Open Veils · Answer
Is witchcraft evil?
The 'evil' label is a political and theological weapon, not an ontological description. Esoteric, Gnostic, and comparative religion scholarship consistently shows the category was constructed by institutional power to suppress pre-Christian nature religion, women's autonomy, and rival epistemologies. The practice itself — working with unseen forces — is morally neutral; intention and cosmology determine its character. Demonization of witchcraft tracks almost perfectly with the consolidation of Church and State authority.
Evidence
- Mauro Biglino's close philological reading of Hebrew scripture identifies terms like 'kashaph' (translated 'witch') as referring to herbalists and diviners whose knowledge predated Levitical priesthood — the prohibition was jurisdictional, not moral.
- Manly P. Hall's encyclopedic survey in 'The Secret Teachings of All Ages' traces witchcraft lineage to pre-Hellenic mystery traditions — Hecate-cult, Thessalian pharmakeia, Celtic druidry — none of which operated on a good/evil binary.
- Al Jazeera's November 2025 investigation of Ghana's witch camps surfaces the gender mechanics directly: anthropologist Azumah notes that men accused of the same practices are read as protective, while women are exiled — confirming the accusation is a social control instrument, not a spiritual verdict.
- Rick Strassman's endogenous DMT research and Terence McKenna's ethnobotanical archive both point toward the entheogenic core of historical 'witchcraft' — the 'flying ointments' of European tradition almost certainly contained tropane alkaloids producing genuine altered-state contact with non-ordinary intelligences.
- Elaine Pagels, analyzing the Nag Hammadi library, documents how proto-orthodox Christianity systematically recast competing spiritual technologies as Satanic precisely because they offered direct access to gnosis outside priestly mediation.