There’s a rhythm to panic.
It begins as a whisper, something dark is coming for your children, your faith, your way of life. Within days the whisper becomes a flood. Media blares, pulpits thunder, and neighbors begin to look at one another with suspicion. Each new generation dresses its fear in different clothes: witches, rock music, rap lyrics, foreign dolls, queer joy, or artificial intelligence. The names change, but the spell is the same. Fear becomes a liturgy.
Satanic panics are not born from spiritual warfare; they are crafted through power’s deep insecurity. History shows that whenever people in authority feel their grip loosening: when women, workers, youth, or marginalized communities begin to claim their voice, someone declares that evil is afoot. The panic becomes a tool of empire, sanctified in religious language. Fear does what swords and laws cannot: it convinces people to police one another in the name of holiness.
Creation Spirituality asks us to start from a different ground: Original Blessing rather than original fear. The cosmos is not a battlefield between God and darkness. It is a living communion of being, a web in which even tension can be transfigured. To believe that God can be outmatched by any adversary is to confess a smaller god than the one who breathes galaxies into being.
The Mechanics of Fear
Fear functions like static, when it fills the air, it drowns out truth. It narrows perception until everything feels dangerous, even difference itself.
Empire has always known how to tune that frequency. In the early witch trials, fear justified the theft of land and silencing of women’s wisdom. In the 1980s, it sold records, elections, and purity rings. Today it drives algorithms and fundraising emails. Every panic has its merchants.
The pattern is older than the word Satan. In Hebrew scripture, “the satan” simply meant the accuser, a prosecutor within the heavenly court. This figure worked for God, not against, testing integrity rather than spreading evil. Only later did the concept harden into a cosmic enemy. When imperial religion absorbed that dualism, it found a useful weapon. Once you can label your opponent “satanic,” you no longer have to understand them; you only have to destroy them.
A Practice of Discernment
So what does resistance look like?
Begin by asking the question that every prophet has asked: Who benefits from this fear?
Whenever a headline, preacher, or politician insists that your neighbors are dangerous, pause. Take a breath. Feel your feet on the ground, the air in your lungs. That moment of embodied awareness breaks the enchantment. It creates the space where Spirit can speak.
Then, look for the fruit.
Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruits.” Does the message lead to compassion, justice, and community or to suspicion, profit, and control? Discernment is not about having secret knowledge; it is about noticing outcomes. The fruit tells the truth.
A second practice follows from the first: curiosity.
Fear collapses complexity, but curiosity expands it. Ask what story is being told beneath the story. What wound or insecurity is driving it? When we meet fear with curiosity, we transform it from weapon into teacher. The empire thrives on reaction; the kingdom of God grows through reflection.
Fear, Insecurity, and Empire
Charlie and Brian named the heart of it in the episode: “Equality to the privileged feels like oppression.”
That single sentence explains much of Western history. When those accustomed to superiority encounter genuine equity, it feels like loss. Empire trains us to measure value through hierarchy, so the movement toward balance feels like descent. But in truth it is an invitation to live no longer as masters or victims, but as kin.
Creation Spirituality reminds us that all life participates in the same divine energy. Fear fractures that awareness; it convinces us that safety can only come through dominance. Every satanic panic, from Salem to social media, has served that same illusion. When we remember our interconnection, the illusion loses its power.
Media Literacy as Spiritual Discipline
The next great panic may not be about witches or music but about machines. Already we hear whispers that artificial intelligence will replace souls, that technology itself is demonic. But as Charlie observed, the danger is not the machine it is the human tendency to hallucinate, to fill gaps in understanding with stories that flatter our fears.
To resist this, we must treat media literacy as a spiritual discipline.
Before sharing, pause.
Before believing, verify.
Before reacting, breathe.
Truth requires patience, and patience is a kind of prayer. In a culture addicted to immediacy, waiting long enough to discern reality is an act of rebellion. It is how we refuse to be ruled by the algorithms of panic.
The Practice of Grounding
Try this simple act whenever the world feels too loud:
Place your hand over your heart. Feel its rhythm. Whisper, “I am held in the web of life.”
Let your breath lengthen. Picture roots extending from your feet into the soil of being, drawing up steadiness from the earth itself. This is the Via Positiva in motion, communion with creation as a living sacrament.
When you feel fear tightening its grip, do not shame yourself. Fear is not sin; it is signal. Listen for what it is asking you to protect, and then widen that protection to include others. Fear transfigured becomes compassion.
Beyond Panic: A New Imagination of Power
The antidote to panic is not apathy but imagination.
When Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” he was not romanticizing passivity. He was redefining power as relational rather than coercive. Peacemakers do not suppress conflict; they transform it through presence. That same spiritual technology dismantles panic. Instead of shouting down fear, we hold it gently until it changes shape.
Imagine a community that meets every accusation with curiosity, every rumor with research, every threat with prayerful composure. That is what spiritual maturity looks like in an age of hysteria.
To cultivate it, begin in small circles.
Read together.
Listen deeply.
Bless the ones who think differently from you.
Each act of trust disrupts the machinery of panic. Each moment of calm discernment becomes a quiet revolution.
The Voice of Reason and the Light of Hope
Fear is contagious, but so is calm.
When one person refuses to react, the contagion slows. When a community chooses love over outrage, the empire of fear loses its fuel. The voice of reason is not cold; it is compassionate. It says, Wait. Let us see clearly before we judge.
And when judgment comes, let it be in service of truth, not power.
Because the truth the scandalous, liberating truth is that God has no rival. The cosmos is not divided between good and evil battling for dominance; it is unfolding in love that absorbs even its shadows. The panic narrative collapses under that revelation. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.
Closing Reflection
Take a moment tonight to turn off the news and step outside.
Look up at the night sky. Every star you see burns because of balance, pressure and gravity, heat and space, held together in tension. That same equilibrium sustains your breath. The universe is not panicking. Neither must you.
When the next wave of fear arrives, remember: you are part of a creation rooted in blessing, not curse. You are capable of discernment. You are free to step out of the storm and into the steady work of love.
Creation’s Paths book: A Creation Spirituality Primer https://wisdomscry.com/Creation+Spirituality/00-+Creation’s+Paths/00-+Creation’s+Paths. Please share your feedback with us we want to hear your experience.
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Alban Eilir
00:15 Personal Connection to the Holiday
01:12 Welsh Pronunciation Challenges
02:20 Understanding the Spring Equinox
05:23 The Significance of Angus and Songbirds
09:25 Dreams, Transformation, and Ceridwen
16:38 Eclipses and Liminal Spaces
21:01 Hope and Resilience in Nature
23:10 Celebrating the Equinox
25:09 Closing Thoughts and Blessings
