There’s something just absolutely fantastic about this story:
If you must have opponents, you want them to be ineffectual. And magic and witchcraft are about as ineffectual as you can get… what with them being non-functional bunkum. if someone hated me, I’d far rather have them placing hexes on me or burning effigies of me or jabbing needles into voodoo dolls, than having them taking up arms or even just voting against me. Come election day, stay in your prayer circle, light some herbs on fire and chant gibberish. Thanks. That’d be great.
What’s especially awesome is that the Guardian newspaper ran this piece, and either didn’t know or didn’t care that the author actually seems to think that witchcraft is a valid way of creating physical change in the world. That the author is an idiot is apparent right up front where she claims that witchcraft – here seemingly indistinguishable from Wicca with a fresh coat of third wave radical feminism slapped on it – is an “ancient pagan art.” Ancient rarely ever means “dates all the way back to the 1920’s,” but that’s what modern witchcraft is: a load of commercial spiritualism created in the 20’s and 30’s using some of the iconography of the older – and largely basically lost – witch-beliefs of Europe.
You wanna be a Wiccan, hey, knock yourself out. It is, for the moment, sort of a free country. Just don’t BS anybody, yourself included, that it’s more than any other religion: rituals and such that make you feel better, but which don’t work any better than examining bird entrails or praying viral infections away.
If you believe that your power comes from magic (or, more insufferably, from magick), then you have no power. Magic, conjuring, the supernatural… these are all less than useless when it comes to doing anything of use or value. They might make you feel good; but then, so might playing the slots or taking a drag. Time, effort and funds spent on honing your magical abilities is time spent becoming less powerful, more useless.
There is a fire on the horizon. You can see it burning, out on the edges of the world. The violence we have survived can be our guide to what needs to change. The fire that burned the witches can be the fire that lights our way. Our power is waiting for us, out in forbidden spaces, beyond the world of men. Step forward and claim it. Step forward into the boundless and female dark.
Hey, here’s a thought: maybe we can somehow convince the gun-grabbers that their years of legal and political efforts towards disarming the civilian populace have failed, and that they need to try magic now. Get them to devote their time and effort to hexing firearms to make them vanish.
