Witchcraft

Image: Scott Free

WHAT WITCHCRAFT IS AND WHAT IT ISN'T

• Witchcraft is animist, pantheistic and ancestral
  
• It is not a religion (in the technical sense) as we do not worship (in the technical sense)
  
• A witch is born a witch (although the power of making and changing requires rites of passage: initiation into a coven of other witches where possible, doing it for oneself where one finds it impossible to find others).
  
• One cannot - one day - after being a Christian, a Buddhist, a something else, just up and say 'Oh, I think I'll try Witchcraft next' even though many witches have been caught in the lost places because they didn't have a mirror.
  
• Witchcraft and Wicca are not the same thing (they're close, but so are Druidry, Shamanism, Tao, Voudoun and most indigenous 'sorceries'. We all recognise an ability to be in more places than one simultaneously, to move between one reality and another, to affect change in mutuality with life itself in whatever form it chooses to present itself, and at the behest of the Déithe, and according to fate, destiny, geis, expertise or random factors perhaps quite beyond any of the aforementioned).
  
• What Witchcraft does not have is a hierarchy of better-than and lesser-than or a standard, pay-as-you-go structured training method that goes from a to z, with mail-out grading and/or ranking according to theories learned according to the associated authorities. So you won't be disappointed if we don't join you up. So if you're paying you're with the wrong crew.
  

TAKING THINGS TO PIECES

ANIMA (AND NOTHING IS WITHOUT IT; NOTHING IS INANIMATE)
The vital principle; source of energy and creative action; soul; life. It can as easily be called imramma, chi, chaiah, prana. It applies to EVERYTHING, including all that we can perceive, test, measure, monitor, imagine ... and everything we cannot, but that's here anyway (despite how clever we think we are).

PANTHEON (AND EACH IS UNIQUE, JUST AS EVERYTHING IS UNIQUE)
The gods of a people: tribally, ancestrally, collectively (but not indiscriminately).
Over the years each of us at WildWood Gate has studied a vast variety of mythologies, religious ideologies, magical and mystical traditions because they're interesting (we study and explore other things as well but that's not valid here) but we're 'Celts' (please note the rabbit-ears, because, in truth, the term Celt is a blanket term used to describe many people of many tribes and clans that dwell/t outside of the limits of written history) and even though many of us are mongrels, with other wonderful blood-lines mixed in, the strongest strain is 'Celtic', and, more particularly Gaeilge (with some Albanach and Sasanach) and our Déithe know us because we know them.

One thing we honour are our differences. Those differences are not separatist or elitist.

We do not live in the lands of our ancestors but a dog can be born in a stable and that doesn't make it a horse! We learn as much about the spiritual traditions and cultures of the indigenous people of the land in which we do live to not presume upon their custodial rights and to be certain to do nothing, either culturally or magically, that will interfere in the pattern that is the Dreamtime. Respect for the differences in the relationship to the pantheons of others has been horribly and disgustingly ignored by Christianity (until fairly recently, and now it's too late) who have been as responsible for the genocide of every indigenous people - their cultures, their spiritual understandings, their natural relationships to the land, their lineage, their arts, their language, their sexuality, their relationships to their elders, the survival of their children, their capacity for self-determination and, most enduringly, their self respect.

The British Empire is a 'Roman' thing, and as the integrity of the tribes and the clans was [almost] destroyed ("By way of a hostile sword" Bede) and the unique flamboyance of the majority was replaced by a uniform drabness only broken by the unconscious fighting spirit still obvious at the World Cup. The ways of the draíocht, however, are still here, as are the tribes and the clans ... waking from the Underworld where the Déithe moved with Imramma until it seemed safe enough to walk without [too much] fear.

Our D éithe are the pantheon of the 'Celtic' inheritance. That's just those currently with WildWood Gate. The Gods and the Goddesses of your inheritance are intimately connected to who you are rather than anything I've got to say. What is important, however, is that you KNOW them and to not merely just pick a pantheon, any pantheon AND (more dangerous than stupid) all gods are NOT one god and all goddesses are NOT one goddess (that's Dion Fortune who was FOL and never claimed to be a witch. Her catchphrase has been expounded by Wiccans for decades - that's fine if they choose to engage in a dualist form of monotheism but that is not Witchcraft - just thought I'd mention it because I've heard it so often that it's bound to be one of somebody's questions).

ANCESTRY (LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING)

If you take such theories as the big bang into account (and it's as viable theory as anything else if you feel the necessity to consider anything as having a beginning) then 'we' must, logically, have been there, in the ancestral sense, as nothing comes from nothing (duh!), even if it is (in difference to was - I'm sure you'll work with me here!) merely as the possibility of energy as we consider energy to be. The same applies if you throw away the entire illusion of a beginning and consider the concept of a continuum and consider that possibly we don't know everything [consciously].

We're the off-spring of that immortality. We may be sun and moon and sea and stone and person and rat and mountain lion and retro-virus and all but we're still bloody-well related! And everything is unique but relative to everything else ("divided for love's sake on the chance of union").

Our ancestors (even into the far-flung memory of a trillion billion light years from now, into both 'past' and 'future') are the gods. They're not myth and legend and religion but they can be represented within them, just as simply as one or other might have passed you on the street today.

If that sounds irreverent to anyone reading this then you'd be mistaken. In the truest sense of the word - it is awesome!

TABLES AND RULES (EXCUSE ME???)

There is a habit of comparisons that is quite a current trend. Many texts have written (for example) that Goddesses such as Artemis (Greek), Diana (Roman) and Epona (Celtic) are really the same Goddess; the same people want to tell you that Pan (Greek) and Cernunnos (Celtic) are really the same God.

This is some deep linear desire to compartmentalise the Déithe ... why? Well, go ahead and draw up your tables of correspondences and cross-references. Little good it will do you. It certainly won't endear you to the Déithe and it certainly won't 'make' you a witch!

Witchcraft is very much a process of integrating our awareness of ourselves - as a species - with everything else, removing the false sense of isolation and inequality that is humanity's angst at it's psychological alienation from the Big Picture (life, forever and everything).

WHO WE ARE

WILDWOOD GATE
by Ly de Angeles ©,
From THE FEAST OF FLESH AND SPIRIT, 2002

Inside is one thing;
Outside is something else again;
Yet there is not truly 'inside' nor 'out'
Only the Gate that seemingly divides the two ...
And yet does not ...
All places and perspectives are related -
Somewhere expresses one thing,
somewhere else - something else again.
And, in truth, the Gate cannot divide the seeming one thing
from the seeming something else;
but allows a conscious access from one thing to something else;
allows the illusion of personal territory,
a place to be and a space to be that gives perspective to one of the other ...
And none of the above tells anything
of which side of the Gate one is on;
whether there is a side
or whether the WildWood is everywhere and is, itself, the Gate to something else.
What WildWood Gate is, however,
Is WildWood Gate.

The Covenant of WildWood Gate is made up of both an inner circle, who are all initiated witches, and an outer circle of very close allies who have trained in the public forums called Walking the Web - these are intense training forums that continue over many months, whereby the individuals work together to attack the seduction of contemporary emotional and spiritual value systems, seek beyond the structured patterns of behaviour and thinking, so to enable each of them to live in such a way that is ultimately honourable to the understanding of each.

Over these months (and in some cases, years) we explore what magic is traditionally, in all its current and historic representations, we explore quantum physics, time, attitude, sensory and extra-sensory awareness, codes of living, morality, ethics, the conceptual divine, religions in general, mythology, ideology, strategy and tactics.

We have all become very close as a result of mutual challenge and intellectual honesty. Some have gone their own way over the years but most keep contact, and many of us live within easy communication distance to each other.

This method of learning/teaching is, unfortunately, only truly possible by word of mouth, as many situations are adaptable depending upon circumstance.

We have decided to enter the Covenant onto this site for the dual purpose of both dispelling inaccurate information and opening a forum of discussion whereby you may also perhaps ask some of those questions or raise some of those topics that are considered 'off the wall' in mainstream pagan and occult presentation.

The Covenant of WildWood Gate is quite anarchistic and appreciate unique (if not lengthy) dialogue. Please feel that you can write to us with questions that you haven't succeeded in having answered. If your questions are stupid, have already been answered elsewhere than the forum, are intended as a shit-stir or if you are born-again anything we will reserve the right to re-direct you, ignore you, banish or curse you (in that order). Should we not know the answer to intelligent questions we will find out.

GO GCUMHDAÍ IS DTREORAÍ NA DÉITHE THÚ
"May the gods guard and guide you"

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