What Christians Need to Know about Wicca

1. Wicca is Witchcraft

Wicca and witchcraft are the same thing. As Rosemary Guiley explains, ““As a religion Witchcraft often is called ‘Wicca,’ an Old English term for ‘witch,’ in order to counter the negative stereotype of Witches as ugly, evil, and Devil-worshipers.”^[1]

Why is that an issue for Christians? Because God has forbidden His people from practicing witchcraft. For example:

• Exodus 22:18 – Do not allow a sorceress to live. (The word translated sorceress is “kasap,” which means to engage in witchcraft.)
• Leviticus 20:27 – A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death.
• Galatians 5:20 – The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions…
• Revelation 21:8 – But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.

2. Wiccans can choose their own way to whatever god or goddess they may choose to follow.

Raymond Buckland, author of Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft, says, “All religions lead in the same direction, simply taking different paths to get there. Witches feel that all should therefore be free to choose their own path.”^[2]

However, Jesus clearly tells us in the Bible that He alone is “the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Further, God tells us over and over again that He alone is God. There is none like Him!

• Isaiah 44:6 – This is what the Lord says—Israel’s King and Redeemer, the Lord Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.
• Isaiah 45:5-6 – I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other.
• Deuteronomy 6:4 – Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.
• 1 Timothy 2:5 – For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,

3. Some of the “gods” and “goddesses” embraced by Wiccan’s are condemned by name in the Old Testament.

For example, in his article, “Wicca: A Biblical Critique,”^[3] Michael Gleghorn reveals,

“…the Goddess has often been associated with the moon (and has thus sometimes been called the Queen of Heaven).

“She was alleged to have reigned with a male consort called The Horned One who was a nature god and was also associated with the sun….

“Interestingly, modern Wicca shares many similarities with the ancient fertility religions of Canaan, religions specifically condemned by God in the Bible….

“For instance, the Wiccan Goddess is revered by some as the Queen of Heaven, by others as Astarte. But in the Bible, the worship of Ishtar, the queen of heaven, and Astarte, or Ashtoreth, is repeatedly condemned, as is the worship of her consort, known sometimes as Baal, sometimes as Tammuz.”

• Judges 2:11-13 – Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.
• 2 Kings 23:4-7 – The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest,… to remove from the temple of the Lord all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem…. He did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem—those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts. He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the Lord to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the temple of the Lord, the quarters where women did weaving for Asherah.
• (cf. Jeremiah 44:15-23; Ezekiel 8:14-15)

4. Wiccans do not accept the existence of evil. Nor do they believe in the existence of Satan.

Margo Adler is credited with saying, “We do not accept the concept of ‘absolute evil,’ nor do we worship any entity known as ‘Satan’ or ‘The Devil’ as defined by the Christian tradition.”^[4]

The Bible, of course, disagrees, vehemently!

Of the people in Noah’s day we read that “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). Further,

• Ecclesiastes 9:3 – The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead.
• Jeremiah 17:9 – The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
• Matthew 15:19 – For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.
• Romans 3:10-12 – As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

As to Satan, God certainly says he exists. Not only that, God warns people to be wary of him:

• Zechariah 3:2 – The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”
• Matthew 4:1-3 (cf. vv. 4-11) – Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
• 1 Peter 5:8 – Be alert, and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

5. For some Wiccans, witchcraft is a deliberate choice to turn away from the God of the Bible.

Jone Salomonsen says, “Witches perceive of themselves as having left the Father’s House (Jewish and Christian religion) and returned ‘home’ to the Self (Goddess religion) with a call to heal western women’s (and men’s) alienation from community and spirituality and to become benders of human and societal developments.”^[5]

But we would remind you again that Jesus alone is God. Jesus alone is “the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6). Jesus alone holds the key to eternal life. Just a few examples:

• John 6:67-69 (cf. vv. 60-71) – Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”
• Romans 10:9-13 – If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
• Philippians 2:9-11 – Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

If you have been tempted by witchcraft, compare the best your gods and goddesses can promise you against the best that God has not only promised, but given you. What god or goddess in Wicca can offer you anything even close to this?

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:16-18)

Endnotes

1. Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience (New York: HarperSan Francisco, 1991) p. 647.↑
2. Raymond Buckland, Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications, 1986), p. 99.↑
3. Michael Gleghorn, “Wicca: A Biblical Critique,” https://probe.org/wicca-a-biblical-critique/.↑
4. Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), p. 205.↑
5. Jone Salomonsen, Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco, quoted by Joe Carter, in The Gospel Coalition, “9 Things You Should Know About Wicca and Modern Witchcraft,” https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/9-things-you-should-know-about-wicca-and-modern-witchcraft/↑