The Resurrection and the End of Magic

In the summer of 2019, I was fortunate enough to do something I had long desired: walk the legendary Camino de Compostela in Spain. After a week’s trek from Oporto to Santiago, I did what any good twenty-something would do — I wandered across Europe. That wandering brought me into the mountains of Parnassus, where I stood overlooking the ruins of Apollo’s famed Oracle of Delphi.

The stones lay silent, scattered across the hillside, yet once this place was alive with voices. Kings, generals, and seekers from across the known world journeyed here to hear the word of Apollo through the Pythia, whose cryptic utterances shaped the destiny of empires. Now the columns are toppled, the temple empty; the coffers long since dried up. As I gazed out across the valley, the question pressed upon me: What happened here? What silenced her voice? Did the Sibyl simply grow weary and walk away? Or was something deeper at work?

A peculiar thought struck me. Could it be that magic itself once truly walked the earth? Every great culture has preserved some memory of a flood. That is easily enough researched. But every culture also whispers of magic — of powers white and black, oracles and omens, spells and signs. At what point do we stop dismissing these traditions as quaint superstition and begin listening to what the Ancients themselves are trying to tell us?

Perhaps, as insane as it sounds, just perhaps the ancient world was as all the fairy tales and movies portray it to be; a land overflowing with magic and wonder.  Whatever spout of arcane power that existed flowed to every corner of the ancient world, granting vision to oracles and power to spell casters.  Then something happened in the Cosmos, something so universe defining, something so creation altering that it changed the very fabric of reality as we know it.  The spout was turned off.

For the Christian, the silence of Delphi — and of all the ancient oracles — cannot be dismissed as mere coincidence. Their muteness coincides with a cosmic event: the death and Resurrection of Christ. Where once magic, sorcery, and oracles held sway, their power was broken at the Cross. What remains is only illusion, faint shadows conjured for spectacle, while the true Word still speaks from the empty tomb.

There are some very real Old and New Testament attestations to magic.

The Old Testament: Real Powers, Forbidden Paths

The Hebrew Scriptures do not portray sorcery as harmless superstition or mere sleight of hand. On the contrary, magic is taken seriously, precisely because it was understood to tap into spiritual forces not of God. The prohibitions in the Law are so severe because they deal not with empty games, but with real dangers — rival mediations that encroach upon the covenant between God and His people.  Recall that even the kosher prohibition on pork was likely born out of the real world fear of trichinosis.

1. Pharaoh’s Magicians (Exodus 7–8)

 When Moses and Aaron confront Pharaoh, the magicians of Egypt are able to mimic several of the signs. They turn staffs into serpents, water into blood, and summon frogs upon the land. For a time, they appear to match the power of God’s servant. But when the plagues intensify, their strength falters. At the third plague, the magicians themselves confess: “This is the finger of God” (Exod. 8:19).

This episode demonstrates two things: first, that pagan sorcery could perform real wonders; second, that such power was always limited and ultimately inferior to the sovereignty of God. Magic is real, but only by permission — and its defeat by the plagues foreshadows its ultimate eclipse at the Cross.

2. The Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28)

 Perhaps the most unsettling account of necromancy in Scripture is Saul’s visit to the medium at Endor. In his desperation, abandoned by the LORD and cut off from prophetic vision, Saul turns to forbidden arts. To her own shock, the woman succeeds in summoning the prophet Samuel, who pronounces Saul’s impending ruin.

Here again, the sacred author does not dismiss the episode as fraud. The witch really calls up Samuel, but the result is judgment. The episode reveals necromancy as a genuine breach of the natural order — a door into the realm of the dead that ought never be opened.

3. The Law’s Prohibition (Deuteronomy 18:9–14)

 The Torah explicitly bans divination, soothsaying, sorcery, spells, necromancy, and the consultation of spirits. These are not listed as idle games, but as “abominations” (תּוֹעֵבָה). Why? Because they constitute counterfeit revelation. They attempt to mediate divine knowledge through powers apart from the LORD.

The contrast is drawn sharply: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you — to him you shall listen” (Deut. 18:15). Instead of sorcery, God gives true prophecy. Instead of omens, He gives His Word.

4. The Prophets’ Polemic

 Isaiah mocks the astrologers of Babylon: “Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, stand up and save you… Behold, they are like stubble, the fire consumes them” (Isa 47:13–14). The prophets continually expose sorcery as doomed, not because it is ineffective, but because it cannot withstand the judgment of God.

The New Testament: The Spout Sealed at the Cross

With the coming of Christ, the world enters into a new dispensation of power. No longer do magicians and sorcerers stand toe-to-toe with prophets. The miracles of Jesus are not conjured forces but direct manifestations of divine authority. His very presence reorders the spiritual cosmos, and His Cross closes the old channels of sorcery.

1. Authority, Not Conjuring

In the Gospels, Jesus does not manipulate powers; He commands them.

When He heals, He does so with a word, not a ritual.

When He casts out demons, the people marvel: “What is this? With authority He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him” (Mark 1:27).

When He calms the storm, the disciples cry: “Even the winds and the sea obey Him!” (Matt 8:27).

Unlike the magicians of Egypt or the mediums of Canaan, Christ’s acts are not borrowed forces but the unveiling of divine sovereignty itself.

2. The Cosmic Rupture of the Cross

At the moment of His death, the veil of the Temple is torn from top to bottom (Matt 27:51). This is not a symbolic flourish but a cosmic proclamation: access to God is no longer mediated through shadows or rival powers, but through the Crucified Himself.

Paul interprets this event as a definitive conquest: “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the Cross” (Col 2:15). The demonic hosts that once empowered magic and oracles are now stripped and bound. The “font” from which they drew is sealed.

3. Simon Magus: The Magician Unmasked (Acts 8:9–24)

In Samaria, Simon amazes the crowds with his sorceries. He is revered as “that power of God which is called Great.” Yet when the Apostles arrive, his supposed might collapses. He even attempts to buy the gift of the Holy Spirit, exposing that his craft was counterfeit from the beginning. Peter rebukes him: “Your heart is not right before God… you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.”

Simon becomes emblematic of all post-Resurrection sorcery: once feared, now hollow; once commanding awe, now reduced to illusion.

4. The Burning of the Books (Acts 19:19)

In Ephesus, converts to the Way publicly burn their books of magic, worth vast sums of silver. This dramatic act symbolizes more than moral rejection. It is recognition that these texts are now impotent. Where once they offered access to hidden power, now they are ash before the fire of the Spirit.

5. Paul on the “Elements of the World”

Paul speaks repeatedly of the stoicheia tou kosmou (“elemental spirits of the world”). These were once the powers that enslaved humanity (Gal 4:3, 9). But Christ has broken their hold. What were once chains of bondage are now revealed as powerless phantoms, mere shadows in the brilliant rays of the Son.

From Real Powers to Sealed Spout

The witness of the Old Testament is clear: magic and sorcery were not dismissed as harmless illusions. Pharaoh’s magicians contended with Moses, the Witch of Endor summoned Samuel, and the Law forbade necromancy not as folly but as abomination. These accounts show that sorcery once tapped into real, though fallen, spiritual forces. Yet every episode also reveals their limits: Pharaoh’s magicians falter, the witch’s conjuring brings judgment, and the prophets denounce diviners as doomed before the LORD. Magic was real, but it was a rival — a counterfeit mediation that could never withstand the true sovereignty of God.

In the New Testament, however, something decisive occurs. The miracles of Christ are not conjuring but command: winds, waves, demons, even death itself obey Him. At the moment of the Cross, the veil of the Temple is torn, and Paul declares that Christ has “disarmed the rulers and authorities” (Col 2:15). What once held sway is stripped of power. Simon Magus is exposed as hollow, the Ephesian books of magic are burned as worthless, and Paul proclaims that the “elemental spirits of the world” no longer enslave humanity.

Taken together, Scripture presents a dramatic arc: before the Resurrection, magic is real but limited; after the Resurrection, it is emptied of power. The demons who ultimately supply this power are stripped of most of their power at their fall, yet still remain quite potent compared to us.  The “spigot” that once supplied sorcery is sealed at Calvary. What remains to magicians and oracles are only shadows and illusions, while the true and living Word continues to speak through the Risen Christ and His Church.

Patristic Witness: The Demons Silenced

A. Justin Martyr (2nd Century)

Justin, writing only decades after the Apostles, insists that pagan gods were in truth demons, who once held sway through oracles and sorcery. In his First Apology and Dialogue with Trypho, he argues that with the coming of Christ these demonic powers were exposed and weakened. Justin points to the collapse of oracles as proof: “Since the coming of Christ, the demons can no longer deceive men as they once did.” For him, Delphi’s silence was not decline, but defeat.

B. Origen (3rd Century)

Origen’s Contra Celsum directly engages pagan critics. Celsus complained that Christian exorcists seemed to wield more authority than the old oracles. Origen agreed — but explained why: Christ had bound the spirits that once spoke through shrines and magicians. Sorcery, he conceded, once achieved effects through demons, but its power had grown feeble since the Resurrection. The silencing of oracles was, to Origen, history itself preaching the victory of Christ.

C. Eusebius of Caesarea (4th Century)

In his Praeparatio Evangelica, Eusebius catalogues the mute shrines of the ancient world and links their silence explicitly to the triumph of the Gospel. For him, the great centers of prophecy — Delphi, Dodona, Didyma — did not fade by chance. Their gods were unmasked as idols, their priests abandoned, because the Risen Christ had disarmed the spirits that once lurked there. The oracles fell silent because their voices were never divine; they were demonic, and Christ had silenced them.

D. Augustine of Hippo (Late 4th – Early 5th Century)

In The City of God, Augustine ridicules the pagan gods who once thundered through oracles, now mute before the Cross. He describes the ancient demonic powers as having a kind of “legal claim” over fallen creation, tolerated until Christ’s coming. But at the Passion, those claims were annulled, their authority broken. The oracles ceased, not because the Sibyls grew weary, but because their patrons were bound. For Augustine, this was cosmic proof of Colossians 2:15: Christ “made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the Cross.”

Historical Confirmation: The Silence of the Oracles

A. Delphi: The Voice of Apollo Grows Mute

The Delphic Oracle was once the beating heart of Greek religion. Kings and generals shaped their campaigns by the Pythia’s words. Yet by the 2nd century AD, even pagan writers acknowledged its decline. Plutarch, himself a priest at Delphi, wrote an essay On the Obsolescence of Oracles, puzzled by their growing silence. Later, in the 4th century, Emperor Julian the Apostate — who tried to restore pagan worship — was told in his day that the shrine of Delphi stood empty: “Tell the king: the fair-wrought hall has fallen. Phoebus no longer has a roof, nor prophetic laurel, nor speaking spring; the water of speech is quenched.”

For Christians like Eusebius and Augustine, this was no accident: Delphi was silent because Christ had risen.

B. Dodona: The Oaks Fall Quiet

Dodona in Epirus, where Zeus was said to speak through the rustling of sacred oaks and the flight of doves, was one of the oldest oracles in Greece. Yet by the 2nd–3rd centuries AD it too had gone silent. Christian apologists pointed to Dodona’s death as proof that the pagan gods were no gods at all — or rather, that the demons who once spoke there had been silenced by the Cross.

C. Didyma: The Shuttered Temple of Apollo

At Didyma, near Miletus, Apollo’s oracle rivaled Delphi in renown. It was still active in the Roman period, and emperors consulted it. Yet by the late 3rd century it was abandoned, its priests scattered. The ruins that remain today bear silent witness to what Eusebius called “the evacuation of the demons.”

D. Siwa Oasis: Ammon’s Desert Temple

In Egypt’s western desert, the Oracle of Ammon at Siwa once drew even Alexander the Great. But by the 1st century AD it was already in decline, and under Roman and later Christian dominance it vanished completely. The god who once gave Alexander his “divine sonship” could not speak a word against the Carpenter from Nazareth.

E. Claros and the Lesser Shrines

Other oracles, like Claros in Ionia, or those scattered throughout the Mediterranean, likewise dwindled between the 2nd and 4th centuries. By the time Christianity was legalized in the 4th century, the old shrines were largely dead. Even pagan philosophers like Porphyry admitted the collapse, bitterly connecting it to the spread of Christianity.

F. The Universal Pattern

The oracles did not all close on the same day, but the pattern is unmistakable. From the 1st century through the 4th, the voices of the pagan gods fell silent. Political and cultural factors played their part, but the Fathers insisted the deeper cause was spiritual: the Resurrection had disarmed the powers. The silence of the oracles is, as it were, history’s commentary on Colossians 2:15.

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

 By late antiquity, the mighty oracles that once swayed empires were nothing but ruins. Pagan writers themselves puzzled over the silence, while Christians pointed to the Cross. The timing is too exact to dismiss: as the Gospel advanced, the shrines withered. The silence of Delphi and its sisters is not coincidence but confirmation: the font of magic was indeed shut at the Resurrection.

The Triumph of the Cross

What emerges from Scripture, the Fathers, and history is a single dramatic truth: Christ’s Passion and Resurrection did not merely redeem souls; they reordered the cosmos. The old world, with its rival spiritual powers, its magicians and oracles, was eclipsed in the light of the Crucified and Risen Lord.

1. Christus Victor

The New Testament proclaims that Christ “disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the Cross” (Col 2:15). For the Fathers, this was not metaphor but metaphysics. The spiritual powers that once spoke through shrines, that once lent sorcery its bite, were unmasked and bound. The Cross is not just victory over death; it is the binding of the strong man (Matt 12:29), the shutting of the font from which magic once flowed.

2. From Counterfeit Mediation to True Sacrament

Magic and oracles once offered a counterfeit mediation: access to knowledge, healing, fertility, or prophecy through the invocation of spirits. The Law forbade them as rival revelations, and the prophets mocked their impotence before God. With Christ, the counterfeit is replaced by the true.

Baptism purges where incantations once promised cleansing.

The Eucharist feeds with divine life where pagan feasts starved with shadows.

Prophecy is fulfilled in Christ, the Word made flesh, who is Himself the revelation of the Father.

Thus, what sorcery once offered in fragments and lies, the Church now offers in fullness and truth.

3. Illusion Versus Reality

After the Resurrection, magicians may still dazzle crowds, but what they hold is not power but illusion. Where once demons deceived through real effects, now they can only whisper lies, conjure tricks, or distract with spectacle. Augustine mocks them in City of God: their silence is the loudest proof of their impotence. What remains of magic is “the faintest of illusions, conjured for momentary entertainment,” impotent before the glory of the Risen Lord.

4. History as Apologetic

The silence of the oracles, the collapse of Delphi, Dodona, and Didyma, is not an incidental curiosity of late antiquity. It is history bearing witness to theology. The very stones of Delphi preach: what once held sway is mute; what once claimed divinity is dust. The Gospel endures, and the sacraments of the Church flow as living water where once the spirits drank dry the souls of men.

 Magic once held sway because the powers of darkness were permitted to deceive. But at the Resurrection, those powers were broken, the font sealed, the oracles silenced. What remains is shadow and illusion. The Cross did not only open heaven — it closed the gates of hellish counterfeit, replacing sorcery with sacrament, illusion with truth, and silence with the Word made flesh who speaks still.

The Oracles Are Silent, the Tomb Still Speaks

When I stood at Delphi in the summer sun, the ruins lay quiet. The columns were broken, the temple roofless, the valley below bathed in silence. Once, kings trembled here at the words of a priestess; once, empires leaned on her riddles. Now, nothing. The Sibyl is gone. The voice is stilled.

Yet that silence is not emptiness. It is proclamation. For the Christian, the ruins of Delphi are not merely an archaeological site; they are a monument to the triumph of the Cross. They stand as stone witnesses that the powers and principalities which once deceived the nations have been bound, their fonts sealed, their voices silenced.

Every age has its magicians. Some dazzle with illusions, others with promises of secret knowledge or hidden power. But all are shadows, tricks, and echoes of a world that ended on Calvary. For at the Resurrection, the great exchange was accomplished: sorcery was silenced, and sacrament was given; false voices were stilled, and the true Word was spoken; the oracles were shut, and the tomb was opened.

I left Delphi that day with a strange conviction: history itself preaches the Gospel. The stones that once heard the riddles of Apollo now cry out that Christ is risen.

Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat!