
Evil just plain bites. It's the Enemy. You have to be able to read it.
So how to cast it? A cast of Detect Evil can involve all kinds of sympathetic elements. But as you’ll find with most Christian spell-casting, none of them are really necessary, and some can be actively counterproductive. Throwing powdered sulfur on that elder who keeps challenging your leadership at meetings tends not to get the result you’re looking for.
This one requires both a well developed empathic sense, and a carefully practiced ability to not look at the thing you're looking at. What does that mean?
First, the empathic sense. You develop your empathic sense by maintaining continual connection with other living beings. While good and evil are a fundamental part of the Deep Real, they have to do with the dynamics of relationship between creatures that have awareness. That’s real, but its a different way of being real, different than the way air and water are real. One cannot do “evil” to an inanimate object, for example, unless that object is somehow connected to a living being.
If I throw a rock through a window of a long abandoned house, I do nothing. It is a neutral act. If I throw a rock through your window, well, that’s a different story.
So being carefully and intentionally aware of all living things around you is absolutely essential. If you are isolated and disconnected, this spell becomes impossible to cast. You lose your ability to tell the difference between the Good and the Evil.
Maintaining that broad and global awareness of the relationship you have with those around you and the relationships they have with one another is the first component of this spell. Regular and sustained prayer, both spoken and contemplative, are absolutely key to this.
Clerics who fail to do this and allow themselves to be isolated have a whole bunch of trouble casting this spell. And though our class is a public one, this is a surprisingly easy place to find yourself. Clerics are often under a whole bunch of stress. The organizational demands and role-expectations are really high. A majority of clerics are also introverted, which makes it easy to fold in on yourself, fleeing that which is difficult and interpersonally painful.
But if you’re isolated, either personally or by closing yourself off from others in an echo chamber of like-minded souls, you lose your ability to tell the difference between the Good and the Evil. Lay that groundwork. Keep connected, and do so prayerfully.
The second necessary component in a Detect Evil cast is being able to not look at the thing you’re looking at. What does that even mean? Well, let me elucidate.
When you encounter an individual or specific situation that seems to require a Detect Evil casting, do not look directly at it. Evil people can be charming and smart and confident and beautiful. Evil choices can be deeply alluring, as they offer power and easy success and personal glory.
If you focus on them, you won’t be able to see them for what they are. They will be shiny. They will taste sweet, deliciously, intoxicatingly so. Instead, open your vision. Look not at the person or the choice itself, but at how that person or that choice exerts influence. Use indirect viewing.
It’s a bit like choosing not to turn your mind towards the object that your eyes are focused on, and instead choosing to focus your thoughts on the fullness of your vision. In looking indirectly at a tree in front of you, for example, you don’t look at just one point. Instead, see the whole thing, the way the leaves ripple and move in the wind.
Casting a Detect Evil is like that, only you’re looking indirectly at a network of influences and relationships.
What does a Detect Evil cast look like? Here are some examples.
Years ago, I came across an elderly gentleman, a fading bard and raconteur. He was a longstanding member of a community, smart and utterly charming and gregarious, with a playful mind and demeanor. His charisma was at least seventeen. His mind was like that of a far younger person, like a bright, sharp adolescent. Talking with him one on one was a delight, and he immediately created an easy rapport. Everyone loved him, or so it would have seemed.
But because I was attending to being connected with the whole, I began to notice that his charm had a focus. He showed a particular interest in developing relationships with preadolescent boys. He hovered around them. He was often in physical contact with them, in ways that crossed...very subtly...a boundary line. I could perceive it in the boys, in their awkwardness around him.
I felt the play of it across others, and there was a sourness to it. So I looked indirectly and intently, and in attending to it, realized that all was not well. Other clerics had cast protection spells and glyphs of warding around him, which I found in the dusty cybernetic archives of the church, but those had lost their power. He patiently outlasted them all. There was predation there, carefully and intelligently hidden by a smart and charming human being.
It was evil, and being able to detect it required the careful effort of this spell. That, I was able to stop, with the help of other Presbyterian clerics and those I'd trained within the community. It was hard, but it was important.
Another cast came one early afternoon when I happened upon a fellow cleric disciplining one of her young charges, just inside the doorway of a room. Kids get out of line regularly, so this wasn’t unusual. She didn’t notice me. I paused for a second, and suddenly what I saw was not the conversation, but the room. It was filled with other girls, the rest of the acolyte class. They were all looking down, embarrassed and upset. The room was tense with a feeling of discomfort and shame. Something was wrong. I found myself involuntarily prepping for a spell cast.
Listening in more closely, still unnoticed, Detect Evil did its work. The “discipline” was a bullying harangue, one that threatened that teenage girl with exclusion. It was a public shaming in front of her friends, delivered not because she'd acted hatefully or been disrespectful. It was because she’d chosen to be with friends the night before instead of going to an outing she had planned for the girls. “You're showing me you're not committed to the Way. You don’t care about the Master or your faith,” said the teacher. “You may as well not even be here. In fact, you're welcome to leave. If you don't care, go ahead and leave.” There was no love in it at all. It was, like all evil, only about power and control.
And then, to my shame, I did not intervene then and there. The cleric in question was influential in the community, a potent practitioner of Christ-masked dark magic who already had a chip on her shoulder where I was concerned, and I stumbled in my reaction. When that young woman had a chance to leave, she never graced the door of the monastery again. And neither, eventually, did any of those other girls. When they grew up, they fled to places where they would not be bullied or manipulated.
Detect Evil is vital, but it is only the first step. When you detect it, you need to do something about it.
