Magic is Alive, Unfortunately; Witchcraft is Invoking the Unseen World

Was Eve’s transgression a decision to use earth magic? Was the burning of witches justified?

When I was a kid I had a young witch as a friend. She had been a child actress, her heritage gypsy from the Bohemian Alps. Her grandmother had smuggled her mother out from under the Nazi holocaust – Hitler murdered gypsies too – and they had abandoned, foresworn their heritage, which they saw as awful. In their mountain village, magic was very much alive and families feuded wildly. Houses and businesses exploded in flames, people died horribly, animals died horribly and Jovita my friend, had been promised – before she was born – to a powerful Warlock from a warring family as a solution to a centuries old feud. They were literally in hiding on a leafy street in middle-class Canada. Jovita’s mother worked as a travel agent.

They lived a deliberately quiet life. No spells, no fortune telling. Absolutely no magic ever. Ever. Church. Even talking about it was forbidden.

Eventually I talked Jovita into doing a spell for me. This I am ashamed of. I didn’t believe her, I guess I wanted proof. Part of me thought it was a joke, part was overawed. I got my wish and her apartment exploded in fire and her dogs died. And she vanished. Her mother took her out of school, and married her to a mild doctoral candidate in political science, a Wasp, in yet another attempt to erase their heritage. And I got a lesson I won’t forget in a thousand lifetimes.

I come from, as do you no doubt, a world where none of that happens. But, it is coming back. Goetic magic is practiced everywhere now, you can buy hundreds of versions of grimoires on Amazon. It is used for money first of all, then power over others, curses against competitors and women after your man, the usual stuff. Goetic practitioners consciously summon Lucifer’s angels, the hundred thousand or so who fell with him and who are much delineated in Judaism especially Kabbala. Today’s practitioners do not identify these spirits as demonic, of course. Theirs – old European magic – is a complex system which insists that you learn to express the dark side of human nature. To clarify: meeting, understanding and expressing your dark side – Jung’s shadow is another descriptor – gives you power. In the same way, as one advances, expressing your opposite sexual nature also gives you power. Which explains Sir Kier Starmer french-kissing his chief male funder under the street lights. Romance is different in the world of stolen power.

Shall we ignore them, as any counsellor or mainline pastor would advise? Catholic exorcists say ‘at your peril’. The CNN-described go-to-psychiatrist who has researched demonic possession for the past 25 years, Richard Gallagher, has zero doubt.

Gallagher’s CV reads as follows: physician trained in psychiatry at Yale University and psychoanalysis at Columbia University. Professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College, faculty member of the Psychoanalytic Institute at Columbia University. Joseph T. English, past president of the American Psychiatric Association, called him “highly respected” and “superbly credentialed,” with “unimpeachable integrity”.”

Gallagher has investigated hundreds of cases of demonic possession and many are simply not categorizable as mental illness. In fact, Jerry Marzinsky, a psychoanalyst who worked in an asylum for the criminally insane found that teaching his patients the Lord’s Prayer or Psalm 23, and having them repeat the words, chanting them, over and over when their voices came, caused the voices heard by schizophrenics to become chaotic and back off. Some were even permanently silenced.

We in polite discourse, have erased the unseen world to our peril. We have trivialized it. When people go to heaven on a near-death experience, they invariably return with the message to wake up, we are all one, we must be kind to each other. Nothing of Jesus braiding a whip and taking it to the money-lenders in the temple, more like a gentle admonishment to adhere to the“thinking” of someone like the Dalai Lama. And trust me on this, the NDE is now a conceit, an allegory, something everyone believes as the older they grow, no matter how many letters after their name. The NDE industry is utterly massive. Apparently there is no limit to the money you can make selling this nostrum.

This syncretism, as the Catholics call it, is creeping into academia and popular ‘respected’ non-fiction, by which I mean the kind of author who turns up on Morning Television to sell their wares. Lee Strobel, in Seeing the Supernatural was a recent guest on one of those shows, and he, a serious man, a devout man, has searched out verifiable miracles, angelic appearances, demons, exorcisms, and attempted, using what science we can rely on, as well as the Bible and respected scholars to confirm the existence of the resurrection, angels, NDEs and heaven. And demons

About Gallagher’s work he writes:

it’s daunting and disturbing to explore the world of “fallen angels,” the pack of rebellious spirits that Christian theology says is led by Satan himself. These evil beings have turned the supernatural realm into a tumultuous battleground for the souls of people like you and me, an otherworldly dimension where malicious creatures scheme to snatch us before we can enter God’s eternal embrace. “To the untrained eye, many possessions may be thought to fall into the psychiatric categories of various psychoses and severe personality and dissociative disorders,” said Gallagher. “However, for well-trained psychiatrists and other health professionals, [demonic] possessions differ from such disorders in significant ways.”

We are so protected in our world, still, that for the ambitious in the entertainment business, invoking demons is just play acting that somehow works. Which is how it does work, at first. But what they are doing is invoking and marshalling and above all giving permission to armies of darkness to enter this world. And as one progresses in the “craft”, more sacrifice is demanded, until the ultimate sacrifice of a family member for ultimate success is required. Kanye West claims this agreement of his took his mother’s life. Then peace slips away until you are living in a world of pain. West is clearly in immeasurable pain.

Christian theology states unequivocally that humans, you and I, have ultimate power in this world, and if Christ dwells in our heart, we can bind and send to hell any demonic influence. Unless…unless we invite it in. And as Gallagher says: (Invoking the unseen world for wealth or power is) like ‘inviting a grown tiger into your house, thinking he’ll be a docile pet, when he ends up tearing the place apart and terrorizing you. You want to get the tiger out, but guess what? He wants to stay.”

Kabbala is the marshalling of the armies of evil or dark angels in order to effect your will. The successful practitioner ends up looking like Madonna, creaking around the stage imitating geriatric sex, with a face so swollen and stitched together, she is a Gorgon representative of a life lived for pleasure and pride.

In my region, Wicca is the chosen religion of educated left-wing feminist environmentalists. They call themselves eco-feminist witches, and they hide what they do. Because “persecution” and the “patriarchy’“ against which they set spells and do ritual, and howl under the full moon by the sea until pods of killer whales turn up, I kid you not. Wicca or the Mother religions have a deep history, and it has been fully unearthed if not verified, in Women’s Studies programs, in every college and university in the world. Deemed harmless, deemed a path to reclaim your power. To “make the world a better place”.

Witchlit and WitchTok are big big things in pop culture and there is nary a doubt expressed about the practice, because witches are “good”, just misunderstood, because ‘sexism’. Plus it’s just another “path” or “faith” equal to any other, Rosicrucianism or Theravadan Buddhism. Or Taoism. None of them very important, just a hangover really, a comfort for the weak say skeptics.

Michael Heiser, an Old Testament scholar insists that is wrong:

“We have been desensitized to the vitality and theological importance of the unseen world First many believers claim to believe in the supernatural but think and live like sceptics We’ve been desensitized to the vitality and theological importance of the unseen world.

We say we believe in the supernatural but think like and live like skeptics. It is uncomfortable. It is not rational.

Add in the New Age for the under-educated (this is how the cultural elite think of the New Age). The New Age, as evangelical scholars have pointed out, uses the relationship prescribed for human to God, and twists it to their selfish purpose. I could list here a couple dozen statements of Christ which act as affirmations for prosperity and wealth. The New Age takes that theology and bends it to materialism: affirmations, visualization, manifestation. Only with Christianity and Judaism, you are supposed to check it with the Big Guy – “if it be thy will” being the operative statement, the relationship falling out from there. Today’s New Agers want what they want: clothes and wealth and the ideal partner and posh holidays and training you to get these things is a massive world-wide cottage industry.

(Invoking the unseen world for wealth or power is) like inviting a grown tiger into your house, thinking he’ll be a docile pet, when he ends up tearing the place apart and terrorizing you. You want to get the tiger out, but guess what? He wants to stay.

This is from the newest housewife on the Beverly Hills franchise. She is a master money manifestor.

The New Age trivializes the most important element of life – whether God or heaven exists – and Wicca or Witchcraft weaponizes it. The two aspects of the not-religious-but-spiritual modern female are the exact definition of Eve’s original sin.

Another recognized and prolific scholar in the paranormal is Dean Radin. His latest book looks at the scientific proof for miracles, affirmations, sigils, candle magic, writing magic, and spell-casting. Radin’s bio, here is instructive in his insistence, over many decades that dammit, this stuff is real. Certainly it’s real enough for publishers to make bank upon, proving that while the mainstream may discount or laugh at the supernatural, people seeking knowledge in the marketplace of ideas, do not.

Radin thinks that the whole question of demons is nonsense. Evil doesn’t really exist for him outside the human will to power, (which I remember as the Nazi raison d’etre). He thinks magic is fantastic, and no doubt has become a practitioner, if only to sell more books. He also thinks the Telepathy Tapes are significant. which they are, and says this below with regard to that investigation. The idea he expresses is part of today’s conspiracy theory that MKUltra techniques are being used to keep us brainwashed, addicted to trauma, violence and gross sexuality, so we don’t see what authorities are doing and planning. The digital ID lockdown is very much part of that, and I refer you to the usual suspects, Patrick Wood and Catherine Austin Fitts.

There is a persistent belief in the generalized spiritual-but-not-religious community that humans are up-leveling in their ethical and god-like identities, which is called moving from 3D to 5D. The telepathy tapes which seek to prove the existence of mind-to-mind communication are groundbreaking in this arena. Most interestingly it seems that the autistic can not only communicate telepathically but are matter-of-fact about it.

Radin says demons are not real, that UFO’s and Ebens are not demonic, but gentle persuaders to a kinder way of life. To which anyone raised in the evangelical church or anyone who lives in the real world where crime, financial insecurity, drugs and family breakdowns proliferate, recognizes as the opinion of not-a-serious person. Radin was brought up in the 50’s and 60’s, in the comfort and security of a world built by devout Christians over several hundred years, whether he realizes it or not. Gen Z and later Millennials realize that world has long vanished. As a result, they, en masse are returning to the churches which are more “liturgically demanding”. Gen Z wants the return to the old strong virtues of right and wrong. No more grey. Grey or relativism has ushered in chaos and eliminated safety for everyone. Gen Z finds evil incontrovertible and everywhere.

I found myself this week quarrelling with various AI about the Salem witch trials. AI is both repressive and unctuous and I enjoy being praised, corrected as if by someone with an IQ one standard deviation below mine, and then arguing it into a corner, where it hangs and loses focus. AI refuses to believe that actual witches were doing actual spells in 17th C Mass., but I think it is very likely that they were so doing. Witchcraft was rife through all the British isles, drawing from powerful Celtic traditions. St Patrick had certainly not eradicated it in Ireland or anyplace else. The Lesser Key of Solomon was published around then, and surely bits of pieces of it were trickling through the people. John Dee and Merlin, come on. Faced with starvation, people will try just about anything.

And it was recognized as dangerous. Physically dangerous and dangerous to civic peace. Even today, I steer clear of the witches in my home town. Educated well enough to pull powerful incantations from ancient sources, they are more than capable of attack against a perceived political enemy.

It is impressive just how much charismatic and evangelical Christianity view of evil: Baal, Babylon, Moloch, Isis, Lilith, the Jezebel spirit, mirror that of 17th C Puritan founders. While the Puritans were scholarly and methodical, today’s evangelicals work through their emotions and their ecstatic connection to God. They receive wisdom, rafts of information in prayer and dreams, they are even, if possible, more God struck. The world they face, arguably, is just as hostile as the Puritan wilderness, and they are just as on the knife edge.

Stamping out the witchcraft of old was necessary. It is possible too that ergot in Puritan grain triggered powerful hallucinations; it was certainly the drug used in the Eleusian mysteries; the transcendental aspects of beer made beer-making in Olde Europe the province of chosen noble families, according to the deeply researched Immortality Key, just for that aspect. The drug in beer summoned the divine. Those rites persisted all through the Middle Ages.

The Puritans, instead of being bigoted primitives were a covenant society, fully conscious, fully political. They had talked for a hundred years before they made their move. Their law was grounded in scripture, they wanted godly communities, education for all, and leaders chosen for virtue not birth. They believed the Reformation was a covenant with God and that corrupt post-Tudor society had broken that covenant. Like today, land was being taken, landlords were fully exploitative (hello BlackRock), the Royal court was filled with gambling and sexual license, and a “sink of sin” corrupted the entire nation.

The Star Chamber was the ultimate bully, like today and the punishment of dissent was brutal. Attendance at the official church was forced. Propaganda on full blast. Church offices were sold off to the highest bidder – all this they saw as spiritual fraud. The Stuarts’ etc claim of Divine Right absolutism was anathema. Monopolies, inflation, and price manipulation disrupted the marketplace.

Like today, the elite had locked down the economy for themselves, and set themselves to a powerful extraction of the wealth of everyone else.

Arthur Miller did quite a job on Puritan culture with The Crucible, erasing even the memory of its purpose and mocking the townspeople, as if he could have cleared one field in his entire lifetime. Equally Stacy Schiff’s “The Witches”, is surreptitiously contemptuous of people she and Miller no doubt saw as religious fools.

Witchcraft to both these writers didn’t exist, or did so as some primitive tribal carryover from the slave Tituba. Of course the women would have been driven to witchcraft for survival purposes and of course, the church would have taken action. They knew where it led. It led to the whole insane panoply of sin, the trampling of the weak and the corruption of every institution. In point of fact, the colonists killed a handful of witches compared to the Scots who burned thousands during the 17th and early 18th century, and the Vatican who burned hundreds of thousands, and have every name listed in their archive. This wasn’t just hunting abortionists and herbalists. This was actual demon-hunting.

In this video, with Pastor Frances Myles, you can pretty much determine why Africa is still mired in primitivism. Witchcraft there is the dominant and hidden religion, and it holds. It is the faith of the entirely powerless, and it of course, is used by the demonic to attack Christians.

This is from Taylor Welsh, a 37 year old raised in the mega-churches.

“And so when witchcraft shows up, a witchcraft is any attempt to control, manipulate or subjugate the ruling spirit as the Holy Spirit in an environment. Then you have witchcraft.

Any attempt to supersede the Spirit of God with a separate decision-making matrix is witchcraft.”

The Puritans were the founding culture of the New World. Not the Indians bent on murdering each other and taking their hunting grounds, not the planters and slavers of the south who were there to continue the extractive economies of Europe. They were determined to build the City on a Hill that followed genuine ideals. They were the founders of the first actual democracy, the first in history, so successful that is still, still, a beacon for the entire world.

To the extent we have lost this today, is the extent to which Charlie Kirk’s generation is rightly rejecting our world. The quarrel in Owens/Carlson/Kirk world is not concerning, it is encouraging. We want the truth, not the establishment of yet another corrupt institution. If MAGA is corrupt, it’s done.

Witchcraft is, at the lower end of the culture, the desperation of the marginal and powerless – Eve’s sense of herself as entirely vulnerable. At the high end, it is fully criminal, pulling power from a very real evil that seeks to prey on us.

There lies our choice. Restoration or – the following is the call at the end of today’s witches ceremony – a Great Big Pagan World.

https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/magic-is-alive-unfortunately-witchcraft