Recently, modern witchcraft has been on the rise. I am interested to hear some discussion and discourse from your perspective, on any aspect of modern witchcraft. Myself, I try to be respectful of most religions. That said, I have always been a little annoyed by anyone who believes they can, for example, control the weather or read peoples minds, which seems to be the case in this article, and in several witchcraft-related memes and stuff I've seen floating around. In addition, I think the whole idea of witchcraft as an opposition to the status quo is very much a bourgeois/liberal mindset. Instead of using affirmative action to actually work for change, it's turning to faith and a belief in the occult in order to solve your issues. It seems to me to be almost entirely composed of young, upper-middle class white women that have not needed to struggle or known the struggle of other classes. In essence, a liberal reaction to the people in power. Any thoughts? Willing to change my mind.
Before I became more materialist i dabbled in the occult in college. Witchcraft really has nothing to do with believing you can change the weather or read peoples minds.
Oh, I'm sure quite a few within those circles believe its within the realm of reason but a lot of practicing magicians don't.
Its more like experimental psychology whereby you use ritual and symbols to enact changes in your psyche by imprinting meaning onto them. Its more of a reach towards the importance of ritualistic meaning.
A lot of these ideas came from alchemical philosophy, which holds "as above so below" or "as within so without", so what affects the material world also affects that of the mind and soul as it were.
Of course there's also elements of animsim with other forms of witchcraft like Wicca and such, which are less focused on those alchemical axioms.
I like studying religions as I find them fascinating and I think its important to know how many people understand the world, and I was once one of those edgy New Athiests and I try to move away from that haha
A lot of witchy beliefs line up with common Chapo beliefs. Making things real by joking about them too much, or changing people's minds by memeing at them in public. It's just spellcasting.
I mean, yeah haha good point. Its literally just a different explanatory model of the world
deleted by creator
This is also a core tenet of LaVeyan Satanism, AKA wicca for edgelords.
That's like the worst kind of Satanism too
deleted by creator
is this like a jungian or crowley thing? maybe reich? i hear mat talking about orgonne all the time
Crowley followed this model for sure, and Jung fell into it I believe too as it was pretty big in Europe before and around his time. Not sure who Reich is, but it's fairly common in the Western Occult tradition