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On Accuracy
10 December 2021 13:15Spare me people who wish things to be more accurate! I've been musing on this recently, and in fact I think I have already written about it? I'm not sure.
In any case, I'm thinking a lot about how a desire for things to be scientific, accurate, historic or real are sets of Hidden Gates in the craft.
Hidden Gates and Hidden Masters are a sort of, metaphor someone I knew once used for barriers-to-doing-the-craft, and I like it immensely. When you're doing ceremonial magic, a structure of ordered tests and doors (often laid out on the Tree of Life or similar) is used to assess your progress, a series of inner initiations. Well, what if "I want to do ritual but I guess I'm too tired" is *also* a Hidden Gate and a Hidden Master, albeit of a mundane kind. But this makes sense, surely? Why would Demonic Energies go to the effort of appearing in their full might and forces and princely array, if they can so easily nudge you off your kilter.
This is being brought on in part by watching the witchcraft documentaries on youtube & the number of people saying "this is the Old Religion". And you know what? It's meaningful to me.
I feel like a lot of these urges to correct and make accurate aren't wholly relevant to witchcraft-as-faith-and-craft - they are of interest to historians and in some cases, to those who find their way through reconstructionism. But...a lot of fact-checks in the craft aren't the kind which make what we do more interesting and vivid; on the contrary, they tend to be dull and smug disenchantments.
Because so many of us come from toxic Christian backgrounds, there's often a fear or outright rejection of belief in our scenes - and it's one of the uniquely beautiful things about paganism, that people of varied belief levels are equally welcome, and we can explore god-as-imagined-form and magic-as-placebo and all sorts of alternative ways.
But as I've progressed in what I do, I increasingly feel that many of these urges are Novice emotions that need to be got past before you can advance. To get certain kinds of results, to have certain kinds of experiences requires leap-of-faith and leap into belief.
The question to keep asking is "Does this revelation serve what I do?". And if the answer is no, well...the answer is no. The answer is no.
In any case, I'm thinking a lot about how a desire for things to be scientific, accurate, historic or real are sets of Hidden Gates in the craft.
Hidden Gates and Hidden Masters are a sort of, metaphor someone I knew once used for barriers-to-doing-the-craft, and I like it immensely. When you're doing ceremonial magic, a structure of ordered tests and doors (often laid out on the Tree of Life or similar) is used to assess your progress, a series of inner initiations. Well, what if "I want to do ritual but I guess I'm too tired" is *also* a Hidden Gate and a Hidden Master, albeit of a mundane kind. But this makes sense, surely? Why would Demonic Energies go to the effort of appearing in their full might and forces and princely array, if they can so easily nudge you off your kilter.
This is being brought on in part by watching the witchcraft documentaries on youtube & the number of people saying "this is the Old Religion". And you know what? It's meaningful to me.
I feel like a lot of these urges to correct and make accurate aren't wholly relevant to witchcraft-as-faith-and-craft - they are of interest to historians and in some cases, to those who find their way through reconstructionism. But...a lot of fact-checks in the craft aren't the kind which make what we do more interesting and vivid; on the contrary, they tend to be dull and smug disenchantments.
Because so many of us come from toxic Christian backgrounds, there's often a fear or outright rejection of belief in our scenes - and it's one of the uniquely beautiful things about paganism, that people of varied belief levels are equally welcome, and we can explore god-as-imagined-form and magic-as-placebo and all sorts of alternative ways.
But as I've progressed in what I do, I increasingly feel that many of these urges are Novice emotions that need to be got past before you can advance. To get certain kinds of results, to have certain kinds of experiences requires leap-of-faith and leap into belief.
The question to keep asking is "Does this revelation serve what I do?". And if the answer is no, well...the answer is no. The answer is no.
