What in the Western Church has often been called superstition, from the Latin superstitio is what the ancient Church referred to as δεισιδαιμονία (deisidaimonia), from the word deisos meaning "dread" or even "timid" and daimon, which in the ancient Greek world was a catch-all term for various spiritual, divine, or semi-divine beings. The concept of the Greek daimon was appropriated in 2nd Temple Jewish parlance as being negative, a term to refer to specifically evil spirits, and false gods--which is the meaning which entered into Christian usage and is the basis for the Christian concept of the demon, a fallen angel and diabolical minion.
In Christian usage deisidaimonia referred to what might be described as a false spirituality, or wrong religious sentiment; one based upon fear of spiritual things. And hence how it came to cover what the more familiar word superstition often entails: irrational fear, dread of the supernatural, a false belief vis-a-vis religion and spirituality.
The Church has always condemned what it views as deisidaimonia, because Christians should not live lives of fear and dread over false spiritual things. And it has always been a constant battle, because official Christian belief and practice and folk beliefs and folk practices have not always been aligned. Which is why we have archeological evidence of "Christian" talismans and charms. For example here's a magical amulet from the 5th century,
On one side is a depiction of the raising of Lazarus as recorded in the Gospel of John, and on the reverse is a magical incantation in Greek.
Something like this would have been harshly condemned by Church leadership, but nevertheless was something that would have existed among general lay practice.
This is the same kind of disparity between official Christian teaching and practice and folk practice that we see show up now and again throughout Christian history.
Which is why after Charlemagne conquered Saxony a council held at Paderborn was held to address the conversion of the Saxons now under Frankish authority. At the top of the list of things Paderborn did was condemn belief in witches and witchcraft, and especially to condemn the pagan practice of hunting down and killing supposed witches; anyone found engaging in witch-hunting was to be arrested and put to death. You know, because killing people that you believe to be a witch is murder.
This bears repeating. So let me repeat it. The official Church position, and since the Franks were officially Christian in their religion, that it was vitally important to stamp out pagan superstitious practices and beliefs--such as the belief in the existence of witches and witchcraft and the hunting down of supposed witches.
Pagans, not Christians, believed in witchcraft.
Pagans, not Christians, were hunting witches.
This was official Christian teaching and practice in the middle ages.
There is this idea in the modern age that during the middle ages the Church was going around hunting down vestigial pagans labeling them as witches and burning them at the stake.
But, and I can't stress this enough, official church-sanctioned witch-hunting was not a practice of medieval Christian Europe. It did, however, become a practice of early modern Europe. With the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1487 (for those keeping score, that's only a few years before Columbus made his trip to the Caribbean islands), which was specifically written to try and convince the Church that witches were real, and that witchcraft really existed, and that someone needed to stop them (insert obvious parallels to modern moral panics such as the Satanic Panic of the 1980's). Because even when the Malleus was written and published the general Church position was that this was superstition, it was false, not real, there were no such thing as witches. And then, of course, attitudes do begin to change. And, in fact, where attitudes seem to change the most on this topic isn't in Catholic countries, but Protestant ones following the Reformation.
That's why in the 17th century you have the Puritans at Salem, Massachusetts hunting people down and burning them as witches. This wasn't some vestige of the medieval period. The Puritans were, here, very much a product of THEIR time. Witch-hunting was a modern thing, belief in witches and in witchcraft was a novel idea introduced within the MODERN history of Christianity.
And so, again, deisidaimonia, superstition, is something the Church has consistently had to battle against as an internal struggle within Christianity.
The belief in witchcraft is in the same category as other forms of deisdaimonia--belief in astrology, the belief in the "evil eye", belief that certain numbers hold some kind of spiritual power, such as a fear of the number 13 or the number 666, belief that amulets, charms, or talismans are of any value or significance, belief that certain things are "lucky" or "unlucky" such as a black cat or breaking a mirror. These are all examples of things which are commonly found in "folk" belief but which are condemned as false spirituality, false religiosity, as deisidaimonia--superstition.
One can no more manipulate the universe by speaking a magical formula than one can speak to the dead by going to a so-called psychic, or defend against the "evil eye" by wearing some charm or talisman.
Or, as in the case of this thread's OP--no one can do anything by playing with candles.
And while we're at it, you can't talk with the dead by playing a board game made by Hasbro Toys, or predict the future by tipping around a ball of plastic filled with water, or read someone's fortune by playing with a deck of cards.
It seems like this is stuff that should be obvious. But, because there has been a very lucrative industry of fear-mongering, snake oil peddlers, and false prophets and false theologians actively deceiving Christians to believe in anti-Christian tosh such as this, well apparently it does need to get said. And repeatedly said again and again.
-CryptoLutheran