Are any of you witches? If so, are you Wiccan? Or do you follow some other belief? Why do spells always rhyme?
Well, yes, I’m a witch and Wiccan. Mr. Seawitch is, too.
I always wondered myself why spells rhyme; my guess would be that it makes them easier to remember, and adds a nice dramatic touch. I use spells rarely, if ever, so I might not be the best authority.
Surprising that we looked so normal when you met us, huh? 
Not at all! 
Yep, another Wiccan here (and so is JustPlainBryan). My WAG on spells is the same as seawitch’s–it probably makes them much easier to remember. But, that being said, I don’t do spellwork so I’m probably not the best one to ask on that, too.
I don’t really believe in doing spellwork because I find it, well, for the lack of a better word, somewhat ridiculous. Why bother doing a money spell when you can go and get a job? Love spells? You’re better off looking at the real reasons why your relationships fail.
Besides, the gods help those who help themselves. 
From ghoulies and ghaesties
And long leggedly beasties
The good lord protect us.
What’s the difference between a Wiccan and a Druid?
Present!
I’d say the main difference is that Wicca is a relatively young religion that, while it draws from/attemps to draw from ancient pantheons and traditions, was pretty much “invented” as Wicca in the 20th century… whereas there actually were Druids long ago (although, since I’m not a Druid, I can’t say how close current traditions are to ancient ones).
[Blue Meany Voice] Are you… Druish? You don’t LOOK Druish… [/Blue Meany Voice]
I was wondering…what exactly are the beliefs of witches?
Yep, I’m a witch. A stregha to be specific. I was brought up as one. It’s not really Wicca, but I’m not really offended to be described as one. I think more and more, Wicca is being used as the blanket term for all witchcraft practicers and most other pagans. Sort of like how “Christian” is used very generally.
As to the beliefs of witches, we’re a diverse group. But I think generally (very generally), we give thanks to a two-aspected deity (or two separate but equally powerful deities). This deity is often seen as comprised of a male and female part. Many of us follow the Wiccan Rede: “Harming none, do what you will” (though not all of us are, technically, Wiccans). After that, it all sort of starts to get loose.
Anyway, hopefully the witches who pop into this thread will stop by this thread and explain a little more about their beliefs.
Christian Witch. Basically following Christian Wicca.
. . .um, don’t ask. Really. You don’t want me to explain my religious views here.
::sighs:: Alright. Basically, I believe that there is one, all-powerful diety. I believe that everything has an opposite–since there is one all powerful diety, that diety must contain opposites within itself. Creation and destruction, darkness and light, male and female. Most people see this as good/evil. Some see it as female/male. I don’t see it really as either. I tend to view the oppositions as just parts of one very complex being. Though, sometimes, I find myself thinking in terms of female/male.
These oppositions extend to nature…creating correlations and such. It’s just part of how the universe is ordered to me–by the four elements, by energy and spirit. It’s how I understand things. These correlations allow people to use spells and rituals as a form of focused prayer–one focuses on a piece of tigereye to ask for physical energy because they feel that the tigereye is correllated with energy. It becomes the focus of a prayer, which can be answered by that all-powerful diety I mentioned earlier. For some people–such as myself–this is the most effective and fulfilling form of prayer. Others are more fulfilled by talking-to-God prayer.
The reason for the “Christian” in “Christian witch” is kind of odd. I feel that through the persona and story of Jesus Christ–who, IMHO, had possibly the closest connection and correlation with that all-powerful diety of any human ever–I have learned to truly live. I’ve learned to love myself and others. I’ve learned to let go of the past and work towards the future. To learn that love and life and peace and freedom are worth sacrifices. In that manner…Jesus Christ is my personal savior, and the person most indicative of my relationship and perception of diety. But as to whether I believe that he saved me from Hell, from Satan, from eternal damnation. . .no. I don’t believe in those things. He simply saved me from living a rather miserable life on Earth.
For me. . .that’s enough. While the veil I might see diety through is Christian, what I believe is the essence of that diety is more closely aligned with Wiccan beliefs. I will refer to myself as both Christian and Wiccan–if pressed, though, to choose one, I’ll say Wiccan, if only because that’s the group that would be most likely to accept me.
Angel of the Lord, we seem to have a few things in common. I’m a Christian whose best friends are Wiccans and who’s been mistaken for Wiccan. E-Mail me off-line if you’d like to talk about this some more.
CJ
I’m reading about “spellwork” here. Some of you are performing little rituals, lighting candles, and burning incense. Is this really “magic”? (Oh, and JavaMaven1, the rhyming does seem a bit melodramatic to me as well.)
Most people who haven’t heard of modern witchcraft might think that “magic” is turning people into newts and flying around on broomsticks. But it seems that witchcraft is the act of influencing people and bringing a certain outcome to certain events. From what I’ve read though, the spells seem to be just a form of stylized prayer. (I hope I’m not offending anyone. I really am curious about it – how it works, and so on. And I’ve only had two sips of coffee so far this morning so my thoughts aren’t yet in order.) Do the spells and rituals work? Or are they only as effective on ineffective as praying to a Christian/Jewish/Muslim deity?
Let’s say you have a situation. I don’t want to get into curses, as I know they are supposed to return to the sender threefold. Let’s say you perform a spell to get a better job. If you get a better job after performing a spell, did the spell work? Or would you have gotten the better job anyway? A psychologist might say that no “magic” happened, but performing the spell may have reduced pre-interview anxiety so that you had a more positive attitude going in. In this case a witch would say that the spell was successful, while a non-witch would say that there was no cause-and-effect. So what is “magic”?
I consulted a very successful psychic back in the 1980s. She was 100% wrong. Another psychic was also wrong on all counts, except that he said I would buy a blue car. I had no intention of buying a car, but I needed a new car a few months later and my dad bought a used one that I bought from him, and it happened to be blue. Precgnition? Or coincidence?
I’m cleaning out my apartment so that the owners can put in new carpet. In the process, I came across my old runestones. I don’t remember if they said anything that turned out to happen. Again back in the 1980s, I made a “water witch” – two L-shaped wire rods. I never dug for water where they said to dig; but I did find that if I held them parallel and walked slowly toward a person, they would diverge a couple of feet before I reached the person and grew wider the closer I got. Magic? Aura detection? Or a subconscious tilt of my hands? (I did make an effort not to consciously move my hands.)
What exacty is “magic”, as it is practiced today?
Depends whom you ask.
Based on my own experience and intuition, I’m given to believe in low-level forces that are difficult or impossible to objectively verify but that I’ve felt myself. I also feel that these forces can be shaped in certain ways by the correctly-focused will.
I completely understand that a lot of people think that the above is complete hooey, and I’m not really interested in getting into an argument about it any more than I’m interested in getting into an argument about whether the Gods exist or not, because it just has to do with interpreting my sensations of the world, which are personal and unfalsifiable, etc., etc. So if you don’t like the above paragraph, just put it into parentheses for a little while. Thank you.
On a more objective level, oftentimes a spell will have to do not so much with external events but also with your internal reactions to them. A spell for academic success, for example, might have more to do with one’s own focus.
Therefore, whether it’s one’s effect on subtle forces or one’s effect on one’s own mind, ritual magick as I practice it means using ritual in ways that focus your will on things that are sometimes difficult to get ahold of.
What I mean is that if you just sit there and resolve to, say, do better in school, that doesn’t really give you much to latch on to, as it were. But if you do a ritual, with lots of incense and correspondences and herbs and charms and such like, those give you something to latch on to, something tangible that you’ve done that is meaningful and helps you subconsciously to carry forward what it is you mean to do.
It basically means convincing your subconscious, through methods that are pleasing to it, into doing something your consciousness wants it to do. It’s not always easy to do that, so we do it concretely in a much more tangible way than we would otherwise have to do.
So whatever you may think of subtle forces, as I deal with it, a charm, an herb, whatever, doesn’t have any power by itself - if you put it under a Geiger counter it won’t ping, or whatever. Roses are for love because they make your subconscious think of love. Ritual items have value as a symbol for one or the other thing that you’re trying to control directly in your own mind.
Pagan Unifriend checking in. Mostly Wiccan praxis, UU upbringing, Quaker leanings. Mixed heritage with mixed practice in a group that has been meeting for over a decade. (Include some Native American, a bit of Japanese to balance out the Celtic, and borrow from everyone.)
Johnny L.A.. not too bad for just a few sips of coffee!
Yes, IMHO, ‘magic’ and ‘spellwork’ are ritualized prayer. You perform certain actions and ask for what you want. You are also expected to get off your behind and go for it, too. It is seen (at least in my circle) as a two way street. You ask for the perfect car. You don’t expect someone to drive it up and park it on your driveway and hand you the keys. You have to go look, too. Just like prayer. Ask people if prayer works, and you’ll get two answers, too - depends on the faith of the person you ask. Could be coincidence, but could be not. I’ve found a huge load of coincidences in my life occur after spellwork, but then, I’ve got a fertile imagination, too. For me, I define my experiences in a meaningful way, but don’t expect anyone else to believe me. Kinda hard to define if prayer or spellwork ‘really works’ when you also take action on your own. But sometimes the coincidences are very well timed.
I don’t always use spells to get what I want, though - often enough, the universe just provides it if I ask. I despair on a Friday over a money issue, and on Saturday someone gives me money (or it arrives in the mail) - and always JUST BARELY enough for what I needed. No way for me to have predicted it, no spellwork done, but I asked, and was answered in perfect timing with exactly what I needed, no more, no less.
We’ve also done work for other people, friends with a new business, etc. The work seems to work, but you can’t exactly run a control in this kind of situation. No way to do the alternate experiment and see if things would have worked out differently. We did spells, the things we asked for happened (often the next day), was it coincidence or not?
If we’d prayed in a Christian sense, there’s be the same question, no? Some people say that prayer does have a measurable impact, too - like the study I just read about (can’t remember where, sorry) that showed a statistically significantly higher success rate for infertility treatments when the couple was prayed for (and they and the staff didn’t know who was being prayed for!) - I believe it was double the usual success rate at that clinic for the prayer group. Coincidence? Not? Bad research design? Maybe.
My spells don’t always rhyme, btw. I use some ritual rhymes IN a spell, pretty often, but the body of the spell has to ‘speak’ well - meter is more important than rhyme for me.
I am a mostly solitary wiccan (which basically means that since I’ve always been a loner, I normally prefer to practice alone, rather then with an organized group or coven). Wiccans, and other pagans are an incredibly diverse group. You will rarely find more then a handful with exactly the same beliefs and practices. It’s hard to generalize, so I will only address my personal beliefs.
Spellwork or ritual magik, is simply a ritual religous practice. Similar to Catholic rituals of Mass, or praying with a rosery. Similar to the ritual practices of almost any faith. Incantations rhyme for the same reason songs or poems rhyme, because it makes them easy to remember and pleasant to recite.
“Preforming little rituals, lighting candles, burning inscence” can be used to describe the religous rites of a huge number of religions inlcuding many that are considered far more " mainstream then wicca. And they serve the same purpose in wicca that they serve in any other faith, they are symbols.
For me at least, ritual magik is much more like directed meditation then “watch in wonder as I produce effects out of thin air”. (which is why I generally spell it magik when refering to ritual practices, and magic, when referring to stage magic). The ritual items and incantations used help me to direct and focus my will. But I agree with ** mattmcl ** they are just symbols. They don’t have any inate power. The only power they have is the power of their meaning to me. Does it work? Does prayer work? Does saying Mass for the sick help to make them well? For me, yes magik works. It fills my need to “do something” even in situations where there may be nothing literal I can do to control the situation (or where I feel like I’ve already done everything I can). This is the same need, that brings many people to pray. It makes me feel better. If I work a ritual for release from a troubling situation (I don’t work rituals for money, for me, it seems crass) and then my situation changes, bringing some improvement, do I think that the ritual caused the change. Not necessarily. The ritual may have simply made me more open to a possibility that I couldn’t see clearly before. Maybe thinking positively just but me in the right frame of mind, or maybe that would have been the outcome, ritual or no ritual. There’s no way to to tell. But rituals are calming to me, so it certainly didn’t hurt. My grandmother firmly believes that burying St. Joseph in her yard helped her sell her house. Did it help in a physical sense? I doubt it (imagines little plastic saints crawling out of the ground to influence potential buyers shudder). Did it help her stop stressing quite so much, absolutely.
The human spirt has amazing power. I truely believe that properly harnessed and directed this power can infulence the world around me, or at least my perception of it. That is the heart of magik for me, and really it’s not all that strange a belief.
I hope this makes sense, and I hope it helps you in your qust to broaden your understanding Johnny L.A.. Feel free to ask questions either here or by e-mail. I wish you well.
-Pandora
*My mother is Catholic, so since I have the most background in that faith I tend to use it in examples. By no means is catholisim the only religion that could be used in those examples.
I believe this mostly as well. The only time I would use spellwork, and have, is when I want to affect my psychological self in some way.
Hypothetical example: If I wanted to stop smoking, I would probably perform a spell to help me do that, in addition to physically making a concerted effort to stop. From a psychological point of view, I have put in my brain the subconcious message that I will stop smoking, and on the physical level I am doing everything in my power to make that come to pass. This can be a very effective combination when trying to take control of yourself.
To take this one step further, I believe that mass media advertising is another form of spellwork, where subconcious messages are being transmitted into your brain, thereby subtley compelling you to buy an item when you have the opportunity. Advertising agencies already make effective use of symbols(logos), rhyme(slogans and jingles) and repetition (you see or hear the same ad over and over). They just don’t call it magick as such.
As to the rhyming, yes it makes the spells easier to rememeber, but that in itself is powerful. Rhyme makes it easier for your subconcious mind to remember the spell as well. When your subconcious mind remembers, the spells become even more effective.
From what I’ve read some of the differences between wicca and druidry are that:
- Druidry is older while wicca is a fairly new religion
- Wicca acknowledgesa God and a Goddess as its major deities while druidy has no particular dogma and leaves it up to the individual which deities they wish to follow
- Druids do not celebrate all of the holidays that wiccans celebrate
Some things that I’ve read although do not remember where were that while Wicca is focused on feminity and the lunar cycle, Druidry is based off of the solar cycle and masculinity. I do not know the accuracy of this however.
Here are some links to the topic
What’s the Difference between Wicca and Druidry?
This one has one question regarding the matter, but this entire document seems to be very OBOD specific
The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids FAQ
I think there have been some pretty good descriptions of spellwork so far - great description, matt mcl.
I’d just like to add something I think about how and why spells often seem to work. Let’s assume I have a problem, and I decide to do a spell for it. Before I can gather my materials and write the text, I have to clearly identify what the exact issue is, and exactly what I want the outcome to be. In order to do that, I have to look at the problem from all angles, pick it up and sniff it, find out how much it weighs, really get to know what it is. Usually in the middle of this process, I start having ideas on how I can take care of it - and end up right along with JavaMaven1 and JustPlainBryan, using the practical solutions.
Even if I complete the process and actually perform the spell I’ve been planning, really knowing what the issue is and what I want to happen is a huge part of the solution. How else can I influence myself? If I’m vague and aimless, well… you get back what you put in.
I firmly believe that no matter what faith you are (if any), taking a detailed look at your concerns helps tremendously with finding an answer. The better you know your enemy, the better you can form a strategy, no?
Forgot to add:
I do attend rituals for the holidays - but they are very different from spellwork. The rituals themselves are a celebration, much closer to prayer (IMHO).
If I may be permitted a gross generalization, spellwork seems to be about what I want - rituals are more for showing gratitude for what already is.
solitary eclectic wiccan witch girl here! i’ve been practicing wicca for about 3 years now, it’s great. i’m more into the religion than the magickal aspect though - i rarely cast spells, and they’re almost exclusively healing spells. most of my friends are christian (one friend is even a bible-thumper…) but most are open-minded and some are even interested in wicca. i have several wiccan friends, and they’re pretty much the nicest people i know.
i’m pretty lazy and usually skip Ritual unless i feel like it - to me, prayer is just as effective. plus, it’s more convenient since i tend to forget things (wait… august 1st… oh yeah, it’s lughnasadh… d’oh!).