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witches and magick

PoetPhilosopher

Veteran Member
I see several talk about witches, witchcraft/magic, etc..

Is witchcraft(if possible) natural or beyond natural?

It depends on who you ask. But to me, it has a supernatural side.

It's not to be confused with Wicca, in my opinion (though many Wiccans do practice witchcraft, so there is some resemblance and connection).
 
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dybmh

דניאל יוסף בן מאיר הירש
I vote it's natural. Magick and wichcraft are like recipes. They operate on "laws" just like any of the physical laws that people are familiar with.

2 cups of room temperature water over a high flame boils after 6 minutes.

Eye of newt + wing of bat + other stuff + right time + right place = magical result.

This would be different than sorcery, or working with angels / demons / gods, etc...
 

We Never Know

No Slack
I vote it's natural. Magick and wichcraft are like recipes. They operate on "laws" just like any of the physical laws that people are familiar with.

2 cups of room temperature water over a high flame boils after 6 minutes.

Eye of newt + wing of bat + other stuff + right time + right place = magical result.

This would be different than sorcery, or working with angels / demons / gods, etc...

Unless they are vegan witches. Then the recipe changes :D

IMG_20230101_205025.jpg
 

Ella S.

Well-Known Member
Magic originally referred to the religious ceremonies of the Zoroastrians, whose clerics were called Magi, but the idea later expanded to the religious ceremonies and spiritual rituals of barbarians (that is, non-Hellenists) as a whole. Originally, it did not necessarily have any supernatural connotations, although it did include supernatural practices like what we find in the Greek Magical Papyri.

For awhile, there was a distinction between "high magic" and "low magic." Low magic was the supernatural magic most people have come to associate with the word, being invested in controlling the material world, like what you see in folk magic. High magic was more closely related to occult (that is, secret or initiatory) religious practices and mysticism. High magic is closer to what magic used to refer to.

Aleister Crowley redefined his concept of magick as "creating change in accordance with the Will," where the Will is a specific religious concept involved with the manifestation of psychic energy into reality. This was not necessarily supernatural. Both LaVeyan Satanism and subsets of Discordianism and Chaos Magick use what's often referred to as a "psychological model" of magick that essentially reduces it to movement meditation, psychodrama, and auto-suggestion cloaked in spiritual symbolism. These are directly inspired by Crowley's approach to magic, which often used pseudo-psychological language to describe itself.

Witchcraft used to be the crime of using low magic to harm someone, and it was punishable by hanging in many places throughout Europe for centuries. Even if the magic was ineffective, the very attempt to use witchcraft was a crime, similar to laws against attempted murder and conspiracy. Many people accused of witchcraft confessed under torture, which means we don't really know how many witches were actually guilty of their charges. This is still an area of study by some historians.

Margaret Murray came up with the Witch Cult Hypothesis, which stated that historical witches were actually a part of a secret religion formed by the pagans who opposed Christianization. This became a major influence on groups like Gardner's Witchcraft coven or the Our Lady of Endor Coven. Gardner's religion, Witchcraft, popularized the term as having a more general connotation of low magic and paganism than outright black magic.

Witchcraft would later rename itself to Wicca due to the association the word "witchcraft" had with black magic, although eclectic Wiccans continued to popularize the term as closely related to folk magic, essentially erasing the Gardnerian religious connotations altogether.

(ETA: It's worth noting that folk magic also frequently includes proto-sciences like herbalism or divining the weather by watching the sky, etc. It isn't all supernatural. A lot of high magic, likewise, has supernatural religious connotations like talking to guardian angels. The division between supernatural and natural used to be very fuzzy.

Crowley also wasn't the first person to approach ceremonial magic from a more symbolic and psychological lens, either. It was a common trend in spiritual alchemy and Hermeticism, coming to a head during the Renaissance.)
 
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Heyo

Veteran Member
Is witchcraft(if possible) natural or beyond natural?
It's natural.
It's the result of the perfectly natural fear of the unknown and the childish dream to influence the world (without putting in real work). It's the hope for fairy godmothers, the trope of being adopted but really being of royalty / special in some way.
If it weren't in the exclusion zone of religious believes, it would be of interest in the discipline of psychology.
 

Ella S.

Well-Known Member
It's natural.
It's the result of the perfectly natural fear of the unknown and the childish dream to influence the world (without putting in real work). It's the hope for fairy godmothers, the trope of being adopted but really being of royalty / special in some way.
If it weren't in the exclusion zone of religious believes, it would be of interest in the discipline of psychology.

While I think there is a lot of truth to this, I think it's also worth pointing out that magic is often a result of uncorrected magical thinking. Most cultures encourage or normalize magical thinking to some degree. While it was opposed by some ancient philosophers, I think it's only since the Enlightenment that there has been a major movement against magical thinking in general.

Many people are raised in communities or whole cultures without really knowing any better. Our ancestors, despite having the same genetic capacity to reason as we do, almost certainly gave into magical thinking simply because they weren't trained to notice and avoid it. Critical thinking is a skill that we've been making new strides in over millennia.

It's worth noting that a lot of people who turn to witchcraft and magic were raised in heavily religious households and are intelligent enough to realize that there's something wrong enough with the religion they're in to look for alternatives. Many of them just aren't in a position to recognize magical thinking for what it is, though, and end up in some other, looser spiritual practice that solves whatever issues they noticed with the religion they were brought up in.

It's not that they're all irrational or childish. Some of them just don't have the right tools or information. Even in the Information Age, we're also in the misinformation age.
 

Ella S.

Well-Known Member
I consider most religion to be remodeling of witchcraft. It's only natural for a believer to perform an incantation/prayer (call it what you will) to the one(s) they believe in

I began to write a lengthy post in reply to this that gave an overview of how animism and magic could have ultimately given way to the majority of religions in the world. It was going to demonstrate how all of the Big Five religions still practice forms of magic under various names, as well as point out some of the remnants of animistic thinking that have survived in each of them to this day.

Then I realized that the post was becoming far too lengthy, even for me. Suffice to say, I agree with you in the sense that witchcraft is often closely associated with folk magical practices and animism.
 
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