Roman Catholic Worried... Options

As you can tell from the topic title, all this stuff interests me and I'd like to be able to perform some of it, but everything about the Golden Dawn, Hermeticism, and Ceremonial Magick in general tends to freak me out. I'm a Roman Catholic and I'm obscenely worried about my spiritual self getting into some trouble by doing this stuff. Are there any 'Judeo-Christian' roots to these rituals? I mean it doesn't take a lot to notice the archangels and God's names in the rituals, but seeing videos of people using sinister voices and generally acting like they want to be Lucifer's best friend during said rituals is a little worrisome.

If anyone has any advice for me I'd really appreciate it. I want to be closer with my HGA and thereby God by doing a little magick everyday, I desperately want Him to work through me, but what if unwittingly I allow myself to be worked by an entity with less than amiable goals? Etc., etc.

Thanks in advance..

enochian ... i totally feel you as that is exactly what happened ... the 'renaming' or co-opting of spells and rituals from other names of more ancient traditions ... absolutely, it was done quite well and integrated quite masterfully.

but, bear in mind, that many of the christian prayers are said to various 'names' of god ... although the modern evenagelical christians have forgotten how to use the names of god (and kind of just fall into that "heavenly father" one) and do not use the magic of their faith in their prayer rituals, in the roman catholic tradition in particular, the various names of god are involved for the various prayer rituals/spells that are synonyms of the pagen gods or egyptian gods or the hindi gods, etc., etc. 'hail mary' would be a spell under any other name. if you study st. francis or any other of the more esoteric based saints/monks/founders of catholic traditions, you will find a deep tradition in spells and invoking the various names of god to energize the ritual/spell/prayer. and the bible says that magic, sorcery and prophesy, calling in the spirit, hands-on-healing, levitation and the like are all "wrong" if not used within the context of the "church" where it is more than encouraged (that is obviously an orchestration of scripture in order to maintain power and control over "us" and "them").

call this "1" "one" or "uno" or "un" or "mono" or "fill-in-the-blank" ... its like the tower of babel for religions ... what words do you use to do ______________. fill it in with the one that fits you the best ... after all, all roads are good, and they ultimately lead to the same place ... even if there are different beaches in that place. but your point of their abduction of the rituals from the ancient pagans of europe is dead on, which is why i think so many ex-"christians" find a natural affinity for and comfort in the pagan rituals and traditions.