Witchcraft & Religion
Everything we've talked about so far this semester regarding strange magic, I have a hard time separating magic from religion. Many religious stories from the Bible demonstrate Jesus and his disciples performing miracles to help those in need. I remember one story where Jesus cured a man of the blindness he had for his whole life. When I first heard this story, I took it for what it was, I was attending a private Christian elementary school at the time anyway. But now in class, we've been discussing the rituals witches would perform or how the cunningfolk would help people. Why is it that our society is more prone to take the Bible for its word, but laugh at magic performed hundreds of years ago? I'm pretty sure that if I was stuck in my small hometown my entire life, I would start searching for ways to keep myself occupied too. This isn't to say I believe in magic, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I don't see much of a difference between people who strongly believe in magical elements and those who are religious. Magic is a belief and so is religion, and there's no strong proof supporting one idea over the other. I find it interesting that alchemy was laughed upon, but it took hundreds of years to separate church and state powers. As a STEM major, I know that there will always be questions we don't know or comprehend the answer to and every individual will have their own interpretation. Since the beginning of the semester, I've tried to conduct more research on the hard and firm lines between religion and magic but feel like I've come up pretty empty-handed. Believe truly is the governing force and it reminds me of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Where if a person believes something to be true, they will look for signs in the universe to make that predisposition true. Therefore, people will always end up neglecting certain facts to support their own point of view, so I don't believe a conclusion will ever be reached when separating witchcraft and religion.
Thanks for posting on magic and religion. To me, this is a profoundly important question for individuals to consider and to answer for themselves. Like your previous topic on cult and occult similarities, there are thousands of answers depending on context. But our discussions and readings have suggested that early Christian theologians were aware that Christianity might seem like just another form of magic, and they exploited this by accepting certain magical practices into their theology. Statue magic, for instance, became praying to the saints and holy mother. I am also on the skeptical side, but like you I fully accept the power of belief, or the power of self-fulfilling prophecy as you mention. I am grateful for your thoughts and discussion.
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