The Magical Significance of Silence

I have immediately hit a snag with the title of this post because I was going to make the point that for Christians and witches and/or Pagans silence is different. But of course there is nothing to stop a Christian being a witch, practicing magic or even having a foot in paganism! So perhaps I mean the significance of silence in some magical traditions.

Of course I am not aware of any history of a monastic movement as such in modern pagan or magical traditions (come on, you didn't seriously expect me to stay on the subject for more than a paragraph did you?). You will find formal, vowed monasticism in some of the Old Catholic or Liberal Catholic traditions. In modern magical traditions we do have a long tradition of going into the quiet with our books, or on a walk, to do the thing that monastics do in silence.

But what is that? Monasticism comes from the Greek word monos meaning alone and has implications of paring things down to what is necessary. And that's where the difference starts, because I'm a witch and I'll decide what I'm doing thank you very much.

I think we do, however have activities which aim to focus, concentrate and feed our witchcraft. They may well not take place in silence. There is a Judaeo-Christian tradition where God is a still small voice and it is necessary to silence the chatter to some extent to enable an I and Thou encounter, whereas in paganism you're standing on the Divine and she's quite likely to tell you when she wants attention.

So rather than the quietening for encounter meaning, influenced by the Qabalah in magical world views silence is more likely to represent the nothingness before something, even before an intent of creation. Like taking a breath before speaking. Or the sensation that you might need the loo soon but the idea hasn't popped into your head.

Don't get me wrong there is an implication of purity type thing but it tends to be the thing before the actual thing.

It also has remarkable power, considering it's nothing, because the child on the Golden Dawn fool card is making the sign of silence but yet can control the wolf!

Sssh!