Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
On Witches and Worship

On Witches and Worship

Last updated on: July 26, 2022 at 3:50 pm by Mary Pezzulo

On Witches and Worship 2022-07-26T15:50:36-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I saw one of those scary comments about “witchcraft” today.

If you were raised in the Charismatic Renewal, you know the kind of comments I’m talking about.

This one was a priest who was trying to do something good, to tell people that it’s okay for Catholics to read fantasy novels and play role-playing games. I’m glad he got that much right. But then he said “Real witchcraft calls upon the preternatural power of demons to make concrete change in the world. Sometimes magic actually works. If it never had any effect, if it was all just a sham, the Church wouldn’t be so cautious about it.”

And in the moment I read that, I was back in my childhood, in the Charismatic Renewal. Charismatics are terrified of witches. My mother used to make us pray a Hail Mary every time we drove past a building where she claimed “witchcraft” was being taught. I don’t know what was actually being taught in that building, but she truly thought it was a school for witches. “Witches are weird, crazy, wacko women who want to worship the devil,” my mother explained, and we were saying a Hail Mary in atonement so the Blessed Mother wouldn’t cry. But the Hail Mary also felt like protection, a ward I was casting up so the devil worshippers wouldn’t hurt me.

We often prayed Hail Marys and even entire Rosaries against the people who worshipped the devil, just in case their magic actually worked.

We barricaded our entire lives against the devil, and against witches. I’ve already written about the time my mother canceled Halloween because she’d read that Jack-o-Lanterns were a beacon to attract witches, with comical and less than comical results. We weren’t allowed to watch “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” or dress as witches for Halloween. We weren’t allowed to to read books with witches in them with a few glaring exceptions– folktales where the witches were the bad guys, sometimes. Certainly C. S. Lewis who was Christian and the next best thing to a Catholic. But any fantasy books that pinged my mother’s Charismatic radar for “witchcraft” got sent back to the library unread. Some other people in my Charismatic community took it even further. Once a fervent woman led a picket of the local public school because they were reading Roald Dahl’s The Witches in the fourth grade. Once this same fervent woman stole books from the public library and disposed of them, so that children wouldn’t be led into “witchcraft” and the worship of the devil.

Witches were everywhere, we were assured. They were conduits for evil spirits and responsible for everything that went wrong. They could curse random objects and the objects would become conduits for evil spirits as well. You could get possessed by a demon by touching the wrong thing or watching the wrong movie, reading the wrong book, playing the wrong board game.

I absorbed the toxic superstition of the Charismatic Renewal until I was terrified of everything. I would repeat Hail Marys under my breath to bounce away the devil in case there were any witches around. That was a major manifestation of my obsessive-compulsive disorder in my teenage years: the inability to stop reciting Hail Marys on a loop and an aversion to touching any object that looked too much like a witch had been near it. I used to carry Holy Water and blessed objects to repel any scary spooks nearby and soothe my OCD– which is itself a superstition, of the kind that witches were said to practice.

I still don’t like to pray the Rosary, because it flashes me back to the horror and panic of being Charismatic.

I was an adult and had already run away from home when I found out that actual witches don’t worship demons. They pray and perform rituals, similar to the rituals I practice as a Catholic. But if a demon happened to try to get involved, insofar as they believe in demons, they would be as wary of that demon as a Christian would.

Right now, my best friend is a witch.

She lives in Columbus and I visit her often. She has studied Christian theology and loves it. She has an icon of the Virgin Mary in every room of her house. She prays outdoors by a bonfire during the full moon. She knows about herbalism and other folklore, and she uses her knowledge to help people. She is always helping people. She believes the best way to worship God is to be constantly busy helping people. She and I are working together to build an outreach in her neighborhood, neighbors helping neighbors. We’re going to build a free pantry and a menstrual supply station. Someday we want to have a community garden and the non-denominal version of a Catholic Worker House to help as many people as we can. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, the best way I can think of to spend my time, and she agrees with me.

When I am having a panic attack or a flashback, I often make my way to the computer and send a message to my friend.

She writes back, calmly counseling me. She usually has a Bible verse or two, which help immensely.

The thing I didn’t learn growing up is that God is love, and love is of God, and everyone who loves surely knows God. Everyone who loves is born of God. Everything that is loving is born of God. When you are kind and help people, that in itself is worship.

Things that are the opposite of loving are from the devil. But the devil isn’t some all-powerful mirror image of God. The devil is an echo of an arrogance, an anger and a sulkiness from eons ago, still arrogant, angry and sulky to this day. The devil is a resentment, constantly biting his own tail and wishing that all creation would do the same. The devil is a nothing that would like to make all of us nothing. The devil is irrelevant and would like it if we wasted time on irrelevancies.

God is love.

When people act out of love, we give appropriate worship to the One True God. When we act out of panic and try to instill fear, we play into the hands of God’s enemy. And that’s true whether we call what we do prayer or magic.

My friend and I serve God.

The Charismatic Renewal wasted its time thinking about the devil.

Make of that what you will.

Image via pixabay

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.

Previous Post

July 24, 2022

O Happy Fault

Next Post

July 27, 2022 A Different Kind of Grief

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, while six-winged beings called out 'Holy, holy, holy.' What were these creatures?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Leviathan Cherubim Angels Seraphim