Keep Your Hellfire Out of the Witchcraft
I have never been a Little-Christ, and I don’t intend to change that now. I don’t have a problem with the shepherd god. I don’t hate priests or preachers as a general rule and I don’t hate the faithful. It’s important that I make that clear, because I can be severely critical of certain kinds of Christians and how they interact with the world we live in. It isn’t just Christians- pagans, Muslims, atheists, I apply the same standard to everyone. It isn’t about how you worship, or what color your skin, hair or eyes might be. It isn’t about how often you pray, or where you direct your rituals. It isn’t about what language you speak, the clothes you wear, or how you take your meals. No, it’s about how you choose your friends, and how you interact with them once they’re yours.
I care about respect, and courtesy. If you have none for others, then I have none for you. When a missionary says my faith is invalid because I’m not following the ‘true’ god in the right way, I think of the atheist raging against the evils of religion. Both men are wrong for the same reasons. I am not a Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, or Muslim either. I respect the writings of holy men for what they are, the writings of men, full to overflowing with their wisdom, hopes, and flaws.
Neuroscience proves that specific parts of our brain are active when we have a spiritual experience or feel the effects of faith, but there’s nothing that tells us if we’re interacting with some supernatural entity or just letting our brains make it up as we go. I don’t think it matters- the results are the same. When the chips are down and the dice are rolling, we simply can’t prove whether something exists outside the world we know. Science works within the scope of the physical world. If there’s more to existence, it might intersect with what we know or it might not, and science can’t say. Our scientific method isn’t some new god that demands sacrifice of the old in exchange for secret knowledge. Our science is a tool of our own making, and a monument to our will and history.
I have a degree in anthropology, and I study our history. I know how men think and how cultures grow. I know how Christianity rose as the universal faith of the Roman Empire at Constantine’s Council of Nicea. I know how it spread on roman boots, and how the catholic monolith split from Orthodoxy, and then splintered with the Protestant Revolution. I know how the mystery cults of the old gods worshiped, and I know how isolated groups carry their faith and fear without a priesthood to guide them. All religions serve a purpose, and it’s not the search for truth. I found my own faith in the natural world, and feel the breath of the divine on the wind. I am an animist because it suits me, and when I use my faith for others it suits them too.
I choose to believe in magic because it serves a purpose. It doesn’t matter if it’s not empirically true and I’m not concerned with saving a soul I’m not even sure I have. I’m not afraid of any proud fallen angel with his pit of torment, and I’m not afraid of disappearing after death. I use magic to calm my mind and steady my hand because it works, and I practice it for others because it serves their needs too. It enacts change in the mind, and that change burns through my world like a wildfire. I can’t read the future in my cards, but I can read your present and tell it back with clarity. Divination offers guidance and a change of perspective, not new information to confuse you further.
I use magic to calm my mind and steady my hand because it works, and I practice it for others because it serves their needs too. It enacts change in the mind, and that change burns through my world like a wildfire. I can’t read the future in my cards, but I can read your present and tell it back with clarity. Divination offers guidance and a change of perspective, not new information to confuse you further.
Science is about knowing our world and changing it. Magic and religion are about knowing and changing ourselves. Everyone must use them differently or the good gets lost in translation. When you try to force your faith down my throat by saying your god is best or mine isn’t real, I want to bite into your throat and tear out a piece.
Men are mighty, good, and true- don’t tempt me to shred your heart for you.
