Wiccanism, magick, spells and the like

nyarlothothep

I've been reading up on this a little bit, but I remain to be convinced that real life wizards can actually affect physical changes in the universe through spells. I was reading about Aleister Crowley and to me he seemed like someone who used drugs to convince himself that he was actually performing magic when he was hallucinating. Some of his ideas pertaining to individuality were interesting but on the whole I think he wasted his life pursuing something which wasn't there. One possibility would be that somehow through spell casting the individual might be tapping into the programming of the cosmos, if it were to be a simulation, to cause some kind of alteration, but meh, thats a pretty weak reason. I'm playing too much Dragonage.

liah

Ugh. 'magick.' Why can't they just spell it like normal people?

Anyway, I'd give it about as much consideration as I'd give any other religion - interesting to research, and quite interesting in a fantasy novel sort of way, but evidence is glaringly absent.

krudler

I'd put it with the same craziness as tarot reading, astrology and crystals, hokum of the highest order.

AhSureTisGrand

It amazes me how people actually convert to Wicca. No slick evangelists, no major celebrities, no promise of money, no significance in society etc...

liah

AhSureTisGrand wrote: »

It amaazes me how people actually convert to Wicca. No slick evangelists, no major celebrities, no promise of money, no significance in society etc...

I reckon a lot of them do it because it sounds cool, and they fancy the idea of there being magic in the world. It strikes me as a little.. immature, I guess. A lot of flighty types seem attracted to it.

nyarlothothep

I'd say it could be for the same reason people join any group, essentially for the sense of belonging. What I'd be interested to see is if any wiccan has actually managed to summon a real demon or levitate or something like that and record the evidence or demonstrate it continuously. Because if that were the case it would be cool, but if people could actually cast spells I'd imagine governments and militaries would be all over it. I know people have gone crazy due to it, which is curious in itself, eg the Mars Volta using a ouija board if the story is to be believed.

liah

liah wrote: »

I reckon a lot of them do it because it sounds cool, and they fancy the idea of there being magic in the world. It strikes me as a little.. immature, I guess. A lot of flighty types seem attracted to it.

As a former believer in that nonsense, all that is entirely true.

nyarlothothep

King Mob wrote: »

As a former believer in that nonsense, all that is entirely true.

Did you manage to summon demons? There was one particularly evil one mentioned on the wiccan forum from 7 years ago, I dare not say its name.

nyarlothothep

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Did you manage to summon demons? There was one particularly evil one mentioned on the wiccan forum from 7 years ago, I dare not say its name.

No, in all the books and webpages I read this was always a no-no, but then they also told you how to supposedly do it. Never tried myself.
Interestingly there was quite a few that mentioned stuff from the Cthulu mythos.

Belief in magick is a really slippery beast which I'll try to explain when I've more time to post.

nyarlothothep

King Mob wrote: »

No, in all the books and webpages I read this was always a no-no, but then they also told you how to supposedly do it. Never tried myself.
Interestingly there was quite a few that mentioned stuff from the Cthulu mythos.

Belief in magick is a really slippery beast which I'll try to explain when I've more time to post.

Thats quite creepy and unsettling. As for the Cthulu mythos lol + epic fail. With respect to belief in magick, thats quite interesting, I mean people can believe in all sorts of things but not completely go completely bat**** insane , if after say using a ouija board or doing something "forbidden." I guess its a case that they might narrate their own future to themselves, in that in believing they've done something off limits they're cursed so they act in a fashion which will inevitably re-affirm their conviction subconsciously. Still a scary thought though.

ShooterSF

Please feel free to correct this if I'm wrong as it's was just my initial opinion but I always figured it attracted those having a hard time in life as another great equaliser like heaven/hell or karma or any of that what goes around crap...

ShooterSF

ShooterSF wrote: »

Please feel free to correct this if I'm wrong as it's was just my initial opinion but I always figured it attracted those having a hard time in life as another great equaliser like heaven/hell or karma or any of that what goes around crap...

Oh don't get me started on lecturing about karma or I'll lose the plot - Im sick of the "what goes around comes around" bastardisation of it :mad:

krudler

bluewolf wrote: »

Oh don't get me started on lecturing about karma or I'll lose the plot

"whats for you wont pass you by" how I hate that fcuking phrase.

Zillah

nyarlothothep wrote: »

What I'd be interested to see is if any wiccan has actually managed to summon a real demon or levitate or something like that and record the evidence or demonstrate it continuously.

I tried asking this on the paranormal forum years ago. Basically just saying "So I've heard someone of you describe yourselves as performing magic. What kind of magic effects have you achieved?"

Queue many pages of insufferable arguments where people insist that they have magic powers, that it's not like in the movies, but refuse to even say what it is they've ever achieved. Same sad delusions as any religious person.

This magick nonsense is the exact same as Papal nonsense. Which they are, somewhat ironcially, usually very critical of.

EDIT: Haha, found it: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=50586395
Six years old that.
Double Edit: See how much more calm I am these days?

AhSureTisGrand

Is there a South Park episode about Wicca? I feel there should be one

strobe

Used to go out with a girl that was mad into it, witch girl we called her. Mad as a bag of frogs she was but stunning, way out of my league, had that whole gothy gypsy black nail varnish and silver jewelry thing going on. She actually put a 'hex' on me when we broke up :pac: but removed it a few months later after I ran into her on a night out and we buried the hatchet.

It's all nonsense of course. There are even people on eBay that sell 'spells' to people. Love spells, revenge spells, protection spells, all sorts of bullsh1t.

In the fukking sack with the lot of them!

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

Zillah wrote: »

EDIT: Haha, found it: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=50586395
Six years old that.
Double Edit: See how much more calm I am these days?

that thread is.... beautiful.

christians, muslims, jews, various other hippies all annoy me a little bit but I just plain dont like pagans/wiccans and whatever other self selected groups of morons can't spell magic properly.

Undergod

I don't practice Santeria; I ain't got no crystal ball.

strobe

Zillah wrote: »

EDIT: Haha, found it: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=50586395
Six years old that.
Double Edit: See how much more calm I am these days?

That thread is comedy gold man. My favourite part was where someone used a Star Trek episode to explain how magic works. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Bloody Nipples

Zillah wrote: »

EDIT: Haha, found it: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=50586395
Six years old that.
Double Edit: See how much more calm I am these days?

That is absolutely brilliant.

Dave!

A few friends dabbled in witchcraft stuff when we were all in the early teens... I gave it a shot too, but even then was a bit too skeptical to buy into it We mostly just sat around trying to extinguish candles using just our minds/powers/whatever. It worked fairly frequently... I wonder how...

Nobody could ever re-ignite the candle though

Zillah

My belief in the power of the mind died after an eager and determined 13 year old Zillah stared at a pencil on a table for an hour one bright summer afternoon.

Dave!

Actually now that I think of it, when I was in church as a kid, I would always use the opportunity to practise my mental powers! I used to try and knock stuff off the altar, and light stuff on fire using my head lawl

Turtwig

Well I remember once as kiddo trying to move a pencil with the 'force' by sticking out my hand and trying to focus on these little micro particles/organisms in my conscious to connect to the identical ones in the pencil and push it along.
The pencil rolled a little bit, but on close inspection it was gravity. That didn't stop me trying though.:o

Morag

nyarlothothep wrote: »

I've been reading up on this a little bit, but I remain to be convinced that real life wizards can actually affect physical changes in the universe through spells. I was reading about Aleister Crowley and to me he seemed like someone who used drugs to convince himself that he was actually performing magic when he was hallucinating. Some of his ideas pertaining to individuality were interesting but on the whole I think he wasted his life pursuing something which wasn't there. One possibility would be that somehow through spell casting the individual might be tapping into the programming of the cosmos, if it were to be a simulation, to cause some kind of alteration, but meh, thats a pretty weak reason. I'm playing too much Dragonage.

There is no such thing as Wiccanism.

Crowley was never initiated into Wicca.
He was friend with one of the first public figures who was known to be Wiccan and there is record of correspondence between them but Crowley was never Wiccan.

Wiccan is a fertility religion, while all initiates of Wicca are witches and pagans not all pagans or witches are Wiccan.

Crowley coined the term magik to differentiate what he was talking/writing about and stage magic.

AhSureTisGrand wrote: »

It amaazes me how people actually convert to Wicca. No slick evangelists, no major celebrities, no promise of money, no significance in society etc...

People don't convert to Wicca, they will have already left their childhood faiths behind them. There are neo pagan evangelists, but no Wiccan ones as one of the tenets of Wicca is no proselytising.

liah wrote: »

I reckon a lot of them do it because it sounds cool, and they fancy the idea of there being magic in the world. It strikes me as a little.. immature, I guess. A lot of flighty types seem attracted to it.

The name Wicca means a very specific fertility religion and certain traditions with in it, which originated in a specific area in the UK.

Alas the name has been co opted in many places in America to mean generic neo paganism and witchcraft, and being alt and cool and tbh those who use the term incorrectly can be very much flakes.

Hookah

My understanding is that Crowley's 'magick' is about personal transformation, or the undoing of one's conditioned self.

It's nothing to do with the paranormal, afaik.

sensibleken

I am also a former believer in this crap.

There is no formal belief system so you cant really say anything without people disagreing with it.

Magick was defined by crowley (conveniently stolen from gregor mathers) as an action of the will, simply doing something, anything, is an act of magic. thus bluring the line between putting up some shelves and creating a ritual to invoke lugh.

some would go on about universal energies, some would say it has to be scientifically measurable (i know).

As for crowley himself, he was an egotistical compulsive liar of the highest order. still he had a lot of good stuff to say. thelema took the fashionable aesthetics of ancient egypt merged with the siprituality of taoism and yoga and blended it with the hedonism of 19th century aristocratic counter culture.

Count Duckula

Say what you will about religion, at least their delusion is hard to disprove. They very rarely claim to have powers - it's all about this mystical deity who does things subtly and in ways you won't really notice. Tosh, but tosh they can cling onto.

But witches? Really? Do you honestly, genuinely, truly believe that you have just cast a spell? Seriously? You've just channelled magic in such a way as to physically affect the world? You have just taken a fundamental aspect of the universe and, through the proper application of the correct rituals and incenses, changed it?

I have even less truck for Wiccans than the usual religious tripe. It's one thing to attribute chance and random occurrences to a higher consciousness looking down on us, it's quite another to claim you can fly and then actually believe it.

Dades

Count Duckula wrote: »

I have even less truck for Wiccans than the usual religious tripe.

I'd be the opposite.

I have no problems with Wiccans or people purporting to do 'magick' or whatnot.
I'm sure for loads of them it's a community thing, a hobby, a lifestyle or a distraction from reality.

Sure, some may believe they can do really daft things, but as long as they aren't running our schools or wedging their dogma into other people's lives, live and let live, I say.

Zillah wrote: »

See how much more calm I am these days?

Like a lake, and just as deep. :pac:

Morag

Count Duckula wrote: »

I have even less truck for Wiccans than the usual religious tripe. It's one thing to attribute chance and random occurrences to a higher consciousness looking down on us, it's quite another to claim you can fly and then actually believe it.

I have never heard any wiccan claim they can fly, anywhere, not in any published book, online discussion site, email list, or any reports of any claiming such. Seems your getting muddled by myths and fairy stories and hollywood.

Canis Lupus

Zillah wrote: »

EDIT: Haha, found it: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=50586395
Six years old that.
Double Edit: See how much more calm I am these days?

That's some seriously painful reading.

rossc007

Count Duckula wrote: »

Say what you will about religion, at least their delusion is hard to disprove.

I would be of the opinion that its as difficult to provide proof of religious beliefs as it is to prove that "Magick" exists

That thread Zillah quoted is keeping me highly entertained during lunch!

TheBardWest

sensibleken wrote: »

There is no formal belief system so you cant really say anything without people disagreing with it.

But come on, sensibleken! This is the internet! We can say whatever we want here about whatever group of people we want (and do so anonymously!) without having the faintest factual knowledge of who we're talking about!

Seriously - I wish these types of threads would be populated with more people who had the sense to go out an actually talk to people about their beliefs, rather than make ridiculous assumptions about entire groups of people without knowing what they believe...

For anyone who's actually interested in learning about magic/majick/magick - I recommend reading Philip Carr-Gomm's "Book of English Magic". An easy-to-read, historical overview of the subject as it grew and gained popularity in England over the centuries...

maximoose

Canis Lupus wrote: »

That's some seriously painful reading.

I dont know how Zillah kept as patient as he/she did during that thread. Just read the whole thing and while it was very entertaining, some of the responses were head-bangingly infuriating. Well done sir.

Rev Hellfire

I'll never understand how people brought up in one lie can go on and reject that with what is clearly another nonsense.
Then again I suspect maybe no-one truly believes in this muck and its simply a group identity thing they fortunately grow out off.

sensibleken

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

I'll never understand how people brought up in one lie can go on and reject that with what is clearly another nonsense.
Then again I suspect maybe no-one truly believes in this muck and its simply a group identity thing they fortunately grow out off.

Because just dismissing something off hand because it sounds rubbish is very close minded. Thats what creationists do with quantum physics.

Everyone approaches it differently. But a lot of peoples thought process is 'well i discovered christianity (or whatever) is bullsht, heres this other thing that makes a bit of sense or is at least interesting, maybe i'll read up on it'

Then it either makes sense to you or it doesn't. For me it made sense for a while until I kept reading and practicing and eventualy left it a non believer but quite well read on a lot of the worlds religions and rituals.

Rev Hellfire

sensibleken wrote: »

Then it either makes sense to you or it doesn't.

People believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden doesn't make that any more sensible. Something doesn't become true just because it makes you feel special.

Though if you can provide some tangible repeatable proof its anything other than wishful thinking and the delusional I'm (and I'm sure everyone else is) open for correction.

Update, apologies I misread your post, you at least don't believe this nonsense either.

sensibleken

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

People believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden doesn't make that any more sensible. Something doesn't become true just because it makes you feel special.

Though if you can provide some tangible repeatable proof its anything other than wishful thinking and the delusional I'm (and I'm sure everyone else is) open for correction.

I know that. I've already said I don't believe in it. You said you couldnt understand why people give up one lie for another or words to that effect. I was just saying some people dont just dismiss something off hand because it sounds a bit mad, like quantum physics sounds a bit mad at first.

Update: just saw your update

Zillah

maximoose wrote: »

I dont know how Zillah kept as patient as he/she did during that thread. Just read the whole thing and while it was very entertaining, some of the responses were head-bangingly infuriating. Well done sir.

The main antagonist in that thread, Mysteria, is still operating as a psychic, and still calling herself The Psychic Queen of Ireland.

A google search leads to her Facebook account, which has this gem:

Teferi

liah wrote: »

Ugh. 'magick.' Why can't they just spell it like normal people?

Anyway, I'd give it about as much consideration as I'd give any other religion - interesting to research, and quite interesting in a fantasy novel sort of way, but evidence is glaringly absent.

Just a small point here Liah but anyone seriously interested or involved in paganism generally doesn't spell it as magick. They spell it like normal people. People who are more airy-fairy earth lovers (ie. eccentrics) and kiddies who are interested in the various paths in paganism would be the ones who spell it magick.

sink

Teferi wrote: »

Just a small point here Liah but anyone seriously interested or involved in paganism generally doesn't spell it as magick. They spell it like normal people. People who are more airy-fairy earth lovers (ie. eccentrics) and kiddies who are interested in the various paths in paganism would be the ones who spell it magick.

Lol @ trying to distinguish people who take their magic seriously from airy-fairy eccentrics.

Teferi

Well, I'm not Pagan but the pagan I do know makes the distinction (and once she explains it, it makes sense).

Zillah

Last I read was that 'magick' was an attempt to distinguish 'real' (lol) magic from stage magic.

liamw

I can't fathom how people believe this sh*t. It's beyond my comprehension.

Teferi

Zillah wrote: »

Last I read was that 'magick' was an attempt to distinguish 'real' (lol) magic from stage magic.

You were probably reading the more pagan lite stuff then.

sensibleken

Teferi wrote: »

Just a small point here Liah but anyone seriously interested or involved in paganism generally doesn't spell it as magick. They spell it like normal people. People who are more airy-fairy earth lovers (ie. eccentrics) and kiddies who are interested in the various paths in paganism would be the ones who spell it magick.

some would, golden dawn, crowley and many others spelled it magick. some pagans spell it magic like eliphas levi etc.

nyarlothothep

Zillah wrote: »

The main antagonist in that thread, Mysteria, is still operating as a psychic, and still calling herself The Psychic Queen of Ireland.

A google search leads to her Facebook account, which has this gem:

wow, she didn't even try with the photoshop lens flare effect.

nyarlothothep

nyarlothothep wrote: »

wow, she didn't even try with the photoshop lens flare effect.

That's not photoshop :pac:

nyarlothothep

:eek:

Dades

King Mob wrote: »

That's not photoshop :pac:

You mean it's majgicck? :pac:

Rev Hellfire

Dades wrote: »

You mean it's majgicck? :pac:

The camera never lies...