This Week in Witchcraft - S1:E9

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Welcome to This Week in Witchcraft. The elements have been conquered with intense heat, and witchcraft has become more cosmopolitan.

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Can you spot it out in the wild? I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are

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Michael Durham and Andrew Hudson. Michael has a witchcraft bit he has pulled out of the wild for us today.

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Right, so in thinking about what witchcraft is, that it is the demonic appropriation of alternate authority, that it's about trying to establish standards that are deceptive by nature, that are contrary to the standard that God has revealed in His Word and illuminated by His only begotten

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Son, Jesus Christ, thinking about how does witchcraft operate as the praxis of paganism, where in paganism there is a despairing oneness to everything, that there is no way to find a point to stand outside of things to get that actual objective truth of the matter, but you're always caught, despairingly so, from within the world.

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So it's pantheistic, everything is a one big muddled hideous mess.

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So where witchcraft is the praxis of paganism, it is always morphing things, changing things, twisting things, perverting things, but this is not seen as evil by those who adhere to paganism, whether it's the neo -pagan constructs that we deal with today in our culture, in the

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West, in the rejection of Christendom, rejection of Biblical standards and so on, or whether it's the paganism of old,

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I mean if we look at pagan philosophers that were dealing with their own philosophical quandaries about how does this world work, in which we live, the concerns of the philosophers were also about why are things always in motion, how can anything be real and standardized, and so you have the idealism of Plato, you have the forms of Aristotle, and you have all these efforts to try to get at how does this world work in which we live, but they believed in, the ancient culture believed in the gods, and there was a god over every single little part of the created order that they witnessed, and when earthquakes were going, when volcanoes erupted, or when bad weather was there, or it was a famine, or a disease broke out, or you know wars went the wrong way,

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I mean they always had these explanations in terms of the gods who were capricious, they were hard to please and hard to control, and you just never knew how it was going to turn out, but the idea that everything was in motion and changing is deeply rooted.

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So I'm talking about evolution, evolution is not a new idea, not something that Darwin or those who preceded him came up with, but the idea of everything evolving and changing goes all the way back to the ancient mythologies, wherein you have the ideas of even the

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Platonic dualism of spirit and matter, wherein there was a sense of devolution from spirit down to matter in terms of moral quality, that the more pure spirit a being was, the more right and good and holy and untainted that being was.

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Though there was matter, this was created by those who were corrupted, and there was a long chain of aeons of spiritual beings who brought about in descending order and descending morality and descending value, brought about the physical realm.

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But what is this? This is change, this is in a sense evolution, even though you see a descending order in that, but this is a progression wherein things are not standardized but changing, and it's chaotic, and who knows what's going to happen.

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And the stories among the ancients of how the earth is created has to do always with the gods in chaos fighting one another.

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There's Babylonian mythology and Egyptian mythology about gods fighting one another and a god dying and out of the carcass emerges earth.

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I mean this is all about chaos, it's all about things that are not planned, not controlled, and just things happen, and then more things happen, and then more things happen, and there's not a sense of purpose in the beginning.

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If there was any kind of purpose at the beginning it was completely erroneous and thwarted, and as you move forward you just see chaos again and again and again.

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Well this is the basic premise of evolution, wherein there was no forethought, there was no real plan, it was chaos, it was accidental, and stuff happened, and then more stuff happened, and then more stuff happened.

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Even though there was this idea lacing around evolution that things were evolving from lower forms to higher forms, as we've talked about before in the neopagan despair, you know, maybe earth was better off without parasites like humans destroying mother earth and so on and so forth.

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So it's not so much about, you know, are we really higher life forms or not?

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The question, the issue, the fundamental aspect of evolution is that there is chaotic change that moves forward, right?

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So there's not a sense of anything being objectively standardized, set in concrete, these realities don't change.

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There's not a sense of that. So this is what funds witchcraft, is this evolutionary mindset, this mindset of chaos and change, that things just change and move forward.

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That's why there's absolutely no moral obligation for a word to maintain its same definition over any course of time.

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This is why any moral standard doesn't have to stay the same.

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And in fact, because of evolution being the funding of the entire pagan worldview, this just chaos and change moving forward, if there's not a moving forward, if there's not a changing of things, then that's when something is wrong.

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That you're not affirming the fundamental basic doctrines of paganism.

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Stuff changes. Everything is fungible, right? This happens either in the materialistic worldview of the 1800s and the 1900s or in the more obviously pantheistic worldview that we're moving into.

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So everything has to change and witchcraft is always at work changing definitions, terms, the way these words work together.

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And think about it, if you're not an advocate of evolution, if you're not an advocate of, hey things change and it's all chaotic, there's no purpose, you just have to go with the flow, otherwise we won't survive.

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Then the same goes with practitioners of witchcraft. If you're not going to practice witchcraft with us, if you're not going to be a part of the change, things happen, you can't fight it, this is fundamental to reality.

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If you're not going to practice witchcraft along with us in all these different changes, obviously you're a heretic and you need to be opposed.

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Church discipline. Right, and church discipline takes place. But this is why there,

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I think sometimes, how can you do that? How can you say this man is a woman?

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Or how can you say that this evil is good? Or how can you say, how can you invent these new terms that have never been around?

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How can you live in such a confusing, absurd worldview? You know, and so on and so forth. And there's a lot of misunderstanding there.

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But what it is, is there's a consistency, witchcraft being the praxis of paganism, paganism being just the whole worldview brought on by the assumptions, the presuppositions of evolution being the root doctrine.

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So, I'm sitting here thinking about this. In our intro to the show, we talk about how witchcraft has become more cosmopolitan.

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So, it's kind of like the presuppositions have not changed from Plato and Aristotle to now.

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Um, but they're just wearing different uniforms, right? It's like the same play, but it's ran by a different team or a different set of uniforms.

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And I'm kind of thinking too, you know, it's the same mistake that the pagans of old make.

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And I don't think we should be deceived by this narrative that evolution came out of the discipline of science or natural theology.

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I think evolution comes out of capital T theology. It's actually a set of presuppositions put onto the discipline of science where they're cooking up evolution rather than this deceptive narrative saying, well, we have all this evidence and using the scientific method, we come up with evolutionary theory.

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But it's actually backwards. It's presuppositions, pagan presuppositions that allow for this type of process thought or progressive change in either creation or theology.

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Right. Yeah. So once Adam and Eve, you know, go to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and eat from the tree so that they themselves can make those definitions that they can define for themselves, what is right and what is wrong.

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Because man is not God, because we are changing because we're like flowers in a field that was here one day and has gone the next.

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When we're trying to define good and evil for ourselves, that's going to be an ever -changing, ever -changing act that from one generation to the next is going to result in chaotic absurdity, rather than,

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I mean, the alternative to that chaos is one generation telling the next.

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Thus saith the Lord. So I'm thinking of the scripture that your sin will be visited on the third and fourth generations.

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Do we see that in evolution where we might have had some evolutionary theorists who had a morality that they would find the things that are going on in evolution now repulsive, but it's just the natural ends of what their children and grandchildren or what they gave to their children and grandchildren.

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You could look at it like in the natural sciences, a chemist with their reactive agents, combining them in a process and yielding a product.

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That reaction is then fed back in. The product has now become the future generation's reagent to mix with another agent to produce another product.

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Or as Michael, if you've talked about previously, this new thesis that has come out is now someone else's rather synthesis, the synthesis that has come out from previous reactions is now someone else's thesis and will encounter a new antithesis and yield further results.

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Right? So, um, Hegel's dialectic is based upon this idea of change, this chaos, this change is moving forward.

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And of course there's an idealism with Hegel where he thinks we're going to save the world through ideas and purifying ideas through this constant synthesis.

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But even in the earlier forms of evolution that people are more historically aware of, there was an idea of man being far more active in the role, right?

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Of, of the physical, of the material evolution going on. And we call that eugenics, right?

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Yeah. It's a natural result. Yeah. So in eugenics, what are you trying to do with eugenics where you're actually using, got to save the species, got to save the species through the, through the biological process of breeding only certain types of humans and getting rid of the undesirable types of human beings.

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So the answer, the answer to salvation in this chaotic change that we're experiencing is their elimination of undesirable biological specimens.

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Correct? Now moving forward out of the more materialistic biological mindset to a more spiritual mindset, a more pantheistic than ever mindset as everything is getting re -infused, re -mythologized and so on.

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We're still encountering eugenics today, but it's not a biological eugenics.

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It's a idealistic eugenics. It's a, it's a doctrinal eugenics. It's a, we're, you know, we need to do is to cleanse, to cleanse our culture from wrong ideas.

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People with dangerous ideas. Subhuman. Yeah. Are subhuman, right?

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Because their ideas are not part of the change moving forward. They're not practicing witchcraft along with us.

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And so we need, so there's a eugenics that still goes on today, but it's not purely biological, though they can't free themselves entirely from it because they're still using racism and classifications of race to talk about their new eugenics.

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They're saying whiteness and so on and so forth. Just thinking about synthesis antithesis is

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Hegel, the regulative principle, regulative principle for worship or praxis for paganism.

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I mean, like it, it seems like in order to change definitions, that's almost what you have to do is thesis antithesis and to synth into synthesis.

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That's what we're getting when we see people practice witchcraft and it's like he's laid out the, the practice, um, and very clear terms.

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Yeah. So as soon as there is this clear rejection of the word of God as the standard and the felt need to have another standard come alongside it and to be emerging with or through Descartes, whoever, whatever philosopher there is.

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Um, what Hegel did is simply try to identify where things were going, how things were progressing.

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So what he saw was here's a rejection of the thesis. Let's say that's and here's, here's an antithesis.

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Uh, let's call it, you know, pure rationalism. Okay. And then here's the synthesis. And then, and he's, so he's identifying the

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March forward of ideas. And so he gets inside, Hey, okay, this is how this is what we're new. So he had an idealism.

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Now the thing with idealism is that it's going back to the kind of natural science and chemicals. It's extremely reactive to everything.

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So what Marx does, he gets a materialistic dialectic, right? So he used him for the materialistic dialectic in that sense.

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Um, but that doesn't work, right? We don't have the, um, the, the revolution everywhere that he's thought should occur.

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So that's when you have the, the next movement for the next evolution forward with the

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Frankfurt school, where you have, um, Gramsci and others saying, Oh, okay, well, it can't be a purely materialistic here.

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This is going to be a cultural, it's going to be a March to the institutions, a change of the, of the cultural moving forward.

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But Hegel is the, you know, the OG of it all. Right. And it makes sense that Marx had being the materialist has produced the bloodiest results.

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Yeah, exactly. So that's a good point. So, you know, a materialistic version of this is going to end up with a lot of death.

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So anyway, so back behind it all, um, we have to recognize that the reason why we see so much witchcraft going on today is because of these fundamental assumptions of evolution.

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Not, not necessarily everything's getting better and better, but that everything's changing and changing and it's chaotic without reason.

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Well, that, uh, wraps up the witchcraft section. Let's go on to content that we would suggest.

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Michael, we'll start with you. Okay. Um, a book by Thomas J. Nettles by his grace and for his glory, subtitle, a historical theological and practical study of the doctrines of grace in Baptist life.

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And what Tom Nettles does is he goes back to the origins of Baptist life and he talks about how they got started, the difficulties that they encountered not being accepted by several of the state churches.

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And then he talks about particular portraits of important Baptist in historical life.

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And it's a full of interesting stories and important observations.

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And it's a read. Uh, I would recommend durable trades by Alan C correction,

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Rory Groves. Uh, it is really about trades which have stood the test of time, surpassing the industrial revolution and into the modern age, quote unquote, modern age.

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It also does go into how beneficial it would be for family in that this would either take you out of this home or keep you in the home, or at least be able to have your children doing things with you.

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So if you're looking for something, a legacy of work to continue on into future generations, this will be a good book for you to review.

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It would provide a good overview or survey of the landscape. Before we move on to mine quickly asking you to this question, we'll start with you,

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Andrew, what trades would you pull out of there for you to either pass down or for you to engage in right now?

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Do you have like a top two or three? Uh, I'm going to put my eggs in the basket of auto mechanic.

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The current climate is one where knowing how to service vehicles will become just as valuable as the vehicle that itself as people will not be able to keep up because of the treadmill of inflation, the cost of goods and services will continue to increase.

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Michael, what about you? I would say anything that deals with, um, food. So if you're going to, if you can be a livestock herder of some kind and then be a butcher as well, this is, you know, if you can help, if you can raise your own food and then raise food for other people, that's going to be a very important skill.

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Plus it's something that you can bring alongside your children and involve them in just basic, meaningful chores, showing them the importance of those daily responsibilities.

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Yeah, I agree with that. We're doing that with Killian right now. He's got eggs that he can go grab and we're teaching him how to protect things that are precious to our eating every single day.

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So, and I've got about 10 that I want to employ in my own life, um, including the butcher in the, in the food supply and stuff like that.

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But, um, we're not going to list mine or talk, go into that. I'll just recommend a soil owner's manual, how to restore and maintain soil health by John sticker or sticker.

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I can't tell how to pronounce that, but it's a really short read and pamphlet. And it's got some resources in it that you can go to understand your stewardship of soil as it's a biome, but what you're doing is you're stewarding livestock that live underground.

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So there, and there are a myriad of creatures that live beneath your feet that you are largely unaware of.

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And the right combination of care and rest on, I would say rest in the sense of, uh, no tillage and on your soil can go leaps and bounds into not just preserving, but improving soil for generations after you.

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And there's a lot of practice being done on this in places like North Dakota and Minnesota that have yielded much fruit.

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And that wraps it up for today. We're always very thankful for our listeners tuning in every week and for supporting us by rating reviewing and sharing the show.

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And we hope you can join us again for another week of uncovering and rebuking witchcraft in the modern world.