#activism witchcraft

[actiwitch]

🌱 pagans, witches, and other spiritualists,

Interest poll for a later interest poll. if you'd at all be interested in a vegan/vegetarian spiritual zine lmk👀

[coven-of-genesis]

LOW ENERGY LITHA ACTIVITIES

light colourful candles

watch the sun rise or sun set

brew a honey & chamomile tea

burn a floral scented incense

decorate your altar with flowers

eat fresh fruits and berries

open the windows and let fresh air in

admire flowers

read a faerie related book

have a cleansing bath or shower

meditate outside

press some wildflowers in a book

[somethingsomethingtralala]

Looking forward to my grey hair to finally take over my whole head so I can really scare the neighborhood kids with my cackling

[tadpoles-and-daydreams]

Spellwork with Loki (An old post that rotted in my drafts for weeks)

Me: "Loki, are you sure you want to be the main power source for this spell? I feel bad asking that of you. At least let me give SOME of my energy?"

Loki: "Dude it's fine, it takes like no effort for me. Stop being afraid to ask for shit and just let me do this. You're not even asking, you're accepting an offer. I am ACTIVELY EXCITED for this spell let me do it."

Me, a few hours after the spell, faceplanted on my bed: ".... Thank you for being the main power source for that spell bc I don't think I even gave much energy, just primarily conducted yours, and I'm so fucking tired."

Loki: "And you still have part two! This is fun!" :D :D :D

[noelles-legacy]

Eepy 🌙

I feel like all the Hogwarts legacy MCs need to have a massive sleep over✨💫

[boymanmaletheshequel]

I can’t even begin to fucking explain how heartbroken and in complete and total shock I am right now. I’m so sorry, keep fighting. Don’t ever stop. Prepare for and don’t stand down to these next years. Trump will enact project 2025, trans ppl will be persecuted, mass deportations and a potential genocide of immigrants will be carried out, women will loose all rights to bodily autonomy, gay rights will be repealed, the system of education will be abolished, Gaza will be leveled, and all the progress we’ve made the past 4 years will be destroyed entirely. And trump will be installed as a permanent dictator. But do. Not. Give. Up. We beat hitler, we beat Mussolini, and we WILL BEAT DONALD TRUMP, no matter HOW LONG IT TAKES.

[thespectralcottage]

🍂Cozy Witchcraft for Fall🍂

Fall cozy ideas for your practice to try out. 🫶🏻

Light pumpkin scented candles for abundance

Enchant your favorite blanket for calming energy and to bring you a good nights sleep

Make a playlist for sound cleansing

Make your tea/coffee with intention

Carve a pumpkin for protection from spirits and negativity

Use kitchen witchery to make a homemade soup

Eat apple pie for good health and luck during this colder season

[the-inkstained-witch]

sometimes mundane witchcraft is putting a glamour spell on your makeup or stirring a sigil into your coffee, and sometimes it's sending baneful energy by flipping off every cop car you see, and I think that's beautiful

[runningw-thewolves]

The Asatru Folkist Assembly can take Stone Henge from our cold, dead motherfucking hands.

For those not in the know; the Asatru Folkist Assembly are a “Pagan” organisation that is extremely racist, sexist, ableist etc. They’re trying to get a foothold in the UK and are starting with an event at Stone Henge. Stone Henge is a VERY important Pagan site in England, with Pagans visiting almost every month. A petition has been made to try and stop this. Please for the love of all that is holy, sign the petition, share it, reblog this post.

They can have Stone Henge over our dead fucking bodies. Credit to Ocean Keltoi for raising awareness on this.

[brattysammy]

As we enter Scorpio season and begin to look more inwards, I thought I’d share how I like to cast my circles 🕯️🌖

I begin with west: I call upon the element of water🜄, as I take a sip of my tea, activating my sense of taste.

I follow with south: I call upon the element of fire🜂, as a light my candle, activating my sense of sight.

I continue with east: I call upon the element of air🜁, as I burn some herbs and stone pine, activating my sense of smell.

I finish with north: I call upon the element of earth🜃, as I ground myself holding a rock in my hand, activating my sense of touch.

Lastly, I call upon spirit ◯ (प्राण), as I hum the mantra Oṃ ॐ, activating my sense of hearing, and filling the space with vibrations from within me.

A circle has been cast ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･𖦹°‧⋆˖⁺‧☽◯☾‧⁺˖⋆

[actiwitch]

Trying to plan some pagan and witch zine collections in relation to perspective/experiences on different subjects.

(ex: how our practices fuel or inform our environmental activism or outlook, spells on that subject, tips, etc)

I'll be doing all of these at some point, just wanted to gauge interest here :)

[devieboii]

My full moon activities fluctuate from being these super elaborate rituals to being like “Hey Hekate can I just play video games in your honor for an unreasonable amount of time tonight 🥺” and She’s always like: “👍 go for it kid”

[mamamoon92]

🖤✨

[yourwitchjay]

dude my day is fucking jacked

I've been blasting the vengeance saga since the watch party, my fyp is FLODDED with marauders angst as per halloween, rise of the order starts, I've done a lot of samhain deity work AND I'm doing a bunch of rituals to communicate with spirits with my friends, I get to dress up and it's okay, I get to see a bunch of hot gay ppl in costumes, I'm watching halloween movies

and after allllll of that the set it off remake come out tomorrow!

AND IM EXPECTED TO BE NORMAL AND FUNCTION AND GO TO CLASS?!?!

edit: OMG I FORGOT ABIUT THE NEW HELLUVA BOSS EPISODE I JUST SAW IT BUT IM STILL IN CLASS IMMA LOSE IT

[salixsociety]

The Problem of the 'Witch's Sabbat'

Why we should stop calling our non-jewish holidays 'Sabbats': a (hopefully) definitive guide.

It is the year of our Gods 2024, and to this day I still enter communities and see the word 'sabbat' as one of the first. It is common practice to refer to any holiday, but especially those as featured in the Wheel of the Year, as sabbat(h)s, and frankly, I am sick of it. So I hope that I can use this post to convince some people on why it is time to remove that word from our vocabulary.

Where Does the Word 'Sabbat' Come From?

The very root of this word is the Hebrew ש־ב־ת (sh-b-t). It is the root word for many words pertaining to rest and not working (or more broadly: 'cessation'). This word evolved into שַׁבָּת (shabát), which translates to Saturday or weekly rest-day, normally. This word, also often spelled Shabbos from Ashkenazi Hebrew, travelled through various antique languages (Ancient Greek -> Latin -> Old French) directly to Middle English, where it became 'Sabat', and later Sabbath. While this word, in its travel through Europe, has influenced some words, you'll notice that it has also stayed one unique word, with a unique meaning: the Jewish Rest Day. The Sabbath, Shabbos, Sabbat, Shabat, et cetera, will always and has for most of its history been the word uniquely reserved for Saturday in Judaism. To those not very well read on Judaism, it may be helpful to know that Judaism is what is considered a closed practice. It is only permissible to practice Jewish religious tradition, and to a large extent, Jewish culture, if you are a Jewish convert. By extension, that should clue you in on the nature of the word and holiday of Shabbat.

Further reading on this topic: Etymology, Jewish Sabbath.

When Did it Become Relevant to Witches?

The first time the words 'sabbat(h)' and 'witch' were uttered in the same breath would likely be around the late Medieval period. The reason why this is, is something not nearly enough people are familiar with: the incredibly deep link between antisemitism and witch-hunting. Before the early Church turned its hateful eye to the concept of 'witches,' it was firmly on Jews. Jews, alongside other heretics and oppressed minorities like the Rroma, were considered utterly worthy of damnation. They were seen as antagonistic to the Church, going against everything the Church stood for, and furthermore as misanthropic, greedy, unreliable enemies. They were the scapegoats for many disasters and indeed frequently accused of practicing magic or poisoncrafting to invoke these disasters on the 'Good Christian Folk'. Furthermore, and this may sound familiar to you, jews were accused of 'consorting with the devil' and murdering children in order to consume their blood to mock the Eucharist, often referred to as blood libel. It was often claimed that this (nonexistent!) practice was done on the Shabbat, alongside other practices twisting and mocking those done in Church on Sunday. The persecution of Jews in Medieval Europe was horrific and seemingly endless, having origins in antiquity and reaching a peak during the Crusades, and another when the Plague ran rampant. Jews were banished, forced to convert to Christianity or brutally murdered, not infrequently by burning or strangulation.

What all of this is meant to illustrate is that the witch stereotype, or the wish to persecute witches in the early modern period, didn't come out of nowhere. There is a reason that caricatures and cartoons of witches feature a short and stocky body, a big and 'ugly' nose, green skin, red or dark hair, buckled shoes, and a conical hat (which before it became associated with witches, was often called a judenhut or jew hat). The roots of the witch stereotype in antisemitic caricatures and stereotypes are well-recorded and easy to see. And, indeed, the crimes most witches were accused of and burned for, directly mirrored the crimes jews were accused of before them. Consuming 'pure' Christian blood, mocking the Eucharist, fornicating with the devil, and all of this at the 'witch's sabbat', a made up gathering that witches would supposedly fly to on their broomsticks.

The idea that witches existed and the wish to eradicate them didn't purely come from antisemitism, of course. Misogyny, xenophobia, religious idealism from the Church, and other factors played incredibly large roles. But let us remain forever aware that the people burned were not in fact people flying on brooms, having sex with the devil and drinking the blood of Christian children. They were jews, they were Romani, they were people of color, they were women accused of stealing milk, they were victims.

So, the word 'sabbat(h)' wasn't just appropriated because somebody else wanted it or didn't understand it, like in many other cases of (mis)appropriation. It was appropriated explicitly to harm and eradicate several already fragile and oppressed, and in the case of Judaism, culturally exclusionary, communities.

The Role of Western Esotericism and Wicca

One could have expected the concept of the witches' sabbath to die out alongside the trials, but there is a secondary evil in this story, and it is Wicca.

In the late 19th century, English anthropologist and folklorist Margaret Alice Murray, one of the few women in her field, was halted in her research about Egypt, and was forced to find a new field of interest. She developed a hypothesis, based in mostly fantasy, that certain 'witch-cults' had survived the "Burning Times" in Europe. They were, according to her, secret societies upholding prehistoric fertility cults. Though most of her work was based in fantasy and speculation, her theory had one passionate follower: Gerald Gardner. But we will get back to him in a moment, because there is someone else pivotal to Gerald Gardner's beliefs: Aleister Crowley. Crowley is perhaps one of the most famous sexual predators, racists, antisemites, and cultural appropriators in the history of western magic. But, he was 'intelligent', well-travelled, privileged, and obsessed with occultism. He joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn when Gardner was already there. Both during his time in the Hermetic Order and after, he studied many religious traditions across the continents and wildly appropriated from all of them, most notably for this story, from Kabbalah (Jewish Mysticism). I will not go in depth about him, but he, and his fixation on Kabbalah, were extremely important to Gardner's views. Gardner, amateur anthropologist (with two fake PhDs!) and former devout Christian, used the works of Margaret Murray and Aleister Crowley to justify his claim that an old witch named Dorothy Clutterbuck had initiated him into one of these prehistoric fertility cults, one that survived the witch hunts. This is where Wicca started, and that makes the formation of Wicca entirely impossible to separate from antisemitism - and that is reflected by their language and rituals. From appropriation directly from Kabbalah, a closed practice, to calling their (mis)appropriated holidays 'sabbats', the origins of Wicca and their views on the trials are abundantly clear.

The Harm

I think we are now at the point in this blog where I should no longer have to explain that taking the word 'Sabbath' (or any other spelling of it) outside of its cultural and religious context, and applying it to practitioners of magic, is outrageously antisemitic. It is the propagation and preservation of notions and habits that got thousands of people, jews and not, brutally murdered, displaced, and forcefully converted, and it continues to conflate jews and witches - something that we've had to agree is antisemitic quite a few times, after quite a few genocides.

Another major evil in calling pagan/witchy holidays 'sabbats' is that it misconstrues what the witch trials actually were - it was the persecution of heretics. Witches are heretics, heretics are non-christian, jews are non-christian, therefore jews are heretics, therefore jews must be witches! In both the Old and the New World it was always the different, the other, the unfamiliar that were murdered. Again: people of color, Romani, jews, muslims, scary and ugly women, thieves, disliked women, the disabled, the mentally ill. It was not, and it will never be, privileged white women. In fact, it was generally them assisting in the eradication! I mean this with quite some distaste: if you are one of those people that says 'we are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn', I know what you are. You are either uneducated or hateful, and I hope you fix that sooner rather than later.

Something else rather distasteful to me is how casually people are willing to dismiss the arguments against the use of 'sabbat' by the pagan/witch community. Antisemitism is not considered as serious, as severe, as relevant, as important, as worth considering. Not as much as other issues. I have had days-long arguments with people providing source on source on source and been met with: "I just don't see the harm." And I hear what you are truly saying. What you are truly saying is: "it's only antisemitism." When it is the appropriation of white sage, when it is the appropriation of Papa Legba, when it is the appropriation of something you don't want all that much, you are willing to stand up. But when it is antisemitism, when it is a word you've used for years, when it seems small and like it would be more convenient to just keep it, you are willing to stand by. And that is performative activism, and that is perpetuating the casual willingness to appropriate from Judaism. And it will be the reason that you and the people in your circle will also feel confident casually appropriating from other cultures.

Intersectionality

Despite the fact that the antisemitic nature of this usage should be enough, there is so much more harm to be done. After all, as was mentioned, it wasn't just jews that died. It was everybody who was not a white, wealthy, able-bodied, heteronormative, Christian man. It was women, so many women. It was schizophrenics. It was slaves, freed and not. It was natives. It was everybody who was different. When you stand by when people call their holidays 'sabbats', you are not just saying yes to antisemitism. You are saying yes to racism. You are saying yes to homophobia. You are saying yes to indigenous hate. You are saying yes to misogyny. You are saying yes to ableism. You are saying yes to ageism. You are saying yes to xenophobia. You are saying yes to hate.

After all, even when it starts with one group being persecuted, the persecution will go on after the extinction of the first group. And when the persecution finally reaches your group, and you have let every other group before you gone extinct, there will be nobody but you to fight for you.

Further Reading

OTHER BLOGS: The Witch Hunts & Antisemitism: An Often Overlooked History Why I Don't Call Them Sabbats, Why You Should Stop, and Other Thoughts on Problematic Aspects of Western Witchcraft The Antisemitic History of Witches Jews and the Witchcraze Can You Be a Jew and a Witch? Why Do Witches Wear Pointy Hats?

BOOKS and PAPERS: The Saturnine History of Jews and Witches - Yvonne Owens Heal the Witch Wound - Celeste Larsen “Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 127, iss. 3 (2012) - Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth "The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, translated with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes by Montague Summers Do What Thou Wilt - Lawrence Sutin Witchcraze - Dr. Anne L. Barstow Imagining the Witch: A Comparison between Fifteenth-Century Witches within Medieval Christian Thought and the Persecution of Jews and Heretics in the Middle Ages Male witches in early modern Europe - Lara Apps, Andrew Gow

[curiositysavesthecat]

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