Are You a Christian Witch? Welcome to the Coven

With All Hallows’ Day — also known as All Saints’ Day — just behind us, an interesting thought came to mind. There’s something about this time of year, the thinning veil between worlds during Samhain (Halloween or All Hallows’ Eve), that draws attention to the interplay between the old and the new, the pagan and the Christian. It’s a liminal space — a moment to reflect on cycles, ancestors, and the sacred mysteries that live in both shadow and light.

It made me think: many people believe that Christianity and witchcraft can’t coexist. That you must choose one path and reject the other. But for those of us who walk as Christian witches, this dichotomy has always been a false choice. You can honor saints and light candles to Mary, while also casting a circle on the new moon. Both can exist in the same spiritual life — just as they have for generations.

Spirituality has never been a straight line. It’s a tapestry, woven from threads of faith, intuition, ancestry, and lived experience. And if your weave includes both crosses and candles, Psalms and sigils — that’s not confusion. That’s coherence. It’s a living dialogue between the divine and the human, the sacred and the self.

For some of us, that dialogue has always included both Christianity and witchcraft. Christian witches are not a new phenomenon. They’ve been here — quietly blending prayer with spellwork, rosaries with moon rituals, scripture with candlelight — for generations. What is new, though, is the rising chorus of voices insisting that spirituality must be an either-or choice. That you can’t walk with Jesus and work with herbs. That the Church and the circle can’t share the same soul.

But here’s the thing: they always have.

Long before labels divided believers and witches, Christian mystics, healers, and wise folk were already doing both — praying to God while whispering blessings over the sick, invoking saints while tending to the spirits of the land. The line between “miracle” and “magic” was never as clear as history tried to make it. Both arise from the same deep longing: to touch the divine, to participate in creation rather than just witness it.

Witchcraft is an inclusive path — or should be.

At its core, witchcraft is not a religion. It’s a practice — a way of working with energy, intention, and nature’s rhythms. It’s about reclaiming personal agency, listening to intuition, and honouring life in all its sacred messiness. That means it can be — and should be — inclusive.

Witchcraft can sit beside Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or no religion at all. It doesn’t demand that you abandon your roots; it simply asks you to live your spirituality authentically. If Jesus is part of your practice, so be it. If you pray to Mary, light candles to the saints, and still cast a circle on the new moon — that’s your truth.

In fact, our ancestors have been combining it for hundreds of years.

The Alpine art of blending faith and folklore

Some examples from my home country? Up in the Swiss Alps, Christianity and older earth-based practices have coexisted for centuries — sometimes in tension, often in harmony. Many local traditions still bear witness to this beautiful in-between space.

• Chalandamarz (celebrated in Graubünden on 1 March) sees villagers, especially children, ring bells and crack whips to chase away winter spirits and welcome spring. It’s officially linked to the Christian calendar — yet its roots go back to pagan fertility and purification rites.

  
  

• During Klausjagen in Küssnacht, held on the eve of St. Nicholas Day, locals parade through the streets with torches, horns, and giant paper mitres. While now tied to St. Nicholas, the ritual stems from older “spirit-chasing” customs meant to drive away darkness and call in renewal.

  
  

• And then there’s the Betruf, or Alpine prayer call — still performed in parts of Central Switzerland. At dusk, herders stand in the fields and chant blessings to God, Mary, and the saints, asking protection over cattle and humans alike. But they also call out to the mountains, winds, and spirits of the land — blending Christian devotion with a deeply animistic awareness of nature.

  
  

Not to mention all the traditions we do have around Christmas time and easter, many of them date back to pre-christian times and have been included into a Christian world view. These traditions remind us that the blending of spiritual paths isn’t rebellion — it’s heritage. Our ancestors didn’t draw hard lines between the sacred and the magical. They lived close to the earth, and their faith reflected that intimacy with life, weather, and spirit.

Why do people fear dual faith paths?

From a psychological point of view, humans tend to crave certainty and clear categories — especially when it comes to belief. Religion gives structure and belonging, and anything that blurs those boundaries — for instance a personal spiritual path — can feel threatening to both identity and authority.

Throughout history, institutions tried to simplify complex human experiences into clear hierarchies: holy vs. heretical, sacred vs. profane. But that’s not how the soul works. Spirituality is fluid — and if it is truly free from dogma and hunger for power, it evolves as we evolve.

When we embrace a dual or blended path, we’re doing something psychologically integrative. We’re acknowledging that faith and intuition, reason and ritual, structure and freedom — all can coexist within us. This integration is actually healthy. It allows us to stay rooted in tradition while adapting to modern life — something our nervous systems and psyches deeply need.

In a world that often feels divided, fragmented, and disconnected, the ability to hold multiple truths at once is a form of spiritual resilience.

You don’t need anyone’s permission to belong.

There will always be voices — both from the Church and the occult community — that tell you, you can’t be both. That you have to pick a side. But those are the same voices that fear nuance. That fear freedom.

The beauty of modern witchcraft is that it’s rooted in autonomy — in the right to define your own spiritual path. You don’t need an institution’s approval to connect with the divine. You don’t need to choose between prayer and spellwork. You are allowed to find the sacred in both.

Now here is where it can get tricky, because we all want to belong so much, don't we? And walking your own spiritual path might sometimes feel as if there is no one else. But that is not true, we are all connected, even with different paths. So, to all the Christian witches out there — the ones who find God in the sunrise and magic in the Psalms — welcome to the coven. You belong here.

You are not breaking a boundary. You are standing in a lineage of blending — one that stretches from mountain valleys and moonlit chapels to the crossroads of today’s modern world. Because real magic happens when we stop letting others dictate how we connect with the divine — and start listening to the sacred spark within ourselves.

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Editor's note:

If you have been reading "The Urban Mystic" for some time, you certainly also came across articles questioning, critising and simply contraticting the Christian insitution. So, we need to be clear on one thing here: When I write critically about Christianity, I’m not questioning faith itself. My reflections address the institutional structures that have, for centuries, used fear, guilt, and hierarchy to control believers and suppress spiritual autonomy. Meaning, my words are never a rebellion against faith — they’re a reclamation of it. What I resist is not belief, but the fear-based systems that taught us to dim our light in the name of obedience.