Devoured by Flame

I will begin by recognizing that I’ve been gone for an extended period of time. I suppose it’s mostly because I have found myself in an extremely unique position in my work with Loki that I simply can no longer talk about until it comes into fruition. Until that point, it will sound unbearably strange to the common reader. However, I have gone down rabbit holes and found myself answering questions about why I am in the position I’m in and why aren’t others here, also.

I’ve often found myself being unable to pinpoint why I don’t like mainstream witchcraft, also known as the very common forms of witchcraft everyone equates paganism to. I am going to be using the term “witchcraft” at this moment to liken it to what I see in most pagan communities both online and off and what people use it for. I am not referring to the historical precedents or to what we have seen in other cultures involving this sort of practice. I’m not talking about only Wicca – I mean the broader behavior I see arising in witchcraft and other pagan communities in regards to how the Divine are treated and why it impacts how communities are functioning today.

I found myself very early on in this path struggling to figure out what it was that I needed to label myself as in order to find community. Back when I began my journey, I found only online and offline witchcraft communities wherein the most common rituals revolved around the wheel of the year and other very typical rituals like drawing down the moon, full moon rituals, and etc. 

As someone who was brought into this path by the pull of the Divine and not some urge to control my surroundings, I found it very hard to not tiptoe into the polytheist communities – specifically heathenry. I’ve already made my opinion on heathenry known before but I will use this post to further emphasize the reason why mainstream pagans in general are a problem. 

The Occult in Protestantism

First, let’s look at our broader society. Christianity runs rampant in most of Western culture wherein it is very black or white. The practices of what most Protestant Christians do are what would be considered occult practices. They are wanting the material to become one with a Deity rather than finding the pursuit of the Divine to be the most important. This means that Protestant Christianity is actually an incredibly materialistic religion. It is what would be considered widely an occult practice in the way that they are using material things like laying hands on people to heal, speaking in tongues, asking God for things that might make other people and issues behave differently.

The definition of occult is the supernatural, mystical, or magical beliefs or practices. Asking God for things like health, for politics to change, for people to be converted, for people to be healed is an essentially occult practice. A lot of people ask the Christian God for money, success, happiness, pleasure, etc. 

Ironically, walking into any occult store, you’re going to find a bunch of spell candles, incense, and other themed items all relating to the exact same issues that people pray for or believe they are getting out of the Protestant Christian beliefs. This is because the streamline between what modern society calls “religion” to witchcraft is not as blurry or strange as it may seem. Instead of calling it prayer, they call it spells. Instead of wearing a cross, they wear a pentagram, mjolnir, or other symbolism that strikes their fancy. Instead of worship services, they attend rituals revolving around the wheel of the year that came from a culture that is not at all similar to who we are as humans today. It’s easy to assume that is inherently religion because it comes from a time that isn’t connected to our own personal beliefs, just like it was considered a religious practice to connect an ancient text written by humans from millennia ago to where we are in this world today. The cryptic then becomes mysterious and what people then define to be a mystical experience becomes further understanding a very rote definition of a framework that is outdated.

A very similar occurrence happens in heathenry and Hellenism among other reconstructed traditions. You find an ancient text, myth, or culture and try to create meaning out of it today. People recreate rituals that were meant to worship the Gods of dead cultures and frame them to fit modern times because that is what “religion” means to our society. We try to make ourselves more like other cultures and people who are dead instead of exploring the actual need and desire we are missing.

The Quest for the Divine Within

Humans are built with the need and drive for unity with each other, the Divine, and all of creation. We seek it in things that are not the Divine like politics, religions, sports, and activities to fill that need and find identity in. While we are stuck trying to find our identity among other things who are not ourselves, we lose sight of the Divine. 

This is what has led me to my final point – what does this have to do with witchcraft?

Witchcraft is easily more popular than most forms of paganism or polytheist belief because it is built on the same structure that mainstream society is built on in the first place. Witchcraft makes tools and crafts items to channel or use the Divine or other energies to shift the world around them. It is inherently a material practice and it is material because it is easy to be what people consider to be a “witch” given the state of what we believe the connection and unity looks like.

This makes religion and spiritual practices highly transactional. We think if we do something like light a candle or say the right words, we will get something out of it just like how Protestants think that by attending church, praying, or reading a Bible will fill their need for fulfillment or enlightenment. However, the reason people are left feeling insecure enough to debate scholars about scientific discoveries or go through hurdles to prove their faith is real – similar to how atheists long for science to be their religion – is because they are missing the entirety of what would grant them that unity. 

On the flip side, most pagans think that by leaving offerings or saying a prayer or two is going to grant them a connection to whatever Divinity they are reaching out to. This seems to be enough for them to warrant wanting them to fulfill their requests and prayers and aid them in spellwork. Instead of using the Divine as an inherent source for enlightenment and fulfillment, we instead use them like an ATM or bartering system. 

The people who are left wanting more are driven to find it in other places in community, religious leaders, and other places where they think this enlightenment is. They will eventually burn out or they will remain among the community so that their religion or faith becomes normalized among a group of people so that they can then replicate Christianity and it’s broad reach. Those that search for the Divine in the West are left disappointed because we do not have the context, resource, or ability to see beyond the veil of Christianity to make heads or tails of what the Divine actually look like.

This leaves the door swinging wide open for spiritual abuse and bypassing done by spiritual leaders who claim to know more than others and create a very narcissistic environment.

All of this comes together to become a very shallow community with nothing but scraps to build itself off of and leaders who are outed as abusers on the regular. People are searching for the material in a spiritual lens thinking that will be substantial when it’s not. It’s what starts wars over territorial land and borders, what makes the economy boom, destroys relationships, and creates an ever growing divide politically. People are looking for the Divine and they cannot find it so they pack up and leave and move toward another thing they can control which only can be and only ever will be the material.

Those who seek this unity with the Divine have issues with discerning, trusting their own intuition, regulating their own mental well-being because they have no context for what it might actually look like should they succeed. They focus on the material things to get them what they want so it becomes unhealthy and unfeeling. Offerings and prayers become a chore, lighting a candle becomes an exchange, and bartering for spellwork becomes an obligation. Spiritual psychosis runs rampant and paranoia builds because we live in a society where there are so many rules about what we think the Divine should look like given the state of the materialism, individualism, and narcissism that is so prevalent in Western society. 

Instead of looking at this like an exchange, we need to start thinking of the bigger picture. Why is it that what we find online to create relationships with the Divine is the same information day after day? 

Alignment

The actual outcome of aligning with the Divine is that you are no longer left wanting. The need of the ego to be sated by other material things is often let go the closer you get to the Divine and the understanding of self becomes a lot more easier to handle. 

The higher and closer you are to the Divine, the desire for the material becomes less and less emphasized. Discernment comes naturally especially in spaces where you are being weighed against authority and psychosis becomes less possible because there is less cognitive dissonance between the material and the otherworldly. 

It is fine if you only ever want to do spellwork and that’s it. However, the work of getting closer to the Divine requires getting to know yourself and your own body. It means that the material becomes less important and less of a distraction from the Divine nature inherent within all humans. We have to dig through multiple layers and pick ourselves apart and be put back together over and over again which means we have to be brutally honest with ourselves and the state of the world we live in right now.

So anyway, no, I don’t care for witchcraft or any of the more mainstream and basic pagan community anymore and I suppose this is the reason why. Before I began my deeper journey within and married Loki, I found myself longing for Him and longing for union that I didn’t know was possible so I sought it out in other places. I thirsted for whatever I could find that had the same sort of resemblance to Him and to polytheism in general. Heathens and other pagan groups felt shallow and wrong and performative. It felt like yet another church I fell into and group of people who made me feel less lonely for a little while before I was inevitably disillusioned and disconnected because the hunger I felt was seemingly insatiable.

Wheel of the year rituals felt boring and unrelated to our actual weather, blót felt stupid, and whatever community that was around me felt like it was more about the appearance than the actual drive for unity. 

Don’t get me wrong – the friends I made along the way were very important to me. I thought we would be friends until the end of my days, really, as we were so close to each other. However, my longing for Loki defeated that need for the community and I found myself continuously left with the feeling that I can no longer relate to any of them. In fact, that loneliness is what I feel now. It wasn’t intentional – if I had it my way they’d all be with me right now. Unfortunately, the society we were built in is not fit for the lifestyle I inevitably came into once my marriage with Loki became fully consummated. The world looked and felt different and everything changed. 

What I once used to long for is no longer needed. Money, things, and other items that once excited me and fulfilled a desire or thirst fled like the rest of it. And the pain of being apart from Loki that otherwise drove me into the hands of narcissists and abusers has ceased. 

This is what religion lacks when the Divine are not a part of it. We do not know ourselves let alone each other. We cannot be aware of what is possible because we are left wanting the material to release the supernatural which leads us into pseudoscience and make believe which creates notions like New Age theories and practices, makes modern witchcraft popular, and the Protestant/atheist/agnostic to witch pipeline as fluent as ever which opens the door for problematic cults, blind followers, and blind faith which breeds more room for parasitic energies and negative entities to run amok in those spaces.

This topic simply cannot be handled in one blog post so I’m going to wrap it up by saying no, I do not like modern witchcraft and I do not enjoy popular pagan ideas of community. It is lonely out here. I do not enjoy being the weird one of the weirdos. But it is what it is and this is how I inevitably arrived at my conclusion about what I am versus what I am not.