The Christian Issue

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The last topic naturally (for me) leads to the question of Christian Witchcraft. Years ago I stumbled across a site for it, but thought it was silly and so never went further to find out more. I think the term Christian witchcraft is troublesome because it seems a little apologetic. It is an attempt to wed two ways that aren’t often seen as wedded and are probably opposed to each other, and then there is the idea we cannot get away from that to be Christian is somehow to be “right” so if only you can marry the Craft to the Cross, you’ve done something. Since, so often I deal with Christian themes it is important to ask: can there be such a thing as a Christian witch? In almost similar words, would I regard myself as a Christian?

Certainly in the Middle Ages and in the not distant past in England and America we know of several self or other identified witches who also identified as devout Christians, but we have to add to this that up until the very recetn past most practicing Christians were syncretistic that is, mixed other ancestral religions with Christianity and were largely ignorant of Christian theology. The old world was a much less precise world, but we live in a world of many precisions, right left, Christian pagan. We have a religion or varying religions called Witchcraft with their own system called pagan (though what relationship it bears to actual paganism is hard to say) In this world, then, the question of one being both an effective Christian and an effective witch is a little different. Certainly in the hot fringes of things, among the deeply Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Pentecostals who delve deep into the power of belief, nothing less than magic is seen. An atheist could deny it. A witch cannot. Just as in Hindu sects stone Ganeshas are seen to drinkthe milk offered to them, Catholic holy men and holy women heal, icons bleed, the Pentecostal preacher Marilyn Hickey is said to have created eyes in the head of a blind woman by the name of Jesus and for anyone who practices the Craft this should not sound unbelievable.

And yet I would say a modern witch is not a Christian, at least not an orthodox, church going one. The Christian healers are under the obligation to attribute Hindu miracles to either illusion or the Devil. Christianity asserts its primacy, not simply its primacy but it’s only game in town ness even to the point that’s its various sects condemn each other. Christians are orthodox.  A witch is heterodox. Christians espouse faith in doctrines. Witches practice heresy. The Christian view of God is in Eden and in the civilized place with its borders and its thou shalt not. The Christian God dwells in the New Jerusalem, but the witch is outside of the city walls and out of the Garden. In the proper Christian view, God strives against the Devil who is always prowling about. In the end, to the witch, God and the Devil are One.

So, unlike the village witch of the sixteen hundreds who loudly asserted her Christian faith while also admitting to speaking to devils we are not entirely able to do the same. For one, our view of the world is not exclusively western or Christian so devils and maybe even fairies might not have much place in it, Our past does have a place in our world view, though, and for most of us our past is at least vaguely Christian. But in this current world we have and know more than Christianity. We know what it is and often what it is not, we sense the difference in ourselves and the church going folk around as, in what we stand for and what the shambles of modern Christendom espouse. And yet, and yet, our rituals, our gatherings, our circles, our rites, our chalices, our housles and our sacrificed gods cannot entirely escape Christianity, no matter how much we try to give them a different origin story, and that is fine. Christianity is the chief mystery of the last two thousand years through which all mysteries before have been filtered. A mystery is to be peered into at all times. It is the lapwing that, if we settle on its surface, we will be lost, but if we give ourselves to it deeply, will reveal much.