Nelly Gillant: from Reiki Master to Disciple of Christ

After talking "with the dead" for a long time, Nelly was very happy in her life as a reiki practitioner. She healed troubled people and fulfilled her mother's dream of becoming a doctor "to heal Mum". With a wealth of clients and an excellent income, Nelly had no reason to change her life. But strange things began to happen in her life and in her practice. One particular event made her take a step back and question herself. Read on to discover Nelly Gillant's incredible journey from Reiki Master to Catholic disciple.

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Les raisons d'y croire :

Driven by despair, Nelly turned to occult practices at a very early age. At the time she had only a vague knowledge of the Christian faith. Later, she followed a fashionable contemporary esoteric trend by living in a very popular 'New Age' milieu.

In good faith, Nelly wanted to heal people and relieve them of their suffering. She turned to Reiki, a practice that the Church rejects and condemns, something Nelly wasn't aware of.

Although things went very well at first and healings abounded, little by little her practice was transformed and Nelly's patients began to suffer regular crises. Nelly explained this as a result of her growing healing powers, and reassured her worried husband.

Then Nelly's own behaviour changed, and she began to exhibit extreme behaviour: aggressivity, irritability, even verbal violence towards those close to her. This was not like her.

Miraculously, she turned to the Virgin to ask her for the right way. After hearing the Father's voice, it was still very difficult for her to embrace the Bible and Jesus after decades of rejecting it and following New Age practices.

Despite the highly lucrative nature of her reiki activities, she decided to give it all up and turn to the truth.

Nelly hesitated for a long time between several churches and, after hearing the Father reassure her of the truth of the Catholic Church, it was there that she finally confessed her past sins and found peace.

Synthèse :

Nelly was nine when she lost her mother to suicide. She began to wonder about life after death, and tried everything she could to make contact with her late mother, who was herself a practitioner of the occult. So it was quite naturally that Nelly began to practise spiritualism and card-reading. Around the age of twelve, she began using runes and the pendulum. She visited mediums and took up automatic writing, fascinated by this world of the occult, which brought her closer to her mother. All this made her particularly popular at school, as she was able to read the past and the future, and her classmates sought her out. As time went on, her gifts grew and she even managed to pass the exams for the "brevet des collèges". In spite of everything, Nelly retained a certain connection with Christ and wore a cross, without knowing why.

Later, she opened a clairvoyance practice to "heal souls". It seemed that the dead liked her and came to visit her regularly during her sessions, even when they were not invited. But according to the Nelly of today, the so-called dead are nothing more than demons who know much about our lives, enter in through people's suffering and take advantage of their weakness.

Nelly sought to acquire ever greater powers and wanted to heal people. At the time, she was already offering fortune-telling and hypnosis services, and she wanted to train in reiki, a healing technique that can be learned in stages. She began offering her Reiki treatments free of charge and gradually increased her fees to ninety-five dollars a session. She went through the different levels of Reiki before reaching the Master level, which is acquired through a process of purification through fasting, allowing the acquisition of greater and greater healing energies. She notes that as the level of mastery of the masters increases, so does their pride .

Nelly explains that Reiki sessions involve moving the hands over the patient's body to bring in a healing energy of light and love. It usually starts at the head and moves down the body. The patient receives a gentle energy that relaxes and generally puts them to sleep. Pain often disappears.

Gradually, strange phenomena appear during the sessions. Patients begin to scream and go into a trance. Nelly's husband was worried. He worked at the other end of the house and heard the screams. Nelly reassured him that her energy was increasing and that the healings were becoming more and more powerful. In fact, she called upon the goddess Isis to help women rediscover their sacred femininity. Nelly's voice began to change during the treatments, and while she was certain that she was infusing healing energy at the time, she now believes that she was actually bringing demons into people, causing them to convulse.

Gradually, Nelly's behaviour changed, and her husband pointed this out to her. She became aggressive, impatient and angry. One day, she found herself shouting at her daughter. She stepped back, astonished by this behaviour, which was so out of character for her.

Nelly began a quest, praying fervently to the Virgin Mary to help her find the truth. One night, she woke up and heard: "Jesus is my beloved son, he is the one and only; confess with your mouth that he is your Lord and Saviour and that there will be no other after him". Nelly understood that it was the Father's voice speaking to her, firmly, but without ordering her to do anything. She knelt down and confessed that from now on she would follow her saviour Jesus.

Everything fell apart for her. Imbued with the theories and practices of the New Age since her childhood, she realised that she had been totally mistaken. Turning to Christ and the Bible, which she had always rejected, seemed impossible. At the age of thirty, she admits to being like a child who has to learn everything all over again. But Nelly found it hard to let go of her healing practices and remained indecisive for a while. However, she could no longer stand all the objects in her practice: incense, dream catchers, and statuettes. She felt suffocated.

Nelly went to a Pentecostal church, where some members prayed a long prayer of deliverance over her. She went into convulsions, shaking, crying, sweating, and started talking to the pastor, insulting him in a strange voice. After three hours of prayer, Nelly was afraid that her husband, who was very accepting of her, would think she was crazy. She decided to call quit her former practices and threw out everything, both courses and objects. She spent several days getting rid of everything.

Nelly looked to different churches for the truth of the Gospel. She feared that Catholics were idolaters; she could risk being invaded by new demons if she went to church with them... In a convent not far from her home, during a service with the sisters, she caught one of them kissing icons: that was all it took for her to panic and ask God for forgiveness for being with idolaters. She prayed to the Lord for the release of the sister in question. Then she heard: "Who are you to judge my Church? These women are here of their own free will, worshipping me, and this is a foretaste of Heaven on earth." It was the same voice she had heard before, and she felt it was full of truth and firmness, but without judgement. Nelly felt very small and it was like a revelation that the Catholic Church is the Church of Christ. She cried profusely.

Some time later, Nelly confided in a Catholic woman she knew, about her doubts, and spoke to her about the path of suicide that the devil was leading her down. The Catholic woman advised her to pray the rosary and put herself under the Virgin's protection. She felt trapped between her inability to pray to the Virgin and her constant torment. She finally decided to pray the rosary. From that moment on, she felt her torments and evil voices go away. "All the oppression was gone" she says.

Nelly soon felt the need to confess. She spent forty-five minutes with a priest, confessing forty years of sins. She wept profusely for several months, so profound was her repentance.

Today, Nelly bears witness to her faith, and insists: "There are all kinds of options in the world, but all you are looking for is Jesus Christ the Lord."

Camille Mino di Ca converted at the age of fifty and was recently baptised. Passionate about conversion stories and the lives of saints, she writes for Hozana and other media, in a variety of forms, including biography, drama, poetry and song.

Au-delà des raisons d'y croire :

Occult practices, including reiki, are widely condemned by the Church and are known for their hidden dangers. Reiki is a technique that appears to be good in every way. The practices are warm, with a pure, spiritual atmosphere. Practitioners usually dress in white. In general, you feel very comfortable in such a practice, safe and secure, with kind practitioners and a willingness to give love.

However, from the moment they invoke the healing energy that they wish to transmit to the patient, they open a door to evil forces, both for themselves and for the patient who accepts to receive this "energy". In the end, you are saying yes to entities that have nothing to do with God. The problem is that these entities then take on a certain power over you and interfere in your life in a negative way.