The Witch of Endor: How the Bible Complicates How I Think About Witchcraft

A confession: I've long been suspicious of astrology and zodiac signs. To this idea, I have no clue if I'm a Leo, Cancer, or Gemini, or Ken. The whole thing felt like elaborate superstition pretending to be wisdom. But then I moved to D.C. and started actually talking to people who were into tarot cards, naturalistic witchcraft, or studying the zodiac and I had to be a skeptic of my skepticism.

The folks I know who are curious about these things aren't naive. They're not treating this as mindless superstition. They're being genuinely curious about the world that God has created and given us, trying to understand patterns and connections that Western science often overlooks or dismisses. We like to say "well, science is taking care of all this," but the Western history of science can divorce us so much from creation that it's no longer helpful for understanding our place in the cosmos.

The Magi in Matthew clearly use astrological signs to find truth about the Messiah's birth. So maybe I—and all of us—deserve to be more curious about these things rather than writing them off immediately.

The Desperate King and the Banned Medium

Which brings me to a subversive story in tucked away in 1 Samuel 28. It's the story of King Saul's midnight visit to the witch of Endor.

King Saul is desperate. Once God's chosen ruler, now abandoned by the divine and facing imminent war with the Philistines. So he disguises himself and sneaks out under cover of darkness to visit a medium, precisely the kind of person he'd spent years banishing from his kingdom.

This woman he seeks out carries an incredible title worthy of the MCU: Ba'alat Ov, which translates to "Master of Spirits" or "Lord of Ghosts."

And when Saul asks her to conjure the prophet Samuel from the dead, something amazing happens: she actually does it!

Despite what my Sunday school teachers claimed, the biblical text makes it pretty dang clear that this is genuinely Samuel speaking, not a demon in disguise. Samuel shows up, he is his typically grumpy self because he's being disturbed from his eternal rest, and then he goes ahead and delivers a prophecy about Saul's impending death that comes true the very next day.

Growing up in conservative Christian circles, I was taught that necromancy was fake demonic deception. But the text itself gives zero indication of trickery or spiritual counterfeiting. Samuel really shows up, and he really speaks truth.

What I'm paying attention to is how the narrative treats this witch. After Samuel delivers his doom-and-gloom prophecy and Saul faints in terror, the medium doesn't kill him or gloat over his downfall. Instead, she prepares a feast for the scaredy-cat king. The text uses the same language about her "quick, generous hospitality" that appears elsewhere to describe righteous biblical hosts, including David's wife Abigail just a few chapters earlier.

The woman who was supposedly practicing forbidden arts is portrayed as more compassionate and hospitable than the king who banned her profession.

Power, Labels, and Colonial Patterns

The real issue isn't whether witchcraft "works."The story is clear that it does. The issue is about who gets to practice spiritual communication and what we call it when they do. When prophets talk to spirits and receive visions, they're called holy men, seers, sages. When this woman does literally the same thing, she's labeled a dangerous witch who must be eliminated.

Kinda like how government surveillance of phone calls gets labeled "national security," while your neighbor doing the same thing is called stalking. The action is identical; only the authority behind it changes the moral framing.

This show us something profound about how power operates. State-sanctioned spirituality receives prestigious labels and social acceptance. Folk religion practiced by ordinary people—especially women and marginalized communities—gets demonized as witchcraft or devilry.

This pattern didn't end with ancient Israel. European colonizers used identical logic to demonize African, Eastern, and Native American religious practices. Shamanic healing, ancestor veneration, plant medicine ceremonies, and indigenous spiritual traditions were whole cloth labeled as "witchcraft" or "devil worship." Meanwhile, European Christian practices—many of which involved their own forms of mysticism, saint veneration, and supernatural beliefs—were considered "civilized" religion.

The demonization of "witchcraft" was a colonizing tactic, a way to delegitimize indigenous spiritual authority and replace it with European Christian control. When Spanish conquistadors encountered Aztec priests, when missionaries encountered African traditional religions, when settlers encountered Native American medicine people, the playbook was always the same: label indigenous practices as demonic witchcraft while positioning Christian spirituality as the only legitimate path to the divine.

Cultural imperialism with a religious veneer.

The cosmology in 1 Samuel 28 is fascinating too. Everyone—good guys, bad guys, kings, and peasants—goes down to Sheol (the grave or pit) when they die. There's no heaven, no hell, just a shadowy realm where everyone hangs out together regardless of their earthly moral status. It's only centuries later, after exposure to Babylonian and Zoroastrian ideas, that Jewish thought develops more complex afterlife theology.

I'm not suggesting we build entire theological systems around one spooky story, or that all spiritual practices are equally valid or safe. But we should ask ourselves hard questions: When I automatically label certain spiritual practices as evil, am I following genuine wisdom, or am I just repeating power structures that benefit some people over others?

The witch of Endor, Lord of Ghosts, challenges me to examine my assumptions about spiritual authority. She reminds me that the most condemned voices are the ones most worth listening to, and that the line between prophet and witch might have more to do with politics than with divine approval.

In a world still grappling with religious prejudice and cultural imperialism, her story gives a radical possibility: that the divine might speak through voices we've been taught to fear, and that wisdom might come from the very people our institutions have worked hardest to silence.