Hei Everyone! I’m not sure how many in this forum are familiar with Magick and it’s related practices, but I wanted to ask those who are to help shed some light on the topic. By Magick (for those that don’t know) I mean the many pagan religions and non-pagan practices of ancient rituals such as Voodoo (Hoodoo), Black Magick, Native American and other American Indian Shamani etc.
I’ve been interested in this topic for information purposes and for general culture and education. What I mean is that it is not something I personally believe in or follow, but it is something I would like to have a better understanding of. Wikipedia and other internet sources are a bit dry and I would love to hear a more personal take on the whole thing.
The accepted scientific understanding of the modern world is very materialistic, though quantum physics is beginning to call that dogma very much into question. In such a worldview, the basic building blocks of the universe are matter and energy; consciousness is an epiphenomenon.
An alternative viewpoint is that consciousness is the source of all creation and matter and energy are epiphenomena. In such a universe, telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, magick are all completely natural.
You might want to start reading some of the Remote Viewing / Remote Influencing research. I recommend these to you because this work has proceeded using very rigorous scientific procedure and that, Dapg01, seems to be the bias of your current belief system.
She probably has friends in other dimensions, Warren. Spirit guides and the like. No idea if she cavorts across the sky in a craft capable of breaking the light barrier though.
no I have no space friends, we dont dance with the devil in the pale moon light either
(snort) Yes I have to take them off every hour so I dont float away.
That’s not what I meant and you know it
Not dimensions no, plains maybe, just as some believe in god I believe in a spirit guide. Some people call their spirit guide god. Spirit guides are just a higher source of energy we talk to just like others pray. Just as some believe in angels, I believe in gods and goddesses
When people say they pray to there spirit guides or deities others tend to judge and think people are irrational. Its easy to judge when you have no understanding of something.
But pray to Jesus or God and that’s perfectly acceptable. Not because its anymore rational. Its because that is what society has taught you to believe. Before the church was formed paganism was the only religion. It was the men who structured our beliefs into churches and such. It was the church who deemed pagans and witches as evil and this was done to control them and the government. They did a good job to, to this day people have misconceptions not because of what they have seen but because what they have been taught.
I have nothing against Jesus or God. He is a higher energy and it matters little to me what you call it. Its all the same energy. Your god is my spirit guide.
No that is just another myth you were taught so that you fear witches. We fly around on brooms and suck the breath out of little children while they sleep. (snort)
Hey they had to make up something to justify burning us at the stake.
Remote Viewing types seem not infrequently to have extraterrestrial contacts. I don’t know if that is due to the extraterrestrial targets they are prone to view, exopolitical motives or some more profound source of resonance.
What I’d read about witches on broom sticks was that it went back to a time when Wiccans used hallucinogenic herbs in their rituals. Because in sufficient quantities these herbs were quite toxic, they were applied in minute quantities for absorption through the mucus membranes. Wiccan women sometimes used broomsticks to apply the hallucinogenic substances, hence witches flying on broomsticks.
For those of you with pure and unimaginative minds, broomsticks were used because they are dildo shaped objects. Ponder that next time you have to sweep the floor.
I am not wiccan I am a witch and there is a difference but I do practice some wiccan traditions. Wicca is a structured religion started in the late 1930’s early 1940’s in england. At times when people ask I just say wiccan because its easier then having to explain it to them but if my grandmother heard me she would roll over in her grave. She was a witch and so was her mother and her mothers mother as far as we can trace in our tree of life.
Well its quite possible the hallucinogenic herbs could have been used in rituals but witches never claimed to fly on brooms. People with no understanding of witches and witchcraft did. All women in the 16 and 17th century had brooms. It was the typical female household tool used for many things. Witches sometimes use long wooden poles for certain rituals. Since most witches had to hide the fact that they were witches when the church proclaimed us evil they would use brooms instead. You could not walk around carrying a long wooden pole but a broom was less suspect. Many a witch of course eventually got caught using her broom in ritual therefore stories started by people who were taught to fear witches began such as riding a broom or using it for odd sexual acts. Those are all ideals that come from ignorance and fear not from fact.
Thanks Tisha and Warren for the explanations. I’ve been reading a bit on remote viewing which helped a bit.
Tisha, can you explain more on what it means to be a witch? I always thought wiccans were witches, but you make them sound quite different. Also, can a person be a witch or a wicca and a christian or are they opposing philosophies. Clearly the powers behind organized christian religions opposed such beliefs, but without the political bs, is christianity and its teachings incompatible to those of witches and wiccans? By the way, what is an empath?
I started getting very curious about magick and things of the sort (including remote viewing) because reading about things like quantum physics, and string theory the reality that is described by past science so far seems very limited in comparrison. Also things like the law of attraction, shamanism, magick, voodoo, etc seem to all hold similar principles.
If the universe is energy and if energy can be manipulated these philosophies seem to believe they have found ways to do this. In the end, it is not a crazy idea after all. It is clear most humans never reach their full physical and intellectual potentials, but what other aspects have we not even begun to develop? Just as a blind man cannot see something, yet it can percieve it and manipulate it using other senses, we cannot ever expect to see energy, but can we manipulate it? Can we devolop senses we never knew we had until we accept our blindness and develop them?
It is true that we as humans have many limitations, however if we never push the limits, we will never know what they truly are. I am a very science oriented person (as I study science) yet I don’t believe that science can reject the possibility of energy manipulation until it opened its walls of belief wide enough to truly test these possibilities.
Ok this is a little complicated to explain but I will try. I am going to widdle it down to just Pagan and Christianity to keep it simple but there are of course many other forms of worship, philosophies and other beliefs that make up the tree of life.
Just like Lutherans, baptists, catholics and (eclectic, meaning…people who believe in “god” but are not of organized religions) etc etc are all Christians
Wiccans, Witches, Neo Pagans druids are all Pagan.
Paganism is not the worship of evil or the devil. That’s occultism and a whole different subject.
Wicca is a branch of paganism just as Lutheran is a branch of Christianity.
Being a witch is like being eclectic. Every wiccan is a witch but every witch is not wiccan (which is not totally true but I will explain below).
Wicca is a structured practice.
Witches do not need the structured practice to be witches. We believe in a higher power just like the rest of them but we choose to practice more in accordance with nature, energy, vibration and spirit with traditions handed down from our ancestors from generation to generation.
Ok lets look at it like a witch would I am going to use a Tree as a metaphor.
Imagine a big strong tree. The roots of that tree are whatever word you relate to labeling the higher power. ( God, The divine, The lord, Jesus, source, I Am etc etc) I call it divine energy myself.
The trunk of that tree is the beginnings of its structure. Paganism and Christianity etc etc… (there are more but remember we are keeping it simple)
The branches of that tree represent different parts of the trunk. Wicca, Lutheran, druidism, catholics… etc etc
Witches and eclectics are those branches that intertwined with the rest of the branches. While the other catholics druids lutherans neopagans etc etc branch out on their own.
To the source, the roots, no one part of the tree is more important then the other. All parts together make the tree of life. The root is not a tree, The branch are not a tree, The trunk is not a tree but together they make a tree. The roots love all of the trunk and its branches because its part of itself.
A person can not be wicca and catholic because those are opposing practices. While there root is the same they are very different branches of the same tree.
You can be Christian and a witch. If you travel up the tree from its root, traveling up the Christian side of the trunk and following the branch of a witch then yes you can be both.
You will read in places that every wiccan is a witch but every witch is not a wiccan. It makes sense when you realize the wicca was only formed in the late 1930’s to early 50’s. On a basic level its truth, But its not totally the truth. Every wiccan is a pagan not a witch just as every witch is pagan not wiccan.
Ultimately these are all human labels that we use to describe ourselves. To be truly spiritual and close to the divine (God) you must strip away those labels and love the whole tree. This is what eclectics and Witches do or at least aspire to do. They see the tree as a whole, one part not being any more important or less then its others.
Its structure and teachings are but again as I said they stem from the same root. When you see the tree in its whole you can comfortably practice both with respect and love for each. If you can not except that we are all of one divine source and that no one part is more important then the other then you would have trouble or conflicting emotions about being both.
Humans do things sort of backwards. We try to find our spirituality through structured religions when ultimately to truly be close to “god” or the Divine one you must find spirituality first then choose your path.
A empath is a person who has the ability to feel the vibrations coming from people and objects therefore feeling its emotions and feelings. Some people call it clairsentient
I am also clairvoyant, No this does not mean I see the future, I am not a psychic. Clairvoyance is the ability to see beyond what others can see with their 5 senses. Its to see clearly. No I dont see or talk to dead people LOL People always ask me that. I probably could if I really tried but I have no desire to see dead people, I can feel them though. You may think its crazy and many people do, Many will go as far as to mock, fear or make fun of me but that’s just who I am. Take it or leave it. I learned as a child to forgive them for there egos.
I love Einstein, E= MC 2 , The beginning of the answer to everything in the universe. Right now Science is just beginning to learn what many people especially witches have always known. We all come from one source of energy (root) and we are part of that energy therefore we can manipulate it. Of course Scientists being human more logic minded have a need to label it. So do Witches when they have to communicate it to others, just as every other religion or belief, but its all the same in the end. Eventually they will figure it all out and claim it as there discovery. LOL
I just wanted to add here we can “see” energy you just have use more then your eyes to do it.
Its true none of us do reach the full potentials, We cant as long as we label everything. I mean we have to to be able to communicate with others what we mean. Just as I am labeling a lot in what I am saying to you above. Its just the way most of us communicate but if you take those labels off spiritually and just become part of that energy, part of the root…the whole then yes you can manipulate energy. On some simplistic level all of us have always known this. I think its just part of the subconscious. If you look at the teaching of Jesus (not the apostles) he tells us this. He just uses the labels or the words people could relate to in that time frame even when referring to the law of attraction.
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Maybe that is what Jesus really meant when they hung him on the cross and he said “Forgive them for they know not what they do” He was trying to convey that we as humans can not fully ever understand until we once again become one that energy or spirit.
There are hundred and hundreds that apply and if you look at them without the labels. Look at them in the sense that everything is of one source you begin to see clearly. In my opinion Jesus was sent here to remind us of what we forgot. We are all of one higher spirit therefore we all are made in that spirits likeness or energy and can do what that spirit can do. We refused to see because of all those labels we need but as humans with limited understanding we could not communicate with out those labels.
On a side note, many believe that the world is ending in 2012. I think its not the world, I think its the world as we know it. I think it will be the beginning of a new consciousness and understanding of where we all stem from. That’s just my opinion though. The removal of many limitations
I love science for what it is, part of the whole of the tree of life so to speak. The explanation of how and why things work the way they do. It all go’s back to labeling though. Scientists can not believe in something they can not label, measure, see, explain and until they do they will never unravel the mysteries of the universe. They are limited in there abilities and they have placed those limits on themselves.
We as people need to look deeper, really connect to that source by taking off the labels and the masks and feeling it, knowing it, believing it to take those limits away and once you do the possibilities are endless.
Its a quandry because when people ask well how do you do that you cant explain without using those very labels your telling them to take off. Its the only way we know how to communicate.
There are methods like meditation, remote viewing, chakra balancing, lucid dreaming and so many others that help us gain more insight into how to finally take away all those limits and become all we were meant to be.
Thank you for asking these questions with a open mind. Its rare I get to talk about these things because most people are to close minded and judgemental. I think your well on your way to finding your anwsers even though you say your scientific minded, you also have a open mind. You can be both if you travel those paths and when you do you will find the metaphoric “Tree of Life”
Astrologically, according to Arch Crawford, we appear to be heading for bigger changes this year (2010) than in 2012. He also sees the biggest changes for 2012 coming near the fall equinox rather than the winter solstice.
Perhaps 2010 is the Battle of Lexington and 2012 is the Declaration of Independence, ratifying what broke out in 2010.
I don’t mean to undermine the religious discussion, but as I understand it, magick and the associated rituals are used to manifest something or somehow control something that already exists.
Most rituals involve intensely imagining the object/situation to be manifested, and then something material is sacrificed as payment. For example, a typical Wiccan spell would involve imagining the desired outcome while weaving a little sack and putting inside “spell components” which are appropriate for what the caster wants to create, and then burning the whole thing or throwing it in a river while simultaneously releasing the desire from their mind.
In this way, they feel they’ve transferred their mental/emotional desire to a physical form and then destroyed it, making it into something immaterial so that it can influence the physical reality from the “other side.” This is probably where we get the custom to make a wish, and then throw a coin into a fountain.
Some New Age gurus will tell you that this is a primitive form of the “Law of Attraction,” a la “The Secret.” Since Pagan times, the world has entered a new era, they say, where the requirements for successful manifestation have been relaxed.
There’s also “Black Magic,” which aims to control other people or otherwise meddle in their lives. I don’t know much about this one, but love spells and such would fall into this category, and the caster assumes a karmic sacrifice as well as whatever spell components are used.
And as an aside, I would like to say that in my experience, people who use quantum mechanics or relativity to support spiritual ideas are taking those theories completely out of context. Quantum Mechanics predicts certain situations where Newtonian causality seems to be violated, but the theory does have its own set of rules and those rules do nothing to allow energy healing or auras or spells. Likewise, E=mc2 is for balancing energy equations under certain extreme conditions, and doesn’t really mean to say that all existence is of one substance. Granted, it does point to energy as being a universal currency, which gives all matter at least one thing in common. In general though, it does weird things like make an excited atom suddenly weigh more just because one of its electrons jumped to a higher orbital.
For the record, I’m usually siding with the spiritual people. I just want to warn that science really hasn’t started agreeing with them just yet. What science HAS done, is shown that the “clockwork” Newtonian worldview that most people use to poo poo metaphysics is deeply flawed and only an approximation at best.
lol in my mind, AD is like the witch’s hut where us pheromone addicts are the supplicant wanting a Love Potion, and MHarris will mix cats eye and butter fingers and watnot in the couldron.
"Any significantly advance technology is indistinguishable from magic"~ Arthur C Clarke.
It can also be used to create something that does not yet exist.
You do not need rituals create magick. Rituals are just tools of focus.
I am in no way taking the theory of QM out of context. Nor have I used it to support spirituality. I will say though that QM is a theory. A theory is simply a belief derived from observation and experiences . My mention of E=MC2 is referring to Einstein and the man behind the theories not to QM. I dont know if you have read “The World as I see it” by Einstein but it really delves into the human spiritual side of the man. That side of him can not be separated from he scientific side of him. One always effects the other and in doing so influences his theories.
I cant help it I just love the man LOL
This is true science does not agree with us and thats ok because I dont always agree with science. Actually I can prove Science wrong far easier then they can prove me wrong LOL After all Science is just the systematic study of the natural world.
Wicca isn’t really the best term to use when generalizing witchcraft. The idea of witches flying to their Sabbat is directly correlated with their hallucinatory experiences from the ointments. There’s various recipes for ointment that have been found in old books. One of which included “fat of children”
Typically it was a cocktail of Nightshade and other extremely poisonous herbs. People in modern times that have tried making and using the ointments died from severe poisoning. It was said while witches were under the influence you could light the soles of their feet on fire and they wouldn’t even notice or move out of their supor.
They’re a modern “New Age” bastardization of Traditional Sabbatic Craft.
They’re more in tune unknowingly with the Chaos Magician school of thought albeit geared more towards positive thinking. Gods and Goddesses being seen as mere archetypes of universal expressions of energy. If the process developed harnesses one’s will to the goal of manifestation, and the gnosis can be repeated successfully, then it takes on personal context.
No karmic sacrifice at all. It’s a great misconception. Most commonly parroted by people that possess moral objections. Or they love to believe that the universe has a tendency to even itself out. Or that it comes back to them in threes because Wicca tells them so.
Not true. Quite conversely and contradictory, how can you say that bringing Maleficum into a piece of shit’s life isn’t karma at work?
It’s mostly due to the fact that alot of Christian Demonology aside from the Biblical Fallen consists of pagan deities from other belief systems. Which became “Demonized”. “Demon” originates from the Greek term “Daimon” which in ancient Greek psychology and philosophy is defined as “One’s greater genius.” Latin for Genius “Genii” - term for guardian spirits in Roman mythology. Much like “Genie” used as an alternate spelling for “Jinn” in Islam.
I was born and raised Catholic, and although I am a practicing Catholic I went through a crisis of faith once and studied/practiced Asatru. Now that I’ve rediscovered my faith…in a way, I have to admit that if the church knew some of my views and opinions regarding paganism and even other more accepted religions I’d likely be considered a heretic.
Along the lines of Tish I believe the very nature of matter and energy allows for the existence of Magick. I believe from a scientific standpoint that the nature of the human mind as an electrical device allows for psychic ability. The nature of time allows for precognition.
Ritual Magic is like organized prayer, the rosary, a mass, meditation or even trance inducing hypnosis. It’s designed to focus the mind/minds on something to the exclusion of outside distraction of the material world. It awakens parts of the brain that are rarely touched. The collective consciousness and ancestral memory are accessed. Your personal magnetic and energy field expand outward and have tangible effects on the material world and less disciplined minds. Now nobody is going to shoot lightning bolts or fireballs but some pretty earthshaking results can take place if the Magician is adept enough and can mentally transcend to be above the needs of the material world (this is where fasting and prolonged meditation/prayer come into play)
If you plan on researching further I urge you to take the flashy tales of cultists like Alister Crowly with a grain of salt. There are many that might try and portray him as the greatest magician of all time…he was a self serving moron who never accomplished anything of lasting import in his life. However two names that are rarely mentioned as practitioners of magick are Ghandi and Jesus Christ. The former being a magician of the eastern Yoga variety (yes it IS more than just a great form of exercise) and the latter most likely being a Kabbalist. At the highest levels of magic the magician can create manifest desires on a massive scale. Consider that Ghandi was able to get Muslims and Hindu’s to stop killing eachother for a time by starving himself…if you know the history of those two groups you’d know that is truly a miracle. As for Christ, even if you ignore the biblical texts of his miracles, the fact remains that a simple carpenter essentially conquered the Roman empire and used it to expand his teachings across Europe and from there to the America’s, growing steadily over 2 thousand years into the most widely practiced religion on earth.
Now as if considering Jesus Christ a magician of the Kabballah isn’t heretical enough I also believe in this philosophy…there’s ONE creative force in the universe. One God…but I asked myself this, with people all over the world looking different and speaking different languages, how much sense would it make for God to appear in India, or northern Europe looking like a middle eastern Jewish man? The divine is not bound by the limitations of human prejudices. God appeared to all people, wearing a face they could recognize and speaking in a language they would all understand.
The key to knowing if a Pagan God is the same as the Judeo Christian God is to examine the message he brings.
I would be excommunicated if I ever shared this opinion with a priest lol.
No idea if she cavorts across the sky in a craft capable of breaking the light barrier though. 
