XPost: alt.religion.wicca, alt.arts.poetry.comments, alt.magick   
   From: dmh7@skypoint.com   
      
   Tom wrote:   
   > "Jane Asher's Vagina"  wrote in message   
   > news:1w6ghleaieht3$.1e99jreoeamyz.dlg@40tude.net...   
   >   
   >>On Tue, 1 Mar 2005 22:13:42 +0000, Shez wrote:   
   >>   
   >>   
   >>>People who practice the art and craft of magick see something in the   
   >>>world that you don't see, its that simple..   
   >>   
   >>Sure is. They make shit up and convince themselves it's real.   
   >   
   >   
   > Let me break it to you gently.  You do the same thing.  And, just like   
   > everybody else, you strongly object to being accused of doing so.   
   >   
   >   
      
   Certainly many people are self-deluded but it pure post-modernist tripe   
   to insist that all opinions are equal, as tempting as that lazy attitude   
   might be nowadays. A person who believes the moon is made of green   
   cheese may be as wrong as a person who believes it is made entirely of   
   silver, but the mistakes are on a different order, and one is closer to   
   some version of the truth. Most people delude themselves into thinking   
   the universe gives a blue spit about them - and the human race in   
   general - but the one who thinks this is due to the Little People is   
   less likely to be correct than one who believes it is due to some   
   unexplained yet probably material connection between "star stuff" and   
   the makeup of the human matter. After all, science works upon   
   probabilities, and some things are simply more probable. Does this mean   
   scuience has all the answers to life? Hardly, since human life is full   
   of imaginative abstracts, but applying the rule that the truer answer is   
   most likely the simplest answer, believing in "magick"  - while   
   comforting to the person who believes in it (and there is nothing   
   "wrong" sbout seeking a modicum of control and comfort in this world) is   
   to believe in something that all experience and observation says is most   
   improbable.   
      
   The strange thing about - say - the Wicca movement is that they   
   celebrate and mimic the supposed behavior that was assigned to victims   
   who were innocent of that behavior. Of all those "witches" who were   
   condemned, tortured, and killed (and there were not as many as Wicca   
   likes to say there were) not ONE was a witch, but only the innocent   
   fodder for a political or religious porgram fueled by hysteria, rumor,   
   envy, hatred, etc. The few who admitted to this "transgression" did so   
   beneath torture or because they were mentally incapacitated, which isn't   
   a surprise given than schizophrenics and other mental "incompetents"   
   were often singled out as being in league with the devil, or some such.   
      
   So the modern identification with these innocetns is based on the word   
   of their persecutors and their accusers.   
      
   In effect, decalring oneself to be a "witch" (as harmless as it is) is   
   not unlike declaring oneself to be an eater of children based on ancient   
   accounts of Jewish (or Christian) behavior. One is playing the role   
   assigned by the enemy.   
      
   dmh   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)