Recently, modern witchcraft has been on the rise. I am interested to hear some discussion and discourse from your perspective, on any aspect of modern witchcraft. Myself, I try to be respectful of most religions. That said, I have always been a little annoyed by anyone who believes they can, for example, control the weather or read peoples minds, which seems to be the case in this article, and in several witchcraft-related memes and stuff I've seen floating around. In addition, I think the whole idea of witchcraft as an opposition to the status quo is very much a bourgeois/liberal mindset. Instead of using affirmative action to actually work for change, it's turning to faith and a belief in the occult in order to solve your issues. It seems to me to be almost entirely composed of young, upper-middle class white women that have not needed to struggle or known the struggle of other classes. In essence, a liberal reaction to the people in power. Any thoughts? Willing to change my mind.
As far as religion goes, believing that you have an unmediated connection to the world and its spirits is usually healthier than believing in a mediated one. So I'd prefer people believe it over christianity.
That said, most witches I've met are people with Christian upbringings who can't shake belief in something and are looking for something with less anti gay baggage.
So the witches I know tend to be gay former Christian's from abusive households looking for a spiritual expression.
Interesting take. Personally I don't have a problem with the idea of Christianity and other organized religions, but then again, I approach them less as a literal interpretation. I try to see the organized abrahamic faiths as what they are: A set of rules you should try to live your life by, developed thousands of years ago. I think it's healthy to see the lessons of, say, the bible, such as not making a big show of donations to a temple, being kind, generous and accepting, and avoiding certain foods (like pork, as in the days without refrigeration this would have been risky to eat in the levant). The thing is, these are very much lessons from a bygone era. We have overcome the problems that made these rules, and now they seem arbitrary in retrospect. Additionally, most people have a sense of morality outside that which is dictated from religion. So I don't think christianity or other abrahamic faiths are inherently bad, per se, but rather they have to be appreciated not as literal, real truth, but more of a code to inspire collective morality in a time when philosophy was still a new concept.
It seems that it is always extremists that make a point of following certain religious aspects over others, and often interpreting texts extremely literally, as opposed to a past reflection on the circumstances of that text, that commit the worst atrocities.
I think we've moved past the need for a dictated morality, as I often see fundamentalists make the argument "without god there is no morality", and I am always disturbed by the idea that those people would not have morality if not for religion.
You are right. I have been criticized by religious people of all the major abrahamic faiths for suggesting this, and every time it's a slap in the face that religion is such a seriously literal interpretation, for pretty much everyone of that religion. Maybe the world would be better if people cold lighten up a bit.
I've met a ton of anarchists into witchy stuff, but none on the internet.
A materialist worldview in the Marxist sense doesn't preclude a spiritual worldview in the more common sense. Historical materialism and ontological materialism are two separate ideas.
Leninism and Maoism for sure are, and most redditors are ontological materialists, but if you go to Latin America you're going to see a ton of comingling between Marxism and Catholicism or Marxism and Indigenous worldviews.
Many indigenous people have non materialist ontologies that predate colonialism, that they work hard to preserve into the present. It's unfair to see this as "the soul of a soulless" society or "the opiate of the masses." If your vision for communism erases that work, it's got a significant blind spot.
I'm not going to link you Marxists because I think the way Marxism thinks about history is counterproductive. Instead, I'll point you to a couple of places where indigenous people have pushed back against the European philosophical tradition.
On the shorter side is For America to Live, Europe Must Die. I expect you to disagree with it. I just want you to secularize and entertain the arguments means is making, because he's highlighting a real gap between the American Indian Movement and Marxis and we need to understand that gap.
The other place I'll point you is the book Decolonizing Methedologies. It's targeted at the academy, so it's a much more comfortable read, and while it doesn't criticize marxism it criticizes the same kind of historical thinking Marxism does.
For me one of the big things is that Marxism imagines a path from primitive to communist that picks up all cultures along the way and ends in second phase communism which is centralized and industrialized. This is a vision that erases whole cultures and assumes a European centered trajectory.
Instead I'd like to ask what kind of world a mosaic of anti-capitalist configurations would create. I want activism and organizing that seeks not to organize indigenous people but to organize with indigenous anti capitalists.
I want to add that there's a materialist aspect here. Most working people are indigenous just because of the nature of the relationship between colonialism and capitalism. Any significant revolution will have a strong anti colonial current, and the preservation of indigenous worldviews is one of the most important parts of anti colonial struggles.
Rhyd Wildermuth and the Gods & Radicals crew are anarchist pagans online. their Pagan Anticapitalist Primer is pretty good
https://abeautifulresistance.org/
I tend to think of it how I do religion; it tends to be an obstacle to being able to see the world materialistically, but when it is not it is a neutral ideological structure that could go either way in supporting capitalism or promoting socialism. Usually it defaults to liberalism since those are the people with the resources to give it an ideological spin that becomes hegemonic.
Before I became more materialist i dabbled in the occult in college. Witchcraft really has nothing to do with believing you can change the weather or read peoples minds.
Oh, I'm sure quite a few within those circles believe its within the realm of reason but a lot of practicing magicians don't.
Its more like experimental psychology whereby you use ritual and symbols to enact changes in your psyche by imprinting meaning onto them. Its more of a reach towards the importance of ritualistic meaning.
A lot of these ideas came from alchemical philosophy, which holds "as above so below" or "as within so without", so what affects the material world also affects that of the mind and soul as it were.
Of course there's also elements of animsim with other forms of witchcraft like Wicca and such, which are less focused on those alchemical axioms.
I like studying religions as I find them fascinating and I think its important to know how many people understand the world, and I was once one of those edgy New Athiests and I try to move away from that haha
A lot of witchy beliefs line up with common Chapo beliefs. Making things real by joking about them too much, or changing people's minds by memeing at them in public. It's just spellcasting.
I mean, yeah haha good point. Its literally just a different explanatory model of the world
Its more like experimental psychology whereby you use ritual and symbols to enact changes in your psyche by imprinting meaning onto them. Its more of a reach towards the importance of ritualistic meaning.
This is also a core tenet of LaVeyan Satanism, AKA wicca for edgelords.
is this like a jungian or crowley thing? maybe reich? i hear mat talking about orgonne all the time
Crowley followed this model for sure, and Jung fell into it I believe too as it was pretty big in Europe before and around his time. Not sure who Reich is, but it's fairly common in the Western Occult tradition
believing you have magical powers has always struck me as a delusional inflated sense of your own importance, like protagonist syndrome but worse
ultimately i don't really give a shit though, at least they don't usually try and make you see the fairy or whatever
I suppose that's true, I have never had a self proclaimed witch actually do any harm to me or anyone else. I suppose the pure inaction is somewhat offensive though: Like, it is an ideological position so similar to liberalism that it comes with the ingrained belief that strong action is far too radical. Like, the whole idea of practicing witchcraft in order to solve world issues like trump or whatever is ideologically identical to saying "vote". That said, you can draw the same comparison to this site and any terminally online movement. But at least here action is encouraged, and I can't say how many of us have really organized in a meaningful way.
Okay so disregard your preconceptions about who and why they're into magic.
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Capitalism has been and is pretty much replacing traditional organized religions. Corporate religion is a real cottage industry and it's only going to get worse.
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Believers in new sincerity may find unironic participation in religion (or something religion-adjacent) to be comforting and fulfilling.
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People striving to shrug off irony poisoning and reclaim traditional beliefs may engage in religion or magical practices. That is okay.
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Culturally, a lot of magical practices are dying. Folk magic is dying out. Magic has been part of the culture of lower classes and indigenous peoples forever. It's okay to engage in these practices in the interest of preserving them.
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The witches vs patriarchy thing is not the whole of mysticism, occult, or whatever you want to call it.
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Engaging in the practice of magic doesn't hinder one's activism any more than going to church or prayer. If you're cool with religious socialists, you should be cool with witch/magician socialists too.
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We can make as much of an argument about being chronically online hindering leftist activism as we can about some people meeting up to howl at the moon
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A lot of contemporary magic isn't people who think they're literally doing Harry Potter magic. They either are just observing traditional, folk, ritual magic or they're into this jungian thing where magic is just a way of communicating with your own subconscious and magic is just a self-help method. Are there people who think magic is real? Sure. There are people who think gods are real.
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As always, decline in material conditions will precipitate a movement towards religion/spiritualism. Better to have a foot in the door on that than rejecting it while trying to build a working class movement.
It's a cool and okay thing to study/practice magic as a form of spiritualism/religion while being a leftist.
This, a lot of the people out there claiming to be witches are just doing it for the aesthetic, those of us who are leftist witches are very quiet and secretive because of the bad associations with neoliberal attempts to co-opt the movement.
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Religion and spirituality are the soul of a soulless world.
People turn to witchcraft in times of duress when they're oppressed and seeking power but have no alternatives nearby.
As capitalism started to rise, it demanded that some certain work be unpaid/unrewarded as it was not profitable even if it was essential for the continuation of society - for women that meant childbirth and child rearing. In response, witchcraft and magic also started to be demonized as people worked out that tension but also as a way to root out the "wise women" that knew how to induce abortions, how to widwife, etc. so as to replace all that with male doctors and so on.
Now, we're on a precipice again. Child rearing is still unpaid but no one can afford anything on a single-person income and the state is unable to provide welfare or cheaper products after 50 years of neoliberalism. Women are back in the workforce, and for some they are side by side with other women and workers but many are isolated. Things are coming apart and people are massively isolated from each other and so they turn to things like astrology or witchcraft - which are incredibly individualistic things to do but allow you to exercise some (imaginary) power or some (imaginary) comfort.
People will awkwardly dabble with these ineffectual things but it's also part of the slowly awakening desire to change the world in a proletariate that is incredibly rusted and seized up.
Is there an equivalent to the current movement in, say, the 1920s? When the proletarian movement was particularly strong in america and the rest of the world. Additionally there was a pretty strong wave in the 70s everywhere but america, such as Italy, Ireland and south america. I'm curious if there were any movements like this in the time leading up to then. Perhaps the occultism of the late 19th century, with the whole seances and such?
There was some push in the 1920s and 1930s about a revival of a pre-Christian witch cult that was purported to have been stamped out by the witch trials of the 17th century - which contemporaneously as described here. Most likely this wasn't the case, but there was apparently a growing interest in witchcraft and folklore at the time.
The 60s and 70s had a renewed interest in druidism and neopaganism as well and was the birth of modern Wicca as we understand it (named after Diana or something like that, I can't remember exactly).
I resent witchcraft because I have to humour people when they talk to me about crystals, when there's a 50% chance that they're only into witchcraft as an aesthetic and they think I'm a mark for believing any of the stuff that they say.
Also more serious stuff, but I can't figure out how to write about it without someone figuring out who I am.
Also more serious stuff, but I can’t figure out how to write about it without someone figuring out who I am.
Are you like a wizard or something?
I wish. It's just stupid/harmful stuff that friends and family did because they believed in witchcraft, and it's specific enough that they would know who I am if they somehow read this.
It's all stuff that happens with other religions too, but... I just want to say that witchcraft isn't less harmful than other religions.
Huh. Sounds weird. I didn't expect there would be enough people actually believing this stuff for things like this to happen...
Yeah, I think I've had more to do with people who practice/believe in witchcraft than is normal... Trying to be vague about this, but it came in 3 waves. Wicca during highschool, indigenous witchcraft (practiced by indigenous people) for the past 7 years, and new age stuff for the past... maybe 5 years.
I was never into witchcraft and never believed in it, though. These are just friends and family, but I had more to do with them during those times than people with any other religion.
Send me a PM if you want. All of this sounds pretty weird and tbh I am intrigued. The closest I've ever come to someone who was into witch shit was some weird goth chick who was hitting on one of my friends in her DMs by trying to wow her with all the amazing witch shit she has supposedly seen lol
But you HAVE to try out this new scrying mirror from the Llewellyn New Moon Collection (TM)! Noooo, my heckin' pentaclarinos!
Yes. This is exactly what I've been wanting to say for so long but I was worried I'd come across as an epic enlightened atheist. Not exaggerating, as a middle class white dude literally everyone I've met who genuinely believes in witchcraft, astrology or fucking "manifesting" (literal toddler-brained shit) is either an obnoxious petty-bourgeois white girl or a weird perverted old guy.
Desperate attempt to find meaning in a meaningless world. Desperate attempt to have individuality and personal autonomy in a world so thoroughly owned and controlled by forces so far beyond oneself that the thought of changing things is absurd.
Witchcraft as an aesthetic is very much neoliberal and bourgeois. Unfortunately, this is the majority of engagement with magick that you see. However, magick is more than witchcraft as a fashion choice. For me, I had my spiritual awakening a couple years ago, before I even had my political awakening, but the two are connected.
Paganism is a great alternative to religion, once you see the need for spiritualism in your life, but still see all the evils and mind control that religion perpetuate. Also religions don't really want you to think for yourself, where the practice of magick is all about thinking for yourself. Aleister Crowley's Magick:Book 4 is a great read, and his main teaching is "Do what thou wilt!". Also, all humans share in the divine (as above, so below) Ultimately I think following this philosophy is what allowed me to break free from the neoliberal consensus world view.
Modern society is very much lacking in meaningful spiritual living, which contributes to our soul sucking capitalist world. The left should embrace neo-paganism imo, not as organized religion, but as individual pursuit.
Witchcraft as an aesthetic is very much neoliberal and bourgeois.
See: r/witchesvspatriarchy
God, one of the top posts is literally "RBG is the last thing standing between the US and Fascism". Of course, it was before she died. I don't know what kind of delusions you're in if you think she is the bottleneck, when the laws she upholds are based in american imperialism
witchesvpatriarchy is also an incredibly narrow sample of "witchcraft", as an aesthetic or otherwise. it would be as much a mistake to get your representative take on the whole of witchcraft from Reddit as any other niche community, Reddit itself leaning neoliberal and bourgeois
Made this account just for this thread, and I completely agree, I jumped ship from Christianity a long time ago and haven't ever regretted it.
Appreciate the commitment. I try to come up with interesting topics that will bring in people and maybe spark some discussion.
I get what you mean and can relate to your order of events. I too had something of a "spiritual" Awakening, and it's what enabled my political shift as well, but it was totally void of any super natural framing. I guess I'd be curious to learn more about what Paganism does for you, given I know little about it but did not need it on my own journey.
I delved deep enough into philosophy that I found that sense of awe and humility that I do often hear about from those who describe religious/spiritual revelations. It wasn't just the philosophy, though, it was combined with studying history, mathematics/logic, social and hard sciences (particularly cosmology/astronomy, but one can find just as much to marvel at within ecology or chemistry too, for example), and beginning to realize just how incredibly VAST the collection of human knowledge is, and how it pales in comparison of what is still to be learned. I experienced "The Sublime," as Schopenhauer called it as I began to see how interconnected all of these systems were, and how incredible it was that we humans could explore the cognitive horizon.
To be a part of that, ALL of that, is reason enough to stand in awe and reverence. To me, it seems like we don't lack meaningful access to spirituality, but rather we have too sterile a relationship with the incredible intellectual tools we use every day. I think that we'd be better served by providing language and ritual that celebrates education not as a means to increase profits, but as a means for better relating to the Universe and human kind itself. Alternative narratives like Witchcraft or Religion seem like they have the potential to confuse or alienate people from fully finding meaning in the Universe as it is.
I might start by distilling it down to the surrender of how little we actually know. Yes, I personally know almost nothing of the great expanse of human knowledge, but likewise humans know almost nothing of the multi-verse. The great arrogance of science and factions like the "new atheists" is believing that because they can't prove something exists, it definitely doesn't exist. Basically, we have good enough technology now that we mistakenly think that everything we can measure and perceive with our limited senses is the end all of reality.
I think in order to be a truly effective force for good you have to have an unshakeable grounding of morality and sense of justice. Of course it doesn't have to come from any super natural framing, I think Marxism can give people that same grounding of morality, because it ultimately means making sacrifices towards equality of people you've never met, really a love of humanity.
I was an atheist, but as I got more into meditation and yoga, I became more spiritual. Also as some have pointed out, my material conditions got worse so I looked for tools to help me wherever i could find them. However, it took some specific experiences I had to gain that unshakeable faith, many of which involved psychedelic drugs, so maybe drugs are the answer? lol
Well once again we have common ground lol. Shrooms offered me a new insight that I likely wouldn't have had without them. It's funny, I feel like I could have written your very same comment, and I think we're definitely grappling with a similar subjective experience. It really is that 'surrender' which is the most important first step to shifting our perspective. Hate to harken back to Socrates, but admission of ignorance is a wisdom of its own kind.
I've been been Journaling and writing on these topics for a little over a year now, it's refreshing to to see it somewhere besides my own notes. It does seem like a potential narrative shift that could help restore meaning and spiritual significance that works better for the contemporary world, whether it goes by paganism or any other name.
for some reason I always attract witches which is strange as Im a dorky athiest square dude. I mean im open minded and ill genuinely entertain ideas and stuff, but yeah definitely a strange trend for me 🤷♂️
also being anti witch is lame let people view the world in a framework that lets them either enjoy or make sense of the world
cool are witches fascist? no? does spirtualism hurt people? also no? ok then that point is useless.
I mean it's a bad analogy, but the Nazis were really into the occult
Im partial to disagree, dogma is cope, spirtualism is a great way to feel interconnected with your peers and care about their struggle which can enhance or lead into solidarity. Im grill pilled/acid marxist despite being an atheist haha matt makes a compelling arguements that the left needs to be inclusive of spirtualism
