Traditions of the Ancestors, i.e. Folk Dancing

Many countries keep traditions of the early inhabitants of the land, such as in Europe and Latin America. This is usually referred to as “culture”, and if you know about or practice these traditions, you are esteemed as “cultured” or thought of as educated.

Even if the “cultured” and “educated” people of the land study the historic origins of their traditions to find out what the purpose of a particular practice is, their lack of education on spiritual matters and the laws of God blind them to the reality of the spiritual world where their ancestors’ practices or traditions are concerned. Considering themselves educated and sophisticated, they laugh about what they think are superstitions and “old wives’ tales” of “lesser educated people”.

Many years ago a young woman from a Latin American country came to me for deliverance. She was tormented by certain evil spirits. As she related to me what was going on, the Holy Spirit brought to my mind “folk dancing”.

I asked her if she had done folk dancing, and she said that her mother had enrolled in a folk dancing school and had performed in several functions and festivals in her native country. She informed me that the dances were to honor a goddess of that country. During the process of deliverance, I called the goddess by name to manifest. She was delivered of that demon and other related demons.

This is similar to a ritual of Santeria practiced in Cuba. Santeria is a mixture of Catholicism with the Yorube African religion.  When the African slaves came to Cuba, the Spaniard Catholic priests tried to convert them. When the slaves saw the statues of the saints in the walls of the church, they integrated them with their gods (this is called synchretism) and created their Santeria practices.

In Havana, I visited a childhood friend who was educated in a Catholic private school. When she was about 17 years old, she and a friend out of curiosity went to a Bembe, which is a Santeria initiation ceremony. She told me that there was a long table in the center of a large room with statues of the “saints” placed all around. In front of each saint, there was a platter of food. She and the friend were told to dance around the table at the rhythm of the bongo drum beat, to select a saint and to eat of the food when passing by that saint.

She did as told and did not remember most of the ceremony, but the friend told her that “she got the saint”, that is, the demon entered her and she fell to the floor, and the demon started talking through her mouth. The people who were there surrounded her and asked questions for the demon to answer.

When she told me the story she was very amused. Her parents did not know what she did. I did not know about deliverance then, so I just went home and pondered about it.

This is another case of an educated, Christian person with no knowledge of the spiritual world. She fell into a trap.

This is the way our God feels about lack of knowledge:

Therefore my people have gone into captivity, 
Because they have no knowledge;
Their honorable men are famished,
And their multitude dried up with thirst. Therefore Sheol has enlarged itself
And opened its mouth beyond measure;
Their glory and their multitude and their pomp,
And he who is jubilant, shall descend into it. People shall be brought down,
Each man shall be humbled,
And the eyes of the lofty shall be humbled. (Isaiah 5:13-15)

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also will reject you from being priest for Me;
Because you have forgotten the law of your God,
I also will forget your children. (Hosea 4:6)