OOPS! Did I say Magic? You can’t even mention the word without drawing snickers from those who think of themselves as typical sophisticated people. But before you laugh, realize that nearly everyone at their core has a natural ingrained belief in magic. Ask yourself if you would willingly welcome into your house, say, a doll that had a reputation for being cursed; one that had a reputation for bringing bad luck to whoever owned it. How comfortable would you be insulting a Voodoo priestess knowing she could put a curse on you?
Freely defined, magic is a method of manipulating the physical world through metaphysical means by employing ritual action. Whether you believe in it or not, hundreds of millions of people around the world do. This includes huge numbers of Westerners who practice benign forms of magic through healing rituals such as Reiki, Pranic healing, spiritual healing and even acupuncture. Millions of people practice voodoo and other animistic religions which utilize magical rituals to achieve other, often less benign ends. These religions are persistent and endure in the face of advancing technology and affluence. They don’t die out like so many of the “watered down” western mainstream religions today. That’s because they are embedded in the human psyche and are self-reinforcing.
The religion of Wicca is a modern revival of a 4000 year old pagan tradition that once worshiped animistic gods. The modern version worships Mother Earth and teaches “white witchcraft”. For the most part, as long as its adherents stick to healing and positive forms of psychic phenomena, it is a fairly benign form of worship. Although the official stance of Wicca condemns the use of magic (psychic forces) for selfish purposes, white magic can lead a strongly psychic “magician” to “gray magic” which is used to manipulate the lives and even the fates of other people.
Trying to help people using healing energies and white magic is one thing, but using these rituals to harm one’s rivals and enemies is another. A healing might be a one-shot-deal or a series of rituals carried out by one or more people combining their individual psychic wills for a single benign purpose. It’s not something that requires ongoing supervision. But the manipulation of someone else’s life through some form of curse requires the ongoing presence of one or more spirits which are tasked with following that person around. This involves a “contract” with those spirits. Once a gray witch steps over this line, he or she has crossed into the realm of black magic which ALWAYS involves the demonic and leads to extremely bad outcomes. People who engage in this sort of religious worship are likely to become slaves to a demon, and they eventually discover that they will pay a terrible price.
Thus, the adoption of Wicca can be dangerous for some people. It has a huge appeal, especially to women, for its sexual aspects (it was invented in the late 1930’s by a nudist named Gerald Gardner) and also for the belief that witchcraft can draw on supernatural gifts giving them power over other people, especially over men. It extols the worship of pagan gods, and as such tends to skirt the edges of Satanism. People who are psychically “gifted” (psychic sensitives) can become entangled with demonic spirits through their ritualistic Wicca practices and find themselves possessed by one or more demons. This is no small threat because once entangled with a demon, there is a real chance that the “witch” will require a successful exorcism or be enslaved forever.
Note: I understand that the above paragraph will offend some people, especially those who believe that Wicca is a religion devoted to the worship of nature spirits, but PLEASE read about how demons infect people later in this chapter where you will learn that casting spells can give explicit permission for demonic interference and possibly even possession. It can easily derail an otherwise innocent person’s life!