Editor’s note – We’re continuing our review of Next Stop, a graphic novel that gives us a rare, close-up look at how New Age ideas take root in a grieving mind. Zach Duncan has spent two earlier pieces tracing manifestation, talismans, and scrying through Pia’s story; this installment turns to something more personal: the counterfeit comfort of a “spirit guide,” and whether any of it actually heals what’s broken in her family. That question – does it work? – is one every worldview eventually has to answer.
Recapping Pia’s Quest for a Magical Fix
We’ve been exploring New Age spirituality and occultism through the lens of a mid-grade graphic novel called Next Stop.
Here’s a quick recap of where we’ve been so far in part 1 and part 2:
Main character Pia Xing is on a cross-country bus trip to a magical lake that she hopes will somehow bring back her dead younger brother and save her fracturing family.
She is never directly taught about New Age beliefs, but her faith in magical ideas grows through her experiences. And she becomes an evangelist of sorts to her fellow travelers.
Here are some of the New Age and occult themes and concepts she encounters:
- Manifestation: Pia desires the power of her thoughts and intent to reunite her with her brother. To somehow “think” him back into reality.
- Talismans: She is carrying a toy from her brother and uses it as a tool to focus her mental energies. This is similar to the idea of a “psychometric link” in the New Age and “sympathetic magic” in occultism.
- Necromancy: Attempting to contact the dead is a specific type of divination practice known as necromancy.
- Scrying: Relying on the water of the “magical” lake to provide hidden insight is this occult practice of scrying. The same goes for other transparent or translucent surfaces like a looking glass or a mirror. Scrying is the method Nostradamus allegedly used to see prophetic visions in buckets of water.
- Vortex: The subterranean lake would be described as an energy vortex by New Age adherents. Such places are thought to have a high concentration of spiritual energy that can ramp up psychic abilities and communication with the “other side.”
Shockingly, Pia actually does see a vision of her brother Ben in the water. Her magical journey seems to have been at least a partial success. Even though she wasn’t able to bring him back physically, the vision offered her words of comfort.
Before we explore whether it helped her accomplish her goal of healing her family, we should investigate the apparition itself.
It falls in the broad category of what New Age adherents would call a “spirit guide.”
Editor’s note – It’s worth pausing on how ordinary these practices can look from the outside. Pia isn’t chanting over a cauldron; she’s carrying a toy and staring at a lake. Scripture doesn’t forbid necromancy and scrying because they’re exotic – it forbids them because they reach past God’s revealed will for hidden knowledge He hasn’t given (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).
What’s a Spirit Guide?
Most in the New Age believe in the existence of advanced spiritual beings that can act as helpers.
Helena Blavatsky, in many ways the originator of New Age and New Thought, called such spirits the “Masters of the Ancient Wisdom.” She believed all her own spiritual insight came from them.1
Those who believe they have guides report different forms for their divine assistance, including angels, animals, aliens, deceased ancestors, or even spirits that reside in nature.2
Here’s Pia encountering what seems to be a nature spirit guide at one of her stops on the way to the lake. Like many things in the book, it’s left unclear as to whether this really happened or if Pia’s trauma and confusion are causing her to dissociate from reality.
New Age belief holds that these spirit guides are real, benevolent, and are sent to help humans on their journey.
To the unfamiliar, the idea of a helpful and personal “spirit guide” seems to track with what Christians believe about the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit vs. a New Age Spirit Guide
Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the “Helper” and Christians believe He gives power for living in and through Christ.3 That might sound superficially similar.
But there are far more places of stark opposition. Including:
- Identity: Christians know the Holy Spirit to be God. New Age practitioners believe spirit guides to be angels, ancestors, Ascended Masters, aliens, or nature spirits.
- Focus: The Holy Spirit continually directs focus outwards and towards Jesus because the ultimate objective is God’s glory. A spirit guide directs focus inwards on personal power and aspirations because the ultimate goal is self-actualization.
- Sin: The Holy Spirit also convicts the Christian of sin to bring about continual repentance and growth in the life of following Christ. The idea of sin is rejected in New Age spirituality.
- Practices: The Holy Spirit leads the Christian into God-focused practices including Scripture reading, worship, and prayer. A spirit guide might lead towards practices like increased channeling, tarot cards, or transcendental meditation.
- Purpose and results: The Holy Spirit brings power for living for Jesus and generates the fruit of the Spirit.4 A New Age adherent believes a spirit guide helps them discover hidden potential and realize their true inward divinity.
There are other stark differences as well, including what people sometimes report about their experiences.
Editor’s note – That checklist of contrasts is the real center of this piece. Every “spirit guide” tradition eventually points a person back toward their own hidden potential, while the Holy Spirit keeps pointing away from self and toward Christ. That single difference in direction – inward or outward – is often enough to tell you what spirit you’re actually dealing with.
The Experience of the Holy Spirit vs. Encountering a “Spirit Guide”
Those who engage in communicating with spirit guides sometimes report feeling peace, lightness, expanded awareness, and unconditional love while interacting with a spirit guide.
They can also report symptoms including anxiety, emotional and physical fatigue, depression, nightmares, and other sleep disturbances that begin after communicating with their guide.
A New Age community discussion might call these symptoms a “spiritual hangover” or “spiritual struggles” or “ascension symptoms.”
This is why many in the New Age advocate for supposedly protective techniques like “grounding” and “clearing” to protect and preserve one’s personal energy fields.5
Note: Those with a strictly a psychological framework for evaluating life would tend to classify these “spirit guide” experiences as some kind of dissociative state.
The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, brings about the opposite experiences in the life of the Christian.
Instead of anxiety and paranoia, the Holy Spirit brings calm and clarity. The Holy Spirit gives hope, joy, and peace.6
Testing Spirits
Both the Biblical worldview and the New Age worldview affirm that we live in a spiritual world inhabited by spiritual entities who can interact with humans.
The Apostle John wrote about the importance of testing such spirits to discern whether they come from God or not.
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. [1 John 4:1]
New Age adherents also believe in the idea of testing spirits.
In the New Age this is tied in with the perception of “vibration.” “Low-vibration” and “heavy” feelings signal a spirit to reject and protect oneself from according to New Age practitioners.
Christians believe that satan can disguise himself as an angel of light, so there is not much weight placed on intuition alone for the Christian. The test is based primarily on objective doctrine. If the message contradicts Scripture it is not of God. If it does not affirm that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh it is similarly easy to reject.
Editor’s note – Duncan’s point about “vibration” versus objective doctrine deserves emphasis. Feelings are not a reliable filter, because Satan is fully capable of producing feelings of peace and love. The apostle John gives us a doctrinal test, not an emotional one, and that’s a safeguard the New Age has no equivalent for.
There is much more that can be said of spiritual discernment. But we’ll save that for another time so we can explore whether all this effort is helping Pia achieve her goals.
Does it Work?
The first and most important question is not whether something spiritual seems to “work” but whether it is true.
Yet at the same time, it is valid to ask whether a lifestyle or set of practices generates positive results over the long term. If the Christian claims of the Holy Spirit are true, we would expect the results to align with our God who is objectively good.
We would similarly expect New Age spirituality, if it is true, to live up to its claims of offering control and healing past traumas through manifestation.
So has it worked for Pia?
Pia, remember, was motivated to embark on her spiritual quest because of deep dysfunction within her family.
Her young brother drowned at a beach while her parents had stepped away and Pia was temporarily distracted.
The page below shows Pia hoping to comfort her mother and, instead, realizing that her mother sees her as an enemy.
She is an outcast in her own family.
Her father isn’t happy with the situation but has seemed to be stuck between feeling badly for his grieving daughter and not wanting to confront his bereaved wife on how she’s treating Pia.
Instead, his advice to his daughter is to discount what her mother says because “she doesn’t mean it when she says hurtful things.”
This is, of course, horrible advice. Because it is impossible.
Children are born with a connection to their parents and desire to remain connected. There is pain and suffering when a temporarily severed connection is waiting to be repaired.
That work of rupture and subsequent repair requires a willingness on both parties.7 But such mutual willingness doesn’t exist in this situation.
Rather than reconciling with Pia, the pain in Pia’s mother leads to her cutting her daughter from a loving relationship instead.
Pia has undeservedly internalized the guilt and has pinned her hopes on the trip to bring her brother back to help fix her family.
How it All Ends
After seeing the vision of her brother in the “magical” lake, Pia returns home.
She goes to visit her mom in the psychiatric institution she has been in since her recent self-harm attempt.
Her mom seems sad. She seems to recognize what a burden Pia has been carrying and even to consider the unfair situation that she has personally been creating by blaming her daughter for the tragedy.
She starts, it seems, to apologize.
While lying in bed, she says, “Pia, I, I, I’m so ….”
The panel below shows what happens next.
She trails off and never does apologize. Then she changes the subject.
The book ends with the family taking a walk together outside the hospital. Their unspoken plan is to start again by ignoring the painful past and moving on.
Unfortunately, such a plan means they’ll never get to the roots of the issue. Unspoken pain acts like a wound that gets infected in silence and locks out true healing and reconciliation.
Wrapping Up
Without grace and mercy from her mother, Pia tried to find a magical solution to bring her brother back. But despite seeing a spiritual vision her brother remained dead.
This is what personal sin looks like in the real world: it keeps relationships broken.
The pain remains in place without ever addressing the heart of the dysfunction.
Compare this to the Christian doctrine of sin which says we are all accountable for our failings. And that we must acknowledge them honestly and continue to turn from them in order to walk in freedom and newness of life in Christ.
This doctrine of sin is unpopular. Yet it’s eminently practical.
It says we have a ruptured relationship with our Heavenly Father because of our sin. We have all lied or cheated or stolen or – like Pia’s mother did – prioritized ourselves and our personal feelings at the expense of others.
Christianity says that true healing is indeed possible. And it says we don’t need to try to bring about our own salvation as Pia tried so desperately to do.
Instead, rupture and repair is possible because of Jesus. Not because we earn it and are worthy. Because of what He’s done for us and the gift of grace that is freely offered to us all.
Grace offers freedom, forgiveness, and rest from the life of toil that we’ll find if we try to save ourselves as Pia tragically has done.
A Word from the Editor
Pia’s story ends exactly where you’d expect a story about self-rescue to end: in silence, with the wound still open. Duncan is right that the real subject here isn’t magic at all – it’s sin, and what we do about it. The Bible names the same diagnosis Pia’s family refuses to speak: we’ve broken the relationship with God and with each other, and no amount of manifesting will mend it. What actually mends it is grace freely given through Christ, received rather than earned (Ephesians 2:8-9). That’s the difference between Pia’s lake and the empty tomb – one asks you to reach for what isn’t there, the other tells you it’s already been done.
Sources and References
- Helena Blavatsky: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky
- Spirit guides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_guide
- John 14:16, John 14:26, John 16:7
- Galatians 5: 16-23
- Grounding and Clearing: Being Present in the New Age: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005ZF4ROK?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
- Romans 15:13
- Rupture and repair: https://www.counsellingtorontoteens.com/rupture-and-repair/
Salvation – Eternal Life in Less Than 150 Words
Distributed by – BCWorldview.org
Editor Comment: It is important to draw a clear line between the Holy Spirit's call to look outward to Christ and a spirit guide's call to look inward toward self. I think that is the reason why Scripture does not call us to pray to the Holy Spirit or in the Holy Spirit's name as the HS lives within us.
This article appeared on Medium and is reprinted with modifications and by permission.