The Meaning of Witchcraft

I am shamelessly hijacking the title of Old Gerald's second non-fiction book on the subject for the title of this post, because it best suits what I have to say. The modern witchcraft moevement is an extraordinary phenomenon, & I think there is great significance in its arising when it did. This post at least partly consists of the thoughts I'm continuing to have about my previous post concerning the United Nations & the Catholic church.

The *only* evidence for a religious movement drawing on the witch figure before the twentieth century is Leland's Aradia. This sentence is almost a direct quote from Hutton, I'm writing this out & about but if you want me to, email me & I will find the actual reference in my notes. My opinion is that without the sort of movements which preceded it, as also laid out by Hutton, & particularly the occult explosion at the end of the nineteenth century, it could not have happened.

And what makes it extraordinary is that our way of life should be a load of quackery & romantic nonsense. It is inconceivable that people on opposite sides of the world can have the same experience without meeting, but it happens. It is inconceivable that we can influence events magically, but it happens.

I feel there is a sea change going on, that has been happening for some decades & we are part of it. In many ways the old order is being confronted by modern powers (ie RC church/UN for example). The old order is struggling for survival.

We, on the other hand are a movement which as a movement is a completely new (ie twentieth century) thing, yet is built almost completely of older ingredients. Our tendency to idealise a fictional past is part of this: we are taking stuff from the past & magically changing it into a new thing. It is not for nothing that Dion Fortune's adage of 'all gods are one god, all goddesses are one goddess, & there is one initiator' is so popular among us. We witness to human ability to make all things one.

This is of course open to criticism as cultural imperialism, but this is really what I'm trying to say. I have a sneaking suspicion that the cultures of the past are actually melding together, so that what may seem imperialism may actually be people coming together as one.

The insight that you are me & I am you is both magical & a genuinely ancient insight of 'spiritual' people.

Even the old divisions of mind/body/spirit are coming down. The internet is partly responsible for the spell cast over the world.

Crowley defined black magicians as those who would resist the natural process of change, which is life itself, & I think to resist this process may be the most futile exercise there is. It is merely to invite death, & transformation into another entity who will be able to change.

When people say that witches go with natural cycles this is exactly what they mean. I personally am not willing this, I am describing the tides of time that I can sense going on in me & around me. The challenge for us as humans is to go with this. The challenge for us as witches is to enable this to happen. The point of witches is to witness to, & move this process on.

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