Point taken. ("Wicca" comes from either an Anglo-Saxon word, "witan," which means "wise," of from another Old English root, "hwicce," meaning "to bend.") Magic and witchcraft overlap but are not necessarily synonymous.
You're right, it is an important identity point and everyone who thinks that Witch = NeoPagan gets on my last gay nerve. I agree that one need not practice witchcraft to be Pagan. I suppose that one could, theoretically, be Christian or Jewish and cast spells, thereby being a witch without being Pagan, although I think there would be a religious dilemma in doing so.
Depends on how old-fashioned your church (or temple) is. Among liberal people, there seems to be a general sentiment that "God helps those who help themselves," and certainly the medieval Christians must have believed that, as magic was rife (there are some excellent books on magic in the middle ages, which talk about the interlacing of spells with prayers to the saints. Unlike voudoun, medieval magic was not syncretistic; there were no invocations of "old gods" or anything like that. There was, however, a lot of magic, used by peasantry and educated alike. The merchant and noble classes used alchemy and "natural philosophy," whicle the peasants used what we would probably think of as "hedge magic...") I think a lot of the theological paradox involved in simultaneously using magic and prayer is a result of the Age of Enlightenment, which took magic out of the realm of natural philosophy and branded it as "mystical occult," keeping many aspects of scientific philosophy as "rational" which had originally been just as occult as magic.
However, the point I was making is that to compare psi-vampires to witches, rather than seeing us as a sub-set of vampires along with sanguinarians, is about as accurate as comparing witches to the movie _Warlock_. It's full of inaccuracies, half-truths, and made up bullshit.
Yeah, but it's got Julian Sands *drool*
Actually, Islam and Judaism fall into the non-pagan religion camp along with Christians because they all worship the same god, Yweh, called Allah in Arabic. Judaism is the root religion.
True. Medieval Christians, who coined the term "pagan," didn't see things that way, though - they didn't want to deal with the implication that they might all be serving the same deity. Muslims of that time saw Christians as infidels, and Jews of that time had similar views. The term "pagan" might have changed, so that it now means any person who is part of a non-YHVH based religion.
I'm thinking like a medievalist again.
Witchcraft (or Paganism for the New Agers) stems from religious philosophies which preceed Judaism and is not derived from it. However, as I've mentioned before, I feel that a great many of the NeoPagan community are simply worshiping Jesus in a dress and are not truely witches.
Hey, Jesus kicks butt. Christianity might have problems, but I suspect Jesus wouldn't like many forms of Christianity any more than he liked most forms of his own religion in his time. It's a shame the modern neoPagans have to follow the same insipid moral rules laid down to them by their parents. Oh, I'm not talking about the "forgive others" rule (which is a good rule of thumb except when you are being directly attacked; there is a big difference, after all, between forgiving and forgetting) or the "accept others no matter what walk of life they come from" (which many Christians seem to forget). Or the "liberation theology" philosophy, which tries to put into action Jesus' tendency to be a radical reformer (that's the sort of imitation of Christ which gerts results!) What makes me mad is the dippy sweetness-and-light apprach that seems to be popular - it's not an extension of Christianity, it's an extension of the Flower Child era only without the drugs, sex, and rock'n'roll! I dunno - I don't mind hippy stuff, I'm not really into it the way I used to be but I like the idealism of the movement - but the New Age philosophy seems to be "hippy light." The sort of stuff that hippies would come up with in their sedate middle age. If I'm going to do the hippy thing, I want to be a real hippy, not a "hippy lite."
Witchcraft is not about wearing frumpy "natural" clothes in hideous gipsy colours, prescribed pendants and necklaces, scarves, Birkenstocks, and pentagrams all over your body. It's not about saying "blessed be" to everyone. It's not about having a thing for incense and candles and weird bumper stickers. It's not automatically about ecofeminism or goddess worship (not that I have a problem with either practice, but not all witches are tree-hugging feminists). It's not about rebelling against Christianity (although many witches do rebel against repressive childhood religion). Witchcraft is about being a witch. What do witches do? Well, as you pointed out (and I stated rather simplisticly) they cast spells, practice herbalism, and stay in touch with what is generally called "folklore." Not all witches are herbalists or spellcasters.
Magic takes many forms. Some magic is the simple magic of "bending," i.e. manipulation. There are some people who could call the amazing corporate wizardry of Bill Gates a form of magic. Many of us also call him the antichrist, but a lot of that has to do with the fact that he is frighteningly competent, to the point of being almost incomprehensible (also, we don't like what he does)
After all, look at how many of them refuse to call themselves witches, even though they practice witchcraft as described above, because of a fear of "bad press". Gimme a break...either be a witch or be a Christian but don't do things half-assed.
Agreed.
Unless you're including yourself in this statement, I have never met a witch who does this.
I was. I don't do it in all my spells, because it's inefficient, but much of my sex magic is based on vampirism.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, of course. Like you said, it's an individual thing. Most of the Witch/NeoPagan community here would have coronary failure at even thinking of doing such a thing.
*snort* I've read Janet and Stuart Farrar's version of the so-called "Great Rite." Makes me wonder how the High Priest can even manage to get it up. If that's the closest mainstream Wiccans come to sex magic, then all I can say is that I'm glad I'm magically "ambidextrous" and capable of using so-called "left hand path" techniques. Bleagh.
The Anglican wedding vow, with its "with my body I thee worship," is much more erotic than "assist me to erect the sacred altar..."
Sistah...I am *so* there. There are at least a dozen bookstores in my area which either specialize in or have sections devoted to "New Age" philosophies if you count Waldenbooks, Barnes & Nobel, and Borders. I have found a total of ***one*** book which even touches on the darker aspects of witchcraft and none dealing with Morgaine. The closest I can get is general Celtic mythology but there is very little information on Her.
Well, of course not. She was a war goddess, a sex goddess, a childbirth guardian, and a death crow - who on earth would want to worship or embody someone like THAT? :P
Probably the same kind of person who would read books about vampires but ignore the practicalities of feeding. Ethical feeding is nice, but if you can't feed regularly from a consenting donor, you have three choices: 1) Starve 2) Seduce energy from the lustful and exist on that (you can live on it, but...) 3) Go psycho and rob blood banks, do serial killing, etc. Options one and three are impractical, option two is usually pooh-poohed as Satanic (or left hand, or whatever). Quite frankly, none of the options are very pleasant. New Age vampirism would be feeding without hunger - an oxymoron, in my opinion. What is the point of feeding, if one does not feel need? It's too much of a hassle to get a donor, if one does not need one.
(And yes, I think the proliferation of coffee-table books on vampires that one can find in the new age section of major bookstores is a little...laughable...You can get better stuff from The Abyss or in a secondhand store)
but visibility as a non-New Age witch is far lower on my list of priorities than, say, visibility as a bisexual woman. Gotta pick your battles.
Yeah. I know. It's rough. I seem to be concentrating on visibility as a vampire, within the SM community and in the occult community, and visibility as a bi woman elsewhere. I've pretty much dropped out of "womynspace." It sucks, but I only have the energy for so many battles, and trying to apologize to misanthropist lesbians why I have a fiance who I am marrying and getting het priviledge from, rather than living as an oppressed lesbian to the point of denying my bisexual urges or seriously downplaying them, got to be too much of a headache.