Which Religions Practice Witchcraft? The Ones You’ve Been Taught to Fear

Here’s the truth that makes colonizers sweat:
Witchcraft is not the opposite of religion—
For many of us, witchcraft is religion.

You’ve been told it’s demonic.
You’ve been told it’s fake.
You’ve been told it’s dangerous.
And they were right about one thing: It is dangerous—to systems of control.

Because the religions that practice witchcraft?
They’re the ones your textbooks skipped.
The ones missionaries tried to erase.
The ones rooted in land, in ancestors, in the kind of power you can’t tame.

🌍 Let’s Get Something Straight: Witchcraft Is Global

Witchcraft isn’t just tarot cards and moon water. It’s spiritual technology, and it's woven through millennia of Indigenous and non-Western religious systems. These traditions are alive, powerful, and very much not yours to appropriate—but they deserve your respect, recognition, and uncolonized understanding.

🌿 Religions and Traditions That Practice Witchcraft:

🌀 Ifá, Yoruba, and African Traditional Religions (ATRs)

These are not “just spells.” These are complex, initiatory religious systems rooted in West Africa. Practitioners work with Orishas, divine forces, and ancestral veneration through ritual, divination, sacrifice, and magic.
🔥 What colonizers called “black magic” is actually holy.

🥥 Santería / Lukumí / Candomblé / Palo

These are diasporic religions that survived slavery and colonization, often disguised under Catholic imagery to stay alive. Candles, spells, baths, spirit possession? Yeah—that’s part of religion, baby.
🔥 It’s not “witchcraft” to practitioners—it’s sacred protocol.

🪶 Indigenous North and South American Traditions

From sweat lodges to sacred smoke to shapeshifting and dreamwalking—Indigenous cultures have always worked with the spirit realm. What was branded “witchcraft” was often just Indigenous people being powerful on stolen land.
🔥 If you call it “witchcraft,” you’re already viewing it through the colonizer’s lens.

🐍 Haitian Vodou and Louisiana Voodoo

Rituals, spirit possession, spellwork, ancestor altars, and justice magic? These aren’t just vibes—they’re religious practices with deep theological frameworks.
🔥 White supremacy called it evil because it couldn’t control it.

🐲 Brujería in Latinx Culture

Syncretic, inherited, raw. Brujería is often a mix of Catholicism, Indigenous practices, and African diaspora traditions. It’s not one-size-fits-all. It’s layered. It’s alive. It’s not aesthetic.
🔥 Brujería is the original spiritual rebellion.

🌗 Folk Catholicism & Curanderismo

Candle magic, novenas, herbal cleanses, saint work, and spiritual protection rituals are still practiced throughout Mexico, Central, and South America. It looks Catholic, but it often dances on the line between church and conjure.
🔥 The church was the cover. The work was always the medicine.

🕉️ Tantric Hinduism and Folk Indian Magic

In India, witchcraft doesn’t hide. From Tantric rituals to Aghori practices to folk deities, spirit work and energy manipulation are integrated into religion—not separated from it.
🔥 You’ve just been too colonized to recognize it.

📢 Let’s Talk About Why You Were Taught to Fear It

Colonizers didn’t just take land—they took belief systems, too. They couldn’t burn every temple, so they burned the people instead. They criminalized our magic, demonized our gods, and replaced sacred rituals with guilt and shame.

Witchcraft wasn’t feared because it was fake.
It was feared because it worked.
And because it didn’t need permission to be powerful.

🕯️ Religion + Magic = Ancestral Power

For many people of color around the world, there is no separation between religion and witchcraft. Lighting a candle is a prayer. Bathing in herbs is a rite. Speaking to the dead is communion.

If your idea of “real religion” comes only from pews, pulpits, or permission slips—you’ve been sold a colonizer’s gospel.

🌿 Don’t Just Learn—Unlearn

We’re not here to cosplay as other cultures. We’re here to honor, uplift, and reclaim the magic that was buried under centuries of fear.

So next time someone says “witchcraft is evil,”
Ask yourself: Whose god told them that?
And why were they so scared of ours?

🔥 Reclaim Your Roots

Ready to connect with spiritual practices that reflect your bloodline, not just an Instagram aesthetic? Explore our altar kits, ancestor work guides, and decolonial ritual PDFs made by brujas, for brujas.

Because your magic isn’t new.
It’s just been waiting for you to remember.

Tags: #DecolonizeWitchcraft #IndigenousSpirituality #ReligionsThatPracticeMagic #SpiritualReclamation #BrujaBlog #WitchcraftAndReligion #AncestralPower #GlobalMagic #SpiritualTruths #WitchTokEducation