This is a hangover from another thread.



Well it certainly makes sense to me too, otherwise I wouldn't think this way.

I have no clue how spirit interacts with the physical universe other than it's probably some kind of lucid dream. When this dream of life is over, we wake up to our true spiritual essence. And that’s the way it works. The actual physics of what spirit is, or how we become manifest in a physical body inside a lucid dream of life is beyond the scope of my brain.

As far as reconciling this with the Goddess and God concept of Witchcraft, that's easy.

All religions are manmade myths. The folklore behind Witchcraft is no different, IMHO.

This should not be taken as an insult by any witch, because this is precisely what many books on witchcraft imply. Witches believe in all sorts of pantheons, and spiritual concepts, including pantheism and/or animism. Even the ones who speak in terms of polytheistic pantheons often recognize that all is one. They recognize that even the individual gods of their various pantheons are manifestation of the “Great Spirit”.

The Goddess and God the of Witchcraft are typically seen as the very first gods of the pantheon which is the Great Spirit. The Goddess and God represent the Yin and the Yang of the Great Spirit. They are facets on the crystal of the Great Spirit that we use for the purpose of communication and interaction.

Let me begin by comparing this with the Mediterranean (or biblical) idea of God and show how it is significantly different. This is important, not for the purpose of comparing religions to show why one religion is better than the other, but rather my intent here is simply to show how it is significantly different.

In the biblical picture there is a Great Spirit called God. However, that God is given an ego. It is a confessed jealous God (by the very doctrine of that religion). It has egotistical wants. It wants to be worshiped. This is the focus of that religion. The whole religion is based on worshiping and pleasing that egotistical God. That’s what it’s all about. The focus of that religion is that everyone will be judged based on whether or not they have worshiped and pleased that God.

Well the religion of Witchcraft is entirely different.

It still only has one God. The Great Spirit. However that Great Spirit is not worried about being worshipped. That’s not its agenda. It has no agenda to become recognized as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords over all mortal men. That’s just not an ambition of the Great Spirit. This is not why the Great Spirit created life as we know it.

The Great Spirit created life for us to enjoy. This is the purpose of life. Does the Great Spirit care how we behave? Witches believe that it does. Do as ye will and harm none. This is what witches believe the Great Spirit desires. However, they also believe that the Great Spirit wants us to appreciate and enjoy creation. After all, what would be the point in creating a creation if no one is allowed to enjoy it?

So the idea is that the Great Spirit of which we are children wants us to enjoy life, and is ever willing to help us enjoy life. You can pray to the Great Spirit for help.

Now this is where the folklore gets interesting.

In order for humans to communicate with the Great Spirit they have created pantheons of gods. These are not separate gods in their own right. Instead they are seen as facets of the Great Spirit. No one is putting any God “before” the creator. There is only one creator. All the Gods and Goddesses of the pantheons are merely facets of this creator. And to be more precise, they are facets that have been created by the imagination of man.

Does this make them invalid? No, not at all. There are merely different ways of envisioning a communiqué with the Great Spirit.

The polytheistic pantheon in Witchcraft begins with the Goddess and the God. These represent the Yin and the Yang of the Great Spirit. They aren’t truly deities in their own right. They are just facets of the Great Spirit. At least this is how I’ve been taught to view them and it works well for me. I imagine there are no doubt come covens who will demand that their Goddess and God are indeed real ‘people’.

I’m just not going to get into that. For me, they represent the Yin and the Yang of the Great Spirit. And yes, I do view them as individual ‘deities’ for the purpose of my own imagination. But at the same time I recognize that this is precisely what’s going on. This doesn’t mean that I’m making them up. The essence of what they are is the Great Spirit. And I believe in the Great Spirit. Therefore the Goddess and the God are every bit as real as the Great Spirit, because this is what they ultimately represent.

It’s an abstraction. A pantheon. A means of communiqué with God.

I can speak or pray to the Goddess or the God and know that the Great Spirit is listening through them. It’s not an insult to the Great Spirit. The Great Spirit is omniscient. . The Great The Great Spirit is in everything and therefore can be imagined in whatever way we choose

So why bother with a Goddess and a God at all?

Well this is where the religion gets quite interesting. The Goddess and the God are seen in specific ways, always reflecting some facet of the Great Spirit which is omniscient. The most popular associations in witchcraft is that the Goddess is associated with the Moon, and the God is associated with the Sun.

The idea behind these associations are two-fold. One is that these objects have very definite cycles that can be followed, thus giving the ‘worshipers’ a sense of time structure in their lives. If you meet with the Goddess in a ritual at every full moon then chances are that you are going to want to show her the accomplishment that you have done in the intervening month. This forces the practitioners of this religion to accomplish things. Otherwise they will be ashamed of their sloth when it comes time to meet with the Goddess.

Seriously though. You can either think of it as being pushed along so you don’t need to explain why you’ve accomplished nothing. Or you can think of it as being given incentive so that you can ‘show off’ your works to the Goddess at the next ritual.

In either case, it forces a timely communiqué with the Goddess. The Heavenly Mother.

The Sun is also in its cycle. And the practitioners who have a relationship with this Heavenly Father also revere it at specific times of the year. Typically at the solstices and equinoxes as well as the midway points between those obvious quarterly times. So once again. You want to be able to show the God your achievements. No achievement means that you are wasting your life, and therefore you have no appreciation of life. It would be silly to worship a God praising God for the gift of life if you don’t even value life. And if you aren’t doing anything with your live, then clearly you don’t value it.

So the Motherly Moon Goddess and the Fatherly Sun God serve a very practical purpose. Plus there are heavenly lights in the sky. Actual objects you can worship and praise. Keep in mind all the time, you are not worshiping the moon and the sun. You are worshiping the Great Spirit, and recognizing it through these Great Symbols of Yin and Yang.

These aren’t “false Gods”. They are merely faces of the Great Spirit. The one and only creator of all.

This is what so many people do not understand. They think witches worship specific deities that are somehow in competition with the biblical God or whatever. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Witches worship the creator of this universe. The one and only Great Spirit. There is no other. If the people who created the image of the biblical God want to worship that pantheon as an image of the Great Spirit then so be it. That’s their pantheon of the Great Spirit. Their folklore and mythology. They worship the same God. They’ve just painted him with an egotistical face as someone who needs to be worshiped and will get peeved if you don’t view him in this way. That’s their war paint that they have put on the face of the Great Spirit. That’s how they have come to view the Great Spirit. Purely masculine and egotistical with an obsession to rule and be worshiped. No Yin required. It’s a purely macho God.

The witches view God as both mother and father. Although some folklore claim that the Goddess gave birth to the God. However, I personally feel that this has to do with the folklore of the winter solstice. The waning sun represent the God “dying” and taking the life force with him. But then he is reborn and returns for yet another plentiful year of summer. The God never truly dies. It’s just a parable. The God is reborn every year. But it’s always the same God. It’s an endless dance. Also this very same God impregnates the Goddess around April. Thus impregnating her for the next cycle. But it’s all analogy and parable to the cycles of nature. Not to be taken literally.

The Goddess is also seen as the Earth. Not just the moon. And the God is also seen as the animal and plant life. Not just the Sun. In this vision the God is seen as the Horned God. Some traditions view the Horned God and the Sun God as being separate deities. I view them as being one in the same. They both represent the Yang of the Great Spirit. Same with the Earth and Moon. They both represent the Yin of the great spirit, the Goddess.

So many cultures have created various images and pantheons of these Goddess and God pictures. However, I’m giving you the purest abstraction of it. Which is much how I view it.

Witchcraft doesn’t stop there. It goes on.

Since, witchcraft takes the omniscient of the Great Spirit very seriously, they view all the forces of nature as being further facets of the Great Spirit. They speak in terms of the spiritual elements. Earth, Air, Fire, and water. They attribute specific spiritual elements to these things as follows.



Earth (as an element) = physical manifestation (this is considered Yin)
Air = wisdom, intellect, reason, logos (this is considered Yang)
Fire = Passion, Energy, Creativity (this is considered Yang)
Water = Emotion, Love, pathos (this is considered Yin)

These four elements also represent the real world. There really is Earth, Air, Fire, and Water in the real world. In fact, in a very real sense we are made of these spiritual elements. Especially if you accept the definitions given in the equations above.

Witches go further yet!

They believe that magick. And they define magick as follows:

Magick – The science and art of transformation in conformity with will

Please note that this is one of potentially many definitions. None this less I feel that this definition is abstract enough for the purposes here.

What are they transforming? Spiritual elements.

What are the spiritual elements?

Earth, Air, Fire and Water?

Not really. Those are just their symbols.

They are really:

Manifestation, Mind, Energy and Emotion.

Witches transform Manifestations, Mind, Energy and Emotion.

These are all connected for a witch and can be transformed one into the other.

During a spell they use Emotion, to raise Energy, which they then focus via their Mind, to cause Manifestation.

However, witches use these spiritual elements on a regular basis. They are symbolized by Earth, Air, Fire and Water and are even believed to exist within these physical substances since God is truly omniscient (.i.e. Spirit is in everything)

Thus witches don’t hesitate to use these physical substances or elements in their spells. They are SPIRIT!

Because of this, the witches pantheon often grows to include “spirit guides”. The Elemental Spirits. Again, these are not truly thought of as individual gods in their own right (although we may think of them in that way), but in truth, they are just yet additional facets of the Great Spirit.

This is why witches can go from one tribe to another and respect the Gods of the other tribe. Because the witch knows that all Gods and all Spirits are all just facets of the same underlying Great Spirit.

So there’s no conflict. No egotistical jealous God. All gods are just a facet of the Great Spirit.

This is how I view witchcraft Sky.

It’s a mythological pantheon. This is true.

But it’s one that makes perfect sense to me.

Is it invented by man?

Well, yes and no.

The precise folklore and mythological aspect of it is invented by man. This is true.

But the fact that God is omniscient in nature and has both a Yin and Yang aspects is not made up, IMHO.

The Idea that Earth, Air, Fire and Water, nicely represent, Manifestation, Mind, Energy, and Love is also a really cool idea as far as I’m concerned.

And the spellcraft of using Emotion to raise Energy, to transform via the Mind, into Manifestation. Seems to work.

So the traditions and folklore of witchcraft fit in very well with my world picture and don’t conflict with it in any way. It’s just a pantheon that helps me to organize all the different aspects of the omniscient Great Spirit.

It’s not what I used to believe. I think a lot of witches may have indeed created pantheons that they take very seriously. Some of them may even believe that their deities are real (just like the Christians believe their God to have an ego).

Sure, my Goddess and God are real. But I won’t argue over their names, their history, or anything like that. They are just the Yin and the Yang of the Great spirit. Any forms they may take on for my sake, are precisely that – forms for my sake. Period.

I’m sure they take on other forms for other people. It’s just a personal interface to the Great Spirit. Covens who have created their Goddess into an idol worship to the point where they have lost touch with the Great Spirit, just got carried away with the Pantheon and have started to worship the pantheon for it’s own sake (just like the Christians). They have become idol worshiper where their idol is the pantheon itself.

I’m fully aware that the pantheon is not God. The pantheon is merely my façade of God. I don’t worship the façade. I worship the Great Spirit through the façade.

The pantheon is just a façade for the purpose of organizing and communicating with various aspects of the Great Spirit.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t actually imagine a Goddess and God. I do! I see them as my heavenly Mother and Father. But they are still just the faces of the Great Spirit. Masks for the purpose of communiqué.

Do you see what I’m saying?

People need to understand the spirit through mythology. And not confuse the mythology for the spirit.

Mostly...

Re: "the mechanism of interaction between spirit and physical" I gotcha. I think the lucid dream is about as good a metaphor as any.


Now as to the God/ess...

In the post I was referring to (Wed 12/10/08 06:51 AM) I understood you to mean you believed that we, as spiritual beings, are both egalitarian and eternal.

To me, the "egalitarian" part meant that there is no single creator of "all". That all spiritual entities are equal co-creators of "all".

Also, the "eternal" part meant that we were not "created", since that would require a "beginning", which is inconsistent with my concept of "eternal".

I obviously misinterpreted something somewhere, so I still need some clarification.

Thanks.

In other words every civilization regardless of what they practice is worshipping a "Great Spirit", just that they had to use figures, or paint their faces, or whatever other additional ceremony to make it more believable when they worship this Great Spirit. Or some used many deities with different personalities or traits, but all led to one Great Spirit in the end.

And as the human mind is naturally imaginative (some more then others) more ideas came to how a spirit should be worshipped or respected throughout the history we know it.

It makes sense. So in the long run everyone (almost everyone) worships/respects/ or acknowledges the same spirit (creator), but just interpets them differently.

Unfortunately because of the imagination humans use they also take with them demands on how to worship a spirit to control the masses. It is sad that this continues today, but if we actually sit back and think about it we are all believing in the same thing one way or another just have from our own imagination different perspectives of how we as a individual want to see this Great Spirit.

Of course some choose to give a name and a certain rule of identity for such a spirit also, may it be called a God, or Wanka Tanka, The Elephant God, to Ra, or what have you, and that is where much disagreements, unruly debates, and confusion occurs.


I personally am truly fortunate to not have joined any religous affilate or having to become a member, for I can now just say that we are worshipping the same thing, although mine doesn't use violence of anykind (like your belief system uses) to achieve serenity, peace, and happiness.

Well at least that is how I would like to see it even though there is violence on this planet, and a system I will never understand why we must eat other living things to sustain. I guess this makes it difficult what interferes with the process of believing in a Great Spirit in the first place. Maybe one day I will figure this out.

Thankyou for the insightful article. I may have interpeted this article differently then most like I usually do but it did help me realize something in the end.

Sky, let me answer your second concern first since that may help to shed light quicker.



Even thought spirit is eternal, the lucid dream we call reality is not. It has a beginning and and end. And therefore the lucid dream that we call reality is 'created'. As are out physical bodies and personas!

You've created your own persona in this life. You have created Skyhook.

You are not Skyhook.

You are the spirit who is playing skyhook in this manifestation.

Skyhook and his persona are creations of this lucid dream. They are just as much a creation of this dream as are the rocks on the shore of the ocean.

Of course Skyhook is far more interesting than I rock (I hope), but none the less, Skyhook is a creation of this ludic dream.

The spirit that has created Skyhook (the real you) is eternal. Sky hook will die and cease to exist. But you will move on to anotehr lucid dream that you will learn to call "reality".

And you will become yet another character in another lucid dream.

You are the eternal dreamer.



Well, this is the part that is beyond human comprehension.

I don't pretend to understand how it works myself Sky. This is the truest mystery.

All-is-one. One-is-all.

How does that work?

Egotistically we balk at the idea that we are all the 'same' spirit. Because egotisically we can't imagine or understand it.

Skyhook thinks to himself, "I'm not Abracadabra! And I want no parts of being Abracadabra! I'm Skyhook! I'm an Individual in my own right!"

It's the ego that needs to perserve this concpet of individuality.

It's Skyhook, the imaginary character in the lucid dream of life, who feels a desperate need to retain his individuality and thus his false perception of sovereignty.

That's the key right there Sky.

Your preception of sovereignty is already an illusion. You have no sovereignty.

You think you do because you have what appears to be free will in the lucid dream of reality. But just how free is your will really?

Can do you anything you want?

No, you cannot. You are limited by the rules of lucid dream itself.

Can you live without your Mother Earth?

Not really. Sure you can build a spaceship and stock it with air and supplies and maybe even steal some earth and seeds from Mother Earth to take with you to make a garden.

But have you really succeeded in living apart from the Earth. No, not really. You just took a piece of her with you (including the spaceship itself).

And if you really want to get abstract about it, it doesn't even matter if you move to another planet, you are still dependent upon Mother Universe for all your needs.

You aren't an individual anything.

You have no sovereignty.

That's the illusion of the dream.

To enjoy this illusion of sovereignty is probably the very purpose of the dream.

You say, "I don't want to be part of everyone else! I don't want to be assimilated when I die! I don't want to be God!"

Well, isn't that interesting?

No one wants to be God.

Why not?

Is being God that dreadful?

The Christians believe that "in the beginning" there was a void, and a spirit moved on the face of the void, and spirit was God.

So. Here we have a lonely God that nobody would ever want to be!

It's viewed as a totally undesirable state of existence.

So are we to believe that this original single creator is itself in a miserable state of lonely existence?

If that's true, then God needs us a whole lot more than we need him! The Biblical God would have created mankind out of a pure act of desperation to create some friends. Of course, the rest of the doctine seems to concur with that since all that God ever does is demand that everyone love him and be his friend or he'll get really pissed.

All they done in that picture is push the illusion of the human ego onto God.

My resolution to this problem is as follows.

We, as humans, with our fixation on the importance of the illusion of the ego simply can't imagine being nothing more than just a part of something larger.

You are part of God, Sky.

You can't every well be assimilated, you already are!

We see the boundaries between our physical bodies in this lucid dream and say, "Hey! I end here. You start there. And this is MY SPACE so BUG OFF!"

My space!

My space!

My space!

Me!

Me!

Me!

Bug off!

I need my sovereignty!

But that's what the human condition is all about. That's what the lucid dream is all about.

If all spirits are completely egalitarian in every way imaginable, then what could they claim as their own?

What could they label as 'mine' that would be unique to them?

What would constitue the boundaries between them?

If they have specific memories that no one else can share then they wouldn't be completely egalitarian in every way imaginable because they would have something that someone else doesn't have.

In the spirit world there are no secrets.

All spirits know everything. There are no secrets.

Their is no privacy in the spirit world.

But there's no need for privacy because spirits don't judge.

What's who judge? Everyone is egalitatarian in every way.

Everything that we normally think of in terms of 'individuality' breaks down.

But it's not a problem. There's nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. There no one to BLAME.

Isn't that what shame truly comes down to? Blame?

You should be ashame of your actions because you are to BLAME for them!

Spirits are above blame.

If we take blame into the spirit world then the spirit world wouldn't be any different from the human condition.

If the spirit world isn't any different from the human condition then becoming a spirit wouldn't be such a great thing after all would it?

All it would do is take your condition of blame and perpetuated it for all of eternity.

Who would want that?

I think I'd rather lose my illusion of sovereignty that to keep it at the cost of eternal blame.

Besides, I've already recognized that my apparent sovereignty in this life truly is just an illusion. It was never real to begin with.

I'm not seperate from anything.

That's the illusion we need to get past.

Then you won't have a problem worrying about becoming assimilated because you will suddenly realize that you already are assimilated and there was never a time when you were not. You were assimilated into this world when you were born!

You're worried about a condition that already exists and has always existed.

You seem to have the basics down pat, but like JB you're kicking and screaming for eternal sovereignty.

But that's the very illusion of the ego.

See Buddha, Jess Lee, or Artgurl for further information.

I have always believed that our spirit (or whatever you care to call it) after death, when it goes where ever the spirit goes, it does not stay the same. I think it intertwines with other spirits, unites, and splits, so that when we are reborn we are not the same.
I believe that my spirit consists of parts of many spirits, and that sometimes, when we meet a so called soul mate, simply recognize a tiny part of ourselves.

I don't know whether this comes over the way I want to, I find it very hard to explain.

Yep, that’s me. My misunderstanding was that whenever I use the first person pronoun, I am referring to the “spirit” not the “ego”. So when you used it, I assumed that was what you were referring to also.

First misunderstanding cleared up.



I don’t subscribe to the “One=All=One” doctrine so I didn’t include it as part of the reconciliation.

Second apparent misunderstanding cleared up.



To my mind, that’s not it at all. It’s more a matter of how useful or workable the idea is for me.

“Preserving this concept of individuality” is not some obsessive/compulsive personality disorder. It’s a pragmatic, self-determined decision. The concept of individuality is one that I can understand and use. The concept of “All=One=All” is not. So I simply choose to believe in something that I can understand and use, instead of something that is inherently incomprehensible and impractical.




From there on it sounds like you are referring to the “lucid dream manifestation of SkyHook”, as opposed to the “spirit who is playing SkyHook in this manifestation”. So in that light I would agree with most of what you said, but it’s also not really pertinent to what I’m concerned with. So for both those reasons I won’t comment further.

Thanks for the clarifications.

I can truly understand your concerns in this area. I have had them as well.

However, I have had lucid dreams of being in the spirit world. Like Invisible suggests, trying to explain them would be vitually impossible.

In those dreams I have simultaneously retained sovereignty and not. I think the only difference is that it's clear that the sovereignty is an illusion but it just doesn't matter.

All is illusion.

Illusion is real.

For spirit illusion is reality.

It's extremely difficult to describe.

All I know is that I'm comfortable with it, and it's not a problem.

That's really all I can say.

The idea that sovereignty needs to be something more than illusion is the fallacy.

For spirit illusion is reality.

That's the epiphany I guess.

Yup. I'd say we pretty much agree. It hardly matters what the data is if you can't use it.

And I've had a "self perceived as all" experience that I think may be what you're talking about. But as you said, it's virtually impossible to describe. The best I could ever do was "Seeing infinity, in infinitely closeup detail, from an infinite distance away." <gear teeth ginding and breaking off as smoke pours out of ears>