Superstition is the Word

To paraphrase Will Durant, religions come and go, but superstition is immortal.  The ancient pieties will always rise to the surface; fairies, demons, elves, and ghosts lurk everywhere, and only a talisman known to be lucky (or better yet ecclesiastically approved) can ward off ill-fortune.  Even at the top of the world’s power structures, surrounded by experts eager to dispense rational advice, world leaders still manage to place their trust in fortune-tellers and astrologers.  

Korea's former president Park Geun-hye entrusted state secrets to her personal shaman, a woman named Choi Soon-sil, who coincidentally is the daughter of one Choi Tae-min, who performed the same services for Park’s father, former Korean dictator Park Chung-hee.  Sort of a fortune-teller hereditary office.  Korean culture has a rich history of shamanic superstitions, and has only in the last century begun to shed them for more rational ways of seeing the world.

Choi Soon-sil arrives for questioning at a prosecutor's office in Seoul on Nov. 1. 

(Kim Dohoon/Yonhap via Reuters)

Nancy Reagan secretly engaged the services of an astrologer in the aftermath of the attempt on her husband’s life, and for a time Joan Quigley, the semi-official White House Astrologer, had nearly complete veto power over the President’s calendar.

A memorable edition of People Magazine

Still, we like to think we’ve progressed some since the Inquisition.  In his magnificent series The Story of Civilization, Will Durant describes the lingering belief in the existence of witches as it broke out yet again in deadly earnest in sixteenth century Europe:

Fear of the power of witches was widespread.  Said a pamphlet of 1563: “To enter into relations with the Devil, to have him close at hand in rings or crystals, to conjure him, to enter into alliance with him, to carry on hundreds of magic arts with him, is more in vogue nowadays, among both high and low, learned and unlearned, than ever before.”   

An epidemic of witchcraft fears swept southeast France in 1609.  Hundreds of persons believed themselves possessed by devils; some thought themselves changed into dogs, and barked…Eight were convicted, five escaped, three were burned; and spectators swore later that they had seen devils, in the form of toads, issuing from the heads of the victims.  In Lorraine 800 were burned for witchcraft in sixteen years; in Strasbourg 134 in four days (October 1582).  In Catholic Lucerne 62 were put to death between 1562 and 1572; in Protestant Bern, 300 in the last decade of the sixteenth century, 240 in the first decade of the seventeenth. 

—Will Durant, The Age of Reason Begins, pp.576-77

The reason those people were burned was not that they claimed to be witches—indeed when on trial they often pointed fingers at each other in order to avoid the stake.  The reason they died was that the public connected a failed harvest or an outbreak of plague to someone who had done nothing more sinister than, for example, wear a sparkly crystal.  As Wikipedia says, superstition at its root is supernatural causality: the belief that two events are connected, without any natural process linking the two.

And incredibly that non-rational attitude continues into the age of quantum computing and gene therapy.  Those marinated in the superstition of their religion still think witchcraft, curses, and evil spirits influence the outcome of events.

The Women's March was the first shot across the bow, heralding a revolutionary rise against the president of the United States, "We the people" and in reality, the foundational biblical truths upon which our nation was founded. Soon after, the second shot was manifested publicly: an unprecedented global summons of witchcraft to curse President Trump, his Cabinet and all of those aligned with a biblical worldview. Suddenly, the whole controversy was elevated to a global spiritual dimension, inaugurating a spiritual battle that cannot be won on the playing field of protests and political arguments. 

Only the church has the answer to this unprecedented manifestation of witchcraft. Spiritual strategy must be used to overcome this open-faced, brazen challenge of the powers. 

—Lou Engle, Charisma Magazine 3/6/2017

Lou Engle speaking at POTUS Shield Heartbeat Ohio conference, March 10, 2017 
(via Right Wing Watch)

UPDATE 23 JUNE 2017

Charisma Magazine reports:

Thousands of witches gathered at midnight Wednesday to cast spells on President Donald Trump as part of a summer solstice ritual.

Dave Kubal, president of Intercessors for America (IFA), previously issued an urgent call to prayer when the resistance launched in February.

Kubal explained about a worldwide call for witches—and those willing to attempt witchcraft for the first time—to cast a spell harming Donald Trump.

According to IFA, the ritual is to be done at the stroke of midnight on waning crescent moon ritual days until Trump leaves office. The summer solstice is considered especially important.

"Whether or not this call for spells pans out and people act on it, we feel compelled, as the body of Christ and intercessors, to come against this evil with immediate and powerful prayer," the IFA reports.

Is it such a large step for a group to go from claiming the existence of a “global summons of witchcraft” to blaming those who harmlessly claim such an identity for any calamity, imagined or real?  How far away are we from jailing members of any group superstition tells us use supernatural means to influence events?  

Evil spirits, curses, witchcraft.  Seriously, grow up.