Rebuttal....and Rantage
I read a story elentaari had posted and thought about the things it said. Quick summary: Intense Christian (minister I believe) receives a stereotypically "evil witch" invitation to a male witch's house. When he gets there, he finds that the house is stereotypically EEEEEEEVIL, dripping occult symbols (also including a D&D gameset which is a whole OTHER rant I'll get to some other time) and suchlike. The witch hands him a book of newspaper clippings that illustrates his accomplishments, such as healing someone with a chant and cursing someone with AIDS because he'd been paid to do so. The 'witch' challenges the man to say what his God has done that can compete with the power of the dark arts and brags about all that he can do. The minister throws the book of clippings back at the witch, screams at him about how the demons he thinks he controls will eat his soul, and God has paid for the Christian's soul with His blood.
I'm disgusted. Not with Rislyn nor with Christianity but with this story and with the so-called witch featured in it. By the way, Ris, none of this is directed at you, but I felt like writing on the topic.
That's not what Wicca and WitchCraft are about. People like this give people like me a bad name. I've actually been doing a lot of thinking recently about my beliefs and how Wicca works in my head. Especially as I've had a lot of people asking me questions recently, which means I need to get my shit straight before I can start explaining to someone else otherwise we both just end up confused. So here goes.
Satanism and witch craft are not equivalent and synonomous. They never have been. Witchcraft as the majority of the world understands it now (through the lens of the Spanish Inquisition) is an interesting prospect, really. Did anybody else know that the Malleus Maleficarum was never approved by the theological faculty at Cologne? Kramer and Sprenger only managed to garner 4 signatures on their work and those signatures only agreed that parts I and II didn't go against Catholic dogma. Ringing endorsement there, lads. (The significance of this is that books weren't supposed to be published by the university without the endorsement of the majority of the faculty, but since Kramer was the dean he steamrolled over the whole thing.)
Quick definitions here. Satanism, according to www.religioustolerance.org (fantastic reference, incidentally) is best defined as someone who actively worships the Christian devil also called Satan. Often this worship takes the form of what is called the Black Mass and involves deliberate and specific perversion of Christian traditions in order to emphasize deviance.
During the Inquisition, the lines between Satanism, paganism, ritual ceremonial magic, heresy, demon worship, and most other things non-Christian were blurred dramatically. The Malleus doesn't make real distinction between a woman practicing simple herbal magic to heal her child from a fever and a man sacrificing virgins on a bloody altar during a demon summoning. (Also because women had no legal power and were generally feared because of the whole Eve-initiated-the-Fall thing, they were overwhelmingly targeted by the witch hunts. But that's another topic I'll deal with some other time). Inquisitors saw no real difference between worship of the divine feminine, Satan worship, and ceremonial magick among other things--they were all not-Christian. Thus the image of witchcraft handed down to the modern era was one of blood, dark magic, evil, cackling old hags, etc. etc. (Remind me sometime actually to get into my analysis of the spells/rhymes in Macbeth...)
Now we get into a linguistic problem--namely, that Gerald Gardner was a fuckwit. He decided he had to go and call his brand new just-invented-yesterday religion "WitchCraft." Thereby summoning up all the old associations of dark magic. Which is why I personally choose to identify myself as a Wiccan rather than a Witch--it's not worth arguing with the fundies, and I get enough of their bullshit anyway. So we're left with a centuries-established stereotype of all witches and all witchcraft as bad and evil (see also: Disney) and a new religion trying to establish itself as the true heir to ancient pagan magic and reverse those stereotypes. My personal distaste for Gardner and his general brand of idiocy left out of the equation, this is a damned near impossible task. Also you have Satanists and ceremonial magicians choosing to identify themselves as Witches which complicates the issue even farther.
So. In conclusion.....fuck this, witches are good, assholes are bad, and I want some Bailey's.
=)
I'm disgusted. Not with Rislyn nor with Christianity but with this story and with the so-called witch featured in it. By the way, Ris, none of this is directed at you, but I felt like writing on the topic.
That's not what Wicca and WitchCraft are about. People like this give people like me a bad name. I've actually been doing a lot of thinking recently about my beliefs and how Wicca works in my head. Especially as I've had a lot of people asking me questions recently, which means I need to get my shit straight before I can start explaining to someone else otherwise we both just end up confused. So here goes.
Satanism and witch craft are not equivalent and synonomous. They never have been. Witchcraft as the majority of the world understands it now (through the lens of the Spanish Inquisition) is an interesting prospect, really. Did anybody else know that the Malleus Maleficarum was never approved by the theological faculty at Cologne? Kramer and Sprenger only managed to garner 4 signatures on their work and those signatures only agreed that parts I and II didn't go against Catholic dogma. Ringing endorsement there, lads. (The significance of this is that books weren't supposed to be published by the university without the endorsement of the majority of the faculty, but since Kramer was the dean he steamrolled over the whole thing.)
Quick definitions here. Satanism, according to www.religioustolerance.org (fantastic reference, incidentally) is best defined as someone who actively worships the Christian devil also called Satan. Often this worship takes the form of what is called the Black Mass and involves deliberate and specific perversion of Christian traditions in order to emphasize deviance.
During the Inquisition, the lines between Satanism, paganism, ritual ceremonial magic, heresy, demon worship, and most other things non-Christian were blurred dramatically. The Malleus doesn't make real distinction between a woman practicing simple herbal magic to heal her child from a fever and a man sacrificing virgins on a bloody altar during a demon summoning. (Also because women had no legal power and were generally feared because of the whole Eve-initiated-the-Fall thing, they were overwhelmingly targeted by the witch hunts. But that's another topic I'll deal with some other time). Inquisitors saw no real difference between worship of the divine feminine, Satan worship, and ceremonial magick among other things--they were all not-Christian. Thus the image of witchcraft handed down to the modern era was one of blood, dark magic, evil, cackling old hags, etc. etc. (Remind me sometime actually to get into my analysis of the spells/rhymes in Macbeth...)
Now we get into a linguistic problem--namely, that Gerald Gardner was a fuckwit. He decided he had to go and call his brand new just-invented-yesterday religion "WitchCraft." Thereby summoning up all the old associations of dark magic. Which is why I personally choose to identify myself as a Wiccan rather than a Witch--it's not worth arguing with the fundies, and I get enough of their bullshit anyway. So we're left with a centuries-established stereotype of all witches and all witchcraft as bad and evil (see also: Disney) and a new religion trying to establish itself as the true heir to ancient pagan magic and reverse those stereotypes. My personal distaste for Gardner and his general brand of idiocy left out of the equation, this is a damned near impossible task. Also you have Satanists and ceremonial magicians choosing to identify themselves as Witches which complicates the issue even farther.
So. In conclusion.....fuck this, witches are good, assholes are bad, and I want some Bailey's.
=)