Embracing Christian Spirits As A Witch
This is an interesting article I came across, offering a different perspective – someone coming from witchcraft and incorporating other elements in time. I explored and am exploring traditional witchcraft after working in ceremonial and hermetic practices first. Love seeing good discussion on these topics!
Agreeing with the article, working with spirits in a cosmology does not necessitate belief in the exoteric religion of the cosmology. As is noted here, Saints usually are older than the Christian religion that stole them away- its an interface to that spirit, one of the benevolent dead that was able to a cohesive entity after death and who has been working with the living for potentially thousands of years. Also, when working with spirits, in this case celestial and infernal, use the tool set and tech most applicable to the work. Find ways of communicating to ancestors in ceremonial language they understand. See what comes with communication. If a practice is not to your liking, do not engage again but always respect the spirits involved. You can banish, admonish and dismiss them, yet be respectful.
There are a few authors I would recommend to read if curious about medieval witchcraft and how it intersects at times with esoteric Christian belief and local pagan practices to evolve into the something new – sometimes by tradition and sometimes for survival. From these anthropological books, we get access to primary text exploring these beliefs. Yes, they are colored from the bias of the writers, in this case Vatican Italian Inquisitors, but they do not harm these witches, usually only tell them to not accept payment for the work – something I found fascinating and totally divergent from what happened in Spain and later in the Americas. To learn more about the
Benandanti
, the Malandanti
, agrarian witchcraft cults of the alps, why the local goddesses were over written (terrible thing to lose to male priest writers) and just referred to “Diana”, being born with the Caul, souls leaving the body to fight demons for the crops on the ember days, astral warfare for the fate of crops by “good” witches and “bad” witches check out the following( all have reliable english translation when needed):
The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries – Carlo Ginzberg (Italian)
Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath – Carlo Ginzberg (Italian)
Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age –
Éva Pócs (Hungarian)
The Witches’ Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic – Thomas Hastis (American, expands on Ginzberg’s work in depth with more modern understanding of the practice)
This was a hard lesson for me but I eventually came to terms with it. Helps that I have a cousin who is a saint.