Years ago I picked up a book with the titillating title The History of Witchcraft and Demonology by Montague Summers, an alleged Catholic priest who professed a belief in the reality of witches, vampires, and werewolves, among other supernatural critters that go bump in the night. On the point of witches, at least, they are all too real.
I’ve never quite managed to finish the book—it’s a slog, given the scholarly writing style of the early twentieth century—but the first few chapters take a deep dive into Gnosticism and related religious movements, like Manichaeism. As I recall, Summers traces much of European witchcraft to various Gnostic heresies.
For the unfamiliar, Gnosticism essentially argues that everything in this world is wicked, and that God is, in fact, evil. The argument is that all physical matter is the creation of an evil god, the demiurge, and that the serpent in the Garden of Eden was, in fact, good, as he sought to bring enlightenment and understanding to humanity. Only the spiritual is good, and the rejection of material existence is, therefore, good. Obtaining to that spiritual good is the result of gaining knowledge, which is why the serpent’s act in Genesis is not a moment of man’s fall, but of his awakening. Gnostic faiths are also inherently dualistic, which can be particularly enticing to Christians, who often fall into a dualistic worldview of the earthly against the spiritual.
At least, that’s one quick version of Gnosticism. The details vary, but the broad strokes are the same. Regardless, we can easily see that Gnosticism and its offspring are inherently anti-Christian in nature. They reject God’s Holiness, and elevate Satan to the role of a “good” god. Like all forms of heresy—and sin!—Satan inverts and perverts the Truth.
And what is witchcraft, then, but an attempt to manipulate the spiritual world to do the bidding of humans in this world? The Bible makes it very clear that witchcraft is not good. We all know Exodus 22:18, a verse that has graced the opening title cards of many a bad horror film: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” 1 Samuel 28:3-25 tells the story of King Saul consulting the Witch at Endor, seeking to speak with the ghost of the prophet Samuel. For this violation of God’s Law—and its implicit lack of trust in God’s Providence—Saul lost his throne for himself and his heirs.
I’m not advocating we go around staking overweight YouTube lesbians who claim to be witches (although I love Brian Neimeier‘s non-violent and cheeky “Witch Test“), but we need to be mindful of how easy it is to fall into heresy. Christianity is a difficult faith at times, even though in some ways, it is the easiest: Christ Offers us the free Gift of His Grace; Salvation is available to us, if only we will receive it. But there are certainly difficult passages, and reconciling the God of the Old Testament with the Christ of the New Testament has presented a perennial struggle for some Christians.
Of course, even that dichotomy is false—and potential form of heresy! The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New—and the God of today and forever! God Does Not Change.
Nevertheless, some groups have failed to make the reconciliation; coupled with the Gnostic influences from Persia (via Manichaeism), the Middle Ages saw the rise of a fascinating, complex heresy, one that was rooted out—brutally but, I would argue, necessarily—by the Catholic Church: the Cathars.
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The Portly Politico 