Yes, England XX century. But times change. English Witchcraft Act 1735 was based on the Anglican preaching that the mother of all witches, the Witch of Endor, was nothing but a mere impostor. Today you can call yourself witch and have some good practice without any problem. What’s good here is that people do not die or get imprisoned because of the fear or religious bigotry of others. What is bag is that you can be a mere impostor and nobody will ever tell you that you lie.
What is witch or who is? I checked it in the Online Etymology Dictionary and found there two interesting things.
1. Klein suggests connection with O.E. wigle "divination," and wig, wih "idol."
2. At this day it is indifferent to say in the English tongue, 'she is a witch,' or 'she is a wise woman.' [Reginald Scot, "The Discoverie of Witchcraft," 1584]
These two (the idol from the first and the wise woman from the second) combined together give the woman who uses or keeps some sacred knowledge. If you translate the word witch to different languages you mostly get words derived from knowledge, prophesy, spell and evil. Well, evil comes from the fear of unknown but the result is almost same – one who knows and who can use this knowledge.
Now who is a witch today? The best way to understand it is to look at what they do and how they do it. One of the most common practices is spell casting. Does it work? If you look in Google for the answer, most sites say, “Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't”. This is “politically correct” form of “NO”. There’re two main reasons for that: lack of knowledge, and lack of power. This is not fault of contemporary witches. This is result of inquisition. More than 100.000 women were murdered during the middle ages. Most of them had nothing in common with the witchcraft, but most of those who had didn’t survive that too. Furthermore most of those who kept traditions preferred to stop it to save their children.
But something still can be done to make spells work or to increase its efficiency. Most of contemporary spells repeat or resemble those of middle ages, this is wrong. Spell is a description of the world and the world changed. You can’t talk about powers of nature when you have no idea about these powers. Most of townspeople don’t survive in the nature more than a week if they get there without food, clothes and cellular phone. Contemporary spell must be based upon contemporary reality with all its phones, planes, nuclear bombs, Internet and the rest of the things we are used to.
Spell must have some effect and this effect in turn must be reached by applying this spell to some object. We are talking about human world and any object in this world exists as a subject of perception. But it’s much easy to change perception from inside the human psychology.
“…"Psychic forces" have far more to do with the realm of the unconscious. Our mania for rational explanations obviously has its roots in our fear of metaphysics, for the two were always hostile brothers. Hence, anything unexpected that approaches us from the dark realm is regarded either as coming from outside and, therefore, as real, or else as an hallucination and, therefore, not true. The idea that anything could be real or true which does not come from outside has hardly begun to dawn on contemporary man…”© C. Jung
This way the spell must be personal, I mean you can’t just use the spell from some grimoire if you are not initialized in corresponding tradition but you must compose spells of your. Composing spells contains two parts.
1. Unconsciousness is reachable through archetypes.
An archetype is a universally understood symbol, term, or pattern of behavior, a prototype upon which others are copied, patterned, or emulated. Archetypes are often used in myths and storytelling across different cultures.
In psychology, an archetype is a model of a person, personality, or behavior.
So the first part is to find the right archetype and to describe the result you want to reach in its terms. If you believe in gods personificating the powers you need, this is your way, if you don’t – find something in the outer world creating this result, doesn’t matter what. Now figure the way of getting your result: ask the god, search the Internet, drive the car, whatever, but it must be the real way to what you want.
2. Archetypes are reachable through the representing symbols and this is the hard part. It’s not enough to imagine something of the kind. You must live in the world you’re trying to create, your spell must cause you to visualize the picture of what this spell about. It’s not that you cast the spell and visualize but it’s you cast it and see it, just it and nothing else.
To accomplish this you must use the right words when you’re composing your spell. It makes sense to build dictionary of the “right words”. “Right words” are the words appealing to your psychic forces. When you say the “right word” you feel that it’s more than just abstract sound, it touches you some way. “Right words” are always personal, that’s why the spell you compose is personal too.
Now how to find the right words. Close your eyes and think about different things: flower, mother, car, war, money, child, tree… Every word gives you different feelings, some of them deep, some of them almost insensible. You need those, making you react. React like sense emotions, remember something and so forth.
It’s a long work. Just take some kind of dictionary (I think some kind of explanatory or etymological dictionary is good enough) and go through it. And write your results.
Now, when you have your dictionary of the “right words” use these words to compose your spell. But think twice – your spell must make you visualize the most exact picture you can think about.
By the way, technique of finding the “right words” is good to check if you chose the right archetype – it must touch you somewhere too.
How your spell works now. Well, now it depends on your power. Not everyone has enough power to make things work. Sometimes it can be passed over by getting some kind of initiation, but you wouldn’t read that far have you had one (different kinds of “New Age” initiations usually don’t work). Sometimes you can gain power of your own or recollect some from your past, and I’ll talk about it one day later.
