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Author Topic: I'm not sure what to follow?  (Read 1436 times)

Reginamills

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I'm not sure what to follow?
« on: March 13, 2017, 11:29:20 am »
Hi, I'm sorry if I'm asking this in the wrong place but I'm really confused. I want to begin learning witchcraft but everything I see basically has to do with Wicca I'm not entirely sure which religion I would fall under, but I don't believe it's that one, as I don't fully believe in Gods and Goddesses. I look at the universe as God, as in God is everything around us and everything has a soul (people animals, rivers, lakes, stars, the moon, planets themselves, etc.) However I also believe in spirits, both good and bad. So basically I was wondering if my beliefs fall under a different religion that any of you know about.

Also, as far as witchcraft goes, all I find are wiccan links. What goes at the beginning of a grimoire or book of shadows? Do I need to put a blessing or consecrate it still or is that just if you worship a god?
« Last Edit: March 13, 2017, 11:36:51 am by Reginamills »

Darkhawk

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Re: I'm not sure what to follow?
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2017, 01:26:22 pm »
Quote from: Reginamills;203689
Hi, I'm sorry if I'm asking this in the wrong place but I'm really confused. I want to begin learning witchcraft but everything I see basically has to do with Wicca I'm not entirely sure which religion I would fall under, but I don't believe it's that one, as I don't fully believe in Gods and Goddesses.


Here's your first snag:  "belief" is not as important to many pagan religions as you're used to.  For Wicca in particular, the unifying matter is a set of practices, and there are many beliefs which can drive those practices.

I have heard of, for example, people who think of the gods as psychological constructs, people who believe in gods as distinct individuals, and people who believe in gods as facets of a great unity (or great duality divided by gender) all being members of the same Wiccan group.

This doesn't mean that Wicca is right for you, but it does mean that "belief" is not as important as you think it is.

Quote
I look at the universe as God, as in God is everything around us and everything has a soul (people animals, rivers, lakes, stars, the moon, planets themselves, etc.) However I also believe in spirits, both good and bad. So basically I was wondering if my beliefs fall under a different religion that any of you know about.


The terms you may want here are "pantheism" and "animism", and they are not religions; they are descriptors of beliefs that can associate with a wide variety of different religions, not all of them pagan.  (I have, for example, encountered pantheistic Jewish and Christian theologies.)

Quote
Also, as far as witchcraft goes, all I find are wiccan links. What goes at the beginning of a grimoire or book of shadows? Do I need to put a blessing or consecrate it still or is that just if you worship a god?

 
"Book of Shadows" is a Wiccan practice, referring to the texts handed down as part of Wiccan training.  It has been broadened to mean a book of notes and spells and rituals used by Wicca-derived witches, but it is not a necessary tool for witchcraft in general.  If you are dealing with a tradition that has a Book of Shadows, then what goes in it will be given to you by your teachers; otherwise, the answer is "whatever you damn well please". ;)

If you are looking into religious witchcraft, these are some of the options other than straight-up Wicca:

  • Reclaiming
  • Sabbatic Craft
  • Cochrane Craft
  • 1734
  • Feri
  • Third Road
  • Dianic Wicca (not actually Wiccan; many groups are gender-essentialist, gender-excluding, and/or transphobic)
  • Huson's Mastering Witchcraft
  • Howard-style Luciferean craft
  • RJ Stewart Fairy tradition
  • Orion Foxwood's thing, though I'm not sure if he calls himself a witch
  • Assembly of the Sacred Wheel, which is Ivo Dominguez


And more or less Wicca-derived stuff:
  • Cultural pantheon based open source Wicca-derived traditions
  • Stregheria
  • Seax-Wica
  • The thing you get if you read a lot of mostly Llewellyn books and maybe cross it with The Spiral Dance or read a lot of the internet
as the water grinds the stone
we rise and fall
as our ashes turn to dust
we shine like stars    - Covenant, "Bullet"

Jenett

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Re: I'm not sure what to follow?
« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2017, 01:34:00 pm »
Hi there!

Quote from: Reginamills;203689
Hi, I'm sorry if I'm asking this in the wrong place but I'm really confused.


This is a totally fine forum for beginning questions like yours. (If you're ever not sure, you can ask about a good location in the Forum Questions folder, or staff can move things. The big distinction is often if you want the additional Beginner Friendly rules applying to what you ask or not.)

Quote
So basically I was wondering if my beliefs fall under a different religion that any of you know about.


So, a lot of the material that's out there identifies itself as Wiccan, but there's actually a bunch of different ways people use the term (which can get horribly confusing.) Some of those uses are a bit more what you're looking for, but the more traditional or limited uses are not what you're looking for.

(However, many of the people who are using it in very open-ended ways may not be great sources of information for various reasons, or may not have a good understanding of where some practices or ideas come from. Sometimes that's not a big deal, sometimes it matters a lot.)

There's a page on my website that goes into the different ways people use the term Wiccan that I think might be helpful to you.

There are tons of ways to do religious witchcraft (which doesn't necessarily have to involve deities: some people work with archetypes, or animism, or other ideas.) It's also possible to just be a witch without it being a religious or spiritual thing.

You don't have to decide that right now: you might find it very helpful to read some kinds of Wiccan-based material, as well as other kinds of religious witchcraft, and see what makes sense to you. Doing that will help give you more names, terms, and stuff to explore. A lot of people put together a practice that works for them, from a bunch of different sources, and since there's a lot of Wiccan-labelled stuff out there, that's part of the mix for many people, even if it's just for ideas or inspiration.

Things I'd suggest reading:
- Marion Green's book A Witch Alone is a good starter for not-very-deistic religious witchcraft. (If I remember right, there's some, but also a lot of seasonal and nature-focused practice.)

- I'd recommend skimming through past threads here in folders of interest going at least a couple of months back and reading those that look interesting to you. That will give you some idea of the range of kinds of practice.

- You may find some of the material from the Reclaiming tradition helpful: while many of them are deistic Pagans, there's a pretty wide range of approaches, and their ritual structure is pretty flexible about how deity fits into the ritual. I'd recommend the book Twelve Wild Swans as a starting place (by Starhawk and Hilary Valentine): it has a bunch of ritual and other activities that you might find interesting to contemplate or try out.

- My Seeking website has a lot of material that includes deities (that being part of my practice, and I talk about what I do) but also a lot of stuff that isn't necessarily reliant on deities. A lot of it is material I've written to explain things a lot of books do badly, so it may be helpful in filling in some gaps for you and the core practices in the Doing section are mostly (minus the ritual and deity material specifically) applicable to a wide range of magical and witchcraft paths.

Quote
What goes at the beginning of a grimoire or book of shadows? Do I need to put a blessing or consecrate it still or is that just if you worship a god?

 
This is something you're not going to find an easy answer to unless you're working in a specific tradition.

It is a good time to ask yourself some questions.

There are lots of different terms for magical records, but most of them have a history and a specific connotation. (Grimoire implies more ritual magic, a book of shadows has an explicit origin in Wicca, so if you don't want people assuming you're Wiccan, you might prefer another name, and so on.) You don't need to name anything right away, so you might just say "I have a magical journal" or whatever.

Likewise, what you do at the front of it is going to depend on what you think is important, and what fits with whatever other practices you decide to include in your path. I treat my magical record keeping like, well, record keeping, and not inherently more sacred or special than any other book.

On the other hand, I've played around with doing a copy for explicit use during ritual (like having it open on the altar), and in that case I'd consecrate it and bless it like I would any other ritual tool, which might include something in the beginning of the book, or might just involve physical and ritual actions blessing the item but not an explicit blessing written in the front.

As you can see, there are lots of different possible options! Some fit together better with other things you might do (for example, you might decide you want to bless or consecrate all your ritual items in reasonably similar ways, which has a useful consistency to it.)

As a final forum note - we ask people not edit posts after more than a couple of minutes, because people often read them pretty quickly. Fixing a typo's fine, but if you have an additional question or other larger content, we ask people to add a new reply to the thread. That makes sure people won't miss your question.
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Faemon

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Re: I'm not sure what to follow?
« Reply #3 on: March 18, 2017, 07:43:20 pm »
Quote from: Reginamills;203689
I want to begin learning witchcraft
This link is the one I recommend most often, although I've outgrown it personally and it's interesting to crosscheck what that tutorial incorporated in the context of that part's origins. (Chakras, for instance.)

Considering your present chosen handle/name, would you consider joining us Pop Culture Pagans of Ecauldron? ;)
« Last Edit: March 18, 2017, 07:44:06 pm by Faemon »
The Codex of Poesy: wishcraft, faelatry, alchemy, and other slight misspellings.
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RandallS

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Re: I'm not sure what to follow?
« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2017, 06:56:39 am »
Quote from: Reginamills;203689
Also, as far as witchcraft goes, all I find are wiccan links. What goes at the beginning of a grimoire or book of shadows? Do I need to put a blessing or consecrate it still or is that just if you worship a god?


For witchcraft as magic, I'm fond of the old [I]Mastering Witchcraft[/I] by Paul Huson. It's far from perfect, but is a good place to begin.
Randall
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