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Author Topic: Origins Of Magick In Wicca  (Read 5752 times)

Jenett

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Re: Origins Of Magick In Wicca
« Reply #15 on: August 29, 2019, 06:08:54 pm »
Yeah, I am not too certain about this.

That is in part because you are inserting assumptions that are not in the text. That's not cool. Please stop doing that.

I gather that you've had a chance to read the linked post since you posted this initial response. (Usually when I link a page, it is to avoid having to type up a detailed explanation of something repeatedly, or that it's a topic where I spent time to write it up with careful clarifications and examples. I don't necessarily expect people to read all of them, but if you're looking for more of 'where is this coming from', the linked page will generally have more explanation.)

A practical note
You have a habit of making a series of replies, reading things as you go. Unlike many forums, we don't mind double posting.

However, an onslaught of quite rapid replies, where you change your opinions between them as you read and consider more, is often frustrating to approach. As a whole, the forum tends to favour thoughtful conversation over rapid fire responses. As we've said before, it is fine here to take time (days or weeks, even!) between responses.

(While I'm here with the suggestions, please also trim posts you're responding to - you've done it for some posts in this thread, and not others. Lengthy quotes make it much harder for people to read or consider responding. Just keep the specific part you're replying to, or a brief quote if you're responding generally to the entire post.)

Back to magical protection
Quote
It seems to imply that I have negativity in my life because I am not living an ethical, caring life and building meaningful spiritual relationships. I have all of that in my life. The negativity in my life largely comes from being an adult survivor of childhood abuse. So the source of most of the negativity in my life does not come from a lack of ethics and caring relationships. Rather it comes from the adults who harmed me as a child and the fallout of that in my adult life.

You had asked explicitly about magical protection. I was therefore replying to that piece. 

I firmly believe that someone who has taken steps to resolve ongoing interpersonal issues in their life, who is generally behaving ethically and in keeping with their long-term goals, and who spends time deepening and developing their spiritual life already *has* a non-trivial amount of general magical/esoteric protection from ambient nasty stuff. (Lots of religions agree on this one, actually!)

For many people, focusing heavily on protection work, per se, is not the most useful thing, as a result.

Of course, sometimes there are specific threats, there are situations of abuse, manipulation, etc. There are also situations in which stuff is just going wrong, and it's not necessarily due to malevolence or abuse.

In those cases, magical protection work can help you get out of the situation (a temporary crisis solution), but is probably not a good long-term plan. For one thing, magical work alone is not sufficient to solve that kind of ongoing problem. For another, ongoing substantial protection work can be emotionally and energetically draining, tiring, and limit your options for making long-term choices to get out of the situation.

That's because by necessity, protecting yourself involves focusing on (and giving at least a little energy to dealing with) that problem - which gives it a toehold in your life. You have to pay some attention to the thing to protect yourself from it. (Or as the axiom in magical work goes: Energy flows where attention goes.) Long-term protection work can also burn through your stored up favours with allies (both human and otherwise), which can limit some of your options down the road.

For specific critical issues, it's usually a lot better to figure out an exit plan or a solution (using physical-world resources as needed, like therapy, a domestic violence hotline, medical support, legal options, sensible friends, whatever makes sense in the situation) and do what you can to get yourself to a stable point where you can build or rebuild as needed.

In the aftermath, you can then focus on dealing with the lingering effects of the situation (again, therapy, what many witchy folks refer to as shadow work, or other practices to figure out how to defuse the reactions and patterns you needed to keep you safe at one point, but that are now getting in the way of the life you want.)

But those things are not *protection magic* - i.e. the thing you were specifically asking about there, and the thing I was specifically answering. Those are other magical, spiritual, personal, or therapeutic practices that may be related to protection, but are primarily doing other things (and often using rather different techniques than protection - many of them are much more closely tied to healing work, divination work, or the idea of one's Great Work.)

Protecting other people magically is also complex - not least because people have a tendency to go do things of their own free will that are not safe. There are places and times when taking on a degree of protection for specific other people on an ongoing basis is appropriate, but it is not something I would recommend to a beginning magical practitioner. By which I mean, first couple of years, probably, of sustained regular work and integration, ideally including regular conversation and work with other people on related practices), outside of those protective aspects directly related to being a parent, romantic partner, or another similar commitment. (Teachers take on this kind of responsibility for students in their classrooms, for example.)

That's because you have to learn how to take care of yourself - in a variety of moods, health conditions, situations, etc. - before you can really extend that sensibly to other people. Otherwise you are prone to burnout, long-term damage, turning the protection into an emotionally co-dependent situation, or other things that cause long-term problems not just for yourself but for the people you started out wanting to help.
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Donal2018

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Re: Origins Of Magick In Wicca
« Reply #16 on: August 29, 2019, 07:46:26 pm »
That is in part because you are inserting assumptions that are not in the text. That's not cool. Please stop doing that.

I gather that you've had a chance to read the linked post since you posted this initial response. (Usually when I link a page, it is to avoid having to type up a detailed explanation of something repeatedly, or that it's a topic where I spent time to write it up with careful clarifications and examples. I don't necessarily expect people to read all of them, but if you're looking for more of 'where is this coming from', the linked page will generally have more explanation.)

A practical note
You have a habit of making a series of replies, reading things as you go. Unlike many forums, we don't mind double posting.

However, an onslaught of quite rapid replies, where you change your opinions between them as you read and consider more, is often frustrating to approach. As a whole, the forum tends to favour thoughtful conversation over rapid fire responses. As we've said before, it is fine here to take time (days or weeks, even!) between responses.

(While I'm here with the suggestions, please also trim posts you're responding to - you've done it for some posts in this thread, and not others. Lengthy quotes make it much harder for people to read or consider responding. Just keep the specific part you're replying to, or a brief quote if you're responding generally to the entire post.)

Back to magical protection
You had asked explicitly about magical protection. I was therefore replying to that piece. 

I firmly believe that someone who has taken steps to resolve ongoing interpersonal issues in their life, who is generally behaving ethically and in keeping with their long-term goals, and who spends time deepening and developing their spiritual life already *has* a non-trivial amount of general magical/esoteric protection from ambient nasty stuff. (Lots of religions agree on this one, actually!)

For many people, focusing heavily on protection work, per se, is not the most useful thing, as a result.

Of course, sometimes there are specific threats, there are situations of abuse, manipulation, etc. There are also situations in which stuff is just going wrong, and it's not necessarily due to malevolence or abuse.

In those cases, magical protection work can help you get out of the situation (a temporary crisis solution), but is probably not a good long-term plan. For one thing, magical work alone is not sufficient to solve that kind of ongoing problem. For another, ongoing substantial protection work can be emotionally and energetically draining, tiring, and limit your options for making long-term choices to get out of the situation.

That's because by necessity, protecting yourself involves focusing on (and giving at least a little energy to dealing with) that problem - which gives it a toehold in your life. You have to pay some attention to the thing to protect yourself from it. (Or as the axiom in magical work goes: Energy flows where attention goes.) Long-term protection work can also burn through your stored up favours with allies (both human and otherwise), which can limit some of your options down the road.

For specific critical issues, it's usually a lot better to figure out an exit plan or a solution (using physical-world resources as needed, like therapy, a domestic violence hotline, medical support, legal options, sensible friends, whatever makes sense in the situation) and do what you can to get yourself to a stable point where you can build or rebuild as needed.

In the aftermath, you can then focus on dealing with the lingering effects of the situation (again, therapy, what many witchy folks refer to as shadow work, or other practices to figure out how to defuse the reactions and patterns you needed to keep you safe at one point, but that are now getting in the way of the life you want.)

But those things are not *protection magic* - i.e. the thing you were specifically asking about there, and the thing I was specifically answering. Those are other magical, spiritual, personal, or therapeutic practices that may be related to protection, but are primarily doing other things (and often using rather different techniques than protection - many of them are much more closely tied to healing work, divination work, or the idea of one's Great Work.)

Protecting other people magically is also complex - not least because people have a tendency to go do things of their own free will that are not safe. There are places and times when taking on a degree of protection for specific other people on an ongoing basis is appropriate, but it is not something I would recommend to a beginning magical practitioner. By which I mean, first couple of years, probably, of sustained regular work and integration, ideally including regular conversation and work with other people on related practices), outside of those protective aspects directly related to being a parent, romantic partner, or another similar commitment. (Teachers take on this kind of responsibility for students in their classrooms, for example.)

That's because you have to learn how to take care of yourself - in a variety of moods, health conditions, situations, etc. - before you can really extend that sensibly to other people. Otherwise you are prone to burnout, long-term damage, turning the protection into an emotionally co-dependent situation, or other things that cause long-term problems not just for yourself but for the people you started out wanting to help.

Those are all fair points and useful information. I will try to maybe be slower and more thoughtful with my posts.

Donal2018

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Re: Origins Of Magick In Wicca
« Reply #17 on: August 29, 2019, 09:08:54 pm »
(While I'm here with the suggestions, please also trim posts you're responding to - you've done it for some posts in this thread, and not others. Lengthy quotes make it much harder for people to read or consider responding. Just keep the specific part you're replying to, or a brief quote if you're responding generally to the entire post.)

Yes, sorry, just did this to the prior post. I will trim posts in the future and will try to take more time and care with responses.

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Re: Origins Of Magick In Wicca
« Reply #18 on: August 30, 2019, 08:10:59 pm »
I will try to maybe be slower and more thoughtful with my posts.

Yes, sorry, just did this to the prior post. I will trim posts in the future and will try to take more time and care with responses.

A Reminder:
Hi, Donal,

It's good that you're noticing and acknowledging these points.

Jenett was gentle, and expressed her advice simply as suggestions, without explicitly putting on a staff hat. However, your habits on both fronts are really beyond the 'gentle suggestions' point. In particular, your failure to trim the quote when responding to a post suggesting you trim your quotes - even though you noticed and acknowledged it later - stood out as an example of you not reading with sufficient care and understanding before replying.

See below for some specific - formal and staffly, falling under the rule that states, 'DO follow instructions/suggestions from staff members and hosts about how to post and/or behave on The Cauldron (quoting, formatting messages, etc.). Staff members have no interest in hearing why you would rather not do it the standard TC way.' - discussion of your posting habits and what you should do about them.

This isn't a formal warning, just a reminder. No reply is necessary; the best response is to do these things, not  make a post to apologize and say you'll do them.

Thanks,
Sunflower
TC Forum Staff


Some specific points (under the blue box, because SMF evidently doesn't llke putting them inside):
  • DO read carefully and attentively before replying to a post.
  • If you don't have the time, or are otherwise in circumstances that don't allow for that care and attention, it's generally unnecessary to post saying so; no one is timing you to make sure you're being 'prompt enough' (or if someone is, they're being a jackass).
  • DO take your time in composing your own posts, to make sure you've covered all the points you want to cover. Habitually coming back with, 'oh, and another thought...,' makes your points difficult to respond to (because they're spread over several posts) and your threads seem overwhelming.
  • TC is a discussion and debate forum; making posts that are simply a record of your latest thoughts is not conducive to discussion. Perhaps it would be helpful to you to start keeping a magical/spiritual diary, or a blog, for those sorts of things?
  • Since I'm making this list, I'll add a point that isn't directly relevant to this thread or Jenett's advice, but is relevant to your general interactions on TC: we are a discussion and debate forum, not a fellowship forum; people will disagree with your opinions and positions. This in no way means they think you are a bad person; it means they disagree with the ideas mentioned in your post (and if you've described an idea and already noted that you don't adhere to it, they probably aren't accusing you of holding that idea). Our rules have quite a bit to say that's relevant to this; you might wish to review them.
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