Wicca, Shamanism, Animism...

[Milliardo]

Well, those sort of stuff. How many here have dabbled in these things, and how did you eventually quit from it? I was into Wicca a few years back. Just like most here who went into it probably, it was more out of curiousity than actually being convinced it’s the “true path”. I was never in a coven or such; for those familiar with the terms, I was a solitary practitioner. Maybe it was by God’s grace I never really found a coven or a group who practiced it here, or else it might have been more difficult to walk away from it. I could never reconcile Wicca with my Christian Faith; it just wasn’t right. I never felt it right. Somehow I feel I was tapping into something evil, something that might take hold of me before long and totally possess me. I do not want that. So I stopped before it completely overwhelmed me. Of course Wiccans might tell you it’s not evil, that they don’t do the rituals and the magic for evil. But I can’t get that out of my mind: the strangeness of it all, the use of such things as wands and the magic circle and all those things. It’s not right.

 

[Liberian]

I could never reconcile Wicca with my Christian Faith; it just wasn’t right. I never felt it right. Somehow I feel I was tapping into something evil, something that might take hold of me before long and totally possess me. I do not want that. So I stopped before it completely overwhelmed me. Of course Wiccans might tell you it’s not evil, that they don’t do the rituals and the magic for evil. But I can’t get that out of my mind: the strangeness of it all, the use of such things as wands and the magic circle and all those things. It’s not right.

You are right that it’s not right, and it is extremely good that you got out of it before it took you over completely.

C.S.Lewis once made an analogy of the difference between pre-Christian pagans and the modern pagans (in Christian countries) as being like the difference between the maiden and the divorcee. Pre-Christian pagans–who were not particularly nice either–have never heard the Gospel while the neopagans have heard it and rejected it.

• Liberian

 

[Subrosa]

The thing that strikes me is that magic is about applying one’s own will over another. Isn’t this what happens when a spell is cast? It might be a spell of love, for instance. But, would that person otherwise fall in love with the person who asked for the spell? It should be left up to the same forces everyone else is subject to, don’t you think? Then again, is casting a spell of love an act of love? Hardly! Love allows for and nurtures anothers freedom. Magic removes it.

Nevermind a destructive spell.

Overcoming someone elses will, whether for good or ill, is an overtly evil thing. Magic is egocentric and at no time can result in good. Magic cannot be of God.

Subrosa

 

[deb1]

In my very early twenties, I started practicing Wicca. I think that the rituals and the feminist aspect appealed to me. I thought that it was an ancient religon but the whole religion was made up by a man named Gardner sometime in the last century. What made Wiccan loose its appeal was the whole silliness of it. Here I was, an intelligent, well read woman, sitting naked on the floor trying to invoke the four watchtowers to guard my imaginary circle so I could conjur up some silly made up spell. One day, it just seemed ridiculous to me. Read any site on Wicca and you will be surprised by how much it sounds like play acting.

 

[Ahimsa]

Subrosa:

Overcoming someone elses will, whether for good or ill, is an overtly evil thing. Magic is egocentric and at no time can result in good. Magic cannot be of God.

Subrosa

So, if Hitler’s will is to destroy the Jews, and if the U.S. overcomes Hitler’s will, even though the U.S. Army is doing a good thing, it is actually an overtly evil thing? Egocentric and all that?

My point is that we “overcome” other people’s wills all the time, except we do it via purely physical, emotional, and intellectual means – rather than magical, spiritual, or supernatural means.

If you really don’t want to “overcome” other peoples’ will completely, it would seem that you would have to become a Buddhist monk or a Trappist in Kentucky.

The problem with Wicca is that its practitioners often seem to lack an intense awareness of the need for sacrifice (as exemplified in Jesus), or ascetic discipline (as seen via the Buddha). Magic is then used as a way of getting what one wants and avoiding what one doesn’t want – which is something non-Wiccans do all the time, as well, but without the magickal paraphernalia.

 

[Shinobu]

I never got into it nor do I want to. I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole.

I had a friend (well long since ex-friend, we parted ways years and years ago), she started to get into that and would say she was going to put a “curse” on someone when she got mad at them. I think she just wanted to give herself some power in her otherwise powerless life. Her parents got drunk habitually and her family life was truely lacking. She most likely just wanted something to fill that void andfill her with a sense of empowerment.

It’s also a bit of popular culture too. Same thing that made the Ouji Board popular. People since this junk in movies and books and want to live that glorified life.

Wiccans seem to be free with their sexuality too and have this whole “if it hurts no one then it’s “ok”” attitude. You can’t leave it up to man about what “is good and isn’t good” because we perverse things as you can see clearly in todays society.

 

[Subrosa]

Ahimsa:

So, if Hitler’s will is to destroy the Jews, and if the U.S. overcomes Hitler’s will, even though the U.S. Army is doing a good thing, it is actually an overtly evil thing? Egocentric and all that?

Hi Ahimsa -

It seems that you have missed the point completely. In the scenario I created in my last post, Hitler would be the egocentric person inflicting his will on others. The U.S. Army would be the liberators. Do you believe that they landed on Normandy beach without the expressed will of the French?

Maybe I should have elaborated a bit more. “When someone uses magic for overcoming someone elses will, whether for good or ill, is an overtly evil thing.” I won’t change my position. Magic is forbidden by the First Commandment. I am supported by the Catholic Church catechism:

**2117 **All practices of *magic *or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. *Spiritism *often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.

In the church we have sacraments. For the sick we have the sacrament of Anointing the Sick. When a priest gives this sacrament, is he using magic? Not at all. He is invoking the Holy Spirit to bless the sick.

Subrosa

 

[Hesychios]

Shamanism is interesting as a study. Whatever still exists in primitive and some third-world type environments seems to be remnants of the earliest widespread belief system. One can learn a lot about humankind by studying the differences and similarities between the beliefs and practices of shamanic societies around the world.

There are still shamanic cultures in Siberia and South America, some tribes in Southeast Asia and Borneo, and I think the Lapps are still largely shamanic.

I don’t know much about the native religions in Africa.

There is nothing wrong with studying these things as an aspect of anthropology. I wouldn’t expect any mature modern person to be looking for Truth there.

 

[jennstall]

deb1:

In my very early twenties, I started practicing Wicca. I think that the rituals and the feminist aspect appealed to me. I thought that it was an ancient religon but the whole religion was made up by a man named Gardner sometime in the last century. What made Wiccan loose its appeal was the whole silliness of it. Here I was, an intelligent, well read woman, sitting naked on the floor trying to invoke the four watchtowers to guard my imaginary circle so I could conjur up some silly made up spell. One day, it just seemed ridiculous to me. Read any site on Wicca and you will be surprised by how much it sounds like play acting.

I could have written this. I also became involved in wicca during my 20s. I’d first started attending some WomenChurch groups made up of “catholic” women, then more broadly based feminist spirituality groups that practiced a range of different religious practices with a women-centered spin on them, and there I met some Unitarian Universalists who were starting a chapter of pagans within the UUA and then from there I actually joined a “coven”.

I rejected my involvement in wicca long before I came back to Catholicism, eventually realising just how silly, phony and futile it all was. I wish I could remember the title of the book that really helped open my eyes. It dissected at great length the claims of neopaganism and the women’s spirituality movement (the two are so very linked) and like you discovered it pointed back to Gardner and also proved well enough to me that paganism as practiced by pre-Christians and paganism as practiced by neopagans have nothing in common and no unbroken line between them.

I still have a hard time regarding it as evil per se. Mostly I just think it is silly and an enormous waste of time. I think there’s a large difference between real occultism (and/or satanism) and wicca and I think wiccans are essentially harmless. Although, I will grant that it could be argued there is a slippery slope as witnessed by my own progression through the various permutations and flavors of “women’s spirituality” (which, in my opinion, at its core is all about anti-Catholicism).

 

[Oren]

Well, I was not brought up Christian or anything else. So I was interested in a lot of religions, hinduism the most. I didn’t believe in any of them but I liked to study them sometimes. After I converted to Catholicism, I fell away for a while, and I looked back to those religions. I looked over bunches of stuff about different pagan beliefs and neo pagan groups and such. I wanted to believe in it. Because it would be easier on me. As I thought at the time. But I never could. I looked at the different beliefs, the different explanations of the world and life and all of that, and I thought ‘man, I could make up stuff better than this.’ So I tried to think about that for a while, just thought about, ok if I could just make it up, what would I say were the explanations, the beliefs I should have. When I got into thinking about that, I just realized that’s all any of it really was. People just made it up. (esp more recent stuff like wicca). So that’s how I got out of it, of persuing it.

 

[Cubsfan]

Subrosa:

Hi Ahimsa -

It seems that you have missed the point completely. In the scenario I created in my last post, Hitler would be the egocentric person inflicting his will on others. The U.S. Army would be the liberators. Do you believe that they landed on Normandy beach without the expressed will of the French?

:tiphat:
Good Answer!

 

[brotherhrolf]

I usually get beat up by the pagans when I enter into these types of threads but…I have a MA in Anthropology. I really do love the study of humanity. There is a huge difference between the study of native (i.e. homegrown) religions which have long oral (and sometimes written) traditions behind them and the fabrications of the neo-pagans, wiccans, neo-shamans, neo-animists, etc. We were created by God and He instilled in us the desire to know Him and to seek Him. For better or worse, native religions can be viewed as man or woman honestly seeking their Creator. They do not know Our Lord but they seek God.

Now comes the neo-whatevers. Their ancestors have been told the Truth and they reject it. My ancestors have known God for a thousand years and more. No matter what they say, neo-whatevers (I’m not using the term pejoritavely) cannot resurrect religions which died over a thousand years ago. Face it all you of western European descent - you can’t resurrect Thor, Odin, Dagda, Isis, Mithras, …ad infinitum. And, saying that your “tradition” has been secretly passed down through the ages is just plain taurine feocal matter. It does an extreme disservice to the many native religions which still exist. How can one compare a Gardnerian wiccan to a Navajo shaman?

 

[Milliardo]

It seems like Christianity, and we Catholics in particular, would have a difficult time ahead. Seems like America is turning pagan as well, with Wicca emerging as the third largest religion in America by 2012. This is alarming. News here: emediawire.com/releases/2005/4/emw231351.htm

 

[return2truth]

I was a pagan. I believed in the relativist notion that all religious practices that helped one to live a moral life and achieve spiritual peace were of equal worth. I believed in an ultimate truth, but that it could be reached from many different paths. In my case, it is because of my occult studies that I found my way back to the Church.

St. Augustine wrote in his Confessions that when he turned his back on God his face was no longer bathed with God’s divine light. Instead, Augustine, much like myself, sought the truth of God in things of the world that reflected it back to him. I found myself drawn to these reflections. Such reflections of God’s truth can be found in many things to varying degrees including the relgious and magical practices of the ancient pagans or those of the New Age. Ultimately, however, they are not the source of the truth. It took me a long time to realize that I had been chasing only glimmers of God and with each step I took I actually was going farther and farther away from Him.

I know why I rejected Catholicism in the first place. I know why NO amount of proselytizing could ever convince me to believe in Jesus as my personal savior. Much like my friends, I had very logical and reasonable excuses for my new beliefs and NO person on earth could EVER change my mind. Fortunately for me, a direct intervention of the Holy Spirit changed my mind. It happened one day: quitely and uneventfully. A knowledge overcame me and I simply knew, without any doubt, that the Catholic Church was the one true Church and the source of the Divine’s light on earth.

My reversion has been a challenge for my relationships with some of my most beloved friends because it is such a 180-degree turn from what they have come know and even appreciate about me. I know that I cannot express in words anything that will help to convey in a convincing fasion what I know in my heart to be true. However, since my friends are relativists in their own personal faith systems they do accept me, though sometimes I feel grudgingly.

Religious, magical and occult systems all reflect the light of God in one way or another. Sometimes the lack of light they reflect can be telling in and of itself. It is important to ultimately realize where that source of light truly is coming from, however, and head towards that instead.

 

[BlindSheep]

I was brought up with no religion, and got involved with wicca because I thought it might give me knowledge of a dimension of reality beyond the physical. I desparately wanted proof that there was more to life than a purely physical, mechanical world. Then I had a dream where I met Jesus, and I knew at that moment that He was real, and that He loved me and I could trust him. After that I was no longer interested in wicca.
I posted about it in this thread.

 

[BlessedBe13]

Subrosa:

The thing that strikes me is that magic is about applying one’s own will over another.

Part of Wiccan belief is not to perform magic that exerts power over another or is destructive (part of “harming none” is not to be manipulative or otherwise exert power over others.) Love spells are a good example for the reasons you brought up.

 

[BlessedBe13]

deb1:

I thought that it was an ancient religon but the whole religion was made up by a man named Gardner sometime in the last century.

It isn’t ancient. I knew that going into it. Christianity and every other religion was made up at some point to.

What made Wiccan loose its appeal was the whole silliness of it.

Perhaps you were going about it in a silly way. I find parts of Christianity silly (to use your term). That is why I don’t practice it.

Here I was, an intelligent, well read woman, sitting naked on the floor trying to invoke the four watchtowers to guard my imaginary circle so I could conjur up some silly made up spell.

I consider myself intelligent and well-read and certainly don’t consider my practices silly. It is not necessary to practice naked - I don’t. I don’t invoke the watchtowers. A spell isn’t going to work if you believe it’s “silly” and of course it has to be made up. It doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It is also not necessary to practice within a circle.

Read any site on Wicca and you will be surprised by how much it sounds like play acting.

Not every Wiccan site. Those created by people that think it’s some role playing game - probably.

 

[BlessedBe13]

brotherhrolf:

How can one compare a Gardnerian wiccan to a Navajo shaman?

You can’t. I know I don’t practice an ancient religion. Does it matter? No. If another Wiccan came up to me claiming to be descendent of hundreds of years of Wiccans, I would laugh in their face. Just as I would laugh at anyone talking about the Wiccans killed during the Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials.

 

[deb1]

BlessedBe13:

. A spell isn’t going to work if you believe it’s “silly” and of course it has to be made up. It doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It is also not necessary to practice within a circle. Not every Wiccan site. Those created by people that think it’s some role playing game - probably.

Well, of course, I didn’t think that it was silly at the time. Post some sites that you think are less silly or role playing and I will gladly look at them.

 

[BlessedBe13]

deb1:

Well, of course, I didn’t think that it was silly at the time. Post some sites that you think are less silly or role playing and I will gladly look at them.

www.wicca.com
religioustolerance.org/witchcra.htm

I have no interest in looking up the pages of people who think that Wicca is all about magic and love spells, so I’m not going to waste my time with that, but the above sites are rather informative.