“Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

The quote above from Shakespeare’s Macbeth brings up images not unlike the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz.  Both of these references depict witches as ugly crones that use their powers for evil.  Witchcraft today, however, has undergone a significant makeover since these past images or even the Salem witch trials of the 1600s.  Today’s witches detest any connection between the images of old or Satanism.  Many youth and adults are fascinated with witchcraft as a source of power in their lives and a means to control the lives of those around them.  Witchcraft is also seen as a wonderful tool for feminists to strengthen and develop their “girl power.” 

Ever since the release of Rosemary’s Baby in the late 1960s interest in Wicca has escalated so that many colleges and universities even offer classes on witchcraft.  Hollywood has certainly played a tremendous role in popularizing witchcraft with such movies as Practical Magic and The Craft.  Movies and TV series such as Charmed and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch picture witches as being chic, urbane, and sexy.  Today people learn about the powers of darkness from local movie theaters, television, and video games, rather than in the libraries, temples, or covens one would expect.  However, what starts out as mere curiosity or dabbling usually turns into obsession.

The Covenant of the Goddess, based in California, describes witches as pre-Christian (e.g. Celtic, Greek, Norse, Finno-Ugric) fertility gods and goddesses:  “Wicca, or Witchcraft, is an earth religion—a re-linking (re-ligio) with the life-force of nature, both on this planet and in the stars and space beyond.  In city apartments, in suburban backyards, in country glades, groups of women and men meet on the new and full moons and at festival times to raise energy and put themselves in tune with these natural forces.  They honor the old Goddesses and Gods, including the Triple Goddess of the waxing, full, and waning moon, and the Horned God of the sun and animal life, as visualizations of immanent nature.”1  Clearly, most wiccans are proud to be pagan.

Without equivocation, witchcraft is a religion.  The United States government recognizes it as such, and many covens hold tax-exempt status.  What witchcraft is not is rational or scientific.  Science implies an ordered arrangement of facts that can be repeated.  There is no guarantee in witchcraft that a ritual will always work.  Witchcraft is a superstition, that is, a belief in what is unknown or paranormal.

In contemporary culture, occultists often make reference to white and black magic.  White magic is said to be one universal source of power for good or blessing.  In contrast to the former, black magic is referred to as power from demonic spirits that is used to harm or cause mischief.  Jeffrey Burton Russell, professor of history, writes that this distinction between white and black magic in the popular imagination is the “creation of modern writers, mainly occultist, and seldom appears in the history of world magic.2

A simple test to affirm the false distinction between white and black magic is to ask witches who claim to practice white magic only, if they would be able to hex someone who had made them upset.  The answer is absolutely affirmative, because there is no difference from black magic, which relies on evil spirits to execute one’s sadistic will.  Popular occultism has relied heavily on the New Age Movement and Jungian psychology to create this modern delusion in the contemporary mind.  Anton LaVey, founder of San Francisco’s First Church of Satan, has often stated that even “white witchcraft is pure mythology.  All witches are drawing upon occultic power and that power does not originate with God.”  “While the herd trudges around in circles,” LaVey says, “the Satanist flies straight to the source.”

The false distinction between black and white magic is clearly seen in the popular film, Star Wars.  For instance, Luke Skywalker gets his power from the good side of the force while Darth Vader gets his power from the dark side of the force.  C.S. Lewis wrote about this popular trend in his book, The Screwtape Letters.  Screwtape, the world-wise old devil, writes his nephew Wormwood:  “If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces,’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits’—then the end of the war will be in sight.3

Russell remarks that “a much more useful distinction is that between low and high magic….Low magic is practical and aimed at obtaining immediate results, for example, urinating into a ditch to cause rain or sticking a wax doll with a pin to cause pain; high magic is akin to religious, scientific, and philosophical speculation and reaches out through occult knowledge to understand, grasp, and ultimately control the Universe.”4  Essentially, there is no distinction here either.  Low magic could be equally malicious as high magic, and vice versa.

Witchcraft is an amoral belief system.  For instance, nature religions cannot attribute ultimate authority to what they term “forces,” is an impersonal energy field believed to permeate all of life.  Nature is impersonal, thus, one cannot apply terms such as white or black magic to natural forces.  Ultimate authority can only be derived from a personal Creator who exists outside of nature.  Only the God of the Bible can manipulate natural phenomenon toward His intended will.  God alone can act contrary to physical laws of the universe.  This means that God is able to perform supernatural events, but that Satan is able to perform only natural events.  All forms of nature religion share the common purpose of invoking and/or manipulating natural forces that are believed to be innate within the universe.  Supernaturalism and naturalism are clearly distinguished.

It is common to find naturalism as explanations for spiritual experiences.  Man has sought to explain spiritual experiences with the deification of nature whereby he can adapt to a syncretism that seems to honor God by using natural principles and laws.  However, God is not some cosmic Santa Claus that can be invoked by man’s initiation.  God responds to man in His own time, as He alone sees fit.  If man’s god comes at his every whim and desire, then, that God is not the sovereign God of the Bible.  The true God can only be approached through the finished sacrifice of Christ on the cross (Heb. 4:14-16).  Using naturalism to achieve blessings from God is a mockery of Christ’s finished work (Heb. 9:9-12).

The confusion between supernaturalism and naturalism was due in some extent to the product of scholasticism, which was based on the philosophy and science of Aristotle.  Scholasticism attempted to use human reason to understand the supernatural content of Scripture.  Miracles and godly/ungodly spiritual experiences were relegated to the realm of being “supernatural.”  Any events that were unexplainable were put into the “supernatural” category.  Supernatural events were a deviation of the natural order and hence considered demonic.  Russell comments, “The Aristotelianism of the scholastics was a narrowly rational system, so that irrational events were seen as supernatural and often demonic….Scholastic Aristotelianism was accordingly bound to reinforce the trend, already begun within the Augustinian tradition, toward driving magic in the direction of witchcraft.”5  It was this view that allowed for the belief that witches could manipulate natural laws through demonic interference.  “Benevolent magic was often tacitly allowed to exist, but in theory the Church assumed that all magic drew upon the help of demons whether the magician intended it or not.  The syllogism was:  magic proceeds by compelling supernatural forces; but God and the angels are not subject to such compulsion; the forces compelled must therefore be demons.  The Church consequently held that there was no good magic.  Its position was not unreasonable, since low magicians the world over often use appeals to spirits as well as allegedly mechanistic means of magic.”6  Clearly, the supposed distinction between white and black magic is meant to indicate the practitioner’s intentions, but the source for both is the same.

The dawning of a culture with no relationship to reality is transpiring.  Eastern mysticism is rapidly seducing the West.  Today’s generation is fascinated with the occult and many are demonstrating this interest by absorbing witchcraft.  People today want individuality and power. They do not want to run into power structures that claim to care, yet demonstrate the opposite by only perpetuating their ideologies in power.  This generation is fascinated by the paranormal and with any attempt to known the future with the hopes of then manipulating future events to one’s advantage.

In dealing with the subject of witchcraft is impossible to avoid a reference to Satanism for the simple reason that both belief systems parallel each other.  Satan is clearly the source of the witches’ power.  Satanists regard Satan as superior to the God of the Bible.  Satanism is the practice of worshipping Satan as the spiritual source of one’s ultimate authority.  However, Satanism denies that the devil exists as a person.  Satan is believed to be corporate evil, not individual evil.  Satanists do not believe in Satan as a literal person, but everything that is evil is Satan.  This kind of ill reasoning is what it is referred to as non-sequitor, that is, it does not follow.  Even though they do not regard Satan as a literal being, Satanists are still devil worshippers for the simple reason that Satanism is the pursuit and worship of unholy and evil in contrast to what is holy and good.

Satanism is embodied by nine Satanic statements as follows:  “(1) Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence; (2) Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams; (3) Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit; (4) Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates; (5) Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek; (6) Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires; (7) Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all; (8) Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification; and (9) Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years.”7  Satanism is by its very definition nothing more than a sequence of negations.  Everything that embodies Satanism in the nine Satanic statements is obscured in negation of Christianity.  As long as man remains in rebellion to God, Satanism will continue thrive on mankind’s fascination with the paranormal and love of his immorality.

Galatians 5:20 lists witchcraft as one of the works of the flesh.  Verse 21 states, “they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”  Deuteronomy 18:9-12 lists a witch as “an abomination unto the Lord.”  For a Christian there is no distinction between black and white, high or low magic.  Though an occultist may use such terminology to justify their evil behavior in nice trends, Christ still stands in judgment of them (cf. Acts 13:6-12).  Wiccans may call themselves “wise ones,” as did their ancestors, but Scripture says that they became fools by “changing the truth of God into a lie” (Rom. 1:25).

Christians should never become comfortable with evil.  The apostle Paul never allowed himself to become comfortable with pagan idolatry.  He had seen many pagan cities, yet never had a passive attitude toward them.  When the apostle was at Athens, “his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry” (Acts 17:16).  The presence of evil provoked Paul to contend against “the Jews, and with the devout persons” in defense of the living God.  God has given His church the power to stand as bold witnesses against the wiles of the devil (Acts 1:8).  The power of God is completely unknown in nature religions.

The resurgence of witchcraft in attractive terms is a palpable exercise in refashioning demonology for modern audiences.  Both witchcraft and Satanism are the dispensing of mythological religious teachings.  Rather than an objective faith based on “many infallible proofs” (Lk. 1:3), witchcraft is an existential “leap of faith” into the dark.  Scripture warns that man should not trust his feelings, which are deceitful (Jer. 17:9), but to heed the instruction of God’s Word (Jn. 17:17) which alone will save him.  The law of entropy is that the universe is running down which leaves naturalism with no hope for mankind.  However, in contrast the God of the Bible is able to reach in from outside of nature with resurrection.  Biblical hope is not reliant on a pagan revival, but in a personal God who alone can save and restore nature (2 Pet. 3:10-13; Rev. 21-22).