I binge-watched WandaVision yesterday, and aside from it being super creative, found it very sad. Witchcraft is being glorified so blatantly and flagrantly! I love a good story, I love allegory and superhero movies not only because story is valuable, but because current entertainment teaches us about the state of the world we’re called to bring light to. I also understand and affirm the human appetite for the supernatural, because we are spirit beings. God made us this way.
But what hits my heart with heavy grief is that witchy power being promoted and connected to trauma. That hurts my heart because it’s real life. Trauma is the bait that got me into the occult before God snapped me out of it and I repented. Trauma survivors are extremely vulnerable to the allure of witchcraft, because you desperately need and hunger for power, as a recovering victim. Not only that, but your strong emotions sometimes seem like a force outside yourself and beyond your control, as you detach and dissociate from what you don’t want to face. Dissociation leaves you open to the demonic, which can fool you into thinking you have power (when in fact you are a slave). Spirituality and emotion are strongly linked.
WandaVision illustrated this so well, it was painful. And yet it also gave so much leeway to her incredible violation of the free will of others, her manipulation — even the cruelty of how she left her nemesis at the end! It’s very disturbing that the series let it go like that. She was one of the most malignant and disturbing villains I’ve seen in a long time. Not only was she a cruel manipulator, but she did it out of high-level narcissism. Self pity. She felt her actions were forgivable because she could have been worse, and because her own pain and self-absorption warranted it. That made her too realistic.
Of course the show admitted by the end that it isn’t entirely true that when we are in pain and trauma, we aren’t responsible for what we do wrong. I just don’t think it was enough. The writers went to crazy lengths to make us sympathize with her. Why? Do they want us to see ourselves in her, and excuse ourselves? All real life villains (or at least the great majority) have painful reasons for what they do, traumatic pasts. Do good anyway – don’t be selfish. If you have been selfish, definitely make it right – at least the show got that right. I appreciated that, but because it didn’t go far enough, and because I’d been put through the grueling story of thousands of people being tortured for one woman’s satisfaction, I didn’t feel it was enough.
Then there was the necromancy. It’s not true that if you have the power to bring someone back, it’s understandable if you try. What a weird and creepy message on a platform originally geared to children and families! Necromancy is a violation of God and humanity. The only way to keep your loved ones after they die is to join them in heaven if you all go there (only through Jesus Christ), or if through prayer or declaration Jesus raises them from the dead like Lazarus (so far, very rare). People get drawn to psychics because they can’t let go, and through psychic activity are opened up to familiar spirits who create sickness of the mind and body. I know by the end of the season Wanda backed off what she’d done, but then she went even further into increasing her power. So she could try again, probably. The overarching message was extremely disturbing on two levels: her villainy, and the witchcraft that seemed to be connected to her pain. Because I don’t want to see real life trauma victims go in that direction. I know it will hurt them.
We need to understand the intense pain of trauma survivors and those who grieve. We need to understand the connection between intense emotion, and the spirit, and the spirit realm. We need to understand the connection between intense emotion, the spirit realm, and the capacity to commit evil against the people around us (or ourselves).
There is a safe place to bring our pain and fury – it’s the cross of Jesus Christ. The beatings He took, the blood he poured out to bring us into His blood covenant — that is where it belongs. He will give us the gift of the Holy Spirit to free and heal and deliver us, to quiet the screaming in our spirits and the noise in the spirit realm. We die to ourselves, we ask forgiveness. If we are in hatred and bitterness, we forgive others — we receive His love. He loves us first, actually – He pours out His love and healing. There is great power in the blood of Jesus, in the beatings He took, in His resurrection. It’s only His power that is a safe refuge for us, and to receive His power is to willfully abandon the right to our own. We die to ourselves, even if we are traumatized and in pain. Holy Spirit is called The Comforter in the bible for a reason – God is perfect love, and it’s safe for us to go empty and surrender to Him. When we ask Jesus to forgive us and to be Lord o our life, and to heal us, He shows up and we are never the same. That’s the only real solution to our emptiness and brokenness.
It isn’t safe or moral to turn to witchcraft, psychic phenomena, or necromancy. It is never okay to commit cruel, evil acts on the innocent (or the guilty, ’cause aren’t we all?) due to our own pain and suffering. To go along with a narrative to the contrary, this weird modern-day fairy tale justification of evil that is replacing the warnings against it, is to bow your knee to the god of narcissism that’s devouring so much of culture like a cancer. That is something we cannot do.
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