Witch Influencers Keep Converting: Is This How We Win Women?

This episode explores the surprising trend of women leaving witchcraft, tarot reading, and the occult for Christianity. We discuss the massive psychic and tarot industry, celebrity examples like Kim Kardashian’s relic wearing, and high-profile conversions from influencers such as Alex Reads Tarot, Kat Von D, and Doreen Virtue. They examine why these women found faith more fulfilling than new age practices and contrast it with other religious movements.

Our conversation covers destiny swapping beliefs, the appeal of Orthodox Christianity for former witches, and the broader cultural shift toward introspection and traditional faith. It highlights personal stories of deprogramming from occult lifestyles and the wholesome outcomes when people seek better paths.

We hope this exploration grants you some additional insight into why some find autonomy and power in spirituality that ultimately leads them to Christianity instead. :)

Show Notes

MAGA Witches

I found a video talking about MAGA witches, but the creator (also someone into the occult) didn’t ultimately find any meaningful or super sizeable communities that were active (she did find a Conservative Pagans and Witches Facebook page that has 3.1K members and is private, but it denied her fake account(s) multiple times).

The posts by people who do identify as MAGA witches are pretty funny though—”Blessed lammas, Mr. Trump!”

The interesting thing that seems to be emphasized among the very few witches who are MAGA is heavy use of AI.

The Prominent Conversions

Alexandra Ashcroft (“Alex Reads Tarot” / @yourfiresignbestie)

Commentary on the announcement including footage of the announcement

Tarot, astrology, and energy work were her livelihood. In late June 2026 she deleted her entire occult catalog, announced she was done with readings, and started new accounts focused on Christianity.

People openly grieved her choice

* “We lost a baddie today”

* She appreciated that unlike Doreen Virtue, she did not criticize the occult or witchcraft. “You’re constantly challenged on the path to spirituality…. You know what you’re doing doesn’t hurt anybody”

* “It changes lives”

* “It makes people better people”

* She argues people who say witchcraft is condemned are “wrong”

* She says she tried talking with people from other faiths but kept returning to witchcraft because “It is the only thing that gives me the power that I need and I crave”

* “Why didn’t you give me a heads up so I could save some stuff first?”

Her stated reasons:

* The change was gradual over nearly a year, not sudden.

* Faith in Christ became “the most important thing” in her life. She spent that time praying, reflecting, and questioning.

* For a long time she hoped she could “somehow reconcile” tarot with Christianity and keep practicing. She could not.

* “The more I prayed, the more that I reflected and sought God, the more that I realized I couldn’t ignore where this journey was leading me.”

Kat Von D (Katherine von Drachenberg)

Celebrity tattoo artist and LA Ink star known for a gothic/occult aesthetic, tarot collections tied to her makeup line, witchcraft books, and spellwork.

She publicly discarded her occult library and tarot decks in July 2022, was baptized in a Baptist church in Indiana in October 2023, and later entered the Orthodox Church (Pascha 2025).

* “Von D also shared that her priest encouraged her to refrain from sharing further details of her conversion from Protestantism to the Orthodox Church, The Christian Post reported.”

* HOWEVER, across later interviews, it came out that:

* After her 2023 Baptist baptism she “hit a wall” quickly. She had many questions and felt there was little discipleship. She described going through the motions with her “cup not full” and sensing “there’s more.”

* Church history. She said one of the strongest pulls was “a deeper understanding of actual church history, which… I had no clue about.” She wanted to be able to answer her son’s questions with that history rather than “because mommy and daddy brought us up this way.”

* Worship felt different. Protestant services had come to feel like “a lecture hall or a TED Talk.” In Orthodox liturgy she said she felt she was “worshiping the Lord with all my being.”

* Icons made immediate sense to her as a visual artist. She had first thought the flat style looked like people “before they learned how to draw.” Once she understood them as windows to heaven and as a way to learn about Christ and the saints without needing to be a theologian, they clicked. She noted they also help her ADHD because she can look at Christ and focus. Kissing an icon did not feel strange to her.

* Stability. She contrasted Orthodoxy’s settled paradigm with the endless rabbit trails of both New Age searching and some Protestant settings.

* Community. After years of isolation in Los Angeles she found a parish that felt like actual community.

Here’s a video montage of her visiting an orthodox church with her son that she posted to Instagram (it’s not the only one)

Her stated reasons for converting

* She said COVID lockdowns and conversations with her husband (“I think we got a lot of things wrong”) forced a full life audit.

* She said New Age practices (tarot, spellwork, meditation, nature worship, yoga) had been “band-aids” and “crutches” that never actually solved anything.

* She compared her Christian friends (who had “light”) with occult friends (who lived in “drama and dread and gloom and doom”) and realized she had been one of the miserable ones.

* She came to see a “spiritual battle” and no longer wanted those items in her home around her family.

* The change felt like “deprogramming.” Things that once attracted her became repulsive. She repeatedly said she just wanted Jesus: “I don’t want these crutches in my life anymore… I just want Jesus.” She also said the shift made her a better wife and mother.

Doreen Virtue

The longest-established of the three. She was one of the world’s bestselling New Age authors, created dozens of angel/oracle card decks (used like tarot), taught channeling and mediumship, and mixed Christian language with occult practice for decades. She was baptized in 2017 and has spent the years since publicly repudiating her old work and telling people not to use her cards. (Her wikipedia page)

Her stated reasons:

* She had a vision of Jesus in an Episcopal church in January 2017 that she said completely changed her.

* Reading the Bible, especially Deuteronomy 18:10–12 (the prohibition on divination, fortune-telling, witchcraft, and consulting the dead), was the decisive moment. She realized the exact practices she had taught and sold were described as “detestable” / an “abomination” to God.

* She had genuinely believed she was a Christian doing God’s work through angels. The passage lifted “the veil.” She fell to her knees, repented, and gave her life to Jesus.

* She now describes her former work as occult deception and regularly apologizes for the decks still in circulation.

Older examples exist (e.g., the Druid blogger Teo Bishop / Matt Morris around 2013), but they are less often cited in the current conversation.

Does the Inverse Exist?

Not really; it’s more people who were Christian by default (and not liking it) getting into tarot.

There aren’t major prominent Christian religious leaders

Lots of people raised evangelical or conservative Christian leave church and pick up tarot, astrology, or witchcraft. Religion News Service profiled this in 2025 with practitioners like Kevin Garcia, Elliot Adam, and Charlie Claire Burgess. They describe tarot as a way to rebuild spirituality after “bad religion.” That pattern is common. It is not the same as a Hillsong worship leader or a 2-million-follower Christian TikToker announcing “I am a witch now.”

Closest examples:

* Kevin Garcia came out as a queer Christian in 2015, built a deconstruction audience, wrote Bad Theology Kills, and later added tarot as spiritual direction. He still talks about Jesus as a mystic path among others. His following is in the tens of thousands, not the million-plus range of Alex Reads Tarot or Kat Von D.

* Hana O’Neill (Suburban Witchery) has written explicitly about a “Christian to witch pipeline” from evangelical girl to practicing witch. Niche platform.

* Many WitchTok creators mention a Christian childhood. Almost none of them were first known as Christian influencers.

On Witches

Percentage of women

Pew’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study put pagans at roughly 0.3–0.4% of all U.S. adults.

One Pagan Census-based summary reports approximately 68% of Wiccans and 67% of Pagans as female.

Combining these stats, we can suppose that roughly 1 in 250 to 1 in 170 women identify as a witch (0.4% to 0.6% of women in the USA).

* This is conservative as there are, for example, Christians (albeit not very high fidelity Christians) who practice witchcraft, at least until they discover that Christianity and witchcraft are incompatible.

Size

Broad witchcraft is small compared to markers for interest in organized religion (like searches for the Bible) but nontrivial

The industry is big:

* Psychic / fortune / tarot readings: $2.3 billion (Best single figure (IBISWorld))

* Tarot/oracle decks and kits $50–300 million (Reports conflict)

* Etsy spells + cheap digital castings: $20–100 million (Heavily overlapping with psychic/fortune/tarot readings)

* Forbes’s 2024 reporting: the platform has facilitated “millions of dollars” in spell sales; some top sellers have made hundreds of thousands.

* Occult / spell / spiritualism books~$50–200 million (Soft estimate)

* Crystals, herbs, ritual goods, shops: $1–2+ billion if included (Wellness, not “occult services”)

For scale: US religious giving is well over $100 billion. The legal US cannabis market is larger than psychic services. Halloween retail alone is several times the deck-and-spell slice. The occult economy is real and has professionalized; it is still a mid-size niche next to church, wellness, or self-help.

What are People into Witches Even Into?

Top selling books on spells/witchcraft on Amazon

* The Spell Book for New Witches: Essential Spells to Change Your Life by Ambrosia Hawthorn | Feb 4, 2020 - $9.99 paperback; 20.4K review (4.5 stars)

* Preview pages show things like

* significant objects one might use, including a Book of Shadows (to keep a record of one’s practice), an alter bowl (to hold salt, herbs, crystals, and waters for portions or scrying), a mortar and pestle, candles, and crystal

* Spells, grouped into

* Spells for romantic love

* E.g. A lover’s bind rune to preserve or attract a loving relationship

* Spells for money and prosperity

* Spells for work and career

* A sweetheart sachet, to attract a sweetheart

* One choice review by Felicia Nelson: “This is exactly what I wanted. So many of the books out there spend the majority of the book talking about how to become a witch or how to be a witch. I don’t need tons of chapters about crystals and the moon and all that. Most books spend way too much time going over those things. I just want the spells. For someone who has already gotten down the basics, or who’s been doing this a long time already, you’re going to like this book. It says that it’s for new wedges, but I don’t find that to be true at all. All I wanted was a book of spells that I could use to compare or cross-reference or add to my own. I’m a solitary witch. This book glosses over all of those basic things that so many other books go on and on and on about, and just gets down to business. This is a book of spells, period. And they aren’t ridiculous spells that make you have all sorts of special hard to get ingredients. You can follow these spells step-by-step, or adapt them to incorporate into your own traditions. I think it’s a great reference; a great starting point. You definitely want to add this book to your collection.”

* The Green Witch: Your Complete Guide to the Natural Magic of Herbs, Flowers, Essential Oils, and More (Green Witch Witchcraft Series) by Arin Murphy-Hiscock | Sep 19, 2017 - $10.22; 28.2K reviews (5 stars)

* This book has a heavy emphasis in gardening and reconnecting to the earth and natural world

* Natural healing, kitchen recipes, “working with green energy”, etc.

* Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick & Manifestation (Mat Auryn’s Psychic Witch, 1) Book 1 of 2: Mat Auryn’s Psychic Witch | by Mat Auryn and Devin Hunter | Feb 8, 2020; $16.12, 10.3K reviews (5 stars)

* Part of a review from a deconstructing Christian: “Let me preface this review by saying that I am a former Christian conservative and have been deconstructing my beliefs over the course of the last one and a half years. I have always felt drawn to witchcraft and spirituality, but toxic Christianity and Christian nationalism made me believe that witchcraft is “evil” and “demonic,” which I now know is anything but. As a part of my journey back to spirituality, this book called out to me-I felt incredibly drawn to it. I am so glad that I bought this book because I learned so much about witchcraft, mysticism and metaphysics that I haven’t known before! Everything in the world is a lot more connected than we think, and the author cites legitimate scientific, psychological, and historical studies to prove this link. I’ve never been one to be a complete science nerd, but the science used in this book was absolutely fascinating to me.”

Episode Transcript

Speaker 8 [0:00]:I still come back to witchcraft. I still come back to spirituality because it is the only thing that allows me the autonomy and the power that I need and that I crave and that I know that I’m deserving of

Simone Collins [0:10]:Hello, Malcolm. I’m very excited to be speaking with you again because Halloween’s right around the corner. We gotta talk about witch talk. We gotta talk about witches and the occult and how I can’t seem to avoid it because women are so into it now. So this is kind of another women are terrible episode, but it’s a little bit wholesome, and you’ll see why. But first, this is just... For for the guys who don’t see this, because I think that guys are mostly precluded from the occult and witch talk and all of this stuff, this is a very, very big industry and genre among women, especially chronically online women. in terms of interest in in just psychic and tarot readings as as an industry, that is a $2,300,000,000 industry just in America. And it’s even all over celebrity gossip. Like, this... It came up in my feed this morning. I I just had to click on it. It was this video called the succession ritual. Why Kim Kardashian wears the dead? And I’m like, wait. What? What are you talking about? and it’s amazing. Let me show you just a little clip of this so you

Malcolm Collin [1:16]:can Kim Kardashian wears the dead?

Simone Collins [1:19]:Yeah. Yeah. Kim Kardashian. Why she wears the dead. Okay?

Malcolm Collins [1:24]:Kim Kardashian is an apex predator of the collective unconscious, an aura harvester. She is a high powered technician of the occult, turning a simple exit into a ritual altar.

Simone Collins [1:37]:Powered technician

Malcolm Collins [1:38]:energy of the of every lens and every eye, storing that power into the fabric of the bridge. This is a glamour witch. Glamour witch. Influence, casting a spell of total saturation before she ever reaches for the relics of the dead.

Simone Collins [1:55]:Oh my god. But look. So here’s here’s her talking about... So... And and the witches are now converting to Christianity? Yep. Actually, look. So even in the beginning of this, what is she pointing to here in her video? Stuff. Yeah. Look at this. These these are these are crowns. These are saints. Alright?

Malcolm Collin [2:13]:They’re converting to orthodoxism, by the way. That’s the form of Christianity.

Simone Collins [2:17]:That you’re... Yeah. We’re gonna talk about this in this episode, but you’re gonna see what she just says about Makes sense. Kim Kardashian here. I’m just gonna... I’ll start playing here. Look.

Malcolm Collins [2:25]:This. But for some, it has migrated from the temple to the auction house. And Kim Kardashian is one of the highest bidders, not to curate history, but to harvest it. She takes Marilyn Monroe’s presidential silk and stretches the seams over her own ribs. She clasps the weight of Elizabeth Taylor’s diamonds around her neck and wrists. She hangs princess Diana’s amethyst cross, a heavy purple relic of royal tragedy against her bare pulse. She even fits Michael Jackson’s fedora still stained with the makeup of a deceased man’s face onto her child. She does not archive these pieces behind museum glass. She doesn’t lock them away. Instead, she wears them as skin. She steps into the literal fabric of the past. She occupies the space left by these icons forcing their history to work for her own image.

Malcolm Collin [3:22]:Is this real? Did she do this?

Simone Collins [3:25]:Well, yes. She does do... These are literal... You weren’t there when she wore Marilyn Monroe’s happy birthday, mister president dress to the Met Gala, and everyone just collectively had a big aneurysm because she stretched out the dress and all the costume historians were like, war crime. and everyone got... But she... And, yeah, she she did buy all those things, and she does wear them. and it’s a... Definitely, you know, this group of people are like, witchcraft. And look. Even in the in the Aztec episode that I talked about, I was talking about how, like, oh, and there’s this other thing. They’re not just worshiping these women. These these these these... With... These TikTok livestreamers aren’t just worshiping La Santa Muerte. Now when they get shot on their livestreams, everyone thinks that their best friends are, destiny swapping with them. Well, guess who else has been accused of destiny swapping? Oh, it’s the glamor witch, Kim Kardashian. They believe that Kim Kardashian has destiny swapped with Paris Hilton, you see, because witchcraft is everywhere. And I can’t get it.

Malcolm Collin [4:20]:Beginnings sort of her life now looks like it’s where Paris Hilton was against

Simone Collins [4:23]:Yeah. The idea is that... No. Destiny swapping is where, like, you want their their destiny as you try to steal it. And so the idea was, well, you know, Paris Hilton did the sex tape. Paris Hilton was famous, and Kim Kardashian wanted to be famous. And then she did the sex tape, and then she just slipped her way into Paris Hilton’s life. Although Paris Hilton is doing great, and I’m so happy for her. And I’m happy for Kim Kardashian. Whatever. I’m happy for all of them. I just want them to be okay.

Malcolm Collin [4:46]:Really? You’re equally... I’m sorry. Paris Hilton has always seemed like a pretty cool person to me. She’s Kim Kardashian.

Simone Collins [4:52]:Kim Kardashian not. Awesome. Kim Kardashian seems fine too to me. She’s She seems fine.

Malcolm Collin [4:58]:Like like, tolerable to be around.

Simone Collins [5:00]:I’m a little bit concerned about her daughter, her oldest daughter. But, anyway, this is an interesting situation.

Malcolm Collin [5:06]:Daughter is the one that she took from her husband and is dressing up in all those crazy outfits? Yeah. That is really concerning.

Simone Collins [5:13]:Yeah. I... I’m I’m worried, but also, like, who knows what’s going on with the shared custody? I’m not gonna judge other people’s lives. People judge our lives and make all sorts of things up. Okay? I’m just gonna... Whatever. The... Here’s the wholesome part of all this. Right? So everywhere I look, witches, witches, it’s all the spells and the witches and the occult, and then everyone’s using tarot cards. But what’s happening when these people who get super into the occult actually start doing some introspecting? They’re converting to Christianity just like we are. And then their their followers and everyone else who just loved their content are... They’re freaking out. So one of the top influencers, Alexandra Ashcroft, who went by Alex Reid’s Tarot, aka at your friend... Firesign bestie, worked as a full time professional tarot reader. She had nearly a million TikTok followers. She got tens of millions of likes. She was even named drop in this Hailey Williams, aka Paramore song. Yeah. It’s called love me different, and this was from her 2025 release called ego death at at a bachelorette party, which is a pretty good... It’s a pretty good name. And the lyric is Alex reads Alex reads tarot reads the s**t out of me, which is a direct reference to her. It’s it’s her whole tag, like, her her handle. so she she built literally, pun intended, a cult following. and her signature move was actually pretty softcore in terms of the whole occult witchcraft thing. It was just to draw a daily tarot card and then invite her followers to set an intention or focus for the day. But then in late June of this year, everything stopped. She posted an announcement video and then nuked all of her content, saying, I don’t know exactly what comes next for me, but what I do know is that Jesus Christ has saved my life, and I can no longer ignore that reality. And she walked away from a 6 figure, probably high 6 figure income stream. It could be... It could have been bigger. And the weirdest thing is that she’s not the only one who’s done so, and I wanted to explore that in this episode because it’s it’s the kind of wholesome part of all this. But I also wanna say this is not a political thing, and one of my favorite things that I discovered when I went down this rabbit hole is that, one, actually, just this morning, I was watching another video about Christian Christian riches. We’re actually gonna talk about Christian witches a little bit later when we talk about conversions away from from the witchcraft. But there are conservative witches, and this includes MAGA witches. And I just have to show you because MAGA witches are... Just as conservative people are super into AI, the one thing that really distinguishes the concern The which is is that they love AI, and you’re about to

Malcolm Collin [8:02]:see why.

Speaker 5 [8:04]:Under the buck full moon, we invoke power.

Speaker 6 [8:06]:A tremendous power, the best.

Speaker 5 [8:08]:The buck full moon rises. Take America back.

Speaker 6 [8:10]:We will win. So much winning.

Simone Collins [8:12]:So much winning.

Speaker 5 [8:14]:The buck full moon is high. It’s time.

Speaker 6 [8:16]:Incredible. What are you going to do?

Speaker 5 [8:18]:I call upon the power of the buck moon.

Speaker 6 [8:20]:Wow. Amazing. Amazing.

Speaker 5 [8:22]:The spell is complete. Look at that buck full moon. It’s magical.

Speaker 6 [8:26]:It’s huge. The biggest and best moon.

Speaker 5 [8:29]:They say it brings good fortune.

Speaker 6 [8:31]:With you, it already has.

Malcolm Collin [8:33]:Aw. They’re like they’re like flirting. Like, what is what is this? I love it. Someone I don’t wanna, like, have a crush. I like this.

Simone Collins [8:44]:This is hilarious. It doesn’t I absolute And

Malcolm Collin [8:47]:if you’re gonna be a witch, just go all the way with it.

Simone Collins [8:50]:How about

Malcolm Collin [8:51]:relationship with the president?

Simone Collins [8:53]:I know. I I 100% agree. So I just wanted to make it clear. This is not a political thing. This is a religion thing. and and the big theme here that I find to be so wholesome is these people who are very well meaning, who get into witchcraft. You know, Alex Reid’s tarot being her thing. She’s just trying to help people set intentions to get what they want done. Right? And she thinks tarot cards will help her, and she wants to help people through tarot. And then she discovers, you know what? Actually, this isn’t this isn’t the solution I thought it was. And so she leaves, and that that is... And she’s not alone. We’re gonna go... We’re gonna start with her example, though. So her whole thing was tarot and astrology and energy work, and and then she deleted her entire catalog. And the the grieving that resulted was super interesting. I’m just gonna go with someone’s reaction, to what to what she did, because it was... You’re... So you’re someone commenting on on her actually....

Speaker 7 [9:46]:Most prominent spiritual creators, Alex Reid’s Tarot, has just announced that she is giving up a tarot and her account to follow religion. Alex announced this news in a TikTok today and has actually wiped her entire account, almost 1,000,000 followers with the exception of this video.

Speaker 2 [10:03]:This will be my final post. I am not going to be offering any more readings or sessions. I’m not going to be creating any more tarot content. And once this account is gone, I will not be returning. I don’t know exactly what comes next for me, but what I do know is that Jesus Christ has saved my life. It was a

Speaker 7 [10:26]:lot of people’s favorite tarot card reader on TikTok, so people are really sad to see this. There’s lots of talk about how this is the second or third major tarot card reader to find religion and leave their tarot card reading behind. There are also some people that speculate maybe she got involved with a boyfriend who was really religious.

Simone Collins [10:44]:Yeah. A lot of a lot of people try to try to cope with that.

Malcolm Collin [10:47]:I don’t think she did from what I have seen.

Simone Collins [10:50]:Yeah. From what you’ve seen. What I thought was was even more telling about kind of what’s unsustainable about the practice that people are playing in was this one reaction of a follower. And the way she describes why she can’t quit her witchcraft, essentially, I think it’s Mad today, for those who saw

Speaker 8 [11:11]:that Alex Reads Tarot is no longer reading tarot, have a couple of things to say. First and foremost, I met Alex briefly when she came on my podcast, and she was so sweet, so kind. I think she is a phenomenal person. She’s given so much to her community over the past few years as a reader, and I totally respect her decision to go off and follow whatever path she deems relevant for her. And I think that she was super respectful and kind and nice in the way that she went about doing it. For those of you that might be old enough to remember, there was a Oracle deck creator named Dorian Virtue. I’m gonna talk that. Everywhere. Okay? This was before there were tons of tarot and Oracle decks, and this woman was popping. Okay? You could not go anywhere without seeing an oracle deck from Dorian Virtue. And one day, this woman came online and basically said, y’all are going to hell. Y’all are communing with the devil, and I’m never touching these decks again. She believed

Simone Collins [11:55]:tarot was actually very nice.

Speaker 8 [11:57]:A religion and made everybody feel awful about it. Okay? And at the time, I was new to spirituality. When Doreen came out guns blazing, I actually felt really nervous. I was like, am I doing something wrong? Should I be listening to what she’s saying? If I use these cards, if I felt this way using her stuff, was it bad? I worried that I was doing something wrong, and I felt super uncertain and really uneasy, and it made me feel kind of sick inside. I was, like, looking up online trying to see what was listed. What was going on? There was this one woman, and she said, listen. Just because Doreen wants to go on her own path, and I’ll say this to you now, just because Alex wants to go on her own path doesn’t mean that you are doing anything wrong by believing in witchcraft or spirituality. Okay? Just because somebody is uncomfortable on the path of witchcraft and tarot and spirituality, a path that is not defined. It’s not clear. It doesn’t have organization. It doesn’t have leaders. You’re really on your own. You’re judged. You are constantly feeling at odds with people that are religious.

Malcolm Collin [12:51]:I make up what

Speaker 8 [12:52]:I They’re... You’re constantly being judged, on the path of spirituality, and it is challenging to live in, alignment with that knowing that you’re constantly being judged and that people think really awful things about you. Even though you know, as somebody that reads tarot or gets tarot readings, you know that what you are doing is not harming anybody. You’re doing something that is providing a real true level of introspection and self awareness. And I know for so many people, hundreds and hundreds of people that I’ve read for in my life as a tarot reader, it has changed lives. It makes people better people. It makes people happier. It makes them more aligned with their soul’s purpose. And for anybody to say that by engaging in those practices, you are doing something negative, you’re doing something that God’s source spirit, the universe, Jesus Christ, whoever would be judgmental of, would smite you for, would condemn you for, I promise you, they are wrong. People that believe that are wrong, and they’re either lying to themselves or they’re lying to you or a little bit of both. Because in no world would you be condemned for doing something to make yourself a better person, and that is also not harming anyone else. So although it may be uncomfortable to see someone you loved and looked up to and really supported for many years decide that this is no longer the path for them, it doesn’t mean that this doesn’t have to be the path for you. Doesn’t It mean that you have to feel like you’ve done something wrong or that you have to make a decision like Alex has. I’ve been seeking. I have gone to religious institutions. I’ve spoken to people. I have prayed. I have worshiped. I have done so many things, and I still come back to witchcraft. I still come back to spirituality because it is the only thing that allows me the autonomy and the power that I need and that I crave and that I know that I’m deserving of as a human being. It is the only spirituality that I have found that shows just as much reverence regardless of gender and identity and sexual orientation, and that is something that is important to me. And I know that it’s something that is important to most of you Easy. Who are also on this path. And I just wanna remind you, you’re doing nothing wrong. And it’s okay that Alex wants to step back. It sucks. She will be missed, and she will always be welcome back if she ever wants to come back to read tarot cards at any point in her life. And if not, that’s perfectly okay too. We wish her the best, and we will still be here reading our tarot cards twenty four seven, baby.

Simone Collins [14:54]:Look. I can sue gives me the power

Malcolm Collin [14:56]:And autonomy

Simone Collins [14:58]:Yeah. I crave. No. If you just replace this with, like, some vice, any vice, gambling, some sort of illicit drug use, you know, it just... It gives me the power I crave. you know, it feels good. but, yeah, I think that that’s that’s she sums up, I think, very well. People’s reaction is, one, oh, it’s nice that this time when someone rejected us, they were respectful about it, and they didn’t attack us for it. but also But I I

Malcolm Collin [15:22]:love the lack of introspection as to whether or not it is actually harmful to her life. Because in my experience, the people who engage in this stuff typically don’t have their lives together. Whereas Yeah. When I look at people of our generation, I I will say the boomer generation had a lot of e religious people who just did not have their lives together, were not actually practicing religious. Right? But when I look at the religious people in our generation, right, generally, they seem to have their lives together at a much higher rate. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And, of course, it makes sense if what you believe is whatever I want to think is true, whatever moral set I want to go with.

Simone Collins [16:03]:Yeah. You’re probably not gonna get too far with anything that’s hard. And as I keep trying to teach our children all the stuff that is good, you have to work really, really hard for it. Like, you’re not gonna

Malcolm Collin [16:14]:get very far. Went over an episode on CSS Lewis’ arguments for why you should believe in God, and I was going through why they were not just bad, but, like, the origin of woke ideology Or what allowed it to so easily infiltrate churches and normalization of these ideas. Yeah. And I think you completely see it why in one of these videos. When he says something like, well, people have genuine... General intuitions around good and evil, and therefore, there must be something behind those intuitions about good and evil, then you’re locking your religion into saying, well, then what is religiously true or what is good and evil for God is what feels good and evil for you. And this is clearly what she believes about religion. She believes her religion because it aligns with her moral intuitions, which is I wanna do x. I’m going to do x. Somebody else wants to do x. How dare you tell me not to do x?

Simone Collins [17:04]:It me the power I crave.

Speaker 6 [17:06]:Yeah. Gives me the power I crave. Yeah. Right?

Simone Collins [17:09]:That’s what really stuck with me. But to your point, and this is exactly the right point, those who have been in this movement and then actually look around and see how their friends in the occult are doing, and then keep looking around and see how their friends who are religiously devout are doing. They’re like, And that is exactly what happened to another of the very prominent conversions, which was Kat Von D, aka Catherine von Draktenberg. She is... If you’re a woman, you know who she is because she she makes, I I would argue, pretty decent makeup. She’s a celebrity tattoo artist, an LA Ink star, and she’s really known for her gothic and occult aesthetic. and she also had tarot collections that were tied to her makeup line. She had witchcraft books. She had... She did spell work. Like, she was in it, like, all the way. And then suddenly, in July ‘22, she discards her occult library, her tarot decks, and then she was baptized in a Baptist church in Indiana in October 2023, but then later entered the Orthodox Church in 2025. and while she didn’t originally... She said that her priest discouraged her from explaining why she converted. When you come to look at her aesthetic

Malcolm Collin [18:29]:Oh, yeah. Gothy witchy woman. Why did she become orthodox?

Simone Collins [18:32]:Yeah. I wonder what’s going on.

Malcolm Collin [18:34]:When you see this this, like, gothy woman’s aesthetic, and then you’re like, she converted to Baptist. When I first heard this, I was like

Simone Collins [18:41]:Yeah. This is her in an orthodox church, and you’re like Probably not gonna last. Your son with the little skull icons on his skull there. That these

Malcolm Collin [18:51]:witches use orthodox imagery. Like, the other witch literally used orthodox imagery of, like, their relic icons and stuff like this Yeah.

Simone Collins [18:59]:As As an example of... Well, it was an example of the power of, like, stressors and

Malcolm Collin [19:04]:crowns and craft. So the... What’s funny is the witches can’t even distinguish orthodox Christianity from spiritualism and witchcraft. Yeah.

Simone Collins [19:14]:But I think the the important thing here, though, is that she found, like, an aesthetic that worked for her, but she also realized, oh, actually, you know... Oh god. I love I love her demonic bathroom so freaking much.

Malcolm Collin [19:25]:She still has it. Yep. It looks pretty cool.

Simone Collins [19:27]:I mean, is demonic. The demonic bathroom even after converting back to

Malcolm Collin [19:30]:one for an orthodox person. Okay? You know what? Yeah. This is what I wanna say, and this is where I have a... An actually pretty strong belief in ecumenicalism around Christianity where when I talk to... Because we... Unfortunately, the Celestium interview, the recording didn’t work, so we’re gonna have to redo

Simone Collins [19:46]:But when I I to talk with her again, though. So it... I’m I’m Yeah.

Malcolm Collin [19:49]:When I talk with, you know, an orthodox person like her, one of the things I always hate when Christians do is when they say Christians believe this or Christians believe this or Christians believe this. And I’m like, well, is it in the bible? And they’re like, no. But it’s what Christians believe. And I’m like, yeah. So what you mean is you’ve been told by somebody that Christians believe this. Like, you’re a local minister or something like this, and you’ve incorporated it into your identity. And now you are using it in a manner that is potentially exclusionary.

Speaker 17 [20:19]:And I want to be clear here. When Christians do this, I think they’re essentially trying to manifest Christianity to be what they want it to be. I don’t think that they actually believe that their their way of interpreting the Bible is the only way of interpreting the Bible. However, when I see other religions do it where it’s even more common specifically is in Buddhism and Mormonism, which, you know, is a form of Christianity, but highly deviant one. Specifically in those two religions, I have frequently brought up things that are just, like, patently and obviously true if you have studied the religious history. Like, in Buddhism, I’m like, oh, yeah. The goal is to end the cycle of suffering and and prevent sentient life from continuing to exist. And people were like, no. That’s not what Buddhism is. And I’m like, you can do a basic search. Like, this is this is sort of the core of the religion . This isn’t some fringe side belief I’m mentioning or within Mormon. It’s when I was talking about elements of the Mormon afterlife. This is more on Leafletstream, not within our own audience or somebody who is very like, no. We do not believe that you continue as a ghost on Earth until the I’m like, no. You do. Like, this is this is the central church’s canon right now. You can, you know, debate around whether or not you can see them or whether there was a strong veil between them and the living, but not whether or not this happens. And they just refuse that because they’re like, I’ve never heard it from my church. And I think that this is also true with the Buddhists who convert. And they’re like, well, I identify as a Buddhist. It’s a minority religion where I live. And because I identify as it, then, therefore, my beliefs define what it means to be Buddhist or to have Buddhist beliefs.

Malcolm Collin [22:03]:And I have things that I believe are true about Christ, about God, about the way the world is structured. And I will say, I believe this about Christianity, but I am okay with sex that believe things about Christianity that I believe are wrong or existing and working with them. Because the reality is is even if I think that Baptists are one of the closest to biblically accurate branches of the Christian tradition, I really like Baptists, generally speaking, this woman was clearly never gonna stay a Baptist.

Simone Collins [22:41]:Yeah. And she talks in one podcast that I I used in my research about how icons just made immediate sense to her as a visual artist and that she first thought that this flat style looked like people before they learned how to draw. And then once she understood them as windows to heaven, she was like, oh my god. This is so cool. Yeah. Like, she needed that. That is that is, like, a way that she makes sense of the world as an artist and as a human. I I call work that way. You don’t work that way. That’s why we need a different type of religious truth.

Malcolm Collin [23:07]:Clearly, when it comes to icons and idolatry, I have argued recently that it is why you still have child sacrifices and cannibalism happening in Mexico. Right? Like Yeah. It is why the Santay Morta court

Simone Collins [23:18]:But it’s also why this witch is no longer a watch. Saying no

Malcolm Collin [23:22]:longer watch. Is the reason why I’m not saying we need to have a crusade against the orthodox in America or we need to have a crusade against Catholicism in America is because if we remove these as options, women like her are going to stay witches. And if we’re talking about the difference between a form of Christianity that allows for icons and living life as a witch, clearly, her life, her children’s life, the life of everyone in our society is going to be better for the fact that she follows the orthodox tradition.

Simone Collins [23:59]:Yeah. And for every

Malcolm Collin [24:02]:person who believes that they are, Catholic and and Catholics can say, well, we don’t. The church has condemned it. I’m like, well, they haven’t condemned it as hard as they’ve condemned SPSX, which is pretty odd. Yeah. Like, it’d be really cool if they could do an inquisition. I I think a lot of people would support that, also target the narcos.

Simone Collins [24:19]:They would love that.

Malcolm Collin [24:20]:Mexicans would love that. Great idea. Anyone in the Vatican say, let’s do an inquisition against, you know

Simone Collins [24:25]:Oh my gosh. It would hold so well. Everyone would love it.

Malcolm Collin [24:28]:Human sacrifices to saints they believe are Catholic. Right? I think even the Wokes would love it. Right?

Simone Collins [24:33]:You know? Everyone would love it. Come on. Let’s go.

Malcolm Collin [24:36]:Oh, no. The Wokes wouldn’t love it because a lot of the Santa Muerte cult is gay or LGBT.

Simone Collins [24:41]:Forgot. Yes. She is... Yes. Santa Muerte, LGBTQ and female icon. This is

Malcolm Collin [24:45]:Some... Antonio is like, oh, a a deity that accepts you no matter who you are because it only cares that you’re gonna die one day. That sounds like maybe not a deity you should be worshiping.

Simone Collins [24:55]:Don’t worship cosmic horror deities. Can we can we just agree on a couple

Malcolm Collin [25:01]:But but the thing is is that for every Catholic who... Or somebody who believes they’re a Catholic who gets involved in these things because there weren’t strict enough policies around, like, icon worship, there are probably 10,000 people who convert because they like the vibe of the giant fancy churches. Right? and they like the the feel of it all. For every, person who... Within the Orthodox tradition may be drawn to it for darker reasons, there are 10,000 women like this or more, a 100,000, maybe half a million people.

Speaker 15 [25:36]:So when I’m against something like idolatry, I want to be clear. I’m not against it because I think it makes a person unchristian. You know, I think a lot of Christians don’t follow the Sabbath as we didn’t for a long time even though it’s very clearly laid out that you’re supposed to. I think it’s it’s something I’m against because if everybody could create restrictions against it, society would be a better place. At the same time, I don’t think that our society that’s structured right now gets a net better if I enforce that upon everyone. I think some people’s path to having a better life travels through iconoclasm, travels through idolatry. And that is the the the world that we live in. You know? If you live in a fallen world, you need to say, okay. Yeah. But if I get rid of all that, how many people are not going to find a way to a better life? And it’s a lot of them. And so that that’s what I mean. I’m like, it is helping people. I do think society would be better if it didn’t exist at all, but think it would be harder to get to that ultimate society from where we are now if it didn’t exist at all.

Malcolm Collin [26:54]:Yeah. Only churches aren’t winning that many converts, that

Simone Collins [26:56]:might be a big number. But Celestium has made me believe that the Orthodox Church has hope for the future. If she and her crew are out there proselytizing in Roblox, alright, they’re gonna be okay.

Malcolm Collin [27:10]:I know. I’ve I’ve met some Orthodox preachers who I really liked, who are fans of the show, apparently. And it’s a it’s a it’s a... It’s... They got rich. They got a cool style. I like it.

Simone Collins [27:21]:Yeah. I think, you know, they’ve they’ve got it going on, and I’m glad that Kat Von D is among them now. And she she ultimately... I mean, first, you know, got baptized, not not into the orthodox church. She switched. But, like, what drove her to this, again, is that she compared her Christian friends, who had light in her words with her cult friends who lived in, quote, drama and dread and gloom and doom, end quote. Her words.

Malcolm Collin [27:45]:Yeah.

Simone Collins [27:45]:The one she had been One of the miserable ones. And she also said that new age practices like tarot and spell work and meditation, nature worship, yoga, all the stuff she was doing had been Band Aids to her and crutches never really solved anything. And what ultimately triggered everything for her, unlike the, you know, year of introspection that Alex Rytero went through was the pandemic. And just kind of sitting alone with her thoughts, and her husband... She and her husband just started talking, and then she started feeling like she was deprogramming, like, actually deprogramming from a cold practices, which is really Well, I

Malcolm Collin [28:20]:think that’s the way it works for a lot of people. And and and I will say, I mean, my one caveat on the orthodox tradition is just make sure you never let them in a funeral home with a bedazzler. Oh my god.

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Simone Collins [28:56]:Okay. Fine. Look. Let’s move on to the one

Malcolm Collin [28:59]:Keep keep the bedazzlers away from them, and and they’re fine. Right? You know, the... So the the... I completely... I I actually wanna focus really quickly on this. What happened to her is she said it was a slow process over the course of the the first one. Alex reached the year.

Simone Collins [29:15]:You’re talking about Alex.

Speaker 2 [29:16]:And with

Malcolm Collin [29:16]:Kat Von D, it also appeared to be a fairly slow process where they begin to become open to the idea first. Like, their hearts had been closed to seriously considering the idea. They then engage with it like the community, and they begin to build the intellectual scaffolding to believe it. This is why I think it is so important to have standards at the community to be like, we can say this is a sin without being overly aggressive to the people who practice it because they then will not, like, put up strong barriers between themselves and that community. A good example of this could even be us. Like, people can be like, why are your barriers with Catholicism so difficult for you guys to break down? And it’s certainly a part of my prejudice here is that Catholics say that it is a sin for my children to be alive. Right? They say that IVF is a sin. The technology shouldn’t exist. If they had power, they wouldn’t have it be legal in The United States. And, that is saying that my five children shouldn’t exist. And that is something that isn’t like a small thing. It’s like... It’s it’s a much bigger thing than even being a gay man in a happily gay married relationship and somebody is saying, you can’t continue that. Right? Like, not just that’s a sin, but that shouldn’t be allowed to exist. Right? You are going to have a very hard time ever putting down your boundaries around that because those are my kids’ lives. Right? Like, obviously.

Speaker 14 [30:50]:And this is where something like when we’re talking about Celestium, she’s like, well, you know, I I lapsed from following all the stuff I was supposed to in the bible because it was difficult for me or because I just lacked the willpower to do it. And when it comes to something like the lives of my children, I just don’t think it falls into that category at all. I was specifically recently talking about IVF with Knox. I was surprised to learn that he also supports it. And I just looked to the Maimonides line. So Maimonides had argued that it’s okay to have an abortion if the mother’s life at risk for the same reason. It’s illegal to fight for your own life if somebody’s attempting to kill you. And you could say, well, it’s not the child’s fault that it’s attempting to kill you or that it’s doing something that could kill you. In which case, I would push back to say it doesn’t matter. Right? Like, it doesn’t matter that some of my kids who may not have died end up dying so that kids who wouldn’t have existed had those kids not died can come into existence and live full lives. That’s one of those things where it’s like, yeah, that is worse, of risk to a yeah. If you if you say life begin to conception, a young child’s life, if neither they nor the other children who had brought into existence would come into existence if you didn’t put them at that risk in the same way that anybody who attempts to conceive a child knows that there is, what is it, like, a twenty five percent chance that it doesn’t take, I I I think, or twenty percent chance that it doesn’t take, in the in the early days. that’s something that anyone is putting any conceived blastocyst at risk of.

Speaker 18 [32:41]:And you can say, well, god wouldn’t approve of that, but the Bible is littered with places where god kills seemingly innocent people. And the best answer we have to that, it it is so that more potential people could live good lives in the future for the net effect it would have on people’s lives. You know, whether it is David’s kid who god kills in punishment for David’s infidelity or the Egyptian children, It it’s something that repeatedly happens. And so I can only interpret that this is the way that God judges morality.

Malcolm Collin [33:16]:and I think finding better ways to approach things like this, is where you are going to get people to be like, okay. I actually feel comfortable engaging with this community enough so that I can begin to build scaffolding that genuinely incorporates it.

Simone Collins [33:35]:Fair. So the person that that... Whose conversion journey of the witching community that I found to be most interesting was the one who was referenced in that cope video that I showed you of the person who’s talking about Alex Reid’s tarot leaving Doreen Virtue, the one who tried to shame everyone, who didn’t just nuke all of her stuff online, but was like, no, you guys. This is super wrong. She, I think, had the biggest impact with her deconversion, within the community because she was the longest established. She was one of the world’s best selling new age authors. She created dozens of angel and oracle card decks that were used a lot like tarot. So people were using her stuff in their practice and then posting about it as well. She taught channeling. She taught mediumship. She mixed Christian language as well with the occult practice for decades. And and she’s among those Christian tarot people, which is interesting. She was baptized in 2017, and she spent the years publicly repudiating her old work after she got baptized, telling people to not use her cards. So I think the other thing too is it hurt more because people really liked her cards. They’ve incorporated their cards into their lifestyles. And then here she is saying, no, man. That’s evil. Like, the thing you like is really, really bad. So she... We were just talking about this actually in in... When we recorded an episode on reasons why people converted. And I was telling Malcolm how... I’ve heard from many people personally that their conversion experience had to do with the vision, which I would never trust. But look. She was a witch. She did mediumship. She trusted this Sorry.

Malcolm Collin [35:13]:Just for context for people, the reason why Simone nor I would trust the vision is we are well aware from a medical context that people have hallucinations all the time. Right? Like Yeah. Apparently... And I do believe she likely had something even if she’s completely culpable for what we did. You know, Lindsay Clancy had a hallucination that she was supposed to kill her kids. Right? Like, just because you hear somebody talking to you or you see a vision doesn’t mean you

Simone Collins [35:38]:should don’t do it. Go out

Malcolm Collin [35:40]:and do the thing. I’d be like

Simone Collins [35:42]:If you as as your profession are, like, a witch in a medium and you’re supposed to let spirits communicate with you and you had a kind of vision like this, you would probably take it really seriously. And she had a vision of Jesus in an Episcopal church in January 2017, so before she got baptized. And she said that that experience completely changed her. And then also... And this is the most important part. This is what it would have convinced me if I were her is that she read Deuteronomy eighteen ten to 12, which is the prohibition of divination and fortune telling and witchcraft and consulting the dead, like, her entire career. and that was the ultimate decisive moment for her, which I appreciate. And I think that it’s interesting that there are all these people who are Christian and are like, no. Witchcraft is okay. You can be a devout Christian and a witch and and, like, read tarot. And and then they just they just hadn’t gotten around, I guess, to reading the bible. Well, it appreciate

Malcolm Collin [36:40]:that she didn’t recontextualize themselves as prophets.

Simone Collins [36:45]:No. Because right when when it says that, it’s also like... It it... The part of the bible that’s like witchcraft bad, divination bad, is then like, but the prophets are important. And I think the kind of insinuation is, girl, you... You’re not a prophet. I I think I appreciate that during virtue was like, okay. The confidence somebody has hurts to read this. This is my entire career. It’s wrong, and it’s gonna be incredibly painful to tell all of the people who are my fans, who are extremely invested in this entire lifestyle that I was wrong and that they should not do this, but she did it. And and so, you know, Alex reads tarot, did the very least you could do. She just stepped back and and she nuked her content. I guess she could have chosen to not nuke her content, but she did take the easy way out of just being like, personal choice. I’m not judging you. I think Doreen Virtue did the most virtuous thing, which is I was wrong. You need to stop this. This is bad.

Malcolm Collin [37:52]:Well, I mean, and that’s what we did with atheism.

Simone Collins [37:55]:Yeah. But I think it’s harder because our career wasn’t, god is not real. Don’t be... You know, like, that... We didn’t make money from it. We were best selling out. Community, kinda. Not really. No. No. We didn’t make money from telling people religion is bad. Don’t do it. Whereas she she did, and she genuinely believed as well that she was a Christian doing God’s work through angels with all this. So it it must have really hurt. and she said that that passage lifted the veil, and she fell to her knees immediately and repented and gave her life to Jesus. And I I appreciate that. I Sorry. What passage? The Deuteronomy eighteen ten to 12.

Malcolm Collin [38:36]:Oh, you mean the the condemnment passage? The... It wasn’t like any positive thing. It was just like, this is bad. And she’s like, I didn’t know.

Simone Collins [38:42]:And she was like, oops. Like, no one told her, I guess. And before that, she, like, again, literally thought that she was a Christian doing god’s work and that the angels were helping her. And she just This

Speaker 2 [38:54]:is this is one of those

Malcolm Collin [38:55]:things where... I mean, like, this is really clear in, like, Deuteronomy, and yet there’s a lot of Jews who, like, know their stuff, like, the the the the Balshems who practiced all this stuff. Right? Like...

Speaker 2 [39:05]:They were like There’s a lot

Simone Collins [39:07]:of stuff. Okay? When I went and I looked at how long the bible was in terms of, like, the audiobook of the... How long is it? Of the Old Testament alone, just the Old Testament. I’m pulling it up here. It’s kind of ridiculous, and there’s there’s so much detail in there. Look. You could read it every day again and again over a lifetime, and you would not... The holy bible, King James version Shall be thine. I’ve got seventy one hours and five minutes left. Come on, man. Like, this is hard. This is hard. Okay? I... I’m not ready for this. It’s... I’m trying. I haven’t... Everyone’s like, oh, you have to get to the New Testament. I’m like, I only get to listen to audiobooks when I’m cleaning things and falling asleep, and the kids aren’t asking for anything. This is gonna take a while. It’s got, like, fifteen minutes a day. Anyway, this is why we need the Sabbath, obviously, and we’re Yeah. Yeah. You can

Malcolm Collin [40:05]:just sit sit... Which, by the way, we’re gonna start. This this Friday, we’re gonna be starting. I don’t wanna.

Simone Collins [40:13]:But I have to. The ten commandments are Yes. We’re gonna believe it if god wrote it. We got it. And we have to honor our parents, and I have to not blaspheme. Although I I was looking at blaspheming more, and it’s more like treating god flippantly. So being like, oh my god. If something were really, really serious, which is normally when I’m saying that, it’s maybe not blaspheming. I gotta look into this more. Look. We’re we’re trying. We’re trying just like Doreen Virtue. Okay? But, anyway, it’s... I think it’s great she converted. I think it’s great that she’s shaming them even though they’d be coping. and here’s the interesting thing, though. There isn’t really a lot of the inverse existing. You you don’t see prominent Christian religious influencers Yeah. Who are turning to witchcraft. Are they deconstructing sometimes? Absolutely. But mostly what I see them deconstructing from... Because I like to follow Fundy Snark. Okay? I love to follow the gleeful analysis of the ex Mormons and and the the FundeSnark people going through the deconstruction experiences of Christian influencers. Most of those people’s gripes are not actually with, like, god or the 10 commandments at all. It’s more with, like, this particular church in which they were raised, which I agree is equally... I I agree it’s problematic, and I agree that that church needs to fix its ways. so I’m kinda with them on that. I think the deconstruction is very productive that we see among Christian influencers. But, no, there are lots of people who are, like, raised evangelical or conservative Christian who leave the church and pick up tarot, astrology, or witchcraft. Religion News Service profiled this in 2025 with practitioners like Kevin Garcia and Elliot Adam and Charlie Clare Burgess. They described tarot as this way to rebuild spirituality after bad religion. I totally believe... I... One, I don’t think they were actually really Christian to believe with. I believe that they were raised in weak Christian traditions that never won their souls or their faith in the first place. I think that happened with a lot of people, and I think it’s important that these churches pay attention when they see this happening.

Speaker 8 [42:18]:And it means that

Simone Collins [42:19]:they need to do better and tend to their own flock better.

Malcolm Collin [42:23]:Well, strengthen your tradition. I mean, I really think that this needs to be the number one thing. You you you just saying, well, this is the way it’s always worked for us, and it’s like, well, I mean, it’s clearly not working for this generation for any of the mainstream Christian denominations except for the charismatics, which are f*****g crazy and and not good. I I want to be clear. Like, as much as I rag on Catholics in this, I I I actually think the charismatics are a much more dangerous group.

Simone Collins [42:47]:no. Honestly, yeah. If someone in the comments was like, why would you compare Pentecostals to witchcraft? We condemn witchcraft.

Speaker 9 [42:59]:And you when you say something like I’ve condemned witchcraft or we condemn witchcraft, it really has the same vibe as when a Catholic or an Orthodox from your perspective says, well, we condemn idolatry. And you’re like, well, what’s that? And they go, oh, that’s an icon. And you’re like, okay. So you just changed around definitions.

Simone Collins [43:19]:And I’m like, okay, dude. One, like, the stuff that I see happening within the walls of a Pentecostal church makes this softcore Reed’s tarot set an intention for the day after looking at a tarot card stuff looks just, like, downright pious.

Speaker 20 [43:51]:So for context on what we mean by this, if you go to books like Frank Ponduras Modern Spiritualism in nineteen o two, we see that a phenomenon very similar to the Pentecostal speaking in tongues of today was very common among spiritualists of the eighteen fifties to nineteen hundreds. however, if you go to the early Pentecostal movement, what they meant by speaking in tongues and we can see this in things like AA Bodhi’s British paper confidence in May nineteen o eight, or from Charles Parham is they thought that god would give them the ability to speak in other languages to preach to people outside of The United States. like, in one case, a guy went all the way to India because he thought that he’d be able to speak Indian. and it didn’t work, and it created a lot of disappointment in the early Pentecostal movement. And then they redefined it as basically whatever those spiritualists were doing. For some other instances of this, you have things like the word of faith or private confession. The idea that spoken words of faith create or guarantee health and wealth and that revelation knowledge overrides since knowledge, traces largely to e w Kenoy, 1867 to 1948. Kenoy observes the ideas from the new thought movement, specifically Finis Quimby and the broader mind science metaphysical movement of the eighteen hundreds and nineteen hundreds. These teachings later flowed into the Pentecostal and charismatic circles via Kenneth Hagin and others. This this is basically manifesting. it’s something that you see within some Pentecostal movements that looks a lot like the manifesting you see from, like, the book what’s it called? The secret that, like, Oprah used to promote and stuff like this, which is just straight up new age spiritualism ported into Christianity. Or you have things like slain in the spirit. This became a signature of Mariah Woodworth’s eta, the trans evangelist of the eighteen eighties to nineteen twenties, and later healing evangelist. People collapsed, intertranslate states, or lay unconscious for hours. This is not something you see in scripture at all. You see in scripture people falling over, when they encounter God or angels, but not at worship services. but it is something we see pretty extensively in the spiritualist movement, and in the this sort of proto witchcraft movements that were appearing during the late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds.

Speaker 21 [46:18]:So to be clear here, we don’t think that Pentecostals believe that they are practicing witchcraft, What I’d say is they picked up practices, without knowing. This is something we see throughout the Bible. Even in the temple, we see Canaanite gods beginning to appear at periods, and they had to be cleared out. The the to accidentally pick up practices from people who are around you is a normal thing and is something that we are supposed to be ever vigilant of.

Simone Collins [46:48]:It it it it bothers me so much that they are using these these these tricks to make people feel as though they’re having deeply felt spiritual experiences without actually studying scripture, without actually doing hard things. Sorry. No. It’s it’s worse.

Malcolm Collin [47:06]:She... Wait. So the reason here... And, really, we do need to differentiate it the same way that we like, some Catholic groups

Simone Collins [47:11]:pretty darn ambiguously like Go

Malcolm Collin [47:13]:ahead. Fix

Simone Collins [47:13]:it. Yes.

Malcolm Collin [47:14]:And and just like others, like the Jesuits within the You’re Jesuits. Community. The charismatic Pentecostal are the ones we have a problem with, but the charismatic Pentecostals more so than other communities. In the same way where I can be like, well, the Vatican is the head of your movement, Catholics, and it’s really bad. With the Pentecostal movement, the charismatic part of the Pentecostal movement is the part that’s growing really fast and that makes up the majority of the movement at this point. and the the And when I hear charismatic,

Simone Collins [47:42]:I hear I’m using shortcuts instead of doing actually difficult things to feel like I’m having

Malcolm Collin [47:48]:a hard religious experiment. They simply define as not magic. They’re like, well, putting hands on isn’t magic or doing these spells isn’t magic crap. Or

Simone Collins [47:58]:Oh, no.

Malcolm Collin [47:59]:Well, they’ll say, oh, we see it in parts of the bible. And it’s one of those things where it’s like, yeah, but the iteration of it that you are practicing doesn’t come straight from the bible. It comes from the nineteen twenty spiritualist movement.

Speaker 6 [48:13]:Yeah.

Malcolm Collin [48:13]:And then was incorporated in Christianity, and then somebody saw a line in the bible that they were able to use to justify a type of magic that had been honed for a long time by just straight up, Wiccans and stuff like that. Well, the Wiccans didn’t exist during that period, but but their predecessors, the Siobhanists What was that guy’s name?

Speaker 13 [48:31]:And note here, what we are not saying is we are not saying that they are not Christians. We are not saying that they are not trying to be Christians. We are not saying that they don’t look to the Bible for justification. We are saying that we disagree with their practices, and we think other traditions have seeped in in the same way that somebody could say of us, oh, you guys have allowed atheism to seep into your religion or agnosticism. But it would be dishonest for us to say that they are not attempting to be Christians in their own way and do not define themselves as Christians. Typically, I take people on the way they define themselves, like above where I said I think Mormons are Christians. And I think that it’s important that we do that when we are talking about what criticisms we have of other movements because it’s the quickest way to get them to stop listening to you when you say, oh, well, this isn’t even Christianity or this is paganism. As apparently, when we’re talking with Celestium, a lot of people say of iconography in or a lot of people say of icons in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. They’re just like, this is pagan. I’m like, no. It’s not pagan. It has elements that God appears to disapprove of from my interpretation of the Bible, but that is my interpretation.

Simone Collins [49:55]:Creepy guy. Whatever. The the people, by the way, all the all the Crawley. Crawley. Alexander Crawley. Alexander Crawley. The witches love him, by the way. The modern witches. They’re like, oh, he was... You know, I followed his work. Blah blah blah. Anyway And It’s all connected. Do do your homework. But... Yeah. No. Pet... Baby witches. They... They’re worse, again, than I would argue many of the so called witches on on Witch Talk. So

Malcolm Collin [50:23]:of the fascinating things that I want to take a moment to sort of dig into on this Okay. Is where... So within Christianity, you have parts of Christianity that have become significantly porous towards this stuff because they have been able to find correlates that look sort of like it in parts of the bible. and this is... Well, this is what we’re seeing with the charismatic pentecostals.

Simone Collins [50:45]:Pentecostals. Oh, Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collin [50:46]:But where they’re they’re practicing stuff that that looks like and often had its org... Origins in the spiritualist movement and then was incorporated and sort of whitewashed or laundered into the Christian movement using, you know, one off versus here and there, missing the wider point of, like, you you should be suspicious enough about this stuff that you just shouldn’t be engaged with it. But this is this is still rare within the wider Christian movement. But within the Jewish movement, it’s been much more poorest to individuals who want to engage in serious mysticism or serious witch like practices, the things that we would think of as witch like practices. Yeah. You know, spells, talking to the dead, doing sorts of...

Speaker 16 [51:33]:And, obviously, this is offensive for me to say for our Jewish viewers, but in the same way where I would say that a Catholic icon or an Orthodox icon is idolatry from my reading, and they would say it’s not idolatry from their reading, we define it as something different than idolatry. Or a Pentecostal charismatic will say, well, this isn’t witchcraft because we call it, putting on hand or or whatever they wanna call it. Right? And I’m like, well, it it seems to be what is outlined as witchcraft within the bible. You will get things in the Jewish tradition, like when I talked about speaking with the dead. In the Jewish tradition, you have something called, are petitionary prayers or notes, which are written for dead individuals who are supposed to intercede on your behalf with God. This is not, like, a super rare or fringe thing, and yet it is strictly said that you are not allowed to talk to the dead. And they’re like, well, technically, this isn’t, you know, because of x, y, and z. in the same way that, you know, within Judaism, you get a lot of, well, technically, I I’m not showing my hair because I’m wearing a wig. And that works within Judaism, but that wouldn’t work within most other religions That derives themselves from warnings around the warnings that we get in things like Deuteronomy.

Malcolm Collin [52:54]:Well, as I pointed out to Simone... And and, again, this really sucks for Juice that this happened. But when the people who created what we today call witchcraft were creating witchcraft, their primary source, in many cases, was the Kabbalah. and so if you have, as I did when I was younger, studied witchcraft because I hung out with, like, the artsy kids in school and everything like that, and I wanted to get laid, and that meant you had to know your basics on witchcraft. Right? Yeah.

Simone Collins [53:23]:Yeah.

Malcolm Collin [53:23]:And and so I remember the first time because I I I then studied Kabbalism later, and I opened it up. And I was like, uh-oh. Uh-oh. I recognize all of these diagrams. I had to memorize these at one point.

Simone Collins [53:38]:Yeah. Actually, yeah, you you made me look them up on another episode, and they’re like, exactly the same.

Malcolm Collin [53:43]:Yeah. You were like you were like, come on. Kabbalism can’t look that witchy.

Simone Collins [53:47]:No. That was wrong. Open up open up

Malcolm Collin [53:49]:a thing on your screen here, and do a a Google image search for, I guess, like, Kabbalism diagrams. Okay.

Simone Collins [53:59]:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collin [54:01]:But but what it means what... Do you get the weirdest default Google image searches every time you open this?

Simone Collins [54:09]:Well, it knows that I like weird costumes. So Right. Like, I

Malcolm Collin [54:14]:think a normal person, they see this stuff, and they’re like, oh, that looks a lot like Wiccanism. And it does in part because Wiccanism borrowed from it. But it is also clearly very much a a a spiritualist.

Simone Collins [54:28]:Yeah. Well, what if I just switched out Wiccan? Okay. Look at look up. Okay. There’s more stars. But look. There’s there’s a... Oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Yeah. It’s true. What’s this derpy looking one? Oh, bless you. Oh, it must be some kind of... No. I don’t know what you are. Anyway, sorry. I’m I’m getting... No. I’m getting distracted. She’s You’re getting distracted. She’s stopping.

Malcolm Collin [54:51]:The point being is is the religion has moved in a direction where it is significantly less hostile to these types of things.

Simone Collins [55:01]:Well... But, I mean, just going back to the original video that I showed you, it also shows how that... You know, it’s not just Judaism. It’s not just Pentecostalism. It’s also Orthodox Jews looking looking back at this.

Malcolm Collins [55:13]:You can

Simone Collins [55:13]:see that that part where they they pointed just like, what is this? What is this? She’s just like, she’s using

Malcolm Collin [55:20]:That’s that’s that’s Orthodox Christians.

Malcolm Collins [55:22]:Manifest. A saint’s bone was a piece of the divine.

Simone Collins [55:26]:She’s like using Christianity as her example.

Malcolm Collins [55:29]:Lives it took and the hands that held it. No. Energy lingers in material

Simone Collins [55:34]:to touch the celestial text.

Malcolm Collin [55:36]:Believer

Simone Collins [55:36]:of the evil churches. It’s obviously powerful.

Malcolm Collins [55:38]:This is the foundation of sympathetic magic, the occult belief that essence clings to matter and that identity can be transferred through a physical link.

Simone Collins [55:46]:Christians, you’re making as much as do

Malcolm Collin [55:47]:this ancient note that, like, you literally get that within many schools of of the the way icons are treated within

Simone Collins [55:55]:the I I have a big problem with that. I I see this, and I’m like, this is this is what the bad guys worship. Okay? This not this not good this not good guy thing.

Malcolm Collin [56:04]:I would say I appreciate your guy. That we don’t see people leaving to go into it. We are not seeing, but it’s... Perhaps it’s not surprising because of the percentage of the world population, many people moving from witchcraft back into Judaism. But I just don’t think it’s it’s as easy to pull a Jew who wants to practice these types of things out of their religion. Well, actually, here’s the thing. Witchcraft is mostly women. And in Judaism, even today, the things that are like witchcraft are, like Practice very restricted for women. Yeah. Primarily men. Yeah.

Simone Collins [56:37]:Which is It’s the mermen of At least

Malcolm Collin [56:39]:that Judaism got right, which is what... If if you’re gonna play with this stuff, at the very least, don’t let women touch it. Oh, for because they go crazy.

Malcolm Collins [56:49]:They have

Simone Collins [56:50]:I don’t know. No. No. Here’s my argument. They’re actually... You... The women should practice it because they’re very feckless with it. And the point that someone had made to us as well is that, look. Like, the witch trials prove that there were not any effective female witches. Because if there were, you would see all the witch hunters, like, you know, hanging from their toenails from a tree or something. Like, you know, their their head’s shrunk into the size of a small apple or whatever. And, like, yes. That’s true. Actually, it appears to be that the witches were extremely feckless because nothing happened to the people who are trying to

Malcolm Collin [57:23]:And to take a moment to understand why this is so damaging, we’ve talked about it before, but I think it is worth elucidating here really quickly. Witchcraft and mysticism and spiritualism don’t need to be real to be dangerous. Oh, yeah. Even if they are not real, what they allow you to do is to create metaphysical and world frameworks that are not externally testable and interactable with. Well, it’s a lot

Simone Collins [57:52]:like the urban monoculture allows you to believe and think whatever you want to believe and think. And you feel like you have power when you don’t.

Malcolm Collin [57:57]:But when you’re doing that, not just around your own identity, but around the metaphysical framework that the world works on with physics and the way reality functions, what it means ends up happening is when you build a community, the beliefs that dominate... Because if two people disagree, I think a spell is done this way. I think a spell is done this way. the person who wins that debate is simply the person who’s able to be more charismatic and draw the larger crowd or be more convincing in the way that they’re making, some sort of argument based on, like, a a shared framework. And this can absolutely spin out of control to extreme beliefs that have no efficaciousness in reality and do nothing but damage the community that’s holding them and the individuals that hold them. If you look at many longtime mystics, how do they look? And this can be whether that mystic is somebody of a Christian tradition that has allowed this stuff to infect them or it has been somebody outside the Christian tradition. You imagine somebody who is unkempt, somebody who is dirty, somebody who doesn’t have real... Who really have their life together, has a long ugly beard and probably smells bad. Right? Like, the same with the witchy women. engaging with this stuff appears to hurt your mental health, daily life, and ability to communicate. And the longer somebody engages with it, because I’ve seen this happen to people, I used to perhaps overly derogatory use the word kabbalah brain for these types of people, but I had trouble communicating with them because they, had delved so deep into mysticism. And I see this just as much with Christian... Charismatic Christians, so it is unfair to just say it happens with Jews or or other groups. That they appear to be able to hold the logical chains of if then thoughts because they have lived in a community for so long that was just like whatever is working best. And I will note here, if a charismatic Christian, like, faith healing worked and stuff like that, there would be a lot of very wealthy people going to them to be healed, because there are wealthy people who will go to anything that appears to work. That’s one of the things with a lot of these forms of magics or movements. If it was really that effective, it would be more commercialized and not in an overtly scammy way as we’ve seen with the charismatic Christian community.

Simone Collins [1:00:15]:Here’s the good thing, though, is that a lot of people are realizing this when they just kind of look around and they’re like, this isn’t working. I think in the... In a very similar way to people realizing, like, I woke woke one was crazy. I think a lot of people are realizing, look. This is not this is not working. It’s not smart, and they changed their ways. I have to go get the kids, so I gotta run.

Malcolm Collin [1:00:36]:I absolutely love you. I hope this

Simone Collins [1:00:37]:was a wholesome version of women are terrible because sometimes women realize that they made a mistake.

Malcolm Collin [1:00:43]:Stressed all day for making a mistake in yesterday’s episode. I did the horrible thing where I spent a week, you know, saying Catholics... There’s some people who identify as Catholics in Mexico who are murdering people for saints that they believe are saints, and are killing babies.

Simone Collins [1:00:58]:Death gods. For Aztec death gods.

Malcolm Collin [1:01:01]:Come on. Worst thing I could say, which has me so deeply embarrassed, which was that C. S. Lewis was a Catholic. And I am so sorry. I unfairly, libelously said that. I was so embarrassed that for the first time we took down an episode midway, which is really gonna hurt us in the algo. It, like, wipes out, like, a week’s worth in gains, but whatever. I I cannot let that slander lie on our channel because when I want to be bigoted, I want to be bigoted in a a a scientific and accurate way. You know, we need to move with a world where we can notice things, but move... Living in that world means you can’t notice wrong things, like believing that CS Lewis would have

Simone Collins [1:01:41]:If you have it within your heart to maybe like this video for us, subscribe if you’re not subscribed. We would really

Malcolm Collin [1:01:48]:Check out our weekend videos. We might have some fun ones coming up.

Simone Collins [1:01:50]:Oh, yeah. But that... You would have to pay for those.

Malcolm Collin [1:01:53]:Oh, yeah. You don’t have to pay

Simone Collins [1:01:54]:for Actually, I think there’s a free trial either on Patreon or Substack. So check them out.

Malcolm Collin [1:01:58]:And just download them all? Okay. Well, whatever.

Simone Collins [1:02:00]:Think... No. Not... What? No. Just watch. Just binge. Choose the good ones. If you don’t like the good ones, then you won’t like the other ones anyway. So... Yeah. Anyway, we’ve been saving a lot of good stuff for weekends lately. So wanna I don’t know of that.

Malcolm Collin [1:02:13]:Maybe. I love you.

Simone Collins [1:02:14]:No. Recently, you’ve been like, but I wanted to run that on a weekday. And I’m like, no. Yeah. The one about the

Malcolm Collin [1:02:18]:CIA stuff. Really get black people addicted to crack? That was very interesting.

Simone Collins [1:02:21]:Forgot. That one I thought. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We gotta go. I love you.

Malcolm Collin [1:02:26]:Bye. Bye. Oh, what am I eating?

Simone Collins [1:02:30]:You can have gyozalodon. Yeah. You can have your leftover soup, or you can have pasta with pesto. You can have a grilled cheese sandwich. You can... Oh, I might not have white bread. Yep. So never mind on that. You can have

Malcolm Collin [1:02:40]:Oh, do we have do we have the stuff that you would need to make a quesadilla?

Simone Collins [1:02:47]:Maybe. I also have those taquitos you bought from Trader Joe’s that are frozen if you just want the

Malcolm Collin [1:02:51]:Oh, let’s try taquitos.

Speaker 5 [1:02:52]:Taquitos.

Simone Collins [1:02:53]:Okay. Love you. I love you. Ciao. Ciao.

Speaker 19 [1:03:01]:maybe you should ask it where it took Octavian. He says that Octavian’s, having fun with his new virtual family. Oh. His AI family. He he has an AI brother called Torsten too.