Tag: witch

Posted on

Why is meditation important?

why-is-meditation-important-for-witchcraft

This post is directed towards our newest members who must feel a bit lost when it comes to meditation. What’s good, what’s bad and what is ok to feel while going into it? Well I will touch upon these as well as the importance of meditating for witchcraft and doing stuff with magick.

Meditation is one of the biggest driving forces of what is to come after it. Just like any ritual you are about to do, you need to prepare your sage, altar, sacred space, circle and herbs. In this sense meditation prepares your mind for what is to come and is crucial if you want the spell to work. If you cannot concentrate there is a big chance you will be shooting empty bullets of energy through the room and not get anywhere. Also you need to respect it, take your time to fall into it, if you’re rushing a meditation you won’t end up focusing which leads me to my do’s don’t s.

– Never meditate if you don’t feel like it (so never do spell working). It really is that important for you to feel in the right place and time and most of all for you to want it. You feel like someone is disturbing your balance, you’re tired or you can’t stop thinking of the exam coming tomorrow (or that cute guy\girl’s eyes) then just leave it. Unlike working out you can’t force meditation to work unless you feel like it. Make sure to choose a space and time when you’re most comfortable( when everyone is asleep, in your bed or during daytime when people are off to work). Always make it count!

– Don’t do the yogi stuff you see on YouTube. Unless you feel like this position is right for you don’t do it. You might prefer simply sitting down or laying down over to crossing your legs under your butt and tangling your arms together in the shape of a dragon heart. While those positions you have seen online allow you to breathe better, count your intakes of air and take them only to your diaphragm then breathe out, they aren’t good for people who have just started out. Take your time, these things will come with practising it. When you are not distracted by pain in any way anymore you can cross your legs in unimaginable ways.

– When we say listen to music, don’t listen to Yonce’s new album. Put something without lyrics on, something comforting if you are one of those people who like to meditate on music. Try Peter Gundry on YouTube or any other orchestral band.

– Candles, herbs and insences are good but not unnecessary. As I have mentioned in previous posts it is not crucial that you have them always while you’re meditating. If you’re out around the ocean or on a hill – don’t bring them. It’s no use. They are ultimately a physical representation for concentration. If you already have it in you, don’t bother.

– Don’t go over to performing rituals if you can’t concentrate while meditating. And that is a big don’t. If you can’t focus your mind, you can’t focus your energy, so use it as a stepstone and practise it for as long as you need.

– How would you know it’s enough? Well, when you catch yourself being able to concentrate to the nothingness in front of you for about a minute without letting thoughts in, you have reached a good basic level of it.

– How do you focus? Imagine everything as a silent movie, even when you start thinking about a picture that popped up in your mind, simply discard it and throw it as far as possible away from you. The second you start doing it without noticing, you are on the right track.

– How long do I need to stay concentrated for? Start small, try to keep your thoughts away by envisioning running water and the sound it makes while splashing or the sun rising for about a minute and build it up from there. Keep in mind that for some of the rituals you have to stay focused for about 30 minutes, so you take it off from there.

cb4e1898367df8536047bc57c6d969c73949a48a_hq.jpg

Posted on

Religion in the Middle Ages vs. Nowadays

modern-witch-witchcraft-religion-middle-ages-now

Have you ever had trouble timing your practise with the speed of events that are happening around you? The world feels like spinning and all real life hits you hard. What if the same thing happened to our practising ancestors? What if Wicca was not feared but rather forgotten? We all know that history is always written for the winners and that events such as the “Witchcraft plague” can be very influencial and threatening to anyone practising but were they really? And on the other hand, how have we, by doing Witchcraft, changed in our century and eventually how does our practise differ from the one beforehand? And how do we “do” Wicca nowadays?

Let’s start with the start.

How was Witchcraft practised before ?

Around 12th to 13th century, Witchcraft was an expression form.

What, you may ask? Indeed, I would answer. Witchcraft was much like an artistic form of expression since the Church’s views were not necessarily shared by the people living in the pieces of land controlled by it. Witchcraft was heresy because it was challenging to the views of the former and all its supporters.To add up, there was also the Inquisition that was pushing the church in numerous countries like nowadays Spain, Germany and others, and was teaching the people that any faith outside of the Church was “bad faith”. As Burton Russel 1974 puts it, the witch was “a rebel against the church”.

This Venn diagram puts Witchcraft on the middle of all old terms, in which it is located between religion and the magical world view. Bear in mind, Magick was contemporary at the time and it took many forms in the Middle Ages. Anthropologists and historians, much like today, percieved it as a “superstition”. Witchcraft was about alligning oneself with the stars, planets and generally putting the model of man within the universe but as a microscopic part. And so magick was a social belief. As pointed out on the diagram, there were different types of it. Low magick was the closest to Witchcraft. Now, low magick, as worded by the anthropologist Alexander Hales, was maleficum, alas centered around evil-doing and high-magick was divinatio, alas divine. And so black and white magick came to be built up off that. You can read more about that in Jeffrey Russels’ “Witchcraft in the Middle Ages” 1972.

But how does that serve us?

Witchcraft was, and still is, a craft deviating from the Church’s beliefs. It was a riot, if you will, against the omnipresent power of Christianity and a cry against the one and only power then. You have to understand the historical background too – the Church was, for instance in England, the sole owner of land – the so called fifs were lended out to the vassals that, on their own accord, collected all taxes and export from the peasents that were working the land, and were giving all this to the king or the church. And so, to be alive and to work, you had to comply, very much like slavery, and you didn’t have a chance to be yourself.

So what is witchcraft nowadays?

It is a combustion of all different views one may have on religion, whether atheistic or christian, no matter. It is a unificator of all people that believe in something + the nature. However, Wicca is much more solitary, unless one is in a coven, and is getting accepted as a religious view in some countries, such as the US.

But why is it different?

One may argue, that because the church’s monopoly is not as influential as before, believers have much more access to old practises and information, making witchcraft and wicca both progress as one. But I have one question on my mind, is the spark the same as before?

I personally think it is, we may have other goals and be money-driven in a exploitive society where 9 hours of our regular days are taken up with sitting in front of a computer but exactly this mundane living has brought us much more to care about as to the people we are inside. The wish to get better and to know more has led us to realising that we are, after all, all children of something greater than our mothers. We have evolved and progressed. From there on, crystals and candles and physical objects should not define our practise, but we ourselves and the freedom we have by living at out own dedicated piece of land and also living in our own conditions and minds, working for ourselves, should always be the driving power behind it.

Do no harm and love each other, as well as who was there before you. Cherish them.

Sources:

All pictures – Pinterest

Information – Medieval Studies classes, as well as Burton Russel 1974 Witchcraft in the Middle Ages by Jeffrey Russel, The Catholic Historical Review Vol. 60., No. 3, pp 468-470 and JB Russel “Witchcraft in the Middle Ages”

X