Witchcraft, The Truth -By Witches, For Everyone!

Statistics for 2006, Australia

If you add together Pagans, Druids, Wiccans and
nature religions you get over 31,000 under the Pagan umbrella.

When you consider that this is higher than any of Baha'i, Jains, Quakers,
Sikhs or Taoists (added together these only make about 45,000)and is nearing
half of Judaism (88,834)which is considered one off the big three - then we
really should have a higher profile and more legitimate recognition in the
wider community.

Some of us within the Pagan community are actively working towards getting
that recognition within the wider faith communities - it's a slow and
sometimes extremely frustrating process, but progress is being made.

Contrary to some popular and misguided belief, Pagans ARE NOT Satanists. To be a Satanist one must be a Christian because Satan is the Christian god of Evil. Pagans DO worship more than one god (and goddess) but, they are not evil. Evil is a human concept. There is nothing evil in Nature. Truly, Nature can often be harsh, cruel, and unforgiving, but it is not evil.

Pagan Gods and Goddesses represent the duality of being: masculinity and femininity. For example, females are typically the life givers, the nurturers. They give birth and care for the young. Males are the life force and the takers of life. But, females are also fierce protectors of what is in their charge. Mother Earth and Grandfather Death. To have life one must have death.
Paganism as a rule, is an Earth-based religion. Pagans, regardless of the named religion, revere the Earth in all her many aspects.

The "Devil"

Devil and divinity grew out of the same root meaning. Devi (Goddess) or Deva (God) became daeva (Devil) in northern Europe. Old English Divell (Devil) can be traced back to the Roman derivative divus, divi: Gods. So, from a very long time ago, gods and devils have been confused with each other. Which helps us understand why the authors of the bible contradicted themselves so frequently. Judeo-Christian tradition attributed many diabolic acts to God.

He was the sender of pestilence, and famine. He created a terrible hell, and its demons to torture human souls on his order. The christian god caused violent storms, which were, and are still today referred to as "acts of god". Thus god was incongruously invoked to combat himself. god even killed himself in the person of Christ, according to the theological dogma that they were one and the same. god destroyed thousands of his followers for trivial offences (1 Samual 6:19).

Yet churchmen seldom dared to accept the bible's own presentation of god as the maker of evil. And yet, god himself said "I form the light, and create darkness. I make peace, I create evil. (Isaiah 45:7). The christian devil became a composite of ancient deities He was given the goat horns and hooves of Satyr-gods like Pan and Dionysus. The trident of Neptune, the reptilian form of Leviathan and Python, the fiery form of Helios, the female breasts of Astarte-Ishtar, the wolf face of Feronius, the wings the babylonian cherubim, and the claws of ancestral spirits. So with a great purpose the chrisitains made sure they took a physical aspect of every other religion's god, and turned it into something hideous, and of course scary and evil.

But it didn't end there, Now it was time to name this devil. And to do that they once again turned to the rival religions that they were trying to overthrow. So the plethora of names crossed the board in a great array such as: Jupiter, Mercury, Minerva, Venus, Hades, Pluto, Baal-Zebub, Lucifer, Zeus, Chathonios, Sabazius, Belial, Adonis, Sabaoth, Iao, Soter, Emmanuel and Sammael.

Then the christians got specific, and postulated that there should be a devil for each of the deadly sins, so the clergy named then thus: Lucifer for Pride. Mammon for avarice (greed or gain). Asmodeus for lechery. Satan for anger. Beelzebub for gluttony. Leviathan for envy. Belphegor for sloth (laziness) and lastly Belial for iniquity (wickedness). Now if this didn't scare the church's congregation!

The churchmen went on to proclaim "What ever isn't normal is due to the devil. (define normal)? No christian was allowed to disbelieve in the devil. His credibility rested on the same foundation of god. Indeed the very concept of salvation depended on the devil. For if there were no tempter, there was no original sin, no fall, , no hell, no need of a redeemer or a church! And without all of the afore, the church crumbles to the ground, and there goes the control over the people, not to mention - one hell of a paycheque!

It was a severe theological problem to account for god's apparent helplessness to halt the devil's activity. Though Lucifer or Satan was supposed to have been utterly defeated in that famous war in heaven, yet it seems he's still lively and spry! The church could only propose that god permitted the devil's freedom of action. They said "It is not the Witch's ointment nor her incantation that makes her forked stick (broomstick) fly through the air, but the power of the devil, allowed by god." They never explained why the church punished what god allowed.

The christian church fought among them-selves on exactly how to define the difference between Sorcery and Witchcraft, as the distinction was pretty blurry between god, humanity and the devil. The church needless to say, came up with an answer; Sorcery was evoking spirits to "carry out those powers which god permitted the devil." On the other hand, Witchcraft was evoking spirits to "commit acts against his ruling." In practice and reality that definition went like this; A man who asked the devil to help him seduce a woman was not guilty of any crime, because sex was under the devil's jurisdiction, by god's order. Devils who killed children did nothing sinful, for god permitted them to kill children "in order to punish their parents." But for the woman (in this Patriarchal religion) who tried to save her dying child with herbs (the only medicine of the day) was mortally guilty and deserved the death penalty, which she got.

The christian churches decreed that all works of Witches were brought about by the devil with god's permission. Even a Witch who did only good works, like healing the sick and delivering babies within her community, must suffer the same death as a Witch who kept to herself. Thus Witches were placed in a no win situation. One might think an "enlightened " modern society would have given up on the idea of the devil. But a poll taken in 1978 showed two out of five Americans still believe in devils.

The strange viability of devils may arise from their usefulness in assuaging the guilt of god and man, "Both Judaism and Christianity have maintained that god must be given full credit for all the goodness in human history (and that would go back thousands of years...what ever did they do then?) And that men must take the blame for all the evil." Thus, the real purpose of the devil is to take some of this heavy responsibility off frail human shoulders. In short; the devil, not Jesus, was the true scape goat who assumed the burden of men's sins,

Bible

The word for this book came from Byblos, the City of the Great Mother, the oldest continuously occupied temple in the world. The Goddess - called Astarte, Baalat, Hathor etc, patronized learning, and her priestesses collected a library of papyrus scrolls. Therefore, Greeks called any papyrus "byblos", which came to mean any holy book. Hence the "Bible" came to be.

Some of the miracles attributed to biblical heroes were copied from older myths of the Goddess, for example Joshua's arrest of the sun was formally credited to priestesses of Isis. Moses' flowering rod, river of blood, and tablets of the law were all symbols of the ancient Goddess. His miracle of drawing water from a rock was first performed by Mother Rhea after she gave birth to Zeus.

One of the greatest mistakes of christian authorities in the western world was their view of the bible as intrinsically different from other ancient scriptures, in that it was dictated word for word by their god, not collected slowly, rewritten and mis-written, revised and worked over by human beings for centuries in the collective effort to control the people in general, and oppress women in particular.

The King James bible relied heavily on a Greek text collected and edited by Erasmus in the 16th century, which in turn relied on a Byzantine collection put together gradually at Constantinople between the 4th and 8th centuries. More texts have been discovered, the Codex Sinaiticus, the Codex Vaticanus, the codex Alexandrinus, and the Chester Beatty papri. All are fragmentary, all differ from one another and of course from the King James version. There are no known portions of the bible older than the 4th century AD.

The revised version of the new testament published in 1881 tried to correct some of the more glaring errors. It erased the final twelve verses of Mark, which were late interpolations including the words that caused centuries of suffering; "He that believeth not, shall be damned."

Traditionally the church forbade not only research but even reading of the bible by laymen to the extent that in doing so was punishable by burning at the stake, as the law of the lands were governed by the church its self.

Richard Simon's 17th century Critical History of the old testament exhibited the now well known evidence that the books of Moses were not written by Moses, but instead compiled by many hands at a much later date.

As years went on, it became increasingly evident that the bible needed tidying up as people were gaining access to it, reading it, and realizing its corrupt flaws. It was painfully obvious that the stories retold, had been edited to suit the requirements of the dictators of the time, namely the church.

In 1869 the book of biblical essays called the Lux Mundi gave up all pretense of the scriptures' historicity or divine inspiration, admitting that the bible is a confused mass of myth, legend and garbled history.

The real point was that organised christian religion had economic interest in maintaining literal interpretation of biblical myths. When theologians began to give in to the truth, they complained that viewing the bible as myth would destroy the whole structure of their livelihood. After David Straus's Leben Jesu disposed of the historicity of the gospel stories, and Renan's Vie de Jesus showed that the gospels could not be taken as literal truth, but only as romantic symbolism. The Rev Maurice Jones exclaimed "If the Christ-Myth is true, and if Jesus never lived, the whole world has for close on two thousand years lain under the spell of a lie."

The Archbishop of Canterbury found it impossible to deny the bibles lies, and began to back track with his plaintive question, "May not the holy spirit make use of myth and legend?"

So truth was out in the twentieth century, obviously the bible was full of myths and legends, but most theologians had no idea of their meaning. One huge reason was that they had never studied the corresponding myths and legends of far older cultures - ancient Paganism, Mysticism and all other non christian beliefs from around the world. Why? Because the christian Church wanted to convince the world that their god was not only better than everyone else's, but that their god was the only one. And to encourage that, the Church murdered millions of people and destroyed as much evidence of their lies as possible.

To further the dark blot on the history of christian missions was their arrogant vandalism of burning books, artwork, smashing images, forbidding the songs and poetry of Heathen tradition, instead of listening and recording them in order to understand the people, to display a decent respect for what other cultures believed in, as the Romans did in the days of their empire.

Had the missionaries been willing to listen and learn, they would have discovered the mythology of the bible all over again in other off shoots from its original sources, for all peoples from nearly everywhere around the world, shared the same fables of creation, the flood, the magic garden with its tree of life and its primal couple, the wise serpent, the heaven-piercing tower, the divided waters, the chosen people, the virgin mothers, the saviors and all of the rest. It is known and understood that the bible as christians know it, is merely a recent and corrupt derivation from a world wide cycle of archetypal myths.

Despite the numerous discoveries and clarifications made by biblical scholars in the last century or so, the average christian person's attitude toward the bible is still that of belief, this can be understood when one considers that people have lived under the tyranny of the christian dictators for about 100 generations. Living in fear of their lives and considering the alternative of being burned at the stake by the church, many people accepted the new rule of the land. So it is of no surprise that almost 2000 years later, many people of today have it so ingrained in their heads that the bible is the unequivocal truth, that they will still commit murder, and even die themselves in its name. The churchmen don't help matters either, they deliberately see to it that their congregations are not told the true origins of the bible myths.

Erroneous but traditional views of bible origins and meanings are doggedly preserved by male chauvinists in particular, since canonical books were deliberately selected and edited to wipe out all feminine images of divinity and sanction religious suppression of women. It will always be hoped by the clergy, that as long as woman regards the bible as the charter of her rights, she will remain the slave to man.

Another erroneous notion that still keep christian women shackled to their bible-based "inferior" image is the notion that christianity was founded on the new testament, when in fact the early churches had no gospels, but rather created and produced their own! Not only did churchmen falsely pretend an apostolic origin for their scriptures; they weeded out all references to female authority or participation in christian beginnings. Even St. Jerome openly admitted that his co-authors of the Vulgate bible were two learned women; but later scholars erased the women's names and substituted the words "venerable brothers."

(source for "devil" and "bible" unknown, if you know the author,let us know so we can give due credit)

The Age Newspaper, March 23, 2004

Strange brew

March 23, 2004

Witchcraft is growing in popularity but today's pagans are more interested in self-improvement than in casting nefarious spells. Claire Halliday reports.

If you believe statistics, Melbourne is the witch capital of Australia. According to the 2001 census there are 4155 pagans in the metropolitan area � the highest concentration in Australia. Another 1459 lurk mysteriously elsewhere in Victoria.

Are more people falling under witchcraft's spell? There is no doubt. The number of Australians identifying themselves as either witches or wiccans more than quadrupled in the five years between the last two censuses.

Pagans in the Pub, Pagan Awareness Network and the Pagan Alliance are just a few Melbourne organisations for those who want to come out of the "broom closet".

With these strangely bedazzling statistics and groups, the definition of a witch is changing with the times.

Leonie is proud to announce her witchery but the location of her coven is secret witches' business. "Just say it's in the inner suburbs," she says.

What goes on there, Leonie, 34, says, is simply a celebration of nature and a rejoicing in the seasons of the sun and moon through chanting, dancing, invocations and laughing. Not a warty nose or a broomstick in sight.

In the Coburg backyard of her friend and fellow member of the Pagan Alliance, Lilith, Leonie dons a soft red robe and offers a taste of these celebrations in the witches' circle that Lilith has constructed near the corrugated iron shed.

It's hardly atmospheric. Lilith's three dogs compete for attention, her teenage son trots a steady path from inside to out (in the process of repairing his pushbike) and Leonie's son appears from the house waving a Carlton Football Club flag.

But still they chant. Witchcraft, says Lilith � a nurse in the regular world � is about celebrating diversity. Everything is beautiful in its own way.

"You don't really question things when you're little," Leonie says. "I became a witch when I started to search for something that made more sense to me."

So much sense that, shunning the initial ceremony attached to the Christian marriage between her and husband Peter, 35, the couple recently renewed their vows, witch-style with a hand-fasting ceremony, a pagan form of marriage.

"It just felt right," Leonie says. "It meant a lot more to us."

In the 1996 census, 1849 people identified themselves as either witches or wiccan; in the 2001 census, the number had grown to 8755. Identifying under the umbrella term of "pagan" (including witches, druids, heathens and shamans), the 1996 census numbers were about 10,000, compared to 20,000 in 2001.

"It is clearly growing in popularity," says Dr Douglas Ezzy, senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Tasmania. Regarded by many to be one of the foremost local experts on the subject, Dr Ezzy was the editor of a book compiled by modern-day witches, Practising the Witch's Craft, an overview of the various witchcraft traditions in Australia.

As an academic who has studied witchcraft for about 10 years, Ezzy says that the misrepresentation of the practice is something that he is particularly sensitive to and that the definition of a witch has become more varied.

"Witchcraft used to be about people who followed the rituals and practices of the Gardnerian witchcraft Book of Shadows (a book of rituals sort of like the Anglican book of prayer). But now there is a huge variety of people who call themselves witches," he says.

"But, in the same way that there are different versions of Christianity, there are different traditions within witchcraft. Some of these traditions have strict criteria for who can or cannot claim to be a member of their tradition."

And the charm of witchery?

According to Ezzy "in this increasingly fast-paced and materialistic world, followers can reclaim the sacred and spiritual aspects of their lives".

Due to the associated stigma, Ezzy suspects that the census figures are a substantial underestimation. Ezzy also cites the large proportion of younger people whose parents may not correctly record their children's beliefs.

Media stereotyping has done little to redress mainstream fears.

"The witches on Buffy or Charmed or The Craft place a great deal of emphasis on spells and fighting demons. Most real witches don't do these things. Witchcraft is much more about self-development and self-understanding," he says.

"The other media image of witchcraft as a dangerous 'cult' is based on medieval stereotypes and Monty Python. In my opinion going to a witchcraft ritual is no more dangerous than going to a Catholic Mass, a Pentecostal prayer meeting, or to watch the football. There are dangerous people in all walks of life, and witchcraft is no exception."

In recent years a strengthening and solidarity within the local pagan and witch community has come about through the internet and meetings. Although there is not one centralised organisation, umbrella groups such as Pagans in the Pub do co-ordinate regular gatherings where members meet monthly.

Gavin Andrew, state co-ordinator of the Pagan Awareness Network � a pagan education and advocacy organisation � says such groups are an important first port of call for likeminded people.

Andrew says he developed an interest in the occult when he was a teenager and found the history of witchcraft far more fascinating than "sitting in church singing doleful hymns".

Not all in society see such beliefs as positive. In June last year City of Casey councillor Rob Wilson, who was last week elected mayor, issued a press release accusing witches of trying to attack and "take over" the municipality in Melbourne's south-east.

Naming a local witch in his press release, Wilson suggested that the witch's religion made her a threat to the community. Wilson also called on local churches to hold a day of prayer to ward off the forces of darkness.

Letters to the local papers revealed a deep divide in the community.

"The Pagan Awareness Network has been pursuing him through the Equal Opportunity Commission of Victoria and VCAT, using religious vilification laws," says Andrew who hopes for a result that will embrace religious diversity, rather than scaremongering.

Faedrah, who opened The Witchy Shop in Warrandyte about 12 months ago, runs daily workshops for people wishing to stick a toe into the bubbling cauldron of bedevilment.

"We get a mix of women and men coming in," Faedrah says.

At The Esoteric Bookshop in Murrumbeena, proprietor David Wilson-Steer says the most popular items are "herbs, charcoal (and) candles fairly evenly distributed between male and female customers".

Australian witches have had to re-jig some of the information in the most widely-read witchcraft tomes in order to cater for our Southern Hemisphere differences.

"Most cast their circles anti-clockwise. In the Northern Hemisphere it's the other way. Real witches in Australia celebrate Halloween at the end of April but most people would think of it as being in October," he says.

With his partner Julie Snodgrass, David Wilson-Steer first opened The Esoteric Bookshop in Hawthorn 12 years ago where the business relied heavily on the passing trade of private schoolgirls doing the ritual teenage flirtation with purple and patchouli.

The recent move to Murrumbeena, with less passing pedestrian traffic, has seen a move to people more seriously interested in the necessary ingredients that witchcraft requires.

Today, according to a website, is International Witches Meetup Day, where witches in more than 612 cities worldwide will get together. A read of the website reveals a collection of mostly university-aged women, who, in Melbourne at least, have voted on an inner-city cafe for their meeting tonight. Cafe owners take note: the witches gathering at your establishment may not be easily identifiable by dress or ritual chanting.

"We just like to get together for a drink like everyone else," Lilith says.

Gavin Andrew can laugh about the stereotypes that most people conjure up when they think of a witch. The reality, he says, is quite mundane. A modern-day witch could easily be dressed in slacks and a cardigan at the desk next to you.

"Many of us don't even bother with the robes and wands and other accessories that have become associated with us," Andrew says. "We do tend to wear a lot of black though . . . it's slimming."