Witch trials often aren't about witchcraft. They're basically just popularity contests. Brainwashers stir up mob hatred and villify somebody who threatens their control over the brainwashed group. Herd/pack mentality can be a dangerous thing. This is how Hitler and his ilk also operated.
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Is witchcraft a faith that deserves respect?
- Thread starter Estro Felino
- Start date
As a westerner I respect the divinity in all people but not necessarily their religions. Politically I tolerate their religions on the principle that I don't want government involved in religion. On RF I do not disrespect religions, because we are a special zone for religions. It does not matter what a religion deserves. On the other hand if the academy of assassins pretends to be a religion I will not tolerate that, but generally most religions I can tolerate as long as they aren't tossing garbage on my porch.
I fail to understand why witchcraft is considered a religion.
I think its a modern religion probably concocted by a combination of fun loving teens, professors and theosophists. In a way I think its a reaction to modern Christianity and to culture that got a teensy bit oppressive. I don't remember everything, but you can read the history of modern witchcraft. Its very short.
With all due respect, I can take what you said seriously.
In my language the word witchcraft has a very negative connotation...it is not a word that can be present in a intellectual discourse.
WalterTrull
Godfella
Whichcraft = very weak jou jou
No one inside the pagan/occult/magic community thinks magic works in this manner. This is simply a false comparison and that's not where logic begins. Essentially, your world view on this subject is similar to Dungeons & Dragons or something you'd see in a video game or movie. Obviously, these are fantasy and sensational. The purpose of all useful magical acts is to reinforce the connections with the spiritual world not to help you win the lottery. Of course, there is "low magic" that is done for purposes related to one's mundane life. Even if that effect is psychological only and makes people feel better about their plight, how does that reduce its value? (I wouldn't assert that personally, because it's not my experience... Just saying that even in this simple comparison there is a use.)
In the middle-east and Africa being anything that's not one of the major Abrahamic religions is hazardous to your health, witchcraft or not. In many cases, even that won't help you if you're just the wrong denomination in the wrong area.
If you or others fail to understand how Witchcraft (proper case, by the way, in this context) is a religion, then they need to take the time to actually study it as a contemporary religious path. Most people haven't, hence it's not uncommon to see people say stupid things about it out of ignorance. Calling it a "faith" for example would be erroneous, as is the case of most other Pagan traditions. Paganisms on the whole emphasize "practice" far more than faith, and Witchcraft is definitely more of a practice. In fact, the other context where the word "witchcraft" is used within the community specifically refers to a practice, rather than a religion (but it can be either, again, depending on context).
Speaking of those, there's basically two contexts the term "witchcraft" is used for contemporary Paganism:
- witchcraft (lower case) - refers to a particular style of practicing spellcraft or magic. Specifics from here vary, but it is often contrasted with "high magic" which is highly ceremonial and ritualized (witchcraft not being either of those things). It is also often associated with "nature magic" or using common, easy to find, everyday objects available to common people.
- Witchcraft (upper case) - another way of referring to the religion of Wicca and its offshoots. When these religions were first developing, they were simply called "Witchcraft" rather than "Wicca." Today, the term "Wicca" is most common, but you will still see folks using "Witchcraft" to refer to the contemporary religions from time to time.
Witchcraft is pretty much universally practiced in all cultures since the dawn of time, and still is. However, there is witchcraft and Wicca -- two different things.
Wicca is a religion, witchcraft is a set of techniques that many different religions practice.The witch hunts started with King James, but Spain got into the act with the inquisition when they ran out of Muslims to kill. Of course, Spain took it even further assaulting non-Catholic Christians and Jews.
Voltaire...aide-nous! sauve-nous!
Witchcraft is pretty much universally practiced in all cultures since the dawn of time, and still is. However, there is witchcraft and Wicca -- two different things.
I guess that would include shaman and there are and have been different types of witches too,i only meant that witchcraft wasn't an en mass thing, different coves and some working alone.
Wicca is a new thang :-1 but still all its followers can be quite different.
The witch hunts started with King James, but Spain got into the act with the inquisition when they ran out of Muslims to kill. Of course, Spain took it even further assaulting non-Catholic Christians and Jews.
You only had to be different, grow herbs or own a cat to be BBQed.
You only have to rely on tropes rather than understanding the subject.
There is some herbalism going on, but there are useful herbs -- it's still not everyone's cup of tea. (Pun intended.) Anyway, animals haven't been ritually used for about 500 years at least in the context of Euro-influenced witchcraft. Most of the modern religions that are involved with it these days are up to nothing of a sort. Most of the ones that still do (Santeria, Palo, Voodoo) are actually syncretic with Catholicism as their major belief system not something pagan-y like Wicca or Satanism.
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
No faith or even indemonstrable "practice" deserves respect by default. They have to earn it, like everything else - and I believe that respect should come through display of actual, demonstrated benefit in its effect on our reality. If there are detriments as well, then those should also be figured in this cost/benefit analysis. Anything that doesn't make the cut for someone, doesn't deserve respect from that someone.
I think, though I am not really that knowledgeable, that it is somewhat like alchemy in the eastern traditions and probably borrows from that -- alchemy and animism. I would classify it as syncretic if it did not have its own Dir.
Fun fact: the English term for magic "hocus pocus" comes from the Latin words of the Eucharistic prayer from the Catholic mass: "hoc es corpus (meum)"... "this is (my) body."My Catholic priest taught me magic doesn't exist
I respect other folks right to practice their beliefs as long as long as no laws are being broken and respect my right not to have any respect for the belief itself.
I have liked most of the Wiccans that I've encountered here on the Internet, am always polite to them, and respect their right to believe, but I don't respect beliefs that I consider false or unjustified.
And though this may rankle some readers, nor do I respect faith of any kind, by which I mean insufficiently supported belief, as in faith in magic or gods. This is in contrast to justified beliefs, also sometimes called faith, such as having faith that the car will start in the morning like it has the last 200+ times it was tested - two radically different concepts called by the same name.
How can faith be a path to truth or knowledge when any idea and its mutually exclusive, polar opposite can be believed by faith, and at least one of them is wrong? One could have faith that witchcraft and casting spells affects physical reality or that it doesn't, and neither position has primacy until evidence is offered, at which time faith is replaced by empirical knowledge, assuming that the evidence has been properly understood.
But still, I like the Wiccans for the most part, which is also true for most faith based thinkers posting on RF, almost all of whom I try to be polite and respectful to even as I tell them that I reject their beliefs.
So in answer to your question, no, witchcraft is not a faith that deserves respect even if people that think of themselves as witches usually do.
Unfortunately, many cultures have not enjoyed the benefits of Enlightenment values and secular humanism. It's not a coincidence that the hanging of witches in the colonies that became the US ended right before the advent of the US Constitution, a crowning achievement of secular humanism that embodies its values. Over two centuries later, the practice of hanging witches seems as barbaric to most Westerners as the recent torture, murder, and dismemberment of a journalist, also at the hand of those not yet enjoying the civilizing benefit of living under Enlightenment values.
You only have to rely on tropes rather than understanding the subject.
There is some herbalism going on, but there are useful herbs -- it's still not everyone's cup of tea. (Pun intended.) Anyway, animals haven't been ritually used for about 500 years at least in the context of Euro-influenced witchcraft. Most of the modern religions that are involved with it these days are up to nothing of a sort. Most of the ones that still do (Santeria, Palo, Voodoo) are actually syncretic with Catholicism as their major belief system not something pagan-y like Wicca or Satanism.
I think you misunderstood, many of the witches who died in the witch hunts weren't even witches, anything that was remotely akin to witchcraft could get you dead, like a cat being a familiar
Serpent Child
Member
I practice witchcraft. Witchcraft is not a religious faith, it’s a practice. Hence ‘craft’. There are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Satanist, Pagan, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, Agnostic, etc. Witches. Every persons craft is unique and very personal. Some people see their own personal craft as their own personal religion and that’s completely okay.