The Art of Magical Living — Issue #28

Dear :

Well, I sure didn’t expect to set off satanic panic! 

In the lead-up to my talk on witchcraft (The History and Reality of Witchcraft in America) for the St. Mary’s County Historical Society in Leonardtown Maryland last weekend—which detailed the area’s dark history of witch hunts and executions in the colonial period—I caught wind of some disturbing happenings.

In the week before the event, a gaggle of concerned local Christians—close to a dozen, I am told—invaded a local bookstore. They looked around, found some tarot decks (!) and crystals (!) for sale, and promptly started praying aloud and throwing salt and holy water around the premises. 

Having apparently exorcised any lingering demons, they quickly beat feet and departed, leaving the clerk shocked (and probably annoyed that she had to vacuum up the salt).

Apparently this year, some of the more superstitious Catholics and other good Christian folks got their underpants in a twist about the celebration of Moll Dyer Day, which I wrote about in the last newsletter (and you can check out in the video below).  

I also learned that local Catholic Churches were warning their parishioners to avoid participating in any events related to the accused witch Moll Dyer, for fear of the evils of witchcraft “harming the youth” of St. Mary’s County (ironically considered the birthplace of religious tolerance—keep that in mind). 

I had to wonder: Had I slipped through a time vortex back to the 1980s?

Then a local pagan I have corresponded with let me know the source of the furor:

They had googled me 😁 

I was also alerted to a blog post from Leonard Wathen, director of religious education at St. Aloysius in Leonardtown, about Moll Dyer, which you can read here. I hope you will take a minute or two to read it. 

While there are commendable points made about the horror of the historical witch hunts and the need for kindness, religious tolerance, and mercy by Wathen — who may be a descendant of Moll Dyer, he says — ultimately the message turns into the usual prejudiced maligning of witchcraft, magic, and divination.

In the post, Wathen provides a link to a story of an exorcism by Msgr. Stephen J. Rosetti, an exorcist from the Archdiocese of Washington who runs the nonprofit St. Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal.

This anecdote, Wathen suggests, should read by the faithful as a cautionary tale about the power of witchcraft to seduce the unwary. Take a moment and read it, too. 

This account from the monsignor did not pass the sniff test. 

“Sarah’s” mother was a high-ranking satanic priestess who introduced her daughter to the practice of witchcraft when she was very young. Sarah said each week six witches gathered to curse priests and the bishops by name. They sat around an effigy of the priest and ritually cursed him. She added that there were many covens in her area and all were weekly cursing different priests.

I’m sorry, that is 100% unadulterated bullshit. 

Modern witches, the vast majority of whom do not worship or even believe in Satan, are not spending their precious time (every week!) cursing effigies of priests and bishops. This is a perverse confabulation conjured by someone stuck in the era of Michelle Remembers. 

In fact, if one were cynical, one might believe this hysterical satanic panic reboot is designed to avert attention from the 456-page report recently completed by the Maryland Attorney General's Office that implicates 158 priests within the Archdiocese of Maryland accused of sexual abuse and torture of more than 600 victims—many of them children. 

The Archdiocese, of course, has fought tooth-and-nail to keep the report secret. 

As someone who was brought up Catholic (and even confirmed!), I am not anti-Catholic by any means. I love soaking up the ambience of historical churches and had my first introduction to magic and mysticism during the celebration of the Mass as a child, entranced by the candles, icons of the saints, the chants and prayers, and the intoxicating scent of frankincense and myrrh.

As I grew older, I became disenchanted with many aspects of Catholic dogma, which led me to leave the Church, but, as I discovered recently when attending a funeral Mass for a friend, I still know every word of the liturgy by heart. You can’t erase that sort of programming. 

But as I read about the history of religion over these past decades, I came to understand that there are countless ways to approach divinity—including methods that do not require a hierarchy of intermediaries. 

You can, I discovered, connect with divinity—however you define it—in your own way and on your own terms.

I also learned that early Christians performed magic and divination, just like members of every other religion—Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism—before their priests clamped down on those practices. 

I discovered that many Catholics still practice various forms of folk magic—all of it within an explicitly Christian context. 

I learned that tarot cards—maligned by modern Catholics like Wathen as dangerous and diabolical—are absolutely loaded with Catholic themes and iconography, because they originated as a game in Catholic Italy in the 15th century.

And that even the ubiquitous Smith-Waite “occult” deck, is chock-full of Catholic symbolism, like this Ace of Cups with the Holy Spirit/Paraclete descending with the blessed host into the chalice.

Which is not at all surprising, given that Arthur Edward Waite, who conceived the deck, and the artist, Pamela Colman Smith, were both Catholics. 

There are even books that utilize a Christian approach to tarot cards for insight and contemplation. 

Sadly, it appears some elements in the Catholic Church have forgotten the beautiful, enduring message of Jesus—of love, tolerance, and forgiveness—and retreated into fear and bigotry.

The same sort of fear and bigotry that led to women like Mary Lee (1654) and Elizabeth Richardson (1659) being hanged on ships en route to St. Mary’s after being accused of witchcraft by superstitious sailors. 

The same fear and bigotry that led to Rebecca Fowler being the first woman hanged for witchcraft in Maryland in 1685.

And yes, the same fear and bigotry that burned Moll Dyer’s home and left her to freeze to death in the brutal winter night. 

Instead of whipping up fear and hysteria about nonexistent “satanic” witches intent on stealing the innocent souls of their children, maybe the good Catholics and Christians of Leonardtown and St. Mary’s County should instead look deep inside at their own demons—demons that, unlike the fictitious satanic witches based on medieval superstition, are very real and very dangerous. 

Those demon-haunted monsters walk among us today, in the flesh, doing very real and irreperable physical and emotional harm to children. And far too often, they are being sheltered and hidden by the pious haunting the pews, offices, and rectories.

The church’s exorcists should not be making up patently ridiculous stories about covens of satanic witches cursing their effigies and preying upon innocent children—especially when that Church has brought a damning generational curse upon itself. 

The exorcisms should be taking place within the churches, the offices of the Archdiocese, and the hearts of the faithful who refuse to acknowledge historical and ongoing abuse of innocents.

The demons rooted in the institution of the Catholic Church need to be exorcised until there is a full and public accounting and atonement for the countless lives corrupted and violated by predatory priests and clergy, and full contrition of the diabolical coverup perpetuated by those in power. 

Michael