We can make light of today's date -- June 6, 2006, which is 06-06-06, and of course the devil's 'number' -- but there are certain hidden attachments to symbols and if nothing else the day has served to rally the prayers of Christians.

Just as a huge pre-emptive strike by Christians greatly deflected the effect of The DaVinci Code -- taking away its influence on actual beliefs, at least in the movie version -- so can prayer deflect the rituals of occultists who take seriously today's date.

But DaVinci, in so brazenly toying with the character of Christ, indicated the kind of time we are in -- in many ways, an anti-christian time -- and so it paved the way for The Omen, a movie about the anti-christ that cynically is being released this day.

While all the hullabaloo in most cases is just that, those who don't take a meddling with the devil seriously should take a look at what has happened to many of those involved in such movies.

Mysteriously bad events often follow them -- as they also can affect us if we have an occult involvement.

The Omen star Pete Postlethwaite has revealed his brother died after drawing three sixes in a card game -- while he was filming the remake of the 1970s chiller.

The original 1976 movie was beset by problems including the plane for scriptwriter David Seltzer being struck by lightning.

The film's star, Gregory Peck, had a lucky escape after canceling a flight to Israel, which later crashed, killing all on board.

The jinx continued when a warden at the safari park used in the "crazy baboon" scene was killed by a lion and crew members survived a head-on smash. The list goes on. Check too on what happened, behind the scenes, with movies like Poltergeist.

When we play around with the occult, whether through movies, books, astrology, fortune-telling, psychics, music, heavy-metal posters, or other means, we open ourselves to dark influences.

"I had horrible nightmares every single night when we were shooting the film," recalls Omen start Julia Stiles.

There are hidden attachments. There are connections, at times, between symbolic numbers and spiritual effects. Three sixes often seem to be associated with problems (not always, but more often than one would expect). The same is true of superstitious objects.

When we rebuke the force behind such things, and purge our homes, that force dissipates.

June 6, 2006