Wiches

[GrandTrinity]

What is the deal with wiches? What do they do? Should they be avoided? Whats up with male ones? Please if your a wich dont take offense at my question but be honest.

[Trunk]

Whiches?

[witch]

Yes, of course we're evil! And good too--we're a mix just like everybody.

 

The thing with witches is that they basically make up their own religion, particularly nowadays. They choose what gods to follow, what rituals, how often they do rituals, what spells. So it's hard to make generalizations. But in general witches are pro-sex (even the Dianic ones who are pro-lesbian-sex), see female energy either equal to or greater than male energy, are handy with astrology, particularly moon-related astrology, are pro-Nature, and are generally quite practical. That said, witches are typically mighty fond of male energy--we like that male goaty testerone-fueled earthiness. But the fair-minded among us don't take without giving back.

 

I wonder why there aren't more male witches. Women outnumber the men a hundred to one, and witches as a group do tend to be more open to polygamy and orgies and ritualistic sex. And the traditional way to practice ritual is skyclad, meaning naked. But I guess men aren't into that stuff.

Edited August 7, 2007 by witch

[mwight]

I don't mean to offend anyone even witches and or warlocks

 

Please don't hex me

 

 

My opinion is only based on the witches I have met personally.

 

 

 

I have known quite a few individuals who label themselves witches (wiccan) and or practitioners of high magick.

 

They believe (they being the ones I have met) if they construct the correct potions, with herbs and crystals and moonlight and spells, and chants, and insignia's and magickal seals, and whatnot... they can somehow cause great changes to their reality. (I aint seen it yet)

 

I have pointed out there is no direct and immediate feedback in this process

 

(i.e. you have to wait days, weeks, months even for the spell to kick in)

 

and that observing the results scientifically would be impossible, unless they could produce direct and immediate effects like telekinesis etc.

 

I have also remarked that it would be most logical to study under masters who have actually DONE something amazing, learn from them instead of trying to reinvent the wheel so to speak..

 

 

All my attempts to be rational and logical with them failed and then crashed and burned.

 

It seems to me they (they being the ones I know) don't really care about ultimate truth, about waking up from this dream, about developing real power, they want to play dress up and make mud pies to feed to their voodoo dolls. Lots of silly ritual, no real meditation, no real search for the truth.

 

 

Do I think they are evil? NO...

 

I do however think just making up things and reading a few books written by people with no real power, and then pretending you have some great cosmic power to manipulate reality (but your still living with your parents) is delusional and heading into fruit cake territory.

Edited August 7, 2007 by mwight

[witch]

All right. If it's okay, I will keep a personal journal of my own practice here and you can judge for yourself. Not that I wield power, but on the other hand I am not living in my parents' basement.

[rex]

Legend has it that the English New Forest Witches performed extensive ritual in the 1940s to stop the Germans from crossing the channel. Some are even said to have given their all during the performances and died shortly afterwards.

Edited August 7, 2007 by rex

[witch]

One of the grand old dames of the British tradition wrote a book

 

http://www.amazon.com/Magical-Use-Thought-...6358&sr=8-1

 

and in it she describes both how as a girl she was taken to a place in her mind during the WWII air raids that she later found out was a monastery in the Himalayas, and then later as a grown woman had a vision where she was taken there and put through a purification ceremony (involving lots of sex).

 

Maybe just an overactive imagination, but there while there are huge differences in philosophy, there are some similarities in practice between certain types of wicca and certain types of taoism.

[mwight]

I am sure there are some wiccans who found some valid teachings, and stumble upon real power. It's just the ones I know personally don't really care about any of that. It seems more to be a culture closely tied to the goth/emo movement. It's more like they call themselves a witch for the shock value, or perhaps a rebellion against a dogmatic religious upbringing. I am not really sure to be honest.

 

 

I do know that the wiccans I know really don't seem to care about higher truth, because they believe they already have it. They already have know all there is to know, and are supremely powerful.

 

 

I think ritual is bogus, seals, and insignias, symbols and all that is whooey fooey..

 

I think obtaining true power is much simpler in concept, and harder in practice.

 

True power imho comes not from dancing around a campfire naked with your crystals and chanting, it comes from mastering the depths of your own subconscious mind, completely and totally understanding yourself and reality at a higher level. There is nothing magickal, supernatural, etc. about it. There is no shortcut, no magick pill to speed up the process, it requires years of training, exploring the other side of your being.

 

 

 

Gnothi Seauton!

 

 

Again I didn't mean to intend to offend you, or anyone else who is wiccan, witch, warlock, or practitioner of magick.

[witch]

Women's power comes through water and earth, through emotion, imagination, the material world and taking care of the body, particularly what one eats. Men's power comes through air and fire, through knowledge and meditation, action in the world and training the body's actions. A wise person learns from the other side.

 

And I'd say there are just as many idiots who take up martial arts and taoists beliefs so they can break a foe's arm in a fight, pick up women easier, be trendy, or get erection stamina as there are fluffy bunny wiccans.

[mwight]

Women's power comes through water and earth, through emotion, imagination, the material world and taking care of the body, particularly what one eats. Men's power comes through air and fire, through knowledge and meditation, action in the world and training the body's actions. A wise person learns from the other side.

 

And I'd say there are just as many idiots who take up martial arts and taoists beliefs so they can break a foe's arm in a fight, pick up women easier, be trendy, or get erection stamina as there are fluffy bunny wiccans.

 

I agree with you absolutely.

[Wayfarer64]

Its those fluffy-bunny wiccans who are evil (like the one in Monty Pythons' search for the holy grail that chewed a mans throat out)...dontcha know...?

 

but seriously IMHO-

 

The powers derived from meditation and connections with earth wind fire rain, etc are real to me ...We can each grasp power and energy from the world around us... But what we do with it makes us good/evil etc...

 

What we call ourselves matters very little to me -a rose would smell as sweet by any other name... The point is...

 

I for one, do not like the smell of roses. I relate the smell to funerals. So It is my experience that gives the rose smell powers to unsettle me -not the name nor even the smell itself -it is my associations with the phenominom of rose attar that evokes the reaction... as it is with so many of lifes offerings...

We make of this world what we will as we are able-

 

wishing lottsa love to ya all-

[Taomeow]

Consider this...

 

Medieval witch hunts, in full swing in Europe for 300 years nonstop, were pretty much about usurping every shred of power which "pagan" healers (overwhelmingly women) had since time immemorial, and accumulating it in the hands of the fathers of the church. According to some researchers, 1.3 million women were burned as witches during this period, and almost all European cats, who were hated for their free and independent ways and therefore declared to be devil's servants and witches' accomplices. With cats gone, mice and rats multiplied exponentially, invading graineries, shaking up the agrarian foundation of the economy, bringing famine and the fleas of the Black Plague on their backs. With witches gone, the healing arts forbidden and forgotten, what would have been stopped (the way it did get stopped every time it started for hundreds of thousands of years) killed more than 2/3 of Europe's population and threw the whole culture into the Dark Ages for centuries to come. The horrible wrath of the cat is not the kind of power that is unnatural, it's our good old karmic law of inevitalbe paybacks for expenditures of life and limb in excess of one's normal survival needs. In and of itself it is not an "evil" power, it is benevolent and nourishing. Interfere with it, try to negate and usurp it... and die of "natural causes."

 

Today, 150 species of animals and plants disappear from the face of the earth daily . This kind of mass extinction the puppeteers of our modern scientific witches have unleashed on the world has never taken place on this planet in the billions of years of its existence. I wonder what natural "effects" we are to expect. I'd be lying if I told you I know, but I have a feeling it can't be good...

Edited August 7, 2007 by Taomeow

[Oolong Rabbit]

I am sure there are some wiccans who found some valid teachings, and stumble upon real power. It's just the ones I know personally don't really care about any of that. It seems more to be a culture closely tied to the goth/emo movement. It's more like they call themselves a witch for the shock value, or perhaps a rebellion against a dogmatic religious upbringing. I am not really sure to be honest.

I do know that the wiccans I know really don't seem to care about higher truth, because they believe they already have it. They already have know all there is to know, and are supremely powerful.

I think ritual is bogus, seals, and insignias, symbols and all that is whooey fooey..

 

I think obtaining true power is much simpler in concept, and harder in practice.

 

True power imho comes not from dancing around a campfire naked with your crystals and chanting, it comes from mastering the depths of your own subconscious mind, completely and totally understanding yourself and reality at a higher level. There is nothing magickal, supernatural, etc. about it. There is no shortcut, no magick pill to speed up the process, it requires years of training, exploring the other side of your being.

Gnothi Seauton!

Again I didn't mean to intend to offend you, or anyone else who is wiccan, witch, warlock, or practitioner of magick.

 

Hi Matt,

 

For the record I am not a Wiccan, but a few points if I may:

 

1. I agree that most of those who label themselves as witches, wiccans, new age pagans etc... are litlle more than juvenile imbeciles playing dress up. But, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Wiccan symbolism borrows heavily from ceremonial magic * which I think can have some very real effects. Ceremonial magic is basically a system designed to focus one's will towards achieving a desired result. Imagine the human will like a powerful beam of light. All of the correspondences (symbols, incense, astrological timings, names of power. colours, metals etc....) are tools that focus this beam like a magnifying glass harnessing the Sun's rays to create fire. The symbolism is extremely ancient, and rooted deeply in what Jung called the collective unconscious. Buddhism is also full of symbols, imagery and rituals for similar reasons. Symbols resonate deeply to us. They penetrate beyond the rational.

 

2. The belief in dancing to raise power stretches back thousands of years across almost all cultures. Several traditions such as the Gurdjieff's and the Sufi Dervishes use ritual dance as a form of moving meditation and cultivation.

 

3. What exactly do you mean by "true power". I think Witch brought up an interesting point in a post from another thread where she discussed dowsing. Her point was that the dowser may not so much "sense" the water, as his body subconsciously reads the signs in the land. In my opinion, that is really no less magical or amazing than him "sensing" the water, lighting newspaper on fire or changing coke to pepsi. The bottom line is that I think some wiccans can achieve a degree of cultivation by tuning themselves in to nature. They may not realize that this is what they are doing, but it doesn't really matter.

 

*I have also heard more than once that Aleister Crowley helped Gerald Gardner write up some of the framework that would come to be known as modern Wicca.

[MatthewQi]

Hi GT!

 

I have actually met more awakened witches then people from any other tradition. Not sure why that is other than perhaps it is a more prevalent practice here in the US, I don't know. Nothing to be afraid of though. All of the witches that I have met who are awakened are the same as zhen ren taoists (and just wonderful people who I consciously share a common unseen bond with).

 

As you know, I practiced taoist inner alchemy. I don't know much about the tradition of witchcraft other than to say that it leads to the same place that inner alchemy does. At a certain point, everything that brings us to awakening can be seen as having been important to us individually but not what Reality is in itself. We just recognize the same thing in others as we have found in ourselves

 

Best!

 

Matt

[xenolith]

Righteous Witch.

 

For those who choose not to read the link, read this, it's among the most profound assertions ever made:

 

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.

 

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

 

To teach superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing. - Hypatia

 

 

edit: here's a bit more for the interested.

Edited August 8, 2007 by xenolith

[Wayfarer64]

I find the fact that the bio-diversity of our planet is being wasted for the momentary greed of a few ignorant loggers - as the most appalling fact of our current historical time frame.

 

In a very short time the bio-diversity that remains will be recognized as the worlds greatest resource on our home planet and the one thing we have misused the most seriously - (god damn it!!!!!)

 

that both Taoists and other nature-based belief systems recognize this Now is important and something WE SHOULD be addressing as a group-

 

what do ya think out there? should we organize as a group to address this problem?

Edited August 8, 2007 by Wayfarer64

[Taomeow]

I find the fact that the bio-diversity of our planet is being wasted for the momentary greed of a few ignorant loggers - as the most appauling fact of our current historical time frame.

 

In a very short time the bio-diversity that remains will be recognized as the worlds greatest resource on our home planet and the one thing we have misused the most seriously - (god damn it!!!!!)

 

that both Taoists and other nature-based belief systems recognize this Now is important and something WE SHOULD be addressing as a group-

 

what do ya think out there? should we organize as a group to address this problem?

 

WF, have you read Derrick Jensen by any chance? "End Game?" He's both organized and watched the activities of groups that tried to fight the big business protecting lands and forests and living creatures and their own homes. Apparently no one has ever won. The book spells out "why" better than most. If you know of a group that has ever succeeded in getting the 3% of the world population who own 97% of the world resources to dismantle their empires and start living off the land using only the energy of their own bodies towards sustaining their existence, I'd join in a second. Unfortunately, nothing done by 97% of the world population ever matters. The way the cookie crumbles is determined by whoever owns the cookie, down to the last crumb.

[Pietro]

Unfortunately, nothing done by 97% of the world population ever matters. The way the cookie crumbles is determined by whoever owns the cookie, down to the last crumb.

 

Neither Gandhi nor revolutionaries took this stance or their accomplishments would have reached nothing. Remember what happened in the France Revolution. Eventually the people said: fine WE are the nation and WE are going to decide.

We risk that a lot of blood might be spread but if the only other solution is ecological collapse...

 

unfortunately most revolutions are good in destroying and not so good in building, and this is why I am so in favor of people discussing and looking for alternatives. If we don't have alternatives if we were in power, what good would it be to get the power.

[Pietro]

What is the deal with wiches? What do they do? Should they be avoided? Whats up with male ones? Please if your a wich dont take offense at my question but be honest.

 

I have met many witches. Either in Brighton or in Glastonbury. As in al path you have both people who are honest seekers and new agers. Being a tradition who has been severely cut there are many influences that are not pure (meaning historically pure, ot ethically pure), and people who apply things from other traditions. One example is the 'law of the three' which I don't think was originally there. I even suspect it might come from a wrong translation of the 6th line of the 6 hexagram of the i-ching conflict done in the 18th century. Another is that in some old spell they would, for example burn a candle while meditating all the time on something. Now they might burn the candle without the (hard work) of the 4 hours long meditation.

 

Said that I also met some really good and competent people. I remember a friend of mine who was once introduced to the dalai lama, who asked what he was doing in the astral plane and then told him how he thought what he was doing was good, and should be continued and passed on.

 

And speaking about buddhism, for example, you might find pagans who are now integrating some buddhist practices in their meditation, bringing the concept of no ego to paganism, which was absolutely not there historically.

 

And again I remember a guy in Brighton, a short and hairy guy, quite, but easy to laugh, very respected in that community who have the energy of an oak. When he walks near you it just gives the energetic sensation as if an oak was passing by.

 

And yes, I heard they are more sexually active but I wasn't introduced to their practice in this domain. Nor were I willing to change my path for exploring it.

[Oolong Rabbit]

WF, have you read Derrick Jensen by any chance? "End Game?" He's both organized and watched the activities of groups that tried to fight the big business protecting lands and forests and living creatures and their own homes. Apparently no one has ever won. The book spells out "why" better than most. If you know of a group that has ever succeeded in getting the 3% of the world population who own 97% of the world resources to dismantle their empires and start living off the land using only the energy of their own bodies towards sustaining their existence, I'd join in a second. Unfortunately, nothing done by 97% of the world population ever matters. The way the cookie crumbles is determined by whoever owns the cookie, down to the last crumb.

 

Not sure if you enjoy a good conspiracy Taomeow, but you might find the following links interesting:

 

http://www.rense.com/general77/chinsec.htm

 

http://www.rense.com/Datapages/fulfdat.htm

 

The gist of the story is that Benjamin Fulford gave a lecture on how SARS was actually a biological agent engineered to attack those of Asian decent, and the powers that be plan to signifigantly reduce the Asian population. Apparently some head honcho of a major Triad group called "the Green and the Red Societies" met with Fulford an asked what could be done to stop the people (Illuminati) orchestrating these calamties on mankind. They put together a plan for the illuminati to cede their power or else start wiping them out. Normally I would say the guy is full of crap, but he really sounds pretty sincere and he has some good credentials:

 

http://benjaminfulford.com/ProfileEnglish.html

 

He also threatened David Rockefeller on the air to meet with him.... or else.

[witch]

Hmm....

 

But back to the practical matter of conservation. New paradigm--the thing that is killing species the most isn't logging, it's global warming. And that particular issue even billionaires care about, since anyone with half a brain, and billionaires generally have more than half a brain, realizes it's basically the end of civilization if we don't do something about it. Even billionaires are not immune from natural disasters and freak weather (and it disrupts the flying schedules of their private jets).

 

So that's the most important path and the path most likely to yield real world results, with the fat cats acting from their own self interest.

[Taomeow]

Neither Gandhi nor revolutionaries took this stance or their accomplishments would have reached nothing. Remember what happened in the France Revolution. Eventually the people said: fine WE are the nation and WE are going to decide.

We risk that a lot of blood might be spread but if the only other solution is ecological collapse...

 

unfortunately most revolutions are good in destroying and not so good in building, and this is why I am so in favor of people discussing and looking for alternatives. If we don't have alternatives if we were in power, what good would it be to get the power.

 

You know, what Ghandi really accomplished was not what he planned to accomplish. The outcome of his actions was a war with Pakistan, Moslem-Hindu-Buddhist bloodshed, with the British empire still supplying weapons to all sides. What the French Revolution accomplished was a lot of bloodshed and some minor redistribution of the cake, with 97% of the population still getting exactly the amount of crumbs they were getting before the bloodshed. As the wife of Chan Kai Shek once put it addressing the supporters of the Communist-Maoist competition of her husband, "you were slaves in Old China, now you are slaves of the slaves of Old China." But then of course ordinary members of a colonial empire like ourselves have a chance to get more of those crumbs than citizens of the countries under demolition, which creates an illusion of someone having accomplished something. This illusion promptly dissipates if you take the global view -- most people living today starve, most labor out there is excruciating slave labor (yeah, you can, in many cases, voluntarily change your owner unlike the slaves of the 18th century, but what you CAN'T do is lose the owner altogether. Someone is always in this nifty set-up that allows him to own you, your children, and even your cat, which is supposed to jump through all the hoops the owner has set for her or be killed.) But the non-vital stuff abounds -- wow, look at all the electronic toys we have! Surely we must have accomplished something!

 

And, you know, I grew up in a country where revolution was supposed to have won. And what happened was, again, the redistribution of the cake, with 97% of the population still getting exactly as many crumbs from the new government as they were getting from the old one, or fewer. And then, seventy year later, it got redistributed once again, and a few new people laid their hands on the cake, and that's about it. Frankly, I don't think anything works against old power, it doesn't change, it might change hands but not its nature. Old power, like old qi, gotta die in order to be reborn... you can't change an evil old bully into an innocent infant by putting make-up on him... and all the discussions, all the revolutions, all that jazz --

is about which make-up looks better on him, which paint to apply to make his cheeks look rosy and his smile, a bit less cannibalistic. Is all...

 

It's funny how people would do anything so as to avoid feeling helpless, so as to create the illusion of control for themselves. Gandhi was a control freak par excellence. He didn't give up in order to give up, he played this game, "I pretend I give up whereas what I really want is to win, so I'm going to win by giving up, confuse the hell outta everybody." And he won. And old power used him the way it uses all "winners" of all such games...

[xenolith]

Hmm....

 

But back to the practical matter of conservation. New paradigm--the thing that is killing species the most isn't logging, it's global warming. And that particular issue even billionaires care about, since anyone with half a brain, and billionaires generally have more than half a brain, realizes it's basically the end of civilization if we don't do something about it. Even billionaires are not immune from natural disasters and freak weather (and it disrupts the flying schedules of their private jets).

 

So that's the most important path and the path most likely to yield real world results, with the fat cats acting from their own self interest.

Agreed. Without exception.

 

Not sure where the witches went. But agreed anyway.

[Pietro]

You know, what Ghandi really accomplished was not what he planned to accomplish. The outcome of his actions was a war with Pakistan, Moslem-Hindu-Buddhist bloodshed, with the British empire still supplying weapons to all sides. What the French Revolution accomplished was a lot of bloodshed and some minor redistribution of the cake, with 97% of the population still getting exactly the amount of crumbs they were getting before the bloodshed. As the wife of Chan Kai Shek once put it addressing the supporters of the Communist-Maoist competition of her husband, "you were slaves in Old China, now you are slaves of the slaves of Old China." But then of course ordinary members of a colonial empire like ourselves have a chance to get more of those crumbs than citizens of the countries under demolition, which creates an illusion of someone having accomplished something. This illusion promptly dissipates if you take the global view -- most people living today starve, most labor out there is excruciating slave labor (yeah, you can, in many cases, voluntarily change your owner unlike the slaves of the 18th century, but what you CAN'T do is lose the owner altogether. Someone is always in this nifty set-up that allows him to own you, your children, and even your cat, which is supposed to jump through all the hoops the owner has set for her or be killed.) But the non-vital stuff abounds -- wow, look at all the electronic toys we have! Surely we must have accomplished something!

 

And, you know, I grew up in a country where revolution was supposed to have won. And what happened was, again, the redistribution of the cake, with 97% of the population still getting exactly as many crumbs from the new government as they were getting from the old one, or fewer. And then, seventy year later, it got redistributed once again, and a few new people laid their hands on the cake, and that's about it. Frankly, I don't think anything works against old power, it doesn't change, it might change hands but not its nature. Old power, like old qi, gotta die in order to be reborn... you can't change an evil old bully into an innocent infant by putting make-up on him... and all the discussions, all the revolutions, all that jazz --

is about which make-up looks better on him, which paint to apply to make his cheeks look rosy and his smile, a bit less cannibalistic. Is all...

 

It's funny how people would do anything so as to avoid feeling helpless, so as to create the illusion of control for themselves. Gandhi was a control freak par excellence. He didn't give up in order to give up, he played this game, "I pretend I give up whereas what I really want is to win, so I'm going to win by giving up, confuse the hell outta everybody." And he won. And old power used him the way it uses all "winners" of all such games...

 

 

Hmm, what country do you come from? That would clarify some.

 

It's true that the french revolution brought a blood bath. But it is also true that through it, through Napoleone after a lot of ideas got their way into Europe, which led years later in more democratic countries.

 

Agreed that Gandhi was a control freak (as many vegetarians). But I don't agree that all he got was an india pakistani war. He got a lot more, from the awakening of a whole nation to an objective to militar freedom, and so on.

 

Have you noticed how the internet follow exactly the same percentage, with few sites getting the vast majority of traffick? It's not conspiracy, it is a positive feedback effect . Are you sure that it is human evilness over there too, and not just some natural law in effect?

 

This is why thinking is important. You act within the natural laws, not against them. But you know all this, you're a taoist

[Taomeow]

Far as conspiracies go --

I don't think there's ever been anything but. But then, I learned history in school (the country is Russia, Pietro), and then some out of school, so I really don't buy the syndicated-media-sponsored image of a "conspiracy theorist" as some paranoid, gullible, ignorant misfit. (Syndicated media is not a conspiracy theory, right? It IS syndicated, ever wondered how much independent, honest, unbiased, informed reporting this fact translates into? Per my calculations, 3% -- and even this consists of things that don't matter. What matters doesn't gets reported. You get far more information on what kind of underwear Britney Spears wears than on any of the hundreds of thousands of carcinogens in your food supply. The 3% of "The Truth" you'll be able to learn this way will be about a movie star arrested for drunk driving -- yes, it's The Truth! -- or a football player signing a seven-figure contract -- wow, another Truth!) Anyone who has learned history the real deal knows that the history of civilization, the history of accumulation, distribution, and redistribution of power, is the history of nonstop conspiracies -- nonstop, everywhere and always. Read some Plinius or Flavius if you don't believe me...

...but in any event, I'm breaking my own promise to myself (to never talk environmental issues with anyone who hasn't read Derrick Jensen) -- so please consider my contribution to this thread as nothing but a book recommendation. (Witch, you might want to take a look too, what's with a Witch being this tame on environmental issues? Global warming, and all the billionaires are going to worry? They will have their air conditioning cheerfully blasting away the doom and gloom of whatever level of global warming long after the rest of us have switched to buying breathable air by prescription only from our friendly local pharmacy.)

Edited August 9, 2007 by Taomeow