Oh Honey, I Don’t Worship Men: The Truth About Witches and the Devil

Let’s get one thing straight: witches don’t worship the devil. Or at least — most of us don’t.

The other day, I read a sister witch’s reply to that old accusation and couldn’t stop smiling. Someone had asked her whether she was afraid of “serving Satan,” and she simply said:

“Oh honey, I don’t worship men.”

Mic drop.

It’s funny, yes — but also deeply revealing. Because underneath this centuries-old myth that witches “serve the devil” lies something far more complex than superstition. It’s a story of fear, control, and misunderstanding — one that still echoes through cultures today, especially in places where religious trauma runs deep.

The Fear That Fuels It

Many people who warn others about “witchcraft” aren’t acting out of malice. They’re often genuinely afraid — raised to believe that there’s an external evil being waiting to drag souls into eternal fire. Within that belief system, “saving others” feels like an act of love. But it’s also a dangerous game. Because when fear meets power, it easily turns into persecution. Demonizing people for having different beliefs, spiritual practices, or worldviews has a long, bloody history. And the witch — especially the independent, intuitive, nature-connected woman — became a perfect scapegoat.

The Truth About Witchcraft

Here’s what often gets missed: Witchcraft itself is not a religion. It’s a practice — a craft. It can be woven together with religion (like Paganism or Wicca), or it can stand completely apart from it. There are even Christian witches, who integrate prayer and Christ-centered ritual work into their craft.

Yes, some practitioners might work with Christian archetypes like Satan — but that’s a minority. Most witches don’t believe in Satan at all, because, well, he’s a Christian construct. You can’t worship something that doesn’t exist in your cosmology.

What witchcraft is about varies widely — but generally, it’s rooted in energy, intention, connection with nature, cycles, and personal empowerment. It’s about reclaiming your agency, your intuition, and your relationship to the unseen — without the need for intermediaries or institutions to tell you what’s sacred.

Power, Control, and the Narrative of Evil

Historically, calling something “evil” has always been an efficient way to control it. The fear of the devil has been used to regulate behavior, especially women’s autonomy, sexuality, and spiritual authority.

And that’s really what this conversation is about — not who worships what, but who gets to hold spiritual power. Witchcraft, in its many forms, refuses to outsource that power. It says: You are your own connection to the divine. You can work with energy directly. You don’t need permission to heal, to protect, to manifest, to pray.

That, to a power structure built on obedience, is terrifying.

Who Is That Devil Anyway?

When people picture “the devil,” they usually see the same caricature: red skin, goat horns, hooves, a tail, and a pitchfork — presiding over a fiery underworld, collecting souls, and playing rock music in Hollywood movies. It’s an image so deeply ingrained that many forget to ask: where did this actually come from? Because spoiler: there’s no such description in the Bible. None.

This devil — the cliché one — was made up. A patchwork stitched from ancient gods, linguistic twists, political fear, and a whole lot of creative church propaganda. The topic of “the devil” is immensely complex, because what we now call the devil isn’t a single figure from a single source. It’s a theological collage — a mosaic built from pagan deities, mythological archetypes, linguistic evolution, and centuries of religious propaganda.

The Horned Gods of Nature

Long before anyone spoke of heaven or hell, our ancestors worshipped the earth. They honored gods of the wild — creatures of fur, horn, and hoof who represented fertility, vitality, and connection to nature. Think of Cernunnos, the Celtic horned god of abundance and the forest, or Pan, the Greek god of the wild, whose goat legs and mischievous grin symbolized pleasure, music, and desire.

These deities weren’t evil — they were life itself. But when Christianity began spreading through pagan Europe, it needed to convert a population that already had gods. The easiest way? Rebrand them. Some were rebranded but also degraded to Saints, others as enemies. So the old gods of the woods — the sensual, untamed, nature-affirming ones — were painted as devils. Their horns became the horns of sin. Their sexual freedom became “temptation.” Their earthy joy became “corruption.”

The devil, in other words, was born from the Church’s fear of the wild.

The Fallen Star

Next came Lucifer, whose name literally means “light-bringer.” In early Latin, Lucifer referred to the morning star — the planet Venus — and appeared in the Hebrew Bible as a metaphor for the fall of a Babylonian king. It wasn’t originally about Satan at all. But in late antiquity, early Christian theologians (most notably Jerome and later Augustine) reinterpreted this poetic image as the story of a proud angel cast out of heaven. And so, the bringer of light became the bringer of darkness.

This theological twist added something new to the devil’s evolution: rebellion. From that point on, evil wasn’t just wild and sensual — it was defiant. Independent. Too proud to kneel. Sound familiar? It’s no wonder this archetype terrified patriarchal systems.

Hel, Hades, and the Birth of “Hell”

Every villain needs a lair — so where did hell come from?

The word hell descends from Old English hel and Proto-Germanic haljō, meaning “the hidden place.” In Norse mythology, Hel (with one “L”) was actually a goddess — ruler of the underworld, the resting place of those who didn’t die heroically in battle. She wasn’t evil, just sovereign over death’s quiet domain.

When Christianity absorbed Germanic and Greco-Roman cultures, it fused their underworlds — Hel and Hades — with apocalyptic imagery from Revelation. The result was a fiery afterlife of punishment. The goddess Hel vanished. The underworld became Hell. And in this rebranded inferno, the horned god of the woods and the fallen angel found a new home — side by side, merged into one cosmic villain.

The Devil’s Makeover

Between the 11th and 17th centuries, artists gave fear a face. Early medieval manuscripts started to show humanoid demons with horns, wings, claws, and tails — inspired by the gods like Pan, Cernunnos, and the monsters of Greek mythology.

By the 12th century, the image solidified:

• The Codex Gigas (ca. 1229) — the so-called “Devil’s Bible” — features one of the first full-page depictions of a horned, clawed devil.

• Church frescoes across France, Germany, and Italy showed red and black horned figures tormenting sinners — visual sermons for the illiterate masses.

Then came Dante’s Inferno (early 1300s), which sealed the deal. His Satan was a grotesque, winged monster trapped in ice, gnawing on traitors for eternity. From there, the image spread like wildfire — through art, theater, and later, the printing press.

By the time the Malleus Maleficarum was published in 1486, the visual vocabulary was set: horns, goat legs, fire, temptation, evil. And the witch? His alleged servant.

Fear had become a masterpiece of marketing.

The Pop Culture Devil

From Bosch’s surreal hellscapes to modern cartoons, the devil kept evolving — from a monstrous beast to a charming rebel in red. By the 19th century, artists began to humanize him (thank Milton’s Paradise Lost for that). By the 20th, he was starring in jazz songs and Hollywood films — part villain, part icon, part symbol of freedom. What began as the demonization of nature and independence turned into an archetype of rebellion and self-expression.

The Real Revelation

So what does it really tell us? The devil’s image is a mirror — reflecting what a culture fears most.

For the medieval Church, it was women’s power, sexuality, and knowledge. For later societies, it was disobedience, reason, or pleasure. And for some even today — it’s still women’s power.

So when someone claims “witches worship the devil,” just smile. Because that devil they fear? He’s a remix of misunderstood gods, ancient poetry, and centuries of control tactics.

And witches? We remember where those horns came from — and we wear that history like a crown.