This Week in Witchcraft - S1:E7

Welcome to This Week in Witchcraft. The elements have been conquered with intense heat, and witchcraft has become more cosmopolitan. Can you spot it out in the wild?

Welcome to This Week in Witchcraft. I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham, David Kassin, and Andrew Hudson. This week we had a little bit of witchcraft sent in from us, actually out in the wild, and the local wild, why don't you get us up to date on this, Michael?

How “Transitioning” Becomes a Form of Witchcraft

So we were spending some time together, church family, and a story was shared at the table about one of our families here at the church visited their local library and were confronted with witchcraft.

So one of the children of the mothers came up to the mom and said, hey, there's this display back here, it's kind of bad. So mom goes to investigate, and the display says something like, how are you transitioning?

It's kind of a question, you know, how are you transitioning? And it sounds like immediately this is a display for those who have gender dysphoria and are getting some kind of affirming counseling along those lines who are possibly taking hormone therapy and looking at gender reassignment surgery or possibly some other variant that would be associated with this term, transitioning.

Well, when the mom investigated, it was something apparently benign and talking about transitioning from one grade to another, from one academic discipline to another. And what is a very hot topic, a very alarming kind of word, transitioning, is being overlaid upon something that is very normative in the life of a child.

You know, growing up and getting new skills and getting better at reading and those kinds of things is now being called transitioning. So we discussed it at the table, but this is witchcraft in the following sense.

We have a word that, first of all, is a piece of magic, and it was invented to describe several iniquitous acts that are brought together in the name of a man becoming a woman or a woman becoming a man or so on, or God forbid, a boy becoming a girl and a girl becoming a boy as they try to push this as early as possible.

So this word transitioning tries to hide all of the iniquity and the wickedness that is involved. So it's an invented term, so there's a problem there. But now the term is then attached to other things that don't have anything to do with the original definition of the term.

So we understand what the term transitioning means, but now it's being coupled with normal human development and activity. You know, growing up, reading, getting better in school, moving from one grade to another grade.

These are normative things for children, but now it's being called transitioning. It's being called transitioning. This is a bit of sorcery where you're combining these two things that don't belong together whatsoever.

And the effort is to make this idea of transitioning benign, normal for everybody. The claim is, you know, hey, everyone's transitioning. How are you transitioning? The assumption is in the question, right?

How are you transitioning? The assumption is that you are. So how is it that you are? The idea is to say, well, everybody is transitioning. Your transition may look different than somebody else's, but transitioning is normal, right?

Morally normal in terms of society. It's socially normal, morally normal for everybody to be transitioning somehow, some fashion. And then that changes the ethical value of it. If everybody does it, it is normative, it's just human, everybody is transitioning.

So that's the bit of witchcraft that we see out in the wild. I do that every day. I go from my home to work. I'm transitioning. Exactly. And just because somebody else is transitioning different, Andrew, you know, why are you looking down on them?

Yeah, they may be going from work to home. Exactly.

Transhumanism and the Myth of Endless Progress

The first thing that leaps up in my mind in this, and I know most people think the sexual perversion or the sexual element of changing your gender, but the first thing that comes to my mind is the transhumanism movement where it's, I mean, they are trying to make normative the sexual side of it and this as well, but I can see people transitioning from an analog life to a web three life or a analog life to an uploaded life.

And that's one of the other angles that this could be pushed from as well is that new transhumanism that is slowly, I say slowly, quickly, but subtly coming down the pike at us. Science is transitioning.

This actually leads back to one of our earlier episodes with the question of in the year 2022, it's the presupposition that everything is in progress, right? Like everything is in process and a lot of people do with theology as well.

Yeah, we're, we don't need a biblical worldview. We've transitioned to this modern worldview, right?

And as soon as we, as soon as we upload a little bit more, it's going to be even more modern. You know, as soon as we, we upload a little bit more of the new cycle or the new science, it's going to be even more modern than it was before.

Get a transition with it.

Genesis 3, Self-Rule, and the Demonic Rebranding of Evil

All right. So in order to counter this witchcraft, we have to understand what it is at its core and what it is at its core is again, this radical meaning to the root, this radical attempt to seize autonomy, a self rule so that everybody is transitioning.

Everybody is guiding themselves into the fullness of what they are to be, and this goes right back to Genesis three that we read not so long ago to answer a different question. But the serpent's claim to the woman is that God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God knowing good and evil in meaning that enlightenment comes through you grabbing the reins of definitions of good and evil.

As soon as you're able to define what is good for you and what is evil for you, your eyes will be open and finally you will be like God. This is how you transition from being less than God to God. And again, witchcraft is the demonic appropriation of alternate authority.

So this satanic lie is that if you will just simply take hold of your own definitions of good and evil, you will transition out from being less than a God to being a God in and of yourself. And as usual, the gods that men make are hideous, are just simply hideous.

The gods of the ancient pagans, you can look at the extant evidence, the archaeological digs, these are hideous things, demonic things, and it's still true today. And people are being encouraged and even coerced into celebrating these hideous idols that are being manufactured, manufactured through people trying to grab for themselves the fruit of the truth and knowledge of good and evil.

Any word you speak against this, we talked about this last time, members of Finnish parliament taken to task and possibly even thrown in prison for speaking out against something in society that doesn't match with the biblical standard.

Coercion, Celebration, and the End of Neutrality

And you mentioned it, people being coerced into celebrating. 20 years ago, this was a conspiracy theory. It says if you let them just live the way they want to live, leave them alone, they'll leave you alone.

Now, you are not allowed to just say, live and let live. You want to go that way? Fine. I'm going to go this way. Me and my house, we'll serve the Lord. No. You must celebrate. And if you don't, if you don't take this mark upon yourself, then you will be shut out of this society.

You can't just say, hey, to each their own, you must celebrate. You must give your that pinch of incense. You must say the words they're telling you to say. It's almost as if you're being drug into their pagan temple and you must say their words of enchantment, their word, their incantation.

You must repeat their mantra. And if you do not, you will be eliminated. Are you saying there's no neutrality?

This is what I'm saying. Yeah. This is where the libertarians are wrong. You can't actively support the free living, free loving, free, free liturgy of all various groups and because everybody's supporting everybody else's freedom, then there will be no tyranny in the, in the sense that, you know, if the Muslims have complete free reign to do whatever they want and the LGBTQ, you know, non-binary happy rainbow people do have everything that they want to do, then that means that I can too.

As long as everyone has maximum freedom, then I have maximum freedom too. This is what the libertarians are wrong. We're dealing with competing, not just competing worldviews, not just competing authority claims, not just competing structures.

We're dealing with religion. We're dealing with religion and there is no neutral ground. It's all or nothing and we know from the scriptures that Christ wins and will bring all of his enemies into subjection under his feet.

He's the one who's going to fight it. He's going to fight it and win it. He's going to conquer and many, many, many family groups, tribes, nations, languages are going to stream into Mount Zion and give glory and honor to Christ.

So he's going to win. He's going to win big, but there is no neutral ground. You are either in his kingdom or you are outside of it. You either kiss the sun, do homage to the sun and are blessed to find refuge in him or you're on the other end of his iron rod.

And that's the same way it is with the other religions and they're all of a piece because they're all funded from the father of lies. So how the operations are being seen today, you had better celebrate Mr. Thomas beating all those girls in the pool and getting first prize.

And if you complain about it, interesting, I just saw a video of this, a woman is complaining and she's yelling and saying, that's not a woman. Look at that. That's not a woman. And then there's a male feminist standing right there next to her, cautioning her on her hate speech, telling her, you know, asking, say, well, are you a biologist?

Are you a biologist? Are you a biologist saying, you know, you don't know what you're talking about because you're not a biologist. In other words, let's be very clear here, let's be very clear here in this neopaganism and this, in this postmodern neopaganism where there, you know, nobody can know anything unless you're an expert.

Just take the word expert and flip it over and see what they mean by it. It means a priest. Are you a priestess? Are you a priest? Do you have divine clairvoyance to declare what is objectively true in this situation?

If you don't, then you don't get to speak. You don't get to speak because you're not a priest. You're not a priestess. So you just be quiet. And this is a religious war. People don't want to talk about it.

Don't want to acknowledge it. But this is about those who are worshiping the lamb, following the lamb wherever he goes, singing the song of the redeemed, being willing to suffer for what we believe, finding comfort in the promises of Christ versus those who are being deceiving and being deceived.

And for them it's a zero sum game as well. You had better celebrate and say what they say and worship what they worship or they don't want anything to do with you. And you have all of these, you have all of these gaps in between where you, you apparently perhaps neutrality exists, but it's just a temporary illusion because it's all competing eschatologies, right?

Like it, my God wins is on everybody's mind and I'm going to use the methods that my priests or that my scriptures have taught me to use in order to meet those ends. And in every case where you have, whether it's Muslim, neo-paganism, Christian, they're working towards an eschatology, right?

Like they're, they have their eyes on an end goal. We've been told to have our eyes on an end goal and they're doing the exact same thing. And so it's just, it's the game being played out towards those ends.

But back to what you were talking about earlier about hideous gods, I find that particularly important point for me specifically, because that's the thing that I pick out of things that are happening is what's being produced in this beautiful or is it ugly?

With it being hideous gods, don't we also have, I was drawn back to Douglas Wilson's angels in the architecture that I read a few years ago, but don't we have demons in the architecture too that are built to these gods or to these autonomous humans as well?

Like when you look at like modern architecture and the architects who built them, you walk into them and you're like, somebody's worshiping themselves here, right? Like they want to show you what they can do rather than taking your focus and bringing it up to the one who created you.

Like don't we have like an example of demons being in architecture as well to all of these hideous gods?

Babel, Human Pride, and the Difference Between Two-ness and One-ness

Yeah. And there's, it's interesting, you know, in the plains of Shinar, a man gathered together to make a name for themselves and God came down and confused them and frustrated all of their efforts. We just need to remember what is, what is man without God?

Like go back to Genesis two, what is man without God? It's the dust of the earth, he's just dust. Without God, without God breathing the breath of life into us and becoming a living soul and a thash, without that, without God, what is man?

We're just dust. So when man tries to make a name for himself without God, what is that name? Ozymandias. Yeah, yeah. Ozymandias. That's right. Yeah. Or a synonym of Ozymandias, Ichabod. In other words, your name is mud.

You got nothing. You got nothing as hideous, whatever it is.

But that's what you're saying is, is the new religion, this neo-paganism need to make, make everything, everything one, all is God. I am, I am God. That is, that's essentially exchanging God for a lie.

It is a religion. And even though they don't describe it in those, those terms, they're using those definitions. They have their priests, they have their, their holy book, they have their mantra and they have their congregants.

Yes, yes. And they have, they've been giving their tithes and they have their damnation and they have their excommunications and they've got, they've got the whole, every single aspect of religion they've got.

And it's a, this neo-paganism, a oneness, oneness versus two-ness as Peter Jones would put it. But it's the same thing that C .S. Lewis observed many, many years ago was that when it all boils down, it's either Christianity or Hinduism, he said it's just two options.

And what did he mean by that? It was either, it's either two or it's one. There's either a creator who is outside of his creation, imposing his standard upon it, giving us his word, or it's a big hideous blob.

That's your two options and nobody has ever escaped the velocity of that, made escape velocity from that gravitational reality. It's either two or it's one. And in oneness we see absurdity, in the two-ness that we have God as creator and us as his creation, we find truth, we find goodness, we find beauty.

Recommended Reading on Depression, Liberalism, and Economics

Amen. Well, we're going to wrap up this episode with a little bit of recommendation on content that we've either been helped by, edified by, or continually consuming at this very moment. And we'll start with you, Michael.

I want to recommend a book by Martin Lloyd-Jones called Spiritual Depression, Spiritual Depression Its Causes and Cure. Lloyd-Jones was quoted as saying about many things that he did in his life, and of course he was a prolific preacher and author, that this is one that he was particularly moved by its impact on the people that he tried to help with.

So in Spiritual Depressions Its Causes and Cure, a book that I've read three times and have used in counseling and recommended to many people, 21 chapters basically talks that, sermons that the good doctor gave, and he deals with people as they are described in the Word of God.

The way in which people deal with depression, the way that God has made us, and the way in which he has called for us to respond. So it is a wealth of biblical counseling, and I have found it to be personally deeply helpful.

So I finished just this past week, it's a little book, I've mentioned it before, but it's Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen, he is of Princeton, and ended up helping to form the PCA and Westminster Seminary, came out of the liberalism fighting the battle against liberalism in the early 20th century.

His whole thesis is that liberalism is a different religion. In this little book, he is dealing with many of the things that you had described just a little earlier. He's got this quote in it that I thought was incredible, talking about exchanging the liberal view for the Christian view.

The change is nothing less than the substitution of paganism for Christianity as the dominant view of life. Seventy-five years ago, Western civilization, despite inconsistencies, was still predominantly Christian.

Today it is predominantly pagan. This was written in 1923. Yes. He makes a compelling case that the liberal Christianity of his day was a different religion. It had a different understanding of the kingdom, universal fatherhood of God, and universal brotherhood, favored experience over the Bible, they even defined Jesus completely differently.

They couldn't really describe him as sinless, because if he was sinless, that implies that there was a law that he kept perfectly, and then there has to be a lawgiver. Jesus' death is not a substitutionary atonement, it's an example, an example for us to follow.

In a way, Jesus is really the first Christian. He's an example. And of course, he takes that apart and says, well, he also said he was the judge of the world. Are you going to follow that example too?

It falls on its face. Because there's a different Jesus, because when there's no sin, what are you being born again from? There's no sin, there's a different view of the Bible, different view of Jesus himself, and wraps it all up with, this is a completely different religion.

It's no mere heresy. It is a completely different religion. And it's a unity of its own, and he actually calls it anti-Christian to the core. So it was 1923 Christianity and liberalism, J. Gresham Machen, I highly recommend it.

I'm going to go with a secular book that I read a couple of years ago, written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, part of his Encherto series called Anti-Fragile, Things That Gain From Disorder. I did a lot of reading in finance, and this is from the world of finance.

He was an options trader, and he focused on making money in ways that were exponentially greater than the risk he was taking. But the concept that he introduced was that fragile systems are systems which require to be tended, and the anti-fragile system is one in which you can let be, and it will become something greater than the sum of its parts.

All right, I'm going a little bit different direction on the finance spectrum here, but Ludwig von Mises in Human Action, I've been listening to that slowly over the last, I don't know, two or three weeks, and I've come out understanding that I disagree with him epistemologically, but I agree with his anthropology.

It's about as close to a biblical anthropology as you can get without being a Christian. And honestly, he quotes a couple of theologians on anthropology, and I was like, yeah, you get that, but you won't bend the knee, sir.

So that's where he's at. But walking through that and seeing his definition of praxeology and how it applies to markets and how it is supposed to imply value that's not intrinsic because intrinsic value is left for things like God and worship.

Those things have intrinsic value and are valuable in and of themselves, whereas this is more extrinsic and it has to have a price signal. And I like watching him tear apart communism and socialism because they can never have a price signal.

And he makes a real simple argument against that. But Human Action by Ludwig von Mises, and it's a long read and it is dense. But if you can hang on, it's worth it. And it can really be fruitful in your understanding of either why we see what we're seeing today with markets or it might just make you mad, too.

So because, you know, it's it's not working. It's actually working exactly how it was built to work, which is not good. But I really enjoyed that one. And I hope if there's one person out there that can dig into this, it will be worth the recommendation.

But I doubt there is, because if you look, it's hours and hours worth of content.

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