Thou Shall Not Suffer A Witch To Live
by Jeffrey Pierce

This is a continuation of the previous article, Jesus, Magick, and The Bible.

The argument is very simple: "Jesus could not have practiced magick as you claim. Exodus 22:18 specifically reflects God's opinion on magick as being one so strongly opposed to the concept that anyone practicing it should be put to death."

Unfortunately, that argument is completely and profoundly incorrect.

The first challenge to this position is one of perspective. As we considered earlier, we need to consider the individual's perspective in each passage of The Bible or we will utterly skew and misread the meaning held in that portion of scripture. Whenever we approach The Bible from our own modern and mundane perspective, without exception we instantly lose a vast amount of the intended message. What's more is that we need to remember that spirituality is a multi-layered experience - the deeper we dig, the more we find.

"Thou shall not suffer a witch to live," is not a blanket commandment to scour the countryside and execute those who practice magick. Nor is it a judgment against those who walk a mystical path. The statement, and this is clearly understood once you embrace the perspective of those portrayed in this portion of The Bible, is a directive intended to protect the people from outside influences while maintaining the cultural cohesion of a wandering tribe in a hostile and unfamiliar land.

Strangers In A Strange Land

One of the things we need to remember was that the Israelites were a nomadic people. According to The Bible, they wandered in the desert for more than a full generation. (Numbers 32:13) During this entire period of time, they were either traveling through unclaimed wilderness or guests on foreign soil.

After the Israelites escaped from Egypt, one of their first encounters with a foreign people was in the form of a violent military conflict. (Exodus 17:8) This is a key moment in shaping the perspective of the Israelites and will not be an isolated event.

Two chapters later (Exodus 19:20-25) we are presented with the beginning of a series of directives to govern each aspect of nomadic life (the Ten Commandments are presented in Exodus 20), from how to deal with mold (Leviticus 14) to a detailed list of who you shouldn't have sex with (Leviticus 18). These extensive commandments stretch through the remainder of Exodus and over the entirety of Leviticus. The perceived condemnation of witchcraft falls within this portion of scripture. This seems like an utterly rigid approach to life and spirituality until we consider the perspective of the people involved in this stretch of The Bible.

It isn't enough to remember that the Israelites had just escaped from Egyptian captivity; we must consider what their lives were like before they made their great escape.

Exodus 1:11-14 describes a world of oppression and forced hard labor. "So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor... the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly."

The keyword there? Ruthlessly. When you remember the concept of conservation of language, this single word was important enough that it was included in this passage twice. The Hebrew word for "ruthlessly" literally translates to "harshness, severity, cruelty." When the Israelites escaped from captivity, they weren't simply leaving their homes and embarking on a pedestrian journey through a portion of the Middle East. They had freedom! They could breathe. The slave masters were gone. What we miss is that Moses, who would eventually lead the Israelites from Egypt, wasn't born yet when his people were taken into captivity.

This means that the Israelites had spent decades harshly oppressed, severely abused, and subjected to cruelty. And then, in a flash, they were free of all of that. Because of the harsh conditions implemented by their slave masters, they had no cultural identity of their own. They did not have a common form of worship, a series of laws to follow, or their own legal system in place. All of that had been taken away by their masters who forced their slaves to adhere to the Egyptian version of these cultural concepts.

A Need For Structure

What the newly freed Israelites needed was a cultural structure to adhere to as they found their own identity. They had been so oppressed that when skilled craftsmen are found among them (Exodus 35:30-35) it warrants a mention in scripture. Remember, the Israelites had been slaves. They had worked the fields, made mud bricks, and cut and fitted stone. They were so culturally bankrupt from their slavery that the appearance of skilled craftsmen was a major event. It gave them a sense of pride and accomplishment. It set them above being mere slaves and elevated them to the ranks of those who could choose to create beauty rather than simply engage in manual labor.

This need to leave their past behind and redefine themselves was a powerful force during this portion of the Israelites' story.

The other challenge that they faced was that the Israelites had little to no respect for Moses as these events unfold. In Exodus 2:11-14, Moses tries to break up a fight between two Hebrews. Challenging the authority that Moses tried to assert, "The man said, 'Who made you ruler and judge over us?'" (Exodus 2:14) Later, when Moses takes longer than expected to come down from Mount Sinai, the Israelites didn't hesitate to discard Moses and the path he represented, readily exchanging them for "an idol cast in the shape of a calf." (Exodus 32:1-6)

Our modern perspective of this latter event is generally some form of "stupid Israelites; they couldn't even wait for Moses to get back before they turned from God," but this would be a grave misinterpretation of the event. To this point in the lives of many of the Israelites, the main form of worship that they had been exposed to had come from the Egyptians. They had been slaves in Egypt for decades and throughout their captivity had witnessed the Egyptians turning to the divine via idols - crafted representations of one perspective of the sacred. While they followed Moses, at least a portion were aware that an unconvicted murderer (Exodus 2:11-12) was leading them to freedom. They weren't being rebellious or defiant; without structure, with little trust or respect for Moses, they fell back on the only frame of reference that they possessed - the culture of the Egyptians.

The edict against witchcraft wasn't a command to kill witches by judging them evil and unworthy of life, but represented a desperate need to maintain the fragile cultural integrity of the newly freed Israelites. Magick in all its forms - including witchcraft - puts the power of choice in the hands of its adherents. The Israelites had literally taken an entire generation of people who had been born into and lived in captivity, many of whom only knew the culture and religion of the Egyptians, set them free and placed them in a desert without any sort of surrounding cultural framework to use as a point of reference. What's more was that they openly questioned their leadership. A strong cultural framework to adhere to - one powered by the word of God - was desperately needed for their cultural survival.

Many of the laws set forth in Exodus and Leviticus sacrificed individuality in all its forms - including freedom of religion - to maintain the fragile cultural cohesiveness of an entire people. We don't often consider this perspective because each of us can typically look back on a life that was born and raised within a single sustaining culture.

But imagine that you are selected as part of a team to colonize a distant planet and your job is to maintain the integrity of the Earth culture you bring. Almost immediately upon landing, you discover that the world is already inhabited by an intelligent race of beings. Where you have a camp, they have cities; where you have the stories and memories that you brought with you, they have history and monuments. Freed from the confinement of your spacecraft after the long journey to the planet (some of your team members were born onboard the ship and grew to adulthood before you reached your destination) people want to explore the new culture - and they're excited to do so. How do you hold them together and maintain your own cultural identity for all time in this strange land?

Now imagine the same scenario after you've murdered one of the security guards just before liftoff - and not only do your crewmembers know what you did, but they're well aware that you are now the sole spokesman for the new legal system.

The effective method would be to institute a series of rigid laws that define every aspect of your culture and offer stiff penalties for those who violate your laws. You couldn't leave room for questioning the leadership or for individuality in any form. Any alien who would tell your people, "You can find your own way - it's your right," would become a tremendous threat to your cultural stability. If you allow one person to step away and embrace their own path, you have set a precedent that all can do so. What's more is that by allowing that first person to find their own way, you have just guaranteed that you will lose a sizeable percentage of your people to various aspects of the surrounding culture - and with your personal history, you're at risk of losing all of them.

The Other High Priest

As we've seen, the list of major figures in The Bible who practice magick and/or divination is extensive. But the implied approval of such a path wasn't extended only to the hereditary line of God's chosen people - it embraced mystical outsiders as well.

During the early part of Genesis, this chosen bloodline was almost entirely embodied by Abram (who will one day become Abraham) and his family. From out of the blue, comes a man by the name of Melchizedek (Genesis 14:18-20) whom The Bible refers to as the "priest of God Most High."

The curious thing is this: Melchizedek wasn't part of Abraham's lineage, the bloodline of God's chosen people. He stood outside of that bloodline, yet Abram readily acknowledged his role (priest) as one who interacted directly with the divine - and in the framework of The Bible, that casts Melchizedek in the role of an "outsider" (for our purposes, the modern analogy would be "non-Christian") who follows a path of mystical spirituality.

This isn't the only time that a person from another faith is honored for the path they walk. Both Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10 relate the story of a Roman centurion who comes to Jesus seeking healing for his servant. Matthew 8:10 captures our Teacher's response to the man's faith. "When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, 'Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.'" Luke 7:9 offers a similar response: "When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, 'I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.'"

The catch? The man was a Roman centurion. Not only was he part of the army that was currently occupying the Holy Land, but he was almost certainly pagan. Like most Roman pagans, he would have followed the Roman pantheon (probably Jupiter and Mars, given his rank and occupation) and would have worked small magicks as prayers to these gods as part of his culture. In other words, we'd classify him as a witch - yet Jesus commended his faith.

Abram responded to Melchizedek in an even grander fashion. According to Genesis 14:20, after Melchizedek blessed Abram, Abram then "...gave him a tenth of everything." To put this in perspective, we know from Genesis 13:2 that, "Abram had become very wealthy in livestock and in silver and gold," so the gift of a "tenth of everything" was not a simple or empty gesture to offer a mystic from another tradition.

Jesus The Satanist

The stance against witchcraft was never meant to stand for all time. Neither were many of the other laws that were handed down by Moses. This was one of the reason why Jesus so readily disregarded those same laws (Mark 2:23-28) and often took such a firm stance against them (Mark 3:4) that plots sprung up to kill Jesus almost from the beginning of his path (Mark 3:6).

Jesus himself was actually accused of being a minion of Satan. The author of the Gospel of Mark felt that it was important enough that he related the claims twice in a single passage. First, referring to Jesus, "And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, 'He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons,'" (Mark 3:22) then again, a few versus later (Mark 3:30), "He has an impure spirit."

Is magick bad? Should we take a stand against it, even if it is used to benefit the lives of people through healings (physical, emotional, or spiritual) or by offering them sound guidance they can use to address the challenges before them?

While we've already seen how many of the foundational characters in The Bible engaged in magick and divination, Jesus himself offers important insight when he addresses the accusations leveled against him. "How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come." (Mark 3:23-26)

We're going to look at this passage in more depth when we consider the third chapter of Mark, but the meaning is clear. "No. I don't do these things in the name of Satan. If I did, I would be working evil. Because I'm working good, it can only come from a source that we define as good."

The Deeper Layer

We've considered that spirituality is layered, that the deeper we look, the more we find. We've learned two key tools so far: conservation of language and looking at the character's perspective. This latter tool holds an unexpected message in its inner workings.

It is understandable that strictly defined laws needed to be put in place to maintain the cultural cohesiveness of the newly freed slaves. What we don't consider is that, at some point in the years that followed, the perspective of the characters changed once more. Allowed to grow and explore our personal and spiritual identities, we begin chafing against restrictive rules. Those rules need to grow with us or they become a cell in which we are imprisoned. Jesus understood this. It's why he came and literally took a stand against critical pieces of God's hand-delivered religion and culture. The people flocked to Jesus because he represented freedom from the rigid rules that they had outgrown.

Taking things one step deeper into the nature of spirituality, we begin to use what we see and what we understand as a mirror to look into and evaluate our own lives. If it was appropriate for Jesus to toss off the shackles of religion in order to give the people of the time period the opportunity to grow, then it is strongly implied that a time will come when it will be appropriate to throw off the shackles that we currently wear. When that time comes, we will face the same challenges that Jesus faced. When men have power, such as the Pharisees possessed or that held by the modern Church, they will not relinquish that power willingly. Followers, fame, and riches go hand-in-hand with such a framework of power and control. None of these are the things of Spirit. The story of Jesus isn't one that is intended to further strengthen the current powers of this world, but one that illustrates how to cast that power aside and find our own way. That's why Jesus took the stand he did - and that's why, when the time is right, we need to do the same.

Excerpted from the upcoming book, Word and Deed: A New Perspective On Jesus by Jeffrey Pierce.

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Originally published in Old Ways on January 15, 2012