Thank you Laura Goldstone for sharing this essay in fb land. A powerful and timely read, regardless of your spiritual inclinations. While I don’t agree with all points the author made, there were many which resonated with me so i want to share it here. Would love to hear others’ thoughts after reading. http://scarletimprint.com/2014/06/rewilding-witchcraft/
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what if we replaced the term “Witchcraft” with “Rewilding” in the following passage about extinction and the Anthropocene?
“Witchcraft must gaze fixedly at this future. Witchcraft must be the first movement to be brave enough to accept the Anthropocene and to make our last stand. Even if we ended industrial civilisation today we would not be able to prevent these outcomes, but still we are compelled to act. Some will be afraid of this knowledge; witchcraft should be liberated by it, liberated from petty concerns to pursue lives of beauty, liberated from the sleepwalking into death that our culture has made for us and our children. So I counsel, confront death. For witchcraft to be anything other than the empty escapism of the socially dysfunctional or nostalgia for bygone ages, it needs to feel the shape of its skull, venerate the dead and the sacred art of living and dying with meaning. We are all on the fierce path now.”
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My main goal living in and knowing I am going to die in a fully functional and sane world: Spread as much joy, beauty, and eye opening revelation as possible.
My main goal living in and knowing I am going to die in a dysfunctional and insane world: Same.
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Wow, there is indeed some heavy reading in that essay. Not something to be digested quickly.
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yes, i read it a few times, and have spent much time processing it. esp. the part i quoted above, and the “…how tame we have become…” part. it seems to be really coinciding with a reawakening for me, a remembering maybe? of my personal power, and definitely fueling my rewilding fire
There’s a couple of things that occurred to me, reading the piece. There’s an understanding among a fair amount of cultures that I’ve talked to that there are people who practice medicine and those that practice witchcraft (bear with me for a moment).
The Medicine workers operate within the flow of the universe. If it is possible, they will find the odd and unusual ways (if needed) to deliver what a person needs (not necessarily what they want).
Those who do witchcraft put a person’s wants over the flow of the universe. They don’t care if it has repercussions as long as it works.
Cultures, over time, needed both. Witchcraft served as a valuable pressure release when someone felt they had no other options and an excellent scapegoat if things went wrong.
There’s a fair amount of neo-pagans who don’t understand why witches are still persecuted in a number of tribal societies in the world. They equate it to the Christian purges of heretics. They don’t often understand the damage a ‘true’ witch can and does do.
Let’s veer back towards the article for a moment. I’ve been reading the potent words of the author and contemplating the power in the term witchcraft.
In tribal days, someone who went against the healthy flow of the world and their culture was a witch. But we live in a world where the currents are -wrong-, where death stares straight at us and killers of life are everywhere.
Of -course- people who work medicine and work against this current would be considered witches. And that’s a label they should wear proudly. Their job is to tear it all down. A pressure release of a completely different sort.
I think we need to find a way to connect these thousands with proper elders. I think we need to cast a net to contain the horrors that have been unleashed upon the world.
Hells, I have dreams about this…
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ThomasMaxwell – you start out saying ‘flows of the universe’ and end saying ‘flow of the world’. Do you think the two are the same?
I have had glimpses into other worlds. They were so alien in appearance I cannot link them to the world we live in today. It has led me to believe in infinite worlds, not all of them necessarily on spheres revolving in emptiness around hot spheres of plasma. Somewhere out there a monkey with a typewriter is writing Hamlet.
I think what we see on this world is but a small slice of the flow of the universe. One example of a world we can find ourselves in is a world with a destructive culture.
I think most people who try to do ‘magic’ try to inflict their will upon a bendable reality by way of supernatural means. & most people who try to do ‘medicine’ try to court external energies to see how they can help if they are willing to make an attempt at effecting the issue at hand.
My belief is that if the horrors were not here they would be somewhere else. I do not wonder why I am in the situation I am in. I simply do my best to have a positive influence on the people I come in contact with, knowing that one day I will find myself in a better place. Something about the obstacles that this world (according to my thinking not ‘the one and only world’) faces seem to me to be too big for anyone or any group to clear them away to make way for a bright future on Earth. I would like to be proven wrong.
That said – my qualms with this article was it said ‘we must do this’ and ‘we cannot do that’. Even though I do not associate myself with witchcraft I do not like reading/hearing things that make an attempt to dictate my actions. Hence what I said – the whole planet goes insane, I keep on doing my thing. The particulars might change, but the basic roots from which actions stem remains the same.