Category: Witchcraft

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Testing the Spirits – A Step by Step Guide

This is something that comes up repeatedly, how do we test the Spirits, and it is something that should be done with all Spirits, whether they be God, Goddess, Daemon or Angel. If we do not, then we could end up with an astral parasite posing as the Spirit with which we wish to communicate with, and then its all downhill from there. This is difficult for many people because we are taught to not question authority and in terms of an ancient Spirit that holds so much power, how could we possibly put them under such scrutiny? However, the Spirit or Divine Intelligence that we are wishing to talk with would actually expect it. They really don’t want you to find yourself in a compromising situation.

I have created various content regarding this topic in the past, but it has always been to ask the Spirits questions, and if you don’t feel good around the Spirit, to banish. If it doesn’t want to answer your questions, or it was actually banished when you performed that act, then it wasn’t the Spirit you thought it was. However, what are these questions? Is there are a particular way this should be done? I recently read an absolutely fantastic book by Tara Sanchez called The Temple of Hekate, and if you are interesting in working with Hekate, or you have a draw to work magic within the framework of a Greek worldview and praxis, then you should definitely read this book. In the book is a step by step guide on how to test, and I thought it was a great example and therefore wanted to share it and discuss it. So let’s get started.

Step One: Ask the Entity if they agree to be tested?

The response to this is quite simple, if they decline, banish. If they accept, move on to step 2.

The interesting thing is that this doesn’t just apply to the Spirits. If you have a teacher, or someone in a position of authority who does not agree to be questioned, then they are probably not a leader that you want to have around. Unfortunately, we have too many such leaders in our midst and it has become something we have grown used to. We are also told that it is normal to not question such people, so those people in the positions of authority will have it in their head that if you question them, that you are being insubordinate, not to mention how we are taught to do things within the Christian worldview. However, when it comes to the Spirits, if they do not agree to be tested or questioned, then they have something to hide, and a Divine Intelligence would not need to hide anything.

Step Two: Ask Entity for their name and any affiliations they may have?

In some interactions with Spirits they will give us personal names that we can use to call them in the future. These names are usually not known by anyone else and is only for you to use, and it is a name that is to be kept secret, or shared with a trusted group that you may work with. This personal name makes it easier to call on the Spirit in the future and know that when they come, it is the Spirit and not an imposter.

In this instance however, when you are first meeting a Spirit, the name it will give you is the common name that we have come to know it by through study and discussion with other people. The affiliations may be in relation to the Spirits lineage, or it may give you particular correspondences relating to its position.

There is however the chance that the Spirit could be lying to you. In such a case you will have to trust your gut and if things don’t feel right, then banish and leave. Try another day. Otherwise, same as before, if the Spirit refuses to answer, then banish, if they give you an acceptable answer, and you are comfortable with it, nothing seeming out of place or suspicious, then move onto step 3.

Step Three: Ask Entity to swear upon their identity that their responses to you will always be truthful?

Here you will definitely have to go with your gut, and sometimes, even if the Spirit is not the one you wanted to talk to, it may not be an astral parasite. This is where lines get fuzzy and there are no text book answers. If the Spirit makes it through these three tests however, and you are not feeling like something is wrong, then you can usually be assured that you are talking to the correct Spirit.

Again though, if they decline or you don’t feel like things are right, then banish and leave, otherwise move onto step 4.

Step Four: Introduce yourself in a formal manner

This isn’t technically a test, but it is good etiquette when dealing with Spirits. A formal introduction would be something like, “I am [your full name], who’s father is [your father’s full name] and who’s mother is [your mother’s full name].” Or something simple like, “I am [your full name], who was given life by [your mother’s full name].” You can also go onto give your magical name and position or title within your given tradition, if you have such things.

Now you can go on to give the Spirit a password and some questions and answers (not too many, just one or two will do). This is so that when you meet again, the Spirit can give you the password and answer the specific questions and you know for certain that it is the Spirit you interacted with previously, as the Spirit will not give these passphrases to anyone else.

The Banishing

The only remaining question is, what do you do to banish the Spirit. Simply draw a banishing pentagram of Earth in front of you and push it toward the Spirit. This can be drawn with your finger, hand, athame, whatever you use to project energy, and is usually drawn as a blue flame.

To draw the pentagram you would start at the bottom left (Earth), move up to the top point (Spirit) and then continue to trace the pentagram coming back to the bottom left. This is often easier done practically if you stand up, then touch your left hip and from that position, move your hand forward to point in front of you. Then move your hand to a position that is in line with your head but pointing forward. Come down to a position in line with your right hip, then up to your left shoulder, across to your right shoulder, and back down to your left hip.

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Playing With Occult Symbols

Today we are going to have some fun with symbols. Starting with the pentagram, I am going to go through a progressive journey until we get to a representation of the Cosmos as a whole, with the union of all things.

I would like to encourage you to take a symbol and play with it as much as you can. Find all of the representations you can think of, or interpretations that you can find, and just play. Just take one thing and go right down the rabbit hole and all of the sub rabbit holes you find as you go down that one.

So the pentagram or five pointed star has many different interpretations and representations. We can put the alchemical Elements on it, which means Spirit goes to the top point. In its upright position it is often considered to be a representation or image that represents the right-hand path because Spirit is moving up into the heavens. If we were to then invert the pentagram or put it into its averse form both horizontally and vertically, we then have Spirit moving down into matter.

There is a difference between the inverted and averse pentagrams and it is discussed in Lon Milo DuQuette’s book about Thelemic Magick (The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema). In one of the rituals Crowley doesn’t say the pentagram is inverted, he says it is an averse pentagram, and there was some debate around what an averse pentagram is. So if you were to take a pentagram and just to flip it on a horizontal plane, you would get an inverted pentagram, whereas averse means you can turn it on a vertical and horizontal plane, so for the averse pentagram you would draw it on a piece of paper and then turn the paper 180 degrees which flips it on both planes.

Now what happens if we take both of them? If you know me, you know I don’t like all this left-hand path and right-hand path, good and evil, black and white, and all that crap. It all needs to come together in union.

If we were to put the the pentagram into a circle which now becomes a pentacle by the way, seems to still be some debate and argument around the pentagram and pentacle, but the pentagram is a five-pointed star, and a pentacle is a five-pointed star inside a circle. Another rabbit hole which I am not going to go down now. However, if we were to put the pentagram into a circle, then we take that same thing and we copy it, overlay it and then spin it 180 degrees and remove the circle, we end up with a decagram, and that is another sub rabbit hole I am not going down today.

What we are going to do now is put the pentagram into the circle and we are going to divide the circumference of the circle into six equal parts, so that we end up with six points on the circumference. Then we take the pentagram and we give it some perspective so we move the five points of the pentagram onto five points of the circle. Now we can see it with perspective, somewhat three-dimensional. Then we take that and copy, overlay and turn it 180 degrees, and you will notice that we get a hexagram with a cross in the middle.

The hexagram is a representation of the union of two opposing forces. So you’ll see in the image we have a red and a blue triangle which is fire and water. We often consider this to be a union of Man and God.

Now we’ve gone from the pentagram which is a representation of the five Elements. It can be placed in such a way to represent the right-hand path and in such a way to represent the left-hand path. So we have these two opposing forces that we are putting together and getting the hexagram, creating the union of the two opposites.

Within this image of the double pentagram which is forming the hexagram you also get the cross in the middle. There is however one line missing so if we were to draw a line from the top point to the bottom point, we see the Witches’ Foot within the symbol. If you want to go down another rabbit hole, then consider gazing at this symbol and altering it into a three-dimensional object from its two-dimensional plane. There is a whole lot of magic wrapped up with that, and you would need to have a look at how the acute angles hold power and what you can do with that if worked with and released properly.

If we take all the other stuff away, we have a Witches’ Foot which has six points. Whereas the hexagram was two separate triangles that are brought closer together and made to overlap which brings those opposing forces into union, with the Witches’ Foot, we have a six-pointed figure with lines intersecting to create a seventh point in the center.

This is where we can now ascribe this to the Witches’ Compass, to the representation of the Cosmos and to all things, to all three Worlds and four cardinal directions. Here we get into the mystery of 1734. If you don’t know what 1734 is, then go and have a look for Robert Cochrane and his letters, and specifically his letters to Joseph “Bearwalker” Wilson who went on to form the 1734 Tradition. I will get to the relation of 1734 in a minute.

So we have the Witches’ Foot which has seven points. Six points on the outside and one in the centre. Because this is a two-dimensional image, you will now need to bring it into a three-dimensional representation. You have the vertical Line that is the Axis Mundi, the World Tree, with the three Worlds, Upperworld, Middleworld and Underworld. The crossed lines over that then need to be moved into a horizontal plane, and then you have four cardinal points. THink of the vertical line as yourself standing up going from top to bottom, from sky, into the earth. Then extend four lines from your center out to the four directions on a horizontal plane. That is the Witches’ Foot in three-dimensions. This becomes the Witches’ Compass, and this is where one interpretation of the Mystery of 1734 comes in. One Compass, with Seven Directions, Three Worlds on the axis and Four Winds on the cardinals.

This is the representation of the Cosmos. When you look at the directions on the Witches’ Compass, they each go into a Mythical Land where you find particular Spirits and you can tie the North point to the North Pole Star, or if you are in the southern hemisphere, you can use the South point tied to Polaris Australis, but this is where it becomes more personal, so you have to go down that rabbit hole yourself. But what you’ve got is a representation of the Cosmos with your four cardinal directions and the Axis Mundi with the Three Worlds. You can then go from there, and go absolutely crazy and play as much as you possibly want to and can.

So I just wanted to kind of play with one symbol and see where we could take it. There are so many interpretations and representations that you can bring into just one symbol. The pentagram itself has so many different representations. You can take it into purely being Hygieia, the Greek Goddess of health, split up the name itself and put that on the points of the pentagram, and relate those to the alchemical Elements. See how one element flows into another one as you follow the lines around.

Just go crazy and start playing. This doesn’t need to be confined to symbols. You can do this with numbers, words, names, especially if you look into gematria. Then you start creating numbers out of words, and words that equalling the same number have a relationship with each other. There’s just so much you can play with in Witchcraft and Magic.

I think a lot of people miss out on this type of stuff because we read something a person said, and that’s sort of it. Explore it further. Take an image or symbol and combine it with another, and find out if there is any representation you can pull out of it, which can lead to a better understanding of your own personal cosmology. Have some fun.

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Christian Witchcraft?

I’m actually not sure where to start with this. There is so much that would need to be taken apart and examined from so many different angles. Let’s give it a shot though. Can someone be a Christian Witch?

From my own examination, which I am noting below (some of it anyway), I would have to say no, they cannot be put together, however, can you be a Christian Magician or even a Christian Pagan? Sure, because that can involve a different worldview to that of the Witch.

If you look into some of the older folk magic then you will find many inclusions of Christianity and the mention of God, Mary and Jesus, especially in the charms (see below). Look into the old healing arte of leechcraft from the Anglo Saxons. Have a look into the practices of Hoodoo with the inclusion of the Saints and the Christian Bible. While you are doing that, take a look at what these practitioners call themselves. In old folk magic they were Christians, not Witches, or they may have referred to themselves as Cunning Folk, Green Gowns, or other such terms. In Hoodoo we find Rootworkers and Conjure Doctors, but not Witches. Although the word “witch” has become a blanket term, and everyone is calling themselves a Witch nowadays, that doesn’t mean they understand what it means to be a Witch, there is an entire worldview that goes along with it, and we can’t always marry those worldviews.

Father, Son, Holy Ghost,
Bitten sall they be
Wha have bitten thee!

Care to their near vein,
Until thou get’st they health again,
Mend thou in God’s name!

The Foresworn Water charm traditional to Orkney

You may have heard the saying that Witchcraft is not a religion, it is a Craft, and so we could technically plug Witchcraft into any person’s personal practice. We also have the view that, especially in this current, modern time, that Witchcraft has become a blanket term for many practices, just as Paganism once was, and still very much is, however Witchcraft seems to have taken the spotlight in this regard. This is probably due to the widespread use of the term Wicca which, being Neo-Wicca, is rather different to Initiatory Wicca.

For this reason we find that someone can take any religion and add the technologies of Witchcraft to it, hence, people proclaiming to Christian Witches, i.e. taking the religion of Christianity and adding the technology or craft of Witchcraft, just like so many have done with Wicca, whereby Wicca is the religious aspect. After all, “every Wiccan is a Witch, but not every Witch is a Wiccan,” right? However, that doesn’t always ring true, not every Wiccan will call themselves a Witch.

The problem is that we need to examine worldviews. The worldview of a Christian and a Witch are so vastly different, that to try to combine them is like trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

The number one square peg/round hole scenario here is monotheism vs polytheism. You cannot take Christianity and make it into a polythestic religion, and you cannot take Witchcraft and force it to be monotheistic, its literally impossible. You also cannot make monotheism into polytheism or vice versa, no matter how you try to spin it. If you do, you might create something new, but then you should also call it something different. I could end this right here and just say “I rest my case”, but that isn’t going to be enough for a lot of people. So, let’s examine it.

I did come across some books on Christian Witchcraft, three in particular, two of them are complete trash, but the third was a little more mature, by Adelina St. Clair called The Path of a Christian Witch. This book did look into the combination of these two paths rather well, however it is heavily influenced by Neo-Wicca and Eclectic Witchcraft. One of the main problems with her argument was when she mentions that she chose her god and goddess to be Jesus of Nazareth and Mary of Magdelene. According to Christian doctrine, this can’t happen, for “you shall have no other gods before me.” It’s really as simple as that. By stating that Jesus is her god, she is plain and simply going against the word of her own God, and although I have no problem with that at all, it is no longer Christianity that she would be following. If your argument is that the Christian god is loving and kind, then you really need to examine Christianity, because you are not following the Christian god, and I say, there is nothing wrong with admitting that. Follow your loving and kind god, but ask yourself if you still want to identify with Christianity. I personally don’t like the term Christianity to denote the Teachings of Christ, as the religion has become something different. I would rather use the terms Churchianity or Paulianity but we seem to be stuck with it.

As I said, I have no problem with this. There was also mention of recognizing God within nature and celebrating that. All good, but then we need to examine what God is in this regard, and when properly analyzed, again, this is no longer the Christian god. If you follow Witchcraft you are dealing with many gods. If you follow Christianity, you cannot deal with many gods, only one, and according to the Christian Law, that is it, no arguments, no more thoughts on the matter. As soon as you step beyond that, its not Christianity.

Now, although I found the other two books to be complete garbage, what was evident is that the authors had no idea what Withcraft actually is. In fact apart from the mention of “Witchcraft” in the beginning of the book, one of them only used the word “magic” throughout. There are various meditations mentions, the use of spellwork, and such things, under the framework of “magic”, but is that Witchcraft? No, it is not. Sure, we use magic in Witchcraft, but we also use magic in Ceremonial Magick and a variety of other paths which are not Witchcraft. And here is one of the problems. Witchcraft has become a blanket term for anyone following a spiritual path that uses magic and spellwork, however, there is more to it than that. Unfortunately not many people want to challenge their own perceptions or worldviews in order to examine that further. In case you are interested, the other two books I mention are The Basics of Christian Witchcraft by Charlz Angel and The Christian Witch by Albertus Crowley. Quite honestly it felt like I was reading Christian porpoganda that was written to get people straying from the flock to find their way back and say that its ok what they are practicing, as long as you follow the word of Jesus Christ, without trying to force them to see it their way. It’s pure trickery.

Actually, let’s take this apart a little more. Let’s have a look at a quote from The Christian Witch:

“As a Christian Witch, you ought to realize the truth that you have no power of your own, and all powers and graces that are given to you by God, you also surrender to God at the same time.”

Now, consider what that entails for a Witch. You are told that you do not have any power, that magic itself is not used to alter your circumstances through conformity of your own Will. That you are subject to a superintelligence and you have no choice. That you have no power and everything that happens to you is a result of this superintelligence.

This gives you no free will to begin with, which is against what Christians tell us to begin with. It means that magic itself is completely useless, if we are to understand what magic really is. So although you may think you are removing yourself from the grips of the Christian religion, you are just jumping over the fence to the churchyard next door, and nothing changes.

But coming back to worldviews. Where are you going to go when you die? Can’t go to Heaven because that’s not part of the Witch worldview. Can’t go to any Witch afterlife because that’s not part of the Christian worldview. Oh, sorry, did you not think this far ahead? Ok, let’s think a bit more immediate.

Witchcraft is immersed in this existence. Although we speak of the Other Worlds, part of those Other Worlds is this reality that we find ourselves in. It encompasses the spiritual and the profane. Witches honor the flesh as much as the Spirit. There is no separation from them, they are all part of existence. Christian worldview separates them. We are to remove ourselves from this sinful world and move toward a god which is removed from it, as it says in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”.

We can have a look at the World Tree, and if we consider the three worlds of Heaven, Earth and Hell to be a World Tree, it doesn’t match up with that of any other tradition especially that of the Witch which holds the Underworld as the place where our Dead go and where we find our Ancestors. It’s not the Christian Hell, and the two maps are too diverse to even consider relating.

On the topic of the Beloved Dead, what of reincarnation? The Christian worldview is one of a straight line. We are born, we live, we die and go to Heaven. The Witch worldview is a cycle. We are born, we live, we die, we become Ancestor, we are born, we live, we die, we become Ancestor, we are born…….

There are just so many things within the two worldviews that are completely opposed. Finding similarities such as saying that Christ is the Morning Star and the Lightbringer and is therefore a lucifer, or saying that there are three Worlds in both. Taking the Saints, Christ, Mary the Mother and Mary of Magdelene, John the Baptist and all of the Biblical figures and making them your Pantheon. All of these things can be quite valid, but you are then removing yourself from Christianity because within that religion, Christ cannot be a lucifer, the three Worlds incorporate a Christian Hell which is not part of Witchcraft, creating a Pantheon starts to become something different to monotheism.

Maybe you want to reinvent your Christianity, and that is great, I’d probably help you with that, but you won’t be able to call it Christianity anymore, just as combining an apple and an orange becomes something different. Rename it, reinvent it, and considering the name Christianity has made for itself, the tarnish that it has gotten, I personally wouldn’t want to place myself in that camp anymore.

Having said all of that, you are free to do whatever you wish. This is all just my personal opinion. However, I hope it will make you think a little deeper than just the surface level. Just because everyone is calling themselves a Witch now doesn’t mean they all understand what that means. Just because Christ’s Teachings were and are valuable, doesn’t mean those claiming to follow those teachings, calling themselves Christ’s Followers and Christians, actually are.

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What is the Darkness?

The idea of “Forces of Darkness” is purely a Christian paradigm. Some people on a magickal path like to use the term, either to describe those who are of the Left Hand Path, or by those LHPers to describe the oogy boogy forces and powers that they follow. This brings us to the idea of Light vs Dark.

The problem here is quite simple really. It just doesn’t matter. What you will want to work toward is to release yourself from the prison of being separated, and that includes using things like dark and light in your vocabulary. The separation this causes is still tied to that Christian Worldview that you want to step out of. However, to get to that, you need to have an understanding of both in order to know how to bring them into union.

So, if we take the concept of “Dark Forces” from the Christian perspective, this would be anything which is not Christian. That includes all Pagan, Magical, Heathen, and more paths. This even includes subtle practices such as Reiki, which some Christians still believe is “from the Devil”. Therefore, what can we, as Magick Users, consider to be “dark”?

This is going to depend on what path someone is following. If a person is a Neo-Pagan or Neo-Wiccan, then they may consider Traditional Witchcraft to be “dark”, because instead of calling the Lord and Lady which to many can be light and airy, a Trad Crafter might be calling the Devil and the Blood Mother. Just those terms alone might send a Neo-Wiccan into a frenzy, and they might start praying for the poor soul who is so lost in the dirt of the earth, with their stang, skull and cross bones. This imagery might remind you of something, i.e. the Christian praying for the soul of the damned person who has turned away from God, oh save our souls.

However, within the general Magickal community, the “Forces of Darkness” are usually in reference to the so-called Left Hand Path practices. Now this can possibly be viewed in two ways.

In many of the Left Hand Path practices, we find a focus on the entities and spirits of the Ancient Middle East. In some regards this is seen as being more powerful than any other areas of the world, largely because it is believed that these regions are where magic originated, i.e. Sumeria, Babylon, Persia, etc. and it is why so many people in the West are attracted to it. This creates two kinds of imagery. One is of the dark times when the people of antiquity were calling on spirits, and the second is simply the skin color of the people within those regions. This is a racist view mostly, and is just silly, however if you really think about it, this is some of the imagery that arises. When we are dealing with these ideologies, we are focused on the Ancient Middle East and that alone pulls up the visualizations of a dark continent, where dark people lived, and called upon dark spirits.

Then we have those of the Left Hand Path that like to make things edgy. The scarier and darker they can make things within their practice, the better they feel about themselves. This is usually a rebellion that is a reaction to the Christian ideology that they are trying to escape from. Unfortunately some don’t grow  out of it, and it becomes their identity, trapping them again, in that separation, and no better than the Christian ideologies they were trying to escape from in the first place.

There are of course those that consider themselves to be “of the Light” and someone following Daemonolatry, Satanism, et al are therefore “of the Darkness”. This is purely a Christian idea which has been brought over to the Magickal and Pagan communities, and one I think needs to be strongly rejected. It speaks of a lack of understanding and a resistance to growth.

However, the Darkness holds Wisdom, and the Light shines brightest in the Dark. You cannot have one without the other.

There is the saying “knowledge is power”, but knowledge only becomes powerful when it is understood and becomes wisdom. Here we can look at three of the sephirah in the upper part of the Kabbalistic Tree, Da’at, Binah and Chockmah, or Knowledge, Understanding and Wisdom. Da’at is the Abyss, and as we know, an abyss is darkness, a bottomless chasm. We have to move through this darkness in order to gain the Knowledge. We then have to move into Understanding in order to assimilate that Knowledge, and once that has been done, we can move into Wisdom. The union of this is the Crown, the Light, Kether.

So, what do I think this Darkness is? It is the Abyss. This Abyss is feared by many because it is unknown. Because it is feared, it is all things which are feared. It is the shadow side of our nature. It is the beast that lurks beneath the surface that we are told we must cage and never let out. It is the passion and lust that we feel that we are instructed to keep under wraps in order to be accepted.  It is all things that we have been told are not allowed for one reason or another, usually because it is not proper or it is taboo. Power alone can be found in these places, simply by breaking them open, and when we dare to venture into the Abyss, we will find that comfort and warmth that has been kept from us as we float unhindered in the nothing which is everything.

The so-called “Forces of Darkness” are those powers and forces, entities, energies and spirits that are waiting for us to discover the extent of our true selves. The entirety of our being. We cannot be whole until we unite the light and dark within us and bring them into harmony. Until then we remain divided, separated, disconnected from that which we are.

Of course if we are going to talk about dark entities within the likes of Daemonolatry, I would say we are talking about astral parasites, lower energy beings that are not considered to be Divine Intelligences. These entities are around us all the time. A majority of them are thoughtforms created from fear, anxiety, anger, and they tend to feed off fear. In order to do that they will create fear so that they can grow more of their food, and these are the types of entities you want to stay away from.

Darkness is the spaces between the particles. The nothingness and void that is found between the atomic particles and sub-particles. Nothing can exist without the no-thing, and so Darkness is the everything.

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You Can’t Be a Proper Witch Unless…

Over the years I have heard people say that they have been told by their “Elders” that they can’t be a proper Witch until they renounce Christianity. This has some bullshit in it, however, there is something that speaks to holding onto a worldview which is no longer yours.

The problem we face when moving from Christianity to some form of Pagan Path, is that we have been trained to think in a particular way. We need to give all of our hopes and dreams to a disembodied old man in the clouds, and we really have no power to direct our own lives. We also have to recognize good from evil, right from wrong. However this become more and more subjective and personal when we realize that we have been following the worldview of someone else.

This is the thing. Everybody’s worldview is personal. If you have a teacher that doesn’t support the worldview that you are creating, and demands that you fall into their worldview, is really just still tied into their old Christian life. The old saying “My way or the highway” is a Christian worldview and anyone who tells you that their way is the only way and you have to give up what you believe in, in order to become a Witch, should be passed off as a bad lesson.

The difficulty is that mixing Christianity and Witchcraft can be a little hit and miss because the worldviews are so different. Monotheism is very different to polytheism, and the two generally don’t go together. Even if you keep all of the entities that we find in Christianity such as Jesus, Mary, the Holy Ghost, et al, or include the Saints and Angels from Catholicism, and worship these entities within the framework of a Craft, we are no longer practicing a monotheistic format, and can therefore no longer be referred to as Christian. However, people do it.

This is where we find the development of a personal worldview, one that is designed specifically for you, and that you will continue to change and grow as the years go by.

But here’s the crunch. In order to develop your own worldview, you do need to reject everyone else’s, to an extent. Obviously, completely ignoring all worldviews would leave you not being able to learn any, so you need to explore. In that exploration, latch onto a worldview and try it on for a while, see how it fits. If it’s too tight or too baggy, you might want to try on another one, until you find a good fit. Once you have found the ideal worldview for you, at this particular time, then explore it. Get to know it, learn about its depth, its difficulties, its likes and dislikes. Create a love affair with it.

Once you have discovered all you need to know about that worldview, at that time, you can stick with it, explore it more, or try on another one and see if that helps to develop you further. This is how we create our own worldview, our own path to walk. That path will probably be a Crooked Path, full of twists and turns, but then you will start to understand Witchcraft. The way to Knowledge is not paved with a straight road from A to Z, it twists and turns and you find nuggets of hope and happiness in the nooks and crannies of life.

Now to come back to the idea of renouncing a faith in order to be a “proper” Witch. You may find that you do need to reject the worldview you have grown up with, for the simple fact that it holds onto you and doesn’t allow you to grow. However, once you shed that worldview, you can then start to pick up pieces that still resonate with you. It may not be the complete picture of someone else’s way, but it will be the beginning of your way. However, you can’t start to build your own path until you step off someone else’s.

So, although it is rather brazen for a teacher to say “You can’t be a proper Witch until you renounce Christianity”, there is some truth in it, I just wouldn’t put it that way. What you are trying to do is loosen the threads and tethers that bind you to that faith. Allow yourself to become free of it, so that you can then explore your own path. This process however, especially from the faith that you were programmed with from a young child, can take years to accomplish, and even after a couple decades, you still find yourself giving into that old programming, although it becomes easier to catch.

Once you start doing that however, you will find yourself loosening up, freeing yourself from the grips of a controlling organization. It’s not really about the religion or the teachings, its mostly about the people and the militant behavior that they have developed. However, if you go from a controlling teacher to another controlling teacher, you will just be holding onto that worldview, the one that says you will be told how to do things. For some people, they need that, for others, they want to break away from it, however it is not always easy to do that.

Do you have to completely reject everything from that faith? No, not at all. Many magical traditions and paths around the globe have adopted Christianity and Catholicism into their workings. Hoodoo is a prime example. Although it was a necessity to adopt the Saints into the practice in order to stay alive, it became ingrained and now, even though there is not the same threat of being killed unless you follow the way of the slave master, Christianity and Catholicism is still an integral part of their system. Even if you go into Traditional Witchcraft you will find a lot of integration with Christianity, in fact anyone who follows the Craft of their lineage that originates from somewhere like England, if they have a family lineage of Witchcraft, will have Christian elements intertwined with their practice, its unavoidable. Of course, many of the older folx and people who follow these Old Ways, will often not refer to themselves as Witches. They may take on the titles like Cunning Man or Woman, Green Gown, etc. So, if you don’t want to call yourself a Witch, that’s also fine.

This brings up the question, is there such a thing as a “proper Witch”? I don’t think there is. The word proper means “denoting something that is truly what it is said or regarded to be”. A Witch is so diverse, and every Witch is different in every way. We are all different in our own worldview and practice. Sure we have some common threads that overlap, but no two Witches are the same, so what is a “proper Witch”? Nobody will ever know. So if someone tells you that “you can’t be a proper Witch unless…”, they are probably just trying to project their own worldview onto you, making it their way or the highway, and that is someone who is still stuck in the Christian worldview themselves.