Magick & Witchcraft

SOME THOUGHTS ON WITCHCRAFT

Since writing this several years back I have come to have a greater understanding of the principle pagan worldview and have realised that it fits a lot better with my own ideas now, I wonder if my views have changed that much or if I have simply understood witchcraft better? Certainly I continue to question in outward AND inward directions but some of my arguements in this article aren't really as valid as I felt they were when I wrote this piece. Ashley 2002.

Having been recently questioned and subsequently treated to a tirade of the most puerile and ignorant rhetoric on the subject I feel compelled to outline a few of my theological concerns about Witchcraft as a religion relative to the path of high magick and to my own worldview. I am frequently guilty of commenting that I am neither witches' or an initiate in witchcraft and noting that I have some fundamental theological differences with Witchcraft as I understand it. On top of which I feel that although unqualified by initiation to comment thoroughly on witches' magick I should like to stake a claim on its behalf against the recently levelled accusation of it as "bunny magic".

To deal with the first and, in my opinion, more important and far reaching question of my misgivings about witches' theology. My main problem is that unlike the witches' view I do not think I can see life as all encompassingly natural, I believe (and if you read my other works you will know I do not use the concept of "belief" lightly) that we are beings of great light and spirit, we are not worldly and material in our existence and in fact I view the material world as illusory and subjective with no real place other than as an abstract interpolation, albeit a strongly supported one, of space and time in dimension. Witchcraft seems to take too little account of our inherent existence beyond such weird concepts of linear time and tri-dimensional space. Witchcraft seems to take the view that life is eternal and perpetual and although it concludes that space time material existence is but a small part of life it promptly disregards the "life" we have outside this shadow of our true being too much in its day to day teaching, ceremony, worship and magic. Witchcraft's disguise of the supernatural side of our being used to appear somewhat distasteful to me though as I have mellowed somewhat with great learning and experience it has come to seem not so much sinister in what it is trying to cover up as facile in what it chooses to to focus too clearly on.

Certainly I am not suggesting that the witches' view excludes existence beyond the material, far from it, but it seems to me that it unconsciously allows consciousness to seem constrained by dimensional space and linear time when I see consciousness as an individual, albeit assisted, choice to recognise space time as the mere model it surely is even if that is a convenient one.

Sadly however I cannot find any truck with the Christian ideas of humanity nor that of the Qabalistic view (and indeed that of nearly every system of western ritual magick) that man is separate from the rest of nature, some special agent of the divine, indeed it is often a source of theological tension to me to think that the occult lodges so frequently accept the blatant christianised views of the bible - Genesis 1 v.26 says "And God made man in his own image . . . to hold dominion over all earth" then in v.28 goes on to encourage man to "Be fruitful and multiply, replenish and subdue the earth". I'm sorry but I think mankind needs no encouragement to hold dominion over or to subdue this planet, indeed this view of man as external to the life of the earth is precisely why our race has mutated into the complex of parasitic abuse that we seem insistent on inflicting on the rest of the earth, not to mention ourselves. So in essence I have to say that although I do not fundamentally disagree with the witches' worldview, and I admit that it is far closer to my own conviction than either occult tradition or christianity but I am not convinced about the convenience of if not ignoring, at least unfocusing on what I see as fundamental to human being.

I have other stumbling blocks about Witchcraft though none so major, I like very little it's views on the act of sexual union in its ceremonies as a union between flesh and spirit. Certainly Witchcraft is not so trite as to treat this as the symbolism of the sex act but I can't help feeling once again that although it is vital and central to this rite to see the act as union with the divine, the goddess or the god, I see no necessity to associate spirit and flesh whatsoever. That said I think it only fair to note that witches during this act probably do not bring the union of flesh and spirit to ascendancy over union of human and divine.

I also have some misgivings about witches' views on magick though these take on a lesser importance since the witches' use of magick is far more important than Witchcraft's (or my own) limited understanding of why it works. I think that in outlining my opinions on this subject I will come close to responding to the charge of witches' magick as "bunny magic".

I cannot get along with the view of magick as any sort of harnessing of external (or "Odic") force. Certainly there is power in magick but I think too much is made (unfortunately in western ritual magick too) of external power as the driving force behind magick. Magick is a function of the magician's ability to promote changes in his own consciousness by a dynamic polarisation of forms and in conformity with his own will. Power is not a scale to measure potency or efficiency of magick. Neither is it possible to compare magickal systems in terms of power or even potency. It is established fact that magick works but in understanding that the changes are in the magician's own consciousness (and therefore in his subjective and then later the collectively unconscious perception of the world around him) it becomes futile to endeavour to compare witches' magick with any other form of magick. The success of a working is certainly measurable in degrees but only within the magician's own closed system of perception. As far as trying to demonstrate one system of magick as more or less powerful (or indeed potent) as compared to another is absolutely impossible since the only way to do so would be to have the same magician work his ritual (ie. exert his influence of true will over his perception of reality) using two different systems - to do this without inherent bias inside him would be completely impossible. Not only that I do not see that it is in anyway fertile to attempt such a comparison even if one were to devise a method of so doing, does it matter if a man is shot and killed by an arrow, a bullet or even a blast of lightning? The result is the same in every case. The other discrepancies with witches' magick are in the supposed source of this "power". It is demonstrable that belief engenders success in magick, in fact it is clearly essential that the magician believes (or "has faith") in the success of his work as he goes about it or it will certainly not work. The states in which the witches' Cone Of Power is raised, in other words the method by which the coven effectively pool their combined psychic energy, seems to me to be slighty unlikely. I agree with the witches' principle of invocation of divine as opposed to the Western ritual tradition of evocation of the subservient (elemental or other "lower order" beings) but to suppose that the ritual success hinges on any sort of divine will in any greater degree than it does on the magician's own will is folly in my view since it annihilates the supposition upon which the efficacy of magick is founded. Once again i am compelled to point out that western traditional ritual magick treats the circle as protective and enclosing (which in my opinion is a very sensible precaution - there being any power in evocation it rests firmly with the creatures being evoked in many cases!) I think this is truly only half the picture - why can't the circle be protective as well as focusing, after all it is deity that is invoked in Witchcraft (high magick art notwithstanding) and that surely springs from within the magician (yes, a difficult statement to comprehend) albeit channelled through him? So witches will not evoke more primal entities - who, on the non-material planes, are abundant - are witches so above these beings that they cannot bear to communicate with them or do they simply refuse to acknowledge them as having any merit, a possibility that I think is contrary to the witches' principle of perfect love and perfect trust. (I've since realised that this is far from the case, most witches do indeed make contact with lower order beings, spirits and elementals and my misunderstanding sprung from a few remarks Gardner made in his "The Meaning Of Witchcraft") Hmmmm . . . a difficult dichotomy as indeed all of this discussion seems to be. In the end I am unschooled in the understanding of Witchcraft from an initiated point of view and therefore I reserve judgement upon its theology and practice but I will not suffer it to be denigrated by others of equal ignorance (or greater . . .) as "bunny magic", the users of such a term do great disservice to their own knowledge while equally demonstrating their lack of understanding of a subject upon which they sit in judgement.

My time in close work with the craft, my period leading to initiation and my adventures in pursuit of my own magick lead me to realise that these questions may not be answered until I have been initiated, by which time of course it will be too late to independently evaluate them! I feel the pull of Witchcraft again as I write, a deeply balanced and suitable religion into which I may plunge myself again in the future, the craft still holds a place if not in my understanding then in my affection - unlike those who denigrate it in ignorance.