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To: alt.traditional.witchcraft,alt.magick.tyagi
From: "Aetyr" 
Subject: Re: Traditional Practicers?
Date: Wed, 24 Jul 2002 06:13:40 GMT

"catherine yronwode"  wrote in message
news:3D3E007B.3B3D@luckymojo.com...
> I practice in the African-American and European traditions of
folk
> magic, witchcraft, brujeria, hoodoo, powwow magic, conjure,
hexenkraft,
> stregeria, et al, without respect to coven membership or a
specific
> religious orientation.

Yes, it would be hard to have a specific relgious orientation
with such a mixed bag, unless you created it yourself.


>
> For what it's worth, i do not consider the word "traditional"
or
> "tradition" to refer to initiatic lineages in the least, not do
i think
> the term "traditional witchcraft" refers to any religion. .
>
Initiation confers membership in a group.  It also recognises
achievement in art.  Whenever any group does this, they usually
have something to mark this passage.  If you use the term
initiation to refer to rituals designed on the masonic model,
which wicca does use, then the lack of initiation is a feature of
trad craft.

Trad witchcraft does not refer to any Specific religion.  But
european based trad craft does have a cosmology that shares
certain features.  These features could be classed under
religious in belief, simply because they embody a sense of the
holy.  If you learned european trad practices from a book, then
this structure is going to be missing.  Most trads that I have
known learned this structure in a family setting.  In fact, this
shared cosmology is one way that european trads recognise each
other.

Pip


>



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From: "Aetyr" 
Newsgroups: alt.traditional.witchcraft,alt.magick.tyagi
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Subject: Re: Traditional Practicers?
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I wanted to amend some things I said for the sake of clarity.

YES, we have lost people to Christianity, mostly through
marriage.
YES they still use what they learned as kids.  If this makes them
bad Christians then may their god send them to hell.  Easy for me
to say since such a place doesn't exist.  Personally I resent
their loss to that religion, but at least they keep their mouth
shut about it.
YES the people in the family who follow NA traditions have
inadvertently slopped over some Euro trad things into their
practices.  Of course I love pointing this out to them, and it
irritates the hell out of them.
YES American herbal remedies are different from European
ones....some were discovered by Indians, some weren't.  Everybody
uses them, because they are here.
YES most blacks that I know that use magic or powers are
Christians.  Most other blacks regard them as devilish and
evil...at least around here they do. They tell them, "you need to
pray."

Regarding the non Christian trad folk....the ones lost to
Christianity are still family, they just constitute a special
kind of disappointment.  You just can't talk to them about magic
anymore, unless you dumb it down to "psychic powers".  That's
pretty much where they sit.  Personally, I regard them as true
atheists. They don't know what they believe or why they do.
Pip


"Aetyr"  wrote in message
news:Sqz%8.24961$vB3.905228@twister.southeast.rr.com...
> Hello Cat.
>
> "catherine yronwode"  wrote in message
> news:3D3E4F64.21AE@luckymojo.com...
> >>
> > I agree, for the most part, as regard Euroean witchcraft.
Some
> other
> > cultures do ractice initiation as part of traditional
> wichcraft. I was
> > not claiming that there are no initiations in any system of
> traidtional
> > witchcraft, but rather that the word "traditional" itself,
when
> used in
> > this context is not intended by me to be a synonym for
> "initiatic."
> >
> Yes, I understood that you were referring to initiatory rites
> similar to ones in Ceremonial Magic, where degrees were
achieved
> and increasingly inner circles of knowledge were attained.
Those
> kinds of structure function in large organizations.
>
>
> > Where it really gets interesteing to me (but then, i am a
hobby
> > folklorist as well as a witch) is where several of these
> larger,
> > meta-cultural trads blend and join togetehr
>
> This factor in itself causes the most disagreement and
sometimes
> rancour among practitioners.  My cousin and neice both follow
NA
> traditions, the entire tradition, because of NA ancestry.  They
> have many biting things to say about the borrowing of those
> practices by non indians.  But in the USA, most things are
mixed,
> just as our ancestry is.
>
> >snipped......
>
> I know that what you wrote about the xtian overlay in some
> practices are true, but no one in my family or circle of
friends
> has ever followed chrisitianity.  Most were not introduced, had
> the choice of being raised in those beliefs and rejected them,
or
> stood outside of the christitian community.  There is a large
> segment of european based traditionals who have always stood
> apart from the christian mainstream.  Perhaps they constitute a
> class in themselves, because it stands out as a defining
feature
> not only to them, but as they judge other trads.  This fact
also
> will cause much discussion and controversy.
> Pip>
>
>
>