The Twisted Serpent: Part II - Gettin Witchy.
Titled: Twisted Serpent Hailed by Hail Bale. ©2025 a_joy/ajj all rights reserved
In my last post, I mentioned Teresa Dedmon of the Create Academy not only created Prophetic Art, but used Nos. 21 as one of her citation texts to demonstrate how the God of the bible uses art to heal. It was a bit twisted because the story discloses that the reason the so called art was needed, was because that same God had sent fiery serpents to attack the people for griping.
There was a little something I wanted to casually mention about Dedmon’s light-hearted side reference to Nos. 21 as some proof that God heals through art. It’s how we re-negotiate stories to fit our own narratives.
This is not a criticism on my part. It’s part of being human in a time vortex looking for meaning, some authority, validation, and probably so much more than I want to pin down. Prophetic art, when I was slipping and sliding with these Christians, was a bit controversial. In fact, the worship style eeking out of the cheeks of Bethel was problematic for a lot of people who did not like change and who viewed worship through a static traditional lens of sing properly and on cue while standing stoically still being reverent [or trying to stay awake]. Thank heavens it didn’t necessitate singing on key.
These people were still arguing with Cessationism types like John MacArthur about gifts in general. Prophetic art among Evangelical charismatics has got to be proven in the text. The trouble is, of course, it’s not listed as a gift in the bible’s listicles. That means something must be done to legitimize a revelation. And that’s re-negotiating.
Now, I’m not a bible expert and there is no better way to prove that then writing about it. I have my bible crayons out. Prepare for ignorance and sophomoric application of my kindergarten non-expertise. I’m going to do this cross-discipline style because what I see in Dedmon’s wink to Nos. 21 is literally not just a re-negotiating for her ministry, but also an ignorant but humorous wink toward witchy craft. Egad! It gets twisted!
When I was researching this passage to try and understand it in some kind of ancient context, I stumbled upon Dr. Richard Lederman. Now Lederman has an interesting premise that this event in the text may be an explanation for what comes later in the bible when the bronze serpent is destroyed because people were worshiping it. In other words, it was added to explain how the bronze serpent got in the temple in the first place. Quite interesting, no?
Dr. Lederman’s article can be located on thetorah.com and it’s titled Nehushtan, the Copper Serpent: Its Origins and Fate. In his article he makes a curious note about this whole bronze serpent episode. He writes:
“This story may reflect sympathetic magic, where one uses a symbolic model of an object to affect what happens to the real object—like a voodoo doll. The model is used here apotropaically, to protect or in this case to heal the Israelites from the venom of the real snakes that this object is meant to represent.”
Apotropaically is a big fancy word that means the practice of a magical ritual or an incantatory formula to get rid of evil. I think in many cases, it also is for invoking a healing. In the example above from Lederman, it would be to heal. It’s probably relevant to consider that some illness may have been seen as evil - so warding off evil would in fact, heal someone depending on the situation. A good example is demonology. In Charismatic demonology as I experienced it, a lot of life’s ills were caused by an evil spirit. Get rid of the evil spirit, and the person’s body would heal. Voila!
A bronze serpent sort of thing - courtesy of Canva.
Another interesting part in his article, Lederman in the footnotes points to 1 Samuel 6. At that verse point, there is this little section about the Philistines sending the Ark of the Covenant back to its homeland that reads:
“They replied, “Five gold tumors and five gold rats, according to the number of the Philistine rulers, because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and give glory to Israel’s god. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land.”
It’s kind of interesting that in this case, art was an attempt to win over Israel’s God by sending golden versions of the issues plaguing the Philistines [tumors] and the land [rats]. In doing so, the hope was the golden versions would induce the God of Israel to remove both the problems literally from the land. He sights Levine Barush’s work in the Anchor Yale Bible.
Despite the word “probably” in Lederman’s sentence, there is a real possibility this was a type of healing through sympathetic magic. It was the way they understood the world. In this case, Dedmon’s approach to understanding Nos. 2 divests itself of some kind of cultural context in favor of a perceived parallel reality. Art heals. And the thing is, the God of Israel commands the bronze serpent in a similar pattern here to the Philistines and golden rats and tumors. It’s a regional cultural belief pattern popping up. It means the Philistines and Yahweh obviously practiced some similar ways. Scandalous, no?
The thing is, art already had these healing potential qualities [depending on the type of art], although not in the same way Dedmon’s ministry advocates. In her case, she’s converting art into a ritual object one can use to be healed. Seeing a similar pattern, the practitioners of prophetic art are basically, and probably ignorantly, winking and nodding at a scripture verse indicating a ritual form of healing using an object. I’m not saying it’s identical, but it is, at least possible, that it’s magical. It certainly is supernatural. And they promote it in particular ways without snake bites and a pissed off deity.
What Dedmon appears to miss is the bronze serpent wasn’t “art” but was more likely a ritual healing object. Dedmon doesn’t instruct her followers and students to build or paint eyeballs to heal eyes. The point is that the painting becomes a ritual object of supernatural agency it’s just instead of calling it magic it’s called prophetic. “Prophetic” legitimizes what they are doing in spite of the possibly cultural context of the text and the people in the text. Magic is a discrediting agent. Witches do magic. Harry Potter does magic. It doesn’t matter if there is overlap. We can ignore it because prophetic is righteous, and magic is evil. It’s this little slight of hand.
The text as re-negotiated allows for the divination, magical healing woo woo of prophetic art without really understanding the cultural context involved. Yet, it’s like a reworked ancient understanding of the power of the supernatural. These folks don’t lack for this in other teaching, including foreign objects perceived as satanic being hot spots for demons and demonic activity.
The re-negotiations can and do get interesting. Another prophetic teacher - Jennifer LeClaire I believe - discussed in one of her online teachings about confirmation for supernatural weight loss.[1] I want to say this involved cell phones somehow. I can’t remember the major specifics but what I do remember quite well was her use of Isaiah of 61:3. I’ve seen teachers in this group prefer particular bible translations in order to re-negotiate. Once again, I don’t have problems here. Isaiah 61:2-4 in the KJV reads like this:
“To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.
And they shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.”
She told the group the Holy Spirit confirmed the weight loss supernatural healing was indeed the correct Spirit using this scripture. The special focus was on “…a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” Do you see it? She’s using the English understanding of “heaviness” to mean literal weight rather than spiritual or emotional weight. Indeed, even a cursory look into the Hebrew term being used here indicates it is not referencing actual weight loss as in inches in your clothes and pounds on the scale. But for her, it was enough for the text to be re-negotiated to prove the healings were from Jesus.[2]
Titled: The Twisted Serpent Squared. ©2025 a_joy Art/ajj all rights reserved
Charismatic types are big on demonology and very down on witchy craft. They do not, in any measure, perceive what they do, how they behave, or what they accomplish by supernatural means, as witchy craft. It doesn’t matter there are at least some similarities of at least modern versions of magical means. In my own curiosity and exploration of witchcraft [although definitely not universal], I’ve seen and read some clear overlap between the two worlds.[3] This sort of similar pattern is willfully ignored by a whole lot of people in this stream of Christian-ness. Declarations using the bible, for instance, run along crusty edges of spell casting. They have similar attributes and intentions.
This willful ignorance has a lot to do with what we tell ourselves and the stories and re-negotiations we create to justify our needs and experiences within a tight, often limiting, set of frameworks. It requires a great deal of rationalization. Once again, I don’t have problems with ritual or declarations or spells. More power to all who practice what makes sense to them. It’s not the ritual piece that is twisted, it’s the moral self-righteous blindness that I’m pointing a finger at on the part of those who say they are singular truth and practice and that they don’t do that over there - that stuff [pointing to Wicca for instance]. It’s still twisted - all the way down to it’s spooky spooky woo woo.
Good Versus Evil, Oh My!
Before I go, I want to make an important link where twisted can become belligerent. All of this is associated with good vs. evil. It isn’t objective reality, no matter how many types of Christians want to claim their world is objective reality. The Holy Spirit, in the case of Christianity, is a good spirit and only produces fruit in keeping with the listicles in the New Testament.[4]
Behavior outside of those listicles is often accounted for by way of some kind of evil spirit - a spirit of lust, spirit of poverty, spirit of lying, spirit of trauma, and the list goes on and on. For every human failure, one can often find an evil spirit lurking in the psyche of the ministry person. It’s hard not to attribute this to excessive magical thinking.
The good versus evil thing though, allows fevered minds to justify and rationalize their own behavior even when it’s similar to the people that are supposedly evil. The good versus evil split usually means the people advocating it are placing themselves in the “good” camp and those people “over there” in the “evil” camp. It doesn’t lend itself to self awareness or obvious patterns of similarity in rituals and intentions. It’s oversimplified hysteria. When NAR-lings wander around groping at witchy craft by Wiccans, they literally ignore patterned similarities between the two. NAR-lings do a lot of witchy craft. They use the bible to roughly “cast spells” to induce their God in their direction. They make declarations with the same book to obtain the promises of God. They do it based on how they define it for everyone else while they blindly convince themselves they are good little munchkins who don’t do - well “that.” We don’t cast spells that way! We make declarations! We speak promises into existence [which is similar to “manifesting.”] The difference is on how many angels, or demons, one can place on the head of a pin called rationalization. And because they have already placed themselves in the “good” camp - well - they probably don’t realize their plagued by their own deaf, dumb, and blind spirit. Deliverance anyone? I know a great pizza place.
Peace.
Footnotes:
[1] I actually can’t remember for sure if it was Jennifer LeClaire. I remember the teaching part well enough. No hate to her.
[2] Healing can get complicated in many circles I experienced. There was teaching that demons “fake” heal by removing one illness and substituting it for another or that demons actually heal in some sort of fashion. There are plenty of paradoxes but Christianity as a whole has to explain the placebo effect when it involves other deities the religions chooses to consider evil demons. The teaching in demonology does get out of hand where even a tired child who is having a public meltdown is seen as a demonic manifestation rather than simply a tired dysregulated human who needs a nap.
[3] I’ve seen witchy craft promote similar aspects of wealth along the lines of the prosperity gospel. When it comes to spell casting for their own purposes, NAR-lings have a roughly similar version in their forms of declarations. It’s just they use bible verses to declare the events and circumstances they desire. They might light candles, use flags, or sing. The rituals may not be identical, but there are some overlaps in both practice and intentions. I’m sure there is more to be found which is probably why John MacArthur could title his book Strange Fire. I’m not judging anything of this as being for or against. I’m simply pointing out they share commonalities in many ways.
[4] There is a real big problem with this, at least in my own imagination. If you take a good look at what the Spirit of the Lord does, it would be hard to tell it from a demon. I’m sorry, I know that’s blasphemous to many people. Keep in mind, I’m not saying the Spirit of God IS a demon. I am saying that when say, Yahweh sends a lying spirit to Ahab’s court to get him killed, the spirit that raises its hand is the Ruach. The fact that Saul is possessed by a spirit that gets himself to strip naked and prophecy lying on the ground for a period of time, is an interesting set of actions to a demon that say, throws someone to the ground and makes them convulse. Demons aside, at least in the Old Testament, “evil” spirits were sent by Yahweh to afflict people but they were IN Yahweh’s service. It’s changed now of course. But I see a similar pattern of possession and types of behavior no matter the nature of the spirit involved. It’s really subjective on a lot of levels, no matter how many people with big T obsessions and objections what to cry in their cereal bowl. Keep in mind, a spirit penetrating your body and mind and denying you agency is morally questionable in the first place - no matter what kind of parameters of good and evil you want to place on the situation. Also keep in mind, there are indications that the only way humans can behave properly is if they are indwelled by the poured out Spirit of Yahweh/Jesus. At what point do we not at least wink at the Spirit’s indwelling as a form of necessary voluntary possession for rightesouness? Countless NAR-lings at altar calls explain how someone’s acceptance of Jesus means the Spirit is invited inside their being to “guide” them, possess them, and mark them. Supposedly, those who possess the Spirit produce fruit and technically, are not supposed to sin [at least in some of the N.T.]. The Spirit produces obedience to the will of God. It’s progressive possession as you give yourself over to that possession. Rationalize it all you wanna. There are similarities and the technicalities rely on preferences of belief and rationalizations about good and evil. This spirit possession is good. That one other there, bad. The base point is ignored - you’re agency is called into question through penetration by another spirit who then gets increasing power over you. Never mind, there are spirits who produce “goodness” that are not named Jesus and may not require possession to “get their way.” Of course, there is spiritual “influence” nowadays but for me, the Holy Spirit still qualifies. It’s why fruit is so important to the text. The right spirit points here [even if it does something reprehensible]. Christianity has a long history of rationalizing depravity as good to protect its theology.