Making Witchcraft Commonplace

Driving into work this morning I heard a radio ad by Car Toys that disturbed me. I looked up the ad on their website so I could hear it again and I found out that the new Car Toys slogan is "It's Almost Magic." As expected, they have a few more radio spots based on this theme and a couple of television commercials too. The idea behind the campaign is that customers are so surprised by the way Car Toys transformed their vehicle that they are now convinced Car Toys is using magic. The commercial that I heard is titled "Illegal warlockery". It features a teenaged girl who is giving feedback to Car Toys about the work they did on her mother's minivan.

You can listen to the ad here:

I'm not coming down on Car Toys as a company or the products and services that they provide. I love good quality sound and I've heard they do some good work. In fact, if I had a few extra bucks I'd like to put a new stereo in our family Suburban and maybe a GPS; but anyway...

I get the idea behind the ad campaign—Wow, Car Toys does some really cool stuff to cars; so cool that they could not have done it without the help of magic. I get it, pretty neat concept.

What bothers me is the way terms related to witchcraft are thrown around and made to seem so commonplace. I understand, it's a secular radio station, if I don't like it I can turn it off, whatever. My point is this: I have never heard witchcraft talked about so lightly in an advertisement and presented in such a way that makes it seem like everyone does it. For example, the girl in the ad, figuring that Car Toys is into magic, says, "I'm super stoked that you're into the dark arts." First of all, my children would probably ask me what 'super stoked' means and then they would ask what the 'dark arts' are. Consider that—they are called dark arts. Since when is dark, as in the occult, a good thing? And why is this teenaged girl stoked about dark arts? Do her parents know she is into the dark arts? Do they approve of this?

Then the girl says in a normal everyday kinda tone "...I do love witchery, so call me." You might be thinking, "Michael, don't you watch TV? Haven't you seen all the vampire shows? What's the big deal? This stuff is everywhere." Well, no. I don't watch TV and I haven't for over 10 years now. And yes, I have heard of the vampire shows; that's why I don't watch TV! We don't read the Harry Potter books either or any other books that glamorize witchcraft. When she was very young, my oldest daughter threw away all of the Disney books in our library that mentioned magic—and that was MOST of the Disney books. This was her idea because we taught her early on that witchcraft was not of Adonai. Back to the commercial—is witchcraft really that common in our society that we think it's okay for an average teenaged girl to casually admit over the airwaves that she loves witchery? Is this okay or something that we should just overlook? If it is, our society is further down the tubes than I thought. How many people have heard this commercial and thought, "How nice, my daughter and all her friends are into witchery too."

Her final comment is what put me over the edge. She ends her feedback by telling Car Toys, "We should read tarot cards or like, listen to my boyfriends mix-tape." If you listened to the YouTube commercial above, this is what you heard her say. But what they aired on the radio was something different. Tarot cards are bad enough but instead of the 'mix-tape' comment she said, "We should read tarot cards or like, burn some sage." I took this as a reference to marijuana (which I haven't totally discounted); but after a bit of research, I found that burning sage is an occultic practice used in cleansing a home of evil spirits. Why do we even need to mention these pagan rituals in commercials and put ideas into the minds of our impressionable children? Since when has the occult been a good thing?

The other radio spots are not any better. I have not watched the television commercials and at this point, I don't plan to. What it boils down to is this—we live in a fallen world that is getting darker and darker. We, as believers in Messiah Yeshua, need to become brighter and brighter. I pray that the topic of witchcraft never becomes commonplace in my home and in the minds of my family.



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