Christianity vs. Witchcraft: The Misuse of Exodus 22:18 and the War on the Divine Feminine

 

 "Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live." — Exodus 22:18

Few biblical verses have caused more bloodshed, fear, and persecution of women than this one single line. Across centuries, from the witch trials of Europe to the colonial persecutions in Salem, Exodus 22:18 has been wielded like a sword against women—especially those who dared to live outside the narrow confines of patriarchal religion.

But what if this verse was never about women practicing folk magic at all?
What if its meaning was manipulated, mistranslated, and ultimately weaponized to serve political and religious control?

The Power of Translation and Control

In the original Hebrew, the word translated as “sorceress” is “mekhashephah,” which scholars suggest refers not to witches in the modern sense, but to those who practiced malicious magic—harmful intent, curses, or poisoners. Yet when the Bible was translated into Latin, and later into English, the nuance was lost. The term was broadened and darkened to mean any form of witchcraft, divination, or even herbal healing.

By the time the King James Bible was published in 1611—an era of political upheaval, rebellion, and deep fear of women’s independence—the verse had become a divine justification for torture, execution, and silencing. The church and monarchy both understood something crucial: knowledge is power, and women’s folk wisdom—herbs, birth, healing, divination—threatened their monopoly on it.

Even in the story of Jesus’s birth, magic is there—embodied by the Magi, wise men who followed the stars and practiced ancient arts. Yet history glosses over this. As a child, I couldn’t help but ask: if magic is so wicked, why did it guide men straight to the manger? Why did it stand beside God’s only son?

That question never left me.

For years, I carried a complicated relationship with Christianity. I grew up knowing the Bible like the back of my hand. I could quote it. I could argue it. And yet, I also felt the deep pull of witchcraft—the old ways, the sacred feminine, the earth-based practices my ancestors knew before there was a church to tell them who God was.

I left the church, but the church never quite left me. And lately, especially with the way “Kirk-style” conservative Christianity has resurfaced in culture, I’ve found myself questioning all over again. Maybe Christianity isn’t inherently evil. Maybe it’s organized religion—the twisting of spiritual truth into political ideology—that is the problem.

And maybe the verse about witches in Exodus isn’t a divine death sentence at all. Maybe it’s proof of how power rewrites truth.

When Power and Religion Collide

It’s no secret that the most atrocious acts in history—the Crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, colonial genocides—have been fueled not just by religion but by extreme fundamentalism. And this is not unique to Christianity. The violent edge of all the world’s religions has been used to justify hate, conquest, and control.

We were raised during an era when fundamentalist white religious men—Falwell, Robertson, the entire moral-majority machine—preached more separation than love, more hate than Jesus’s teachings. Their message shaped the conservative worldview we still see today. And in that worldview, witches, LGBTQ+ people, or anyone living differently is condemned—not because of Scripture, but because of how Scripture has been interpreted and weaponized.

Witchcraft as the Scapegoat

This is why the figure of the witch is so potent. The witch is the one who refuses to bow to false authority. The witch heals without permission. The witch communes directly with the Divine, without a priest, pastor, or king as an intermediary.

For centuries, that autonomy terrified the ruling class. Folk magic meant self-sufficiency. It meant people didn’t need a king’s blessing, a priest’s absolution, or the Church’s sacraments to live in abundance. So the Church demonized witchcraft. And yet… it tolerated male magic. Magicians, astrologers, alchemists—men like John Dee—were welcomed in royal courts. It was never truly about magic. It was about who controlled it.

The Double Bind

Here I am now, sitting between two worlds: the church I left, and the craft I’ve embraced. I know the Bible inside and out, which gives me a strange advantage. If I’m going to prove the faults of the institution, I have to show where they have distorted Scripture, not just reject it outright.

That’s why I question verses like Exodus 22:18. That’s why I dismantle the myths built by centuries of patriarchal fear. It’s not about hating Christianity. It’s about exposing the gap between what Jesus taught and what’s been used to control.

Because when you strip away the manipulation, Jesus’s teachings—love, compassion, liberation for the oppressed—are not so far from what witchcraft, at its core, really is.

The Fear of Folk Magic

For centuries, kingdoms and religious institutions thrived on control. Common people were meant to pray for miracles, not create them. Folk magic—rooted in intuition, nature, and direct connection to the Divine—gave people personal sovereignty. And sovereignty was dangerous.

If a woman could manifest abundance, protection, and healing without the blessing of the Church or King, then she didn’t need them.
If she could speak to Spirit directly, she didn’t need an intermediary.
And that terrified those in power.

So, magic itself became the enemy. But only when practiced by the “wrong” people.

The Double Standard of Male Magicians

Throughout history, male magicians, alchemists, and astrologers were welcomed in royal courts. They were advisors, scholars, and seers. From John Dee in Elizabethan England to court magi across medieval Europe, their “magic” was considered sacred science, sanctioned by power. 

This is a historical case of misogyny when practiced by women its forbidden vs when practiced by men its praised. 

Yet women who read the stars or mixed herbs were labeled heretics, whores, or witches.
The difference? Gender—and the fear of feminine power.

Witchcraft wasn’t evil; it was independent. It belonged to no Church, no King, no hierarchy. It was (and still is) the whisper of freedom, of a woman’s right to commune with the sacred on her own terms.

Weaponizing Exodus 22:18

When we look deeper, the use of Exodus 22:18 as a justification for persecution wasn’t about holiness—it was about control through fear. Fear of women, of knowledge, of the Divine Feminine’s power to create, heal, and transform. The witch became the scapegoat for society’s anxieties, a symbol of rebellion against patriarchal order. 

And yet, here we are—centuries later—still untangling the harm of that verse, still reclaiming words like “witch,” “sorceress,” and “magick” as sacred acts of remembrance and empowerment.

Reclaiming What Was Stolen

Witchcraft is not rebellion against God—it’s the remembering of God within. It is the ancestral knowing that divinity is not confined to a pulpit or a king’s blessing. It lives in the earth, in herbs, in intuition, in the breath between prayer and spell.

When women were burned for being witches, they were not dying for evil—they were dying for knowledge, healing, independence, and faith in their own divine spark.

And perhaps that’s what Exodus 22:18 was never meant to destroy, but what history’s powerful made sure to silence.

Final Thoughts

In a World on Fire

We’re living in a time when people are flocking to churches again, seeking meaning but often blindly following leaders who twist scripture to fit a political agenda. In this climate, to be a witch, to be queer, to be a truth-teller is to be cast as the enemy. But maybe we are not the “unworthy” ones they claim we are. Maybe we’re actually the chosen—those with eyes open enough to see the manipulation and speak out against it.

When I pick apart doctrine, when I highlight contradictions, when I reclaim verses like Exodus 22:18, I’m not doing it out of rebellion for rebellion’s sake. I’m doing it because truth matters. Because people deserve to know when they’re being led by fear rather than love.

Reconciling the Two

So how do I reconcile Christianity and witchcraft? I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. In fact, the more I study, the more I see how much overlap there is between Jesus’s teachings and the principles of the craft: healing, justice, direct communion with the Divine.

The problem was never faith. The problem was power.
The problem was never God. The problem was kings and priests who used God’s name to control.

And so I stand here now, not as someone who has “left” Christianity, but as someone who sees through the veil of its misuse. Someone who still feels the echo of church hymns in her bones but also feels the pull of the moon and the herbs in her garden. Someone who knows that reclaiming witchcraft isn’t rejecting Christ, but rejecting the false narrative that ever separated them in the first place.

We live in a world desperate for spiritual truth but drowning in dogma. And maybe—just maybe—the witches, the outcasts, the truth-tellers are the ones called to bring that truth back into the light. Not to destroy, but to heal. Not to curse, but to reveal.

Because once you see how power manipulates the sacred, you can never be blind again.
And once you realize you can connect to the Divine without permission, no kingdom can ever rule you again.

Today, we can read that verse and see not a curse—but a warning.

Not against witches, but against those who twist sacred words for domination.
Against those who fear the return of magic because it means the return of power to the people, especially to women.

What good would earthly power be, aferall, if any average person could tear it down with a solid petition to the gods above? 

Once you see how power manipulates the sacred, you can never be blind again.
And once you realize you can connect to the Divine without permission, no kingdom can ever rule you again.

Many Blessings J