Traditional Witchcraft and #MeToo

I have been involved in Traditional Witchcraft for around 45 years, and I have seen this tradition in many various social climates. In the sixties and seventies, Witchcraft was part of the so called sexual revolution; in the eighties and nineties, Witchcraft functioned as the foundation of liberalism, feminism and freedom of religion. As part of the New Age Pagan movement, it seemed that Traditional Witchcraft (those that trace their roots to Old Gerald) represented something of a modern liberal and egalitarian social revolution, whereby the old Christian modes of gender based thinking and societal norms were finally being surmounted. I have lived long enough in the Witchcraft tradition to see it evolve and move towards these stated ideals, and in some cases, this is so. However, as an insider, I also must recognize and acknowledge the dark truths about modern Witchcraft. It is those truths which run contrary to what is formally stated as the modus operandi of the Craft.

During this past tumultuous year of the Donald Trump presidency, strident and overt chauvinism and racism have become part of the mainstream of accepted Conservative social norms. However, despite that event, and perhaps in a fitting resistance to it, many women have become vocal about the harassment, coercion and sexual assaults perpetrated by men in various social settings, whether personal, religious or professional. The hashtag #MeToo revealed that nearly every woman has experienced harassment, coercion or sexual assault in some manner during her life, and in some cases, repeatedly so. Some very powerful individuals in the media, business and politics have been brought down in disgrace due to the social movement and revelation of the indignities and tragic circumstances that women have had to endure simply because the men in power crossed a line or demanded sexual favors. This is nothing new.  As the stories have unfolded, we have learned that many have been complicit or known about it in some form or another for decades.

Hollywood, in particular, has had quite a sinister dark underbelly when it comes to this kind of phenomenon. It was and is a very ugly and evil situation, but our masculine dominated culture of white male privilege has made it a thing, at least until now. The social backlash is regrettable, certainly, since anyone who is accused should be given an opportunity to defend themselves, but it is also true that women have been silently taking this abuse for a long time, and now they have come out to speak their truth. The least we can do is to listen and understand.

However, Hollywood is far away from the covens and practitioners of Traditional Witchcraft, but here, too, there have been abuses. I have often heard of them in the quiet complaints of fellow women practitioners and have even witnessed them occurring, when I was not in a position to do anything about it. This behavior is built into our culture, and there are some traditions that are practiced in the Craft that make them more than likely to occur. Perhaps the most blatant of these potential areas of abuse is the requirement for nudity or Skyclad participation in the covenstead praxis. Now, don’t get me wrong, I find sacral nudity to be a special sacred occurrence, but it can all too easily become an invitation for an unwanted sexual advance or interest, particularly on the part of the male practitioner. If a covenstead has a strong and fair minded High Priestess, and a High Priest who is truly her support and uncorrupted by the power or politics of his role then the coven will be a safe place for women and men to gather together to worship and work magic. The intimacy will cut both ways, making everyone equally vulnerable and empowered. A good High Priestess will have a very low tolerance for harassment or coercion, and her High Priest will be a role model of social fairness and compassion.

After all these years as a functioning Witch, I have found that the best High Priest is one who is gay. Some might find this quite ironic, considering the onerous prejudice given to gay men and lesbian women in the Traditional Witchcraft movement.  That is no longer an issue today, but it was for many years. A good High Priest is one who doesn’t need to prove his manhood or assert his privileged gender by dominating others. That dominance, the associated social corruption and the magical will-to-power is one of the dark secrets of the brotherhood of High Priests. It is a seductive force that can beguile and delude what would ordinarily be a good High Priest. It is a temptation that all coven High Priests must successfully resist and even mindfully de-energize, since to fall to that temptation can produce a very tragic and even criminal social situation. Rape culture dominates our social world, so we must be conscious and aware of how we are relating to women in a coven where sacral nudity is the accepted norm.

There is an adage that middle aged men who are High Priests or practicing Pagan leaders seem to find a way to position themselves as the sexual gate-keepers for higher initiation, magical powers and knowledge. They become instead highly negative obstacles to further growth and spiritual evolution. And once this powerful potion has been drunk, there sometimes seems to be no bottom to the level of corruption that one can achieve. Our Pagan and Wiccan community is rocked from time to time when a leader is discovered to be a sexual predator, taking advantage of the young, inexperienced and most vulnerable members of our community. We are shocked and revolted by the discovery of this behavior, but few can admit that it is baked into the movement. There are indeed stellar members of our community. These men represent the best of a received and understood feminism; they practice social equality and mentorship, having achieved this by overcoming the alluring potential to harass, coerce and even to sexually assault others.

What must happen now is for all of us to admit that such a situation is a possible trap due to the practices of Traditional Witchcraft. This is particularly true with the assumption of positions of authority without any kind of accountability, the social setting of sacral nudity and the necessity of a male to female relationship, and the female to male relationship that is required for initiation and advancement. The sexual nature of the practices and the initiations would seem to be very tempting to those who are weak willed when it comes to sexual temptation or who see themselves as singularly empowered and unchecked. I think that to make Traditional Witchcraft safe for the most vulnerable adherents it is necessary for there to be absolutely zero tolerance for any kind of unwanted or unprovoked sexual advance. The High Priestess and High Priest must set the tone for the conduct of the coven, and that any kind of contact should be consensual and transparently co-equal. I think that making Skyclad rituals less the norm and making the sexual nature of the initiations to be more voluntarily symbolic and token rather than an expected outcome would also help to restore equality to the covenstead. Accountability should be enforced for everyone and perhaps even more importantly, the role of High Priestess and High Priest should be temporary and rotated rather than a permanent avocation.

In my opinion, the single greatest temptation inherent in Traditional Witchcraft is the power assumed by its coven leaders. Social power in a group that is not accountable or transparently applied to everyone equally allows the High Priestess or the High Priest to assume a level of dominance that can only lead to tragedy, unless they are also socially and spiritually evolved. I believe that diminishing the power of the High Priestess and the High Priest and making them merely roles in the group that could be assumed by others, would go a long way to eliminating the temptation to sexually exploit people. You could say that what I am proposing would be to basically demolish the hierarchical foundation of Traditional Witchcraft, and you would be correct. I think that this reformation is long overdue.

In talking about this social issue, I will won’t be judgmental or sanctimonious to anyone who has either enabled this kind of behavior or who felt themselves tempted to take advantage of a situation. I am guilty of both of these actions. Still, I have avoided engaging in gratuitous exploitation of those who have given me their trust as a teacher and a leader. I have always had limits to what I was willing to do. Perhaps I too easily feel the pain and hurt of others.

Since I have been involved in the tradition of Witchcraft for over four decades I have seen this situation play out again and again. I have seen scandals erupt and then sadly read the reports of those who were hurt and damaged by the egotistic behavior of men who should have known better, but who succumbed to the oldest kind of corruption – the will-to-power over others. This phenomenon will continue to happen again and again, over and over, until the very root that is causing this problem is finally eradicated from the tradition altogether. I am hoping that this evolution in Traditional Witchcraft will finally occur so that we can at least say that our covensteads are safe places for everyone to gather, and that the ubiquitous hashtag of #MeToo can be said to be something that happens outside of our tradition and not within it.

Frater Barrabbas

Thoughts About Love Spells

Here is a topic that I often get people asking me questions about, and I am usually reluctant to discuss it. Since this topic is so often asked, I have decided to weigh in and give my readers my perspective on this kind of magic.

Love magic is typically considered one of the main elements of “low magic,” right up there in importance to money magic, magical healing and magical retaliation, or getting justice through backhanded mechanisms. I don’t usually write about love magic because I have found it to be not particularly useful or efficacious, particularly if it is targeted on a specific person. My opinion is essentially that if you want to really mess up a potential relationship possibility, then by all means, use love magic on your desired target. Of course, there are ethical considerations as to whether or not you are justified in performing such magic, but I have found that those who do it are so obsessed with their targets that such considerations don’t even register.

In my opinion, projecting your will upon another and dressing it up with spirits, energy, sigils, dolls, pictures, ancestors and even some hoodoo based alchemy in order to target an innocent person so that they would love and desire you against their will could be considered highly negative magic, since the intent is obviously to dominate someone’s will. I have often thought that the next best thing to outright cursing someone is casting a love spell on them, particularly if they are not in the least bit attracted or interested in the perpetrator.

If you work such a magical operation and it’s successful then you have overturned someone’s will in an obviously deceitful and disreputable manner just to satisfy your fancy. Do you think that all is fair in love and war? Well, think again! If that were true then date rape and other forms of sexual assault would be legal and even encouraged. It would also be quite acceptable if the potential victim struck back and murdered their assailant. If love is your object then it hardly helps you if you are engaged in a veritable war with those whom you would shower with your affections. Love is one thing, and dominance is altogether another thing. It is important to be clear about your intentions and what you want to accomplish, since if your objective is confused then all else is even more murky.

Magic always has some basic ground rules that are practical and even obvious. A completely non-magical and practical approach to achieving a relationship should follow some basic steps, and no amount of magic can make them happen if there isn’t a mutual interest between the two parties. What I have found is that magic often makes these stages either more difficult or more complicated then they already are. Also, many people have the belief that magic will somehow make something that is highly improbable or impossible happen, as if it were a miracle.  

Here are the practical steps, and I think that just about everyone knows this on some level. If you love someone, then that love must be perceived by the other person and returned in some fashion if anything is going to develop. The whole process of courting a potential lover is getting that exchange to occur. This is called mutual attraction, and if it doesn’t exist or even have the potential for existing, then forget about anything further happening. Thus getting your beloved’s attention so that they will focus on you is the first important step. However, that is just the beginning. You have to somehow appeal to what that other person desires in some manner (or stumble upon it by accident), so changing and augmenting how you look, act and even smell is important. I might also add that people who are considered naturally attractive usually have more confidence in their ability to attract others to them. The rest of us who are not so endowed must make the best of what we have. Yet certainly attractive clothes and an attractive style can make up for what one lacks in stature, physique and appearance - at least to a point.

There also has to be a social connection between you and the other person, and you have to have something in common with them. At some point if this process is going to be successful, then you have to access and gain an intimate social contact with them, and it has to be situations that are periodically repeated (like dating). Obviously, courting in our post-modern world, despite how fast everything happens around us, still takes time and patience, but seduction can happen very quickly. This is true even though a successful sexual encounter doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be a romantic relationship as well. Relationships between people are quite complex and also quite fluid, and anything can happen to either enhance the connection or destroy it completely. The most important consideration is that you can’t control everything that happens, and as they say, sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you.

I think that the most difficult and problematic aspect of looking for love has to do with the fact that unlike many other things in our lives, we can’t really control other people. We can try, but it eventually fails, even for the most sophisticated of manipulators. This is also why I believe that working love magic on someone is so difficult, since it is a form of continuous domination. For example, you have forced someone to love and desire you who wouldn’t normally be so disposed, and as the enchanter, you have to always be glamorous, mysterious (or at least your underhanded intentions have to be invisible), and you have to always be engaged with feeding that love spell so it can be maintained. It’s a lot like pretending to be someone you aren’t and somehow over time, keeping up the pretense.

When the truth is discovered by the victim of such magic (and it usually does happen at some point), then the perpetrator of that magic experiences a full and complete reversal or backlash. The ensorcelled individual suddenly realizes that their lover is a fraud and not at all attractive or even interesting, and this makes them not only enraged by the deceit but also repulsed by the one who has been deceiving them. It’s doubtful that such a catastrophe could ever be mitigated, and usually it represents a profound end to such a relationship. It is, in a word, an emotional train wreck, and worse, it often attracts a lot of public attention. The victim usually is not content to just slip away, they also have to let everyone they know that they have been deceived and outrageously defrauded, thereby justifying why they spent any time with that disreputable scam artist they have so recently dumped. Besides, the victim’s friends were probably wondering about that as well. This kind of occurrence happens even without magic, and to outsiders it is highly amusing. It’s also the kind of situation that is used in romantic comedies. Yet in real life, it represents a terrible tragedy without a happy ending that is best avoided by being honest.

That’s why I think that working love magic on a specific person is not only unethical, but it is also fraught with possible failure. We can embellish ourselves to a point so we can be seen as attractive, but in the end, we have to be who we are, and that includes our flaws and unattractive qualities, too. It’s something that is unavoidable - we just are who are and nothing more. Pushing the envelop on this stark reality is to perpetrate a fraud, and if a relationship is to emerge from an initial infatuation, then it must be followed by honesty and integrity.

Another thing that typically happens when someone tries to cast a love spell is that they haven’t made certain that all of the practical steps that could potentially build up a relationship have been done first. In other words, there isn’t an established link and social process for a relationship to occur. They might be lazy or just confused, or they might think that the other person is the perfect match for them, as if willed by fate itself. Thus they will believe that the potential for love is mutual when it actually isn’t mutual at all. Then to confound matters they’ll work a love spell hoping that whatever shortcomings are in play (if they are even aware of them) they will somehow achieve their desired outcome. The psychic energy that they are projecting won’t be able to reach the target because there isn’t any link, but that magic will have to go somewhere, and it does. What happens is that the love spell rebounds back onto the perpetrator and causes them to become obsessed with the object of their desire. They have managed to merely ensorcell themselves, and then their odd, creepy behavior will completely turn off the person that they are unwittingly stalking. In my experience, this is usually what happens when someone attempts to cast a love spell.

In my humble opinion, working a love spell on a specific person is really a bad idea. I always try to talk someone out of this kind of approach if they happen to tell to me about it. Usually, I only hear about the failure and the collateral damage, and it elicits from me a typical face-palm kind of response. Yet human nature is what it is, and the question remains, what can a person do to magically help them attract a lover and build a rewarding relationship? My response is always the same - make yourself desirable and lovable, and then let nature take its course. Make certain that you have a wide social network of people that you actually visit and spend time with, and learn to be open, kind and compassionate to others. You can help yourself by being presentable and attractive in your chosen social network, and also by learning to listen and empathize with others. Where magic comes into play is to address any internal issues that you might have that would obstruct or keep you from having a relationship.

You should also do this simple and practical exercise. Ask yourself these questions and make certain that you get clear answers. Are you open and available for a relationship right now? Are your expectations too high or do you judge others too harshly before even knowing them? Have you cleared yourself of all of your previous emotional baggage or relationship histories. If you are pining for someone with whom you once had a relationship or if you are seeking someone who would never want to have a relationship with you then you will have to eliminate this obstacle before you will be able to find someone. These considerations are so practical and basic to human relationships that they don’t require any kind of occult interpretation or intrusion.

Finally, I would like to say forget about finding your soulmate or that pre-destined love that you have been looking for your whole life! Besides, soulmates aren’t discovered, they are made over time with a lot of hard work and effort. If you can eliminate these erroneous romantic ideals from your head and be open to any possibility, then you won’t be disappointed. Perhaps the most important bit of advice that I could ever give any magician who is seeking a lover is actually quite simple. Do you want to work magic to get a lover? Then work that magic on yourself! In other words, use your magic to discover the lover within you and then you will find a corresponding lover in the material world. It’s really that simple, even though it took me decades to truly realize it.

Frater Barrabbas