Witchcraft

here's a nice subject. Al Jazeera is quite constantly campaigning against the belief in witches, as it is still rather common in central africa. Ofcourse i support that fully, the reason they do , i think, is to fight superstition amongst muslims. Koran disallows superstition, denies the existence of anything but the forebearer of science: religion.

I belief only in science and proofs, for the same reason (that one truth can be handed but two are allways unworkable) religion believed in 'god'.
Religion is, 'starting to get the clue science exists' wich makes it funny and paradoxal at times, because the natures of it's universal truths so often contradict reality.

It is a philosophical realisation at the bases of science, that at some point of deduction , your finest resolution, there is only one truth in material matters.
Judaism, protestantism and islam encouraged reading, and thus science, it may even be that among all this superstition the jewish catalogue is still dearest to science.

I don't think they did that as a matter of religious doctrine, (altho perhaps in judaism) , the idea was not to get people to science through religion.(1) Altho in humane and social matters similar moves were made sometimes with more conviction then that. Usual persona in religions or beliefsystems (budhism), tend to be great instigators of scientific advance of the social norms.

Personally i consider that common brilliance. Anyone brilliant would do that.
A lot of geniuses as well, but they tend to be more occupied.

Now what is the funny thing about this story and witchcraft?

that in all these religious doctrinations a fight against superstition was perceived as just.
For that there were two oxymoronic reasons, like more often in this story:
firstly the witchcraft, the collective resource of ancient 'magical' 'etherical' 'spiritual, 'psychological' and jurisprudential knowledge was the enemy of the 'new relighion' that aimed for wordly as much as spiritual power (one reason a modern progressive islam would be so feasible so much of it's target is a political realisation that you might as well politicise the concept muslim),

the other reason is the actual uncontrollable practice of witchcraft has allways scared the enlightened spirits of this planet, and as such influenced religious doctrine. That argument is bit doublehearted tho, it is no doubt only the interaction with religions and technological society that turns traditional 'witchcraft' into the scary fairytale thing priests etc. turned it into.

In dutch witching translates into , doing things very fast and efficiently, the original essence of witchcraft may have been close to that, the best, only, most easy way to do a thing became part of the collective resource of witchcraft.

As such it was a valuable psychological tool indeed , and any missionairy stage had strong reasons to assume these bearers of knowledge had the psychological capacity's to outclass them, preventing their religion to imperialise those masses.

This lead ofcourse to prosecution, eg. of the druids in europe, but famously of healers etc. in colonised nations.

The spanish would kill anyone that disagreed their theology in europe and they made no short work of any other culture. This european tradition was rudely followed by other christians. In principle the koran has similar fundaments for persecution of the native belief laid. If not only through adaption of judaic text.

So you can see for the actual historical powers of that what the perceivedly monotheist churches called witchcraft we have no reference. And that situation is also apparent in the african former colony's.

This is the history of witchcraft, and now i will try to explain how witchcraft cannot be used to the bad of people, the real craft, the ancient one, or the one we reinvent because the ancient one was extinguished, is based on truth, often direct science in fact, more then with any religion. All religions produce a scarier witchcraft then the original one, because they deny the 'craft', the power in people to be so enlightened, to be the truth.

When u see an old man in a reet hut using the same old (christian) words, you should realise that 3000 years ago, he could be an international diplomat, a respected international contact. His relation to his people has not been natural for the past century's because he had not the organisational(social) reward to offer. Like with all people he'd still struggle for dignity, and willing or not, selfinterest.

Ofcourse he knows 'witchcraft' exists, used to exist, he is a part of that tradition,
but the tradition is dead, there was never a big struggle between 'good and bad' witchery in the ancient tradition. When he accuses someone of witchcraft it shows he does not know anymore what it is.

Because every aspect of the human psychology is apt for analyses witchcraft , ancient mystics, people with great talent, i think basically very intelligent, can understand a lot about another person, and that is the only real source of power any witch could have over any other person.
For example, when you understand someone well you may know what they like and take care they meet someone to love. "you made them fall in love".

This can go quite far, the natural evolutionairy cause for witchcraft (and perhaps that is one reason there is so much confusion) is that the community needed a psychological tool to analyse and cope with digressions. If you don't know what is sane, you don't know what is insane.

So you can see in spain, many old lady's sitting in the street taking great care everyone meets somebody to love. Not completely without any selfinterest.
The man tell you they are all witches, and if you ask them why? they will tell you it is because they are smart.

That was the natural situation, everyone is a witch.


(1) It is actually strange about islam that where it is so obvious in all muhammeds intentions he wants to lift all the masses, that the religion as a whole so much embraces the folkloristic arabic aspects that are definetly an adaption both to the local circumstance and the political situation. The message is, even mohammed couldn't say all that he wanted to say, in the ways he wanted to. And with a lot of it has probably been tampered. In fact it is not so hard to reconstruct his real persona and intentions, because most if not all of the influences that shaped the koran can now be historically isolated, and analyses of the person of muhammed is many times more easy (and historically fascinating) then of say Jessayah, or Petrus, Jezus.