I'm loosely pagan on a spiritual level and I vibe a lot with druidism and many of the things that witches do, but as much as I enjoy the culture, I never fail to cringe over the collective hubris of self-proclaimed witches. It's always the edgiest 30-45 year old women who wear House of 1000 Corpses t-shirts and extreme amounts of eye shadow, who post "Proud Bitch" memes on social media and exude an undeserved air of confidence because they believe so deeply their spells are real.
While I admit that Wicca is quite beautiful and largely misunderstood, the things most witches/hexers are practicing only date back a few decades. They're not speaking the ancient magicks or communing with old gods. I can't speak much on the divine feminine because I'm not informed enough on that subject, but for the other half of their belief system they have taken the rather ambiguous depiction of Cernunnos and turned him into a sexy, big-dicked goat man, and have fabricated their own lore to explain the workings of something that is in reality unfathomably old and lost to man, with no surviving origin story and little to no oral tradition.
We can certainly make some educated guesses, but the bulk of that information died with the druids.
i don't believe in witchcraft but I'm not bold enough to challenge people to hex me. not because it might work, but because i might just be unlucky enough that something completely irrelevant would happen to me and that would forever convince them they were right and i was wrong and i would never live that down.
it might even happen while I'm uploading the update to say that everything's fine. something would fall on my head or some shit, I can't take that risk.
It's just like any other system of belief. You can sit around praying for something, or you can cast more effective hexes, such as "hit this guy with my car," or "actually give him poison."
Lets hope all these internet witches don't learn the power of direct action real magic.
I feel like if the supernatural exists as portrayed by popular culture, then societies around the globe must have had a coordinated and lasting effort to snuff it out at every turn and would have to meticulously continue those efforts even today.
We could debate that the crusades, Salem witch trials, burning of the library in Alexandria, etc are all proof of this effort, but how could anyone really prove it? And would knowing it is real and it is just not accessible make things any better?
Honestly, as much as the idea of controlling forces not inherently responsive to my own command is intriguing. Realistically it would add a whole new level of messed up to our already botched attempt at existence as a species.
I prefer to think of magic as simply the science we haven’t yet discovered.
What do you think someone from a few centuries ago would say about the technology we have today?
You spot fake witches because they believe in magic instead of Magick. Being a witch is a spiritual practice, if curses actually worked the world would be very different (and way, way more fucked than it currently is)
I wouldn't ever do this because as soon as anything went wrong in my life I'd never be able to shake the question that it was super natural. I'm extremely skeptical and don't believe in any supernatural things, but I have a fear of developing superstitions. Also when I get really stressed about my life and feel like it is particularly unfair I start to feel like there is some sort of external source of my problems and it's malevolent. So, doing something like this would be a recipe for problems for me lol.
Reminder that there used to be a $1,000,000 prize available for anyone who could display any sort of supernatural powers that remained unclaimed for 20 years. The challenge rules required that both parties agree upon the test setup, and several people actually tried to claim it and all failed. It astounds me that anyone still believes in this nonsense and that it seems to be becoming even more popular to believe in literal magic and other supernatural idiocy.
My coworker was cursed by our bwitch of an 'assistant manager' for turning her down, and the next day his mom had hot oil splash up her whole arm and it looked bad.
Not supersticious but he was and he was terrified. It was horrible to watch.
This is just a high effort version of "...Then may God strike me dead!" but targeting a spiritual minority instead if the hegemonic national religion. Shouldn't the amount of un-smited politicians indicate that there is no God?
I have a made up word I have never said to anyone.
Nobody claiming to be psychic has ever been able to detect it.
While it's a meaningless thing overall, it is endlessly entertaining to watch someone spiral from "trying" to discover it, to random guessing, to being angry and declaring that I'm lying and they got it the first time.
It's kinda like my secret. I have a secret I have never told anyone. It's another thing I will put before a self proclaimed psychic. Even once they progress to guessing, none have ever even thrown it out as an option.
And you'd be amazed how many self proclaimed psychics there are out in the world, and how many of them seem to really think they are psychic, to the degree that they'll accept someone presenting one or both of those challenges.
The made up word would be a difficult guess for sure. But my secret isn't something so rare that nobody could possibly hit on it as a guess.
I'm not willing to outright say that there's no thing that could be called psychic ability. What I am willing to say is that nobody has ever exhibited such, and likely never will
No, we're not referring to your beloved Atari Pong paddles -- we're talking about your brain. The EPOC uses a headset that actually picks up on your brain waves. These brain waves can tell the system what you want to do in your virtual reality. In other words, you think "lift," and a virtual rock actually levitates on the screen.