I’m seeing that some of the conflict discussion is because people are confusing witchcraft as a religion.
All Wiccans are witches, but not all witches are Wiccans.
Witchcraft is a practice that does not favor a religion, and is not a religion itself.
I'd like to offer an opinion about this if I may. I think one of the problems with mixing witchcraft with the Bible is that it represents a fundamental disconnect in world views. I think that witchcraft is essentially a will to power. One attempts to shift the outcome of events to suit ones will by use of magick. This is in stark contrast to the Biblical depiction of spirituality. That is to surrender to a Divine will. It is a belief that the Divine is the center of all things and is best able to determine what the outcome should be.
Actually, Splintrd, that is probably at least partly correct.
Until Israel became a church-state, and the religion was enforced as law, the people still widely used idols in their homes, and in street markets, as well as petitioning other gods and spirits for various purposes. Many still revered God as the most high, while also incorporating many others.
It was about the time that the Book of Ezekiel was written that Israel was solidified as a government, and the scriptures were collected into a comprehensive volume, that is, canonized as the Catholic church may call it.
Leading to that point, it is very interesting to watch the paradigm shift in belief, even though there is an attempt to remove it without spoiling what is meant to be both history and allegory: Earlier on, it seems that there are teachings that the God of Israel is the God of that people. Later, it is taught that God is greatest among all the gods, and thus the others should be placed below, changing to the others should not be worshiped. This again develops into a belief that God is the only, and the others are false.
I could go on in length, but basically such religious mandates are to ensure that the people who follow the God of Israel seek only Him, and no other spiritual source. To put it more directly, everything else is considered idolatry.
Bible, I think is a using religion to control people. Pagan gods are real. And everybody can see them for example through meditation on the name. But, take it a time, so patience is necessery.
Yes: The Bible has been used by many governments to control people, from lightly to severely. But that neither invalidates its wisdom, nor makes the God represented within false. Any system can be usurped for the sake of gaining power over others.
As far as what gods are and are not real, it is a matter of belief, rather than provable fact. A person may have a spiritual experience with one god, or a pantheon, and not others. That does not mean the others do not exist. Also, there is no way to test for gods' existence with repeatable results. Again, this means that gods are a matter of belief.
