Let us live by walking with Jesus, so that our Neo-Pagan neighbors, the witch, and frankly a lot of us Christians, can put down our crystals, our superstitions, our vision boards, and our bound sage in order to live out a liturgy of life, with rituals, practices, and behaviors that reflect who we are as followers of Christ.
I remember when I first noticed it. I was shopping with my wife at a popular millennial clothing store that had no men’s section! I was trapped. So, I did what any normal person would do. I began to theologically examine the knick-knacks on the back shelf. I’m a lot of fun at parties. What I found opened my eyes to a phenomenon occurring not only in hip boutiques but also in bookstores, at Target, and in the media all around us!
I found that on the shelves were predominantly books, tools, and talismans used to help the everyday working woman with her witchcraft. That’s right, witchcraft! A book of spells, how-to potion recipes, and various means of predicting the future. This was not a fantasy fiction section at the library. These resources were made for adults by adults to serve on one's witching journey.
The modern witch is not just a silly, pointy-hatted kids' costume for Halloween. Witches are walking amongst us in our everyday lives. Indeed, the culture seems to be shifting where witchcraft is not just a fringe alternative, but a lifestyle whose practices, rituals, and symbols are becoming accepted if not commonplace in contemporary life.
Maybe you have seen them? Crystal necklaces, sage burners, manifesting vision boards, people saying “vibes” all the time (ok, I am guilty of that one… but hey, it’s a vibe!). Maybe your neighborhood coven meets in the woods outside your house! Ok, that might be a little extreme, but it does happen. What you are experiencing is the normalization and thus proliferation of what is called neo-paganism. This new paganism is exactly that: a new way for people to reappropriate old pagan themes, concepts, and beliefs, but in a way that fits a modern mindset.
To clarify, "pagan" is an ancient term that Christians used to refer to those outside the faith who maintained their local gods, myths, and superstitions rather than converting to Christianity. Not all neo-paganism is witchcraft. However, witchcraft, especially the witching religion of Wicca, is one of the first and fastest-growing expressions of neo-pagan religions.
You might be thinking, “I knew I shouldn’t have let my kid read Harry Potter!”, but rest assured, the whimsical wizarding world of the Harry Potter children’s book isn’t exactly what we are talking about here. We live in what is often called a post-Christian and post-Modern world. The surge of industrialization and modernization, along with the elimination of scarcity and need in Western society, has left humanity with an identity crisis. Gone are the myths and mysteries that once lingered behind dark forests, high mountains, spooky coves, eerie chants, and strange relics. Now our worldview is dominated by nihilism, a sense of nothingness, where things in the material world lack any transcendent meaning beyond their biology, molecules, and atoms. To make matters more complicated, we live in a world where we have plenty of time to focus on the various limitations and sufferings of our human condition. Our collective inclination has been to fill the void with something. Some have chosen to fill it with magic.
Our culture began to presume a while ago that the Christian God was nothing more than a nice idea for otherwise simple, traditional, and old-school-minded people. If believing in the Christian God filled the gaps of your understanding and satiated the meaninglessness of your suffering, then good for you! In reality, the pursuit of the fullness of life is the ultimate measure of one’s life. The pursuit of a fulfilled life, however, is suppressed by the harsh reality of our human limitations, namely, our biology, our brokenness, and, of course, our tendency to die.
It is no wonder, then, that in a world devoid of transcendent meaning, a mythical and mysterious purpose, and a calling to garner control for oneself in and through the manipulation of an enchanted natural world would appeal to a plethora of people who have bought into the promise. People can pursue their own happiness, create their own identities, and control their surroundings and destinies. Thus, modern witchcraft explodes onto the scene.
So, let’s panic! Witches, the brides of Satan, are on the loose and they’re casting spells and cursing our villages. Where is the pitchfork? Where are the torches?
Hold on there, good people of Salem. First of all, witches aren’t inherently Satan worshipers (though there are some). Most witchcraft practitioners really only dabble in some of the rituals and spells. Witches are often people like us who are struggling with the realities of a broken, sinful, and modern world. They are our neighbors, and that is precisely why we should be concerned about their situation and the rise of their religious practices.
A theologian from the 1970s was ahead of the curve on all of this. Visser‘t Hooft intuited that the new religion that Christianity would have to contend with would not be atheism or a lack of belief in the divine or the transcendent. Instead, he predicted that the natural human drive to believe would lead them to these new paganisms.
Hooft identifies these wandering souls as having a few consistent qualities. neo-pagans, and so the witch, tend to be monistic, believing that god, nature, and all reality are one. They are pluralistic, believing that no one way or expression of god and the divine is exclusively authoritative. They tend to embrace what might be called vitalism, in which experiencing life to the max is the fullest expression of living. They often prioritize eros, or romantic and sexual love. They also embrace nature as significantly important, as it is an active expression of the community of divine beings.
What I hope you discover in this article is that many of the motivations and worldviews of the witch and the neo-pagan are also part and parcel of the worldviews of much of our spiritual-but-not-religious culture. Your coworkers, doctors, mail carriers, and pet groomers don’t need to come to work on a flying broomstick for them to be entrenched in pagan thought. For that reason, Hooft’s final characteristic of the neo-pagan is so important for us to acknowledge. Hooft points out that the new pagans lack a well-defined hope. Sure, some might believe they will be reincarnated as a tree. Some might spiritually splash back into the ocean of the universal divine. And some might even maintain a disembodied presence as an ancestor or a spiritual guide. But who’s to say? We live in a culture teeming with spiritual beliefs and practices, devoid of hope.
Here is why we should care. The lie of the pursuit of power, control, and self-righteousness is being insidiously inculcated in our most vulnerable, underinformed, and easily manipulated populations. As we have seen in the degradation of people’s spiritual, physical, and emotional health in this modern age, this lie is one that only leads to hopelessness.
Will we, the Church, be the hardbringers of hope? Will we walk with witches? Will we seek to understand the source of their worldview and the personal sufferings that might have led them to witchcraft? Will we seek to understand more deeply the world around us to see why they are not crazy (or scary) but rather searching and longing for something transcendent, as all human hearts do?
We have the transcendence of God indwelling in and with us by the power of the Holy Spirit. We believe the transcendent God came into creation to redeem it and make it new. We trust that we have been made new to love and serve a creation which God has made good and meaningful, one in which he chooses to personally dwell and enliven with his grace.
We have something to offer our neighbor, the witch. We have a story, a narrative, an account, a world filled with wonder and adventure. To be a Christian is to lead a life filled with spiritual encounters that are made tangible through ordinary, even mundane, means such as water, bread, and wine. It is to live a life where letting go of control and riding the wave of God's grace can be the most vivifying way we could ever live. Let’s show our neighbor the witch a community of creation where the particular way of Jesus is actually compelling. Let’s show them a life that is saved by grace through faith.
Let us live by walking with Jesus, so that our neo-pagan neighbors, the witch, and frankly a lot of us Christians, can put down our crystals, our superstitions, our vision boards, and our bound sage in order to live out a liturgy of life, with rituals, practices, and behaviors that reflect who we are as followers of Christ. For when we walk in love, witness, and service with witches, Jesus too will walk with us. After all, he loves them. So should we.
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