Witchcraft Survivals in Christianity and Their Similarities with African Diaspora Religions

The first act of established Christianity was to discredit the existing Pagan religion. They destroyed the temples and statues dedicated to the old gods, while at the same time absorbing Pagan symbolism into their practices, just as they had absorbed some of the philosophy of Mithraism earlier in their history. The old gods became saints, their festivals feast or holy days, and the placing of churches on sacred Pagan sites was encouraged to bring the existing Pagans into Holy Mother Church. It was these very acts that allowed the village witch to survive. The old Pagan priesthood of the community actively adopted these changes for their own survival while teaching those they trusted the Pagan symbolism hidden within the new Christian practices. As time went by though, many of the origins of these magical practices were diluted and became lost, particularly by the time of the Protestant Reformation.

In Roman Catholic Ireland we have seen folk magic continuing to be practiced under the guise of Christianity. We once discovered a "prayer" attached to a fairy tree at a holy well close to where we live. It was a piece of paper folded up in plastic and attached by twine to one of the boughs of the tree. The contents read, as closely as we can remember, as follows:

"Blessed Holy Saint Martha, I ask of you to intercede on my behalf to Holy Mary Mother of God, and her Son Jesus Christ. Bring wealth, health, and prosperity to my family. If such blessings are not forthcoming I will refuse to light candles to our Lady in the Chapel, and will not pray for the soul of _____ . I ask this in the name of Holy Mary and her son Jesus Christ."

I doubt very much that the person placing this in the tree would consider herself a witch and, being a good Christian soul, would have little knowledge about the fact that the tree is of Pagan symbolic origin and that the holy well was originally dedicated to the Pagan god Lugh!4 Raven Grimassi told us that such practices are still common throughout Italy, as much as they are in Ireland. He recounts practices that involve the threatening and cajoling of saints, including the practice of turning statues of the Madonna on their heads if the petitioner does not get her way. From traveling in Greek Orthodox Crete we can also report that the survivals of Pagan magical practice are common there, too. We have in our collection a small beaten brass plate depicting a leg used as an offering for healing. It is obvious that magic is far from being just a Roman Catholic phenomenon, but is in fact more common in non-Protestant countries.

There are also interesting similarities with Afro-American magic. When slaves were brought from the West Coast of Africa to the Americas during the 16th and 17th centuries, they brought with them their own spiritual and magical practices. These practices continue today with several names. The pure form still practiced in West Africa is known as Ifa, but in the Caribbean and in the American state of Louisiana it has developed into two distinctly separate forms. When the slaves were brought to the colonies they were, of course, converted to Christianity, and like early Christian Europe refused to give up their Pagan practices easily, hiding their magical practises and beliefs behind the culture that had enslaved them. In French colonies such as Haiti and New Orleans, this was less of a problem as the French had a much more laissez faire attitude to religion. Here we see the development of what is known as Voodoo, or more correctly Voudon, which has always been linked in the popular imagination with witchcraft. The old ancestral spirits, the loas of the West Africans, were quickly absorbed into existing French culture; a good example of this is Baron Samedi (Lord of  Saturday), popularized by the James Bond film Live and Let Die5. Originally the old West African spirit of death, Ghede and his black-and-white, top-hatted face remains one of the popular icons of Voodoo in people’s minds. Saturday is the last day of the week and is ruled by Saturn, the planet and classical god who rules death.

In the Spanish colonies Christianity was less forgiving. It became necessary for the slaves to hide their deities behind saints, just as the Pagans did in Europe. This practice is commonly known as Santeria, and its mystical practices bear striking similarities to the Catholic folk magic practices we have found in found in Ireland. There is one major difference though: The practitioners of Santeria are still very aware of its Pagan origins and know whom the saints represent. One should bear in mind that only three hundred years have passed since the Christianization of their practices, as opposed to over a thousand years within Europe, but by looking at Santeria and Voudon we can possibly see what hereditary witchcraft, minus the cultural overlays, would have looked like up until 12th and 13th centuries. What is also interesting is that its practitioners still consider themselves priests and priestesses, just as we do in modern witchcraft. This seems to confirm the idea that magical practitioners were always considered to be priesthood. Within Voudon and Santeria the idea of the spirit of the deity or loa possessing ("riding" as it is commonly known) the priest or priestess seems to be reflected in the process known in modern Wiccan ritual as Drawing Down the Moon, in which the priestess allows a deity to speak through her. Again we see that Voudon, Santeria, and the other African Diaspora religions survived within prominently non-Protestant areas of the world, but we see no survivals in such areas of the Americas that were strongly Protestant, such as Georgia or Virginia, even though they had a large West African slave population.