Paganism, Witchcraft and Satanism: The Historical Origins of Feminism
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious the Most Merciful
A hundred years. That’s all it took for feminism to dismantle societal structures lasting civilisations. It has forever altered how we view gender, family and power dynamics. But despite its popularity, few understand the spiritual side of feminism.
Every movement needs a set of values, often derived from spiritual and religious sources. Feminism is no different. It is a spiritual movement with a political face.
On the surface it pushes for gender equality and female empowerment.
But at its core, it despises traditional religion. It reframes God as an oppressive force who damned women for centuries. They see history as a battle between the sexes and above all - wish to revive goddess worship to establish a female religion.
This is often dismissed as radical feminist thought. Arguably, these views govern its core ideology. Feminism never divorced itself from its roots in magic and idolatry.
This article analyses feminist literature, exposing its deep ties to paganism, witchcraft and Satanism.
The Dajjal and His Female Followers
Female movements and its ties to sorcery is not new. In fact, Muslims have already been warned about women’s susceptibility to ideologies rooted in magic and deceit.
The biggest trial mankind will face will be the Dajjal (Anti-Christ) who is the first Major Sign before the Day of Judgement. He has one eye, forehead bearing the mark of a disbeliever. He will travel the entire world except Makkah and Medina, amassing a global army - in part being 70,000 Jews. But amongst his crowd is a sizeable and clear demographic: many of his followers are women.
Ibn Umar reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “The False Messiah will come upon this marsh of Marriqanat. Most of those who go out to him will be women, to the extent that a man goes back to his wife, his mother, his daughter, his sister, and his aunt to shackle them tightly, fearing they would go out to him.”
Source: Musnad Aḥmad 5353
The Dajjal is a known liar and deceiver. He will trick the masses into believing he is the Messiah, until his followers accept him as God. But why are women especially his followers? What is it about the One Eyed Liar that will affect the female population?
The simple answer is propaganda. Before the Dajjal officially arrives, the stage will be set for his arrival. His ideology has already been taught. Woven into high school curriculums, university textbooks, sewn into movie scripts and flows from the mouths of celebrities.
Gender wars. Destroying the patriarchy. Sexual freedom. Legalising prostitution. Abortion rights.
Feminism plays into the hearts of women who wish to rebel, reject social norms and live by their own rules.
The question then becomes: what is the ideal society for feminists? Do they believe any civilisation ever honoured women?
The answer is yes: the pagan civilisations.
Pagan Societies and Goddess Worship
Throughout history, human societies were shaped by religion. It influenced human behaviour, morality, institutions. Even when societies gravitated away from Monotheism and turned to idol worship, they relied on a spiritual creed to shape their worldviews.
Much of feminist literature re-writes history and splits it into time periods considered either ‘empowering’ or ‘oppressive’ towards women. For the latter, they need a villain to criticise - usually Christianity - but this later extended to traditional religion.
Many Western feminists dismissed the Abrahamic faiths (Islam, Christianity and Judaism) as oppressive. Some began to search for a female religion. This brought feminists to the ancient pagan civilisations of the Greeks, Hindus, Romans and Ancient Egyptians who had female goddesses. They represented concepts like love, war, fertility and nature.
Similarly, pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped a trio of goddesses known as Lât, Uzza and Manat. They also believed that Angels were the daughters of Allah. This mentality is mentioned in Surah Najm:
Now, have you considered ˹the idols of˺ Lât and ’Uzza,
and the third one, Manât, as well?
Do you ˹prefer to˺ have sons while ˹you attribute˺ to Him daughters?
Then this is ˹truly˺ a biased distribution!
Feminists were pleased by societal goddess worship. Thus, they believed pagans civilisations respected women through their celebration of divine female power.
Feminism and neopaganism turned into a movement at the beginning of the 19th century, fusing female spirituality with women’s liberation.
As a result, feminists re-interpreted history through a female lens, exploring the ‘concept of God in the image of a woman.’ This became solidified in the 60’s when second wave feminists searched for a spiritual dimension to feminism. (Nicolae, 2023, 130-1)
This inspired feminist literature to re-write history to make women gods over men or simply deify women. One such way is to revive female religions. This view is solidified by a quote from The Declaration of Feminism, published November 1971:
"Marriage has existed for the benefit of men... We must go back to the ancient female religions like witchcraft."
The Bible and Satanic Feminism: Satan as a Woman’s Rights Icon
Western feminism emerged out of a complex relationship with Christianity. The Great Schism in 1054 between the Latin Church and Eastern Church led to differing views on how Christianity should be interpreted. The Protestant Reformation was influenced by Enlightenment ideas where the individual could interpret his own religious truth and produce his own doctrine.
This inspired radical liberal Protestant women to form the women’s liberation movement, known as the first wave of feminism.
Notably, some feminists attempted to reconcile religious texts with feminist thought - but many rejected traditional religion. As a result, radical feminists turned to witchcraft, goddess worship and Satanism for a spiritual alternative. (Wilson, 2021, 30-2)
Satanic feminism peaked in the late 19th and early 20th century where feminists adopted Satanism to rebel against patriarchy. They did this by re-interpreting the Bible through a feminist lens. The most famous being The Woman’s Bible in 1895, led by American suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her committee. It was a commentary on the Bible and its references to women.
Feminist literature often reworked Genesis 3 in the Old Testament where Eve succumbed to the whisperings of Satan and persuaded Adam to eat the forbidden Apple. This led to their expulsion from paradise and the Church blaming women for the Fall of Man. This led to Christianity’s degraded view of women.
The Woman’s Bible portrays Eve’s consumption of the forbidden fruit as heroic - a rebellion against the tyranny of God and Prophet Adam.
The book adopts a pro-Satanic view, portraying the Devil as Eve’s ‘benevolent mentor’ which Stanton compares to Socrates or Plato. Satan is seen as an ally to women, who possesses ‘knowledge of human nature.’ It was Satan, according to Stanton who roused in the woman ‘an intense thirst for knowledge.’
Stanton praises Eve for succumbing to Satan. The former represented how women will soon break free from male oppression and nullify God’s punishment on women. (Faxneld, 2017, 189-195
Feminist Rewriting of Islam: Jahiliyah, Sexual Liberation and Goddess Worship
The global feminist movement has also focused on reinterpreting the Quran and the Sunnah, arguing feminist teachings do not deviate away from what Allah سبحانه و تعالى revealed to the Prophet ﷺ. One such effort is made by Fatema Mernissi in ‘Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society’.
This famous book provides a a feminist interpretation of the Seerah (Prophetic Biography). She challenges patriarchal interpretations of Islam, arguing the Muslim world didn’t need to be under a centralised male ruler.
She believed male Muslim historians had erased the pagan Arab’s history of divine female power to preserve a patriarchal system. She speaks positively about the pre-Islamic Jahiliyah period (Age of Ignorance), portraying it as a time of female sexual liberation. In this age women had children out of wedlock, multiple sexual partners and could invoke a no-fault divorce to drive out her husband if she desired. Mernissi describes this period as one of female liberation obscured by male Arab historians. She continues that Islamic reform limited women’s sexual freedom which existed in the Jahiyliyah period.
She writes:
[Islam] banished all the practises in which sexual self determination of women was asserted.’
Mernissi, 187, 66-7
Secondly, Mernissi argues the Jahiliyah period was empowering for women due to the existence of goddess worship. She described female idols like Lat, Manat and Uzza as a show of divine feminine superiority. In reference to Uzza, she states that Islam’s victory at the Conquest of Makkah had erased female history:
al-ʿUzza first had to be destroyed—not only physically, but also wiped out of memory: the feminine should never again be seen where power is exercised. The time of feminine power was to be dead time, the zero time.
(Mernissi [1992] 2002, 126)
As a result the goddess’ destruction was Islam’s rejection of female power - both spiritual and social. Though she does not call for a return to literal idol worship, she uses Uzza is a symbol to argue the pre-Islamic age was a time of female empowerment and the celebration of the divine female spirit.
Neopaganism in the Contemporary Age: The Return of Witchcraft
Feminists have attempted to revive goddess worship by fusing witchcraft and paganism to create a feminist occult religion. An example is the Susan B. Anthony Coven #1 established in 1971 by Zsuzsanna E. Budapest as the first women only witches’ coven. It uses a form of witchcraft known as Wicca and worships Diana the Roman goddess.
In her 2011 blog ‘Why am I a witch?’ Budapest advocates for goddess worship as a way to establish peace on earth. She contrasts it with Christianity, believing it created violence for thousands of years and ‘never civilised the men.’ (Budapest, 2011)
Additionally, Wicca is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States. It is predominantly followed by Millennials who reject traditional religion. Famously a group of US witches organised a mass hex ritual in Arizona against Donald Trump in 2017 in response to his election. They called on Wiccan deities and cast a mass ritual during a Crescent Moon.
A Facebook post about the ritual gathered thousands of likes under the hashtag #MagicResistance. (BBC News, 2017)
As of 2018 it was reported that there may be at least 1.5 million witches across the United States. (Fearnow, 2018).
Moving Forward: Rejecting Shirk and Championing Tawhid
We’re living in an age of spiritual warfare where many industries, ideologies and institutions compete to indoctrinate the masses. Many of these belief systems are rooted in idolatry while cloaked in a lens of self-empowerment.
Feminism is no different. It is a Dajjalic movement, revelling in Satanism, paganism and witchcraft. By radicalising women it aims to corrupt the individual, the family and in turn collapse society. These are the conditions in which the world will be ready for the Dajjal.
The goal of this article is to warn Muslims of this movement’s true intentions, which desires far more than equal rights. By weaponising women’s emotions feminism aims to stoke a rebellion against Allah.
We as an ummah cannot afford to lose our daughters, sisters and mothers to an ideology which believes it knows better than Allah.
Allah the Almighty tells us in Surah Mulk:
How could He not know His Own creation? For He ˹alone˺ is the Most Subtle, All-Aware.
May Allah protect us from the evils of feminism and seek His refuge from this dangerous movement. Ameen.
___________________________
Jazakallah khair for reading. Please benefit the ummah by sharing this knowledge and downloading a transcript below. Feel free to use it for your own research or personal study.
Bibliography
Elias, A.A. (2019) Hadith on Dajjal: False Messiah targets women and families. Available at: https://www.abuaminaelias.com/dailyhadithonline/2019/08/10/dajjal-targets-women-family/
BBC News (2017) Witches cast 'mass spell' against Donald Trump. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-39090334
Budapest, Z.E. (2011) Why am I a witch? Available at: https://feminismandreligion.com/2011/07/19/why-am-i-a-witch-by-zsuzsanna-e-budapest/
Fearnow, B. (2018) Number of witches rises dramatically across U.S. as millennials reject Christianity. Available at: https://www.newsweek.com/witchcraft-wiccans-mysticism-astrology-witches-millennials-pagans-religion-1221019
Mernissi, Fatema. [1975] 1987. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
Nicolae, T. (2023) 'The Western Revival of Goddess Worship', Feminist Theology, Volume 31, Issue 2, pp. 130-142. London: Sage Publications. doi: 10.1177/09667350221135089.
Per Faxneld, 2017 Satanic Feminism Satanic feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Woman in Nineteenth-Century Culture, Oxford University Press
The Interim (2005) Destroying society's primary cell. Available at: https://theinterim.com/issues/marriage-family/destroying-societys-primary-cell-2/
The Quran, Surah Al-Mulk (67:14). Available at: https://quran.com/67:14
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Wilson, R. (2021) Occult Feminism: The Secret History of Women's Liberation. Las Vegas, NV: Rachel Wilson
