Former witch lifts the lid on the decade she spent ‘worshiping the devil’ in a coven – as she reveals how she returned to Christianity after years of being ‘deceived by Satan’ 

A ‘recovering’ witch who says she was deceived by the Wicca religion has revealed why she abandoned the dark arts and returned to Christianity after years of casting spells for her own good fortune.

Selah Ally Tower, who goes by her middle name, joined a coven in her home state of New Jersey after taking a correspondence course in witchcraft in 1989. However, after a decade of casting spells, reading tarot cards, wearing capes and flowing skirts, and enjoying an extramarital affair at the suggestion of her coven’s leaders, a pastor convinced the 58-year-old mother of three give up on witchcraft for good.

‘I did not believe that I was worshiping Satan,’ she told the New York Post. ‘But now I realize I was deceived. I believe it was the spiritual deception [the devil] uses to defeat people.’

Ally, who is also a grandmother of two, was raised Episcopalian and met her former husband at the church she had grown up in. However, Ally said her marriage was a ‘horror show’ and she and her husband slept separately.

‘I had come to a place of doubt and unbelief in God due to my failing marriage and major financial struggles,’ she told Daily Mail Online. ‘My husband at the time had an undiagnosed bi-polar [disorder] so we never knew what to expect and it seemed all my prayers and counseling hadn’t helped.’

After learning about Wicca, Ally said she was drawn to the idea of ‘living in harmony with all of nature’, as well as Goddess spirituality because it felt like the men in her life had failed her.

‘The religion of Wicca took hold of me. It opened a portal into a new world,’ she told the New York Post of turning to witchcraft.

Ally said high priests and high priestesses encouraged coven members to divorce spouses who weren’t involved in the occult while urging them have physical relationships with fellow witches

‘It was kind of like a ’70s free-sexual thing,’ she recalled of the attitude of the coven. Ally went on to have a long-term affair with a man – although he wasn’t a Wiccan.

‘Casting spells, I saw results. Usually, it was like – maybe I needed money or I needed a car. I needed love in my life,’ she said of the allure of witchcraft. ‘It was very selfish. It was all about what I wanted. I was really satisfied with my life.’

When Ally was kicked out of the nondenominational church she belonged to, she extracted her revenge by putting a ‘vanishing’ spell on the pastor, who was like a father to her.

She learned just one month later that he was retiring and moving out of the state – which she believed to be the result of her spell. However, despite their past disagreements, the pastor invited her back into the church and told her she ‘can’t run from God’.

In Taken from the Night: A Witch’s Encounter with God and From the Craft to Christ: The Allure of Witchcraft and the Church’s Response, Ally describes how she found her way back to Christianity after more than a decade of spell casting.

Barry Kosmin, a sociology professor at Trinity College, and the lead researcher on the American Religious Identification Survey, told ABC News that people who identify themselves as Wiccan went from 8,000 people in 1990 to 342,000 in 2008 – and these numbers don’t include the undeclared practitioners of witchcraft.

For Wiccans, Halloween marks the Gaelic festival Samhain, which celebrates the end of harvest season and the beginning of winter.

Ally explained that it is a time when the ‘veils’’ between the living and the dead are at its thinnest point of the entire year.

The former witch said she is happier than ever with her decision to return to Christianity, and as Halloween approaches, she advises that ‘we have to be careful in our choice of costume’ – although she doesn’t have any issue with children dressing up to go trick-or-treating.