Is Herbalism Witchcraft? What the Bible Says About Herbs

No. Using a plant God made is not witchcraft. Steeping peppermint for a tea, cooking with thyme or putting a fig poultice on a boil is not sorcery. What the Bible forbids is giving a plant spiritual power of its own, worshiping it, or using it for spells and divination. Herbs were never the problem. What people do with them can be.

God made it, and He called it good

Everything God created, He created good. At the end of the sixth day, “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31, NASB). And when He placed the first man, He didn’t put him in a city or a cave. “The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed” (Genesis 2:8, NASB). We started in a garden, on purpose.

Scripture ties plants and healing together from beginning to end. Ezekiel sees trees by the river whose “fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing” (Ezekiel 47:12, NASB). Revelation closes with the tree of life, whose “leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2, NASB). And when King Hezekiah was sick, the prophet Isaiah said, “Let them take a cake of figs and apply it to the boil, that he may recover” (Isaiah 38:21, NASB).

The enemy can’t create. He can only pervert.

Here is the thing to remember. The enemy cannot make anything. All he can do is take what God made and twist it.

He does this with everything good:

• Food. God gave us “every plant yielding seed” to eat (Genesis 1:29). The enemy turns a gift into gluttony and an idol.
• Marriage and intimacy. God designed it and blessed it. The enemy pulls it out of the covenant and cheapens it.
• Work. God gave Adam work before sin ever entered the world, “to cultivate it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15, NASB). The enemy turns it into a god we sacrifice our families to.

None of those gifts became evil. They were perverted. And it’s no different with herbs.

Where herbalism really does cross the line

Man takes something God made so well that people start to worship it. That’s where it becomes idolatry. Paul describes it exactly: people “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25, NASB).

You see it all over modern herbalism: a plant’s “spirit,” asking a plant for protection, rituals and spells, charms. Scripture is clear about all of that. Deuteronomy forbids anyone “who practices witchcraft,” “a sorcerer,” or “one who casts a spell” (Deuteronomy 18:10-11, NASB). In Galatians 5:20, “sorcery” is listed with idolatry among the deeds of the flesh. The Greek word Paul uses there is pharmakeia, and that’s why some Christians get nervous about herbs. But the sin is the sorcery, the occult use, not the chamomile in your cup.

The double standard we don’t notice

Think about this. Plenty of Christians don’t think twice about injecting a vaccine or taking something a doctor recommends, even with a side-effect list a page long. We eat Doritos and take Tylenol like candy. But hand someone a cup of chamomile, and suddenly they’re asking whether it’s demonic.

Asking whether an herb is safe is a good question, and every herb page on this site lists its cautions and safety notes, including pregnancy. But a question about safety is not a question about sin. When we treat God’s plants like they belong to the occult, we’ve let the enemy plant his flag on ground he never owned.

We’re taking this ground back

“The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains” (Psalm 24:1, NASB). That includes the plants. “All things have been created through Him and for Him” (Colossians 1:16, NASB).

God designed our bodies to heal, and He made plants to help. When we use them, we know the plant isn’t doing anything on its own merit. It works because of its design, and the glory goes to the Designer. Paul says it plainly: “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude; for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer” (1 Timothy 4:4-5, NASB).

So receive it with gratitude. Pray over it. Give God the glory for it. That’s how we laugh in the face of the enemy and claim this ground back. He doesn’t get to put his flag on something God made.

If you want a quick test for any herbal book, class or curriculum, I lay one out in Is Herbalism Biblical?: does it credit the plant, or the One who made the plant?

Can Christians use sage?

Yes, the way God made it to be used. Cooking with sage or drinking it as a tea is using a plant, the same as any herb in your spice cabinet. Sage has been in kitchens and home remedies for centuries, and that’s what it’s for. God “causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and vegetation for the labor of man, so that he may bring forth food from the earth” (Psalm 104:14, NASB).

Burning a bundle of sage to cleanse a room or drive out “bad energy” is a different thing entirely. So what is bad energy? Call it what it is: demonic activity. It’s the enemy, and he works in the spiritual realm. You don’t fight that with smoke from a plant. You fight it on your knees.

Scripture is clear about where this battle happens: “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12, NASB). It’s just as clear about the weapons: “the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses” (2 Corinthians 10:4, NASB). A leaf can’t touch a spiritual enemy.

Only spiritual things make a difference in the spiritual realm. When the disciples couldn’t drive out a spirit, Jesus told them, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:29, NASB). The seventy came back rejoicing, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name” (Luke 10:17, NASB). And the saints in Revelation “overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony” (Revelation 12:11, NASB). The blood of Jesus, the name of Jesus, prayer: that’s what the enemy answers to.

Burning sage doesn’t remove bad energy any more than a placebo heals you. It isn’t a spiritual thing. And it quietly teaches us to look to a plant for a protection only God gives, which is the Romans 1 trap again: serving the creature instead of the Creator.

So if you have a sage bundle on your shelf, here’s what I’d tell you. Don’t use it to “cleanse” anything. If your home feels heavy, pray over it. “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7, NASB). And if you want sage in your life, buy it in the spice aisle or grow it in your garden, and put it in your stuffing.

If you want to go deeper, my book Back to Eden: A Biblical Foundation for Herbal Healing lays out the whole biblical foundation, in print or as a PDF.