[Edit to address the original poster first before the others]
Any and all magic works if you believe it works. cast a love spell, meet someone, have a relationship, believe the spell had something to do with it,
wah-la! magic works.
Cast a money spell, your mom dies, you get insurance money, shazaam, magic works.
Or maybe its coincedence? Thats entirely up to you to decide or doubt, its your magic.
I think that one of the main misconceptions of magic is that it has to "work".
Magic is
the work, it is steps in making a concentrated effort toward a goal.
Here's an example, you want go change your life, you meditate on the changes you want, you do this thinkng while you are carving candles, looking for
the right kind of pre-written out of the box spell, looking up the appropriate ancient dieites, you cast your magic circle as you've practiced time
after time before, you do your chant, you wave your wands and athame, etc etc and onward, now that you've gone this far toward your goal, all the
other hassles involved in the change you desire seem very much just mundane stuff, and with your belief that supernatural forces are at work in your
favor you go with the flow and take the necessary "everyday" steps to get where you want to be.
Hope that makes sense, I used to have a gift for talking about this stuff and making it clear, but i've kind of been in a cave for a decade when it
comes to these topics.
Originally posted by Enyalius
It's just that not many are actively involved with it.
That would be hard to determine and thus the second part that follows is more correct.
Originally posted by Enyalius
This results in several people doing shallow wicca practices and basically have very misinformed ideas about magick. Those who study it seriously
rarely speak of it, simply because those with shallow knowledge always think they know best making discussions pointless.
I'm not sure what the origin of the Hermetic Quaternary is but it goes like this:
To Know, To Will, To Dare, To Keep Silent.
Note the "keep silent" part. I questioned this in my youth but then after some meditation understood it.
When you open your big mouth about your practices and beliefs you invite others to pollute the purity of your thoughts, your path if you will, with
their influence, their voice, their opinion, their ignorance, their dogma. It is often better to keep many things to yourself until these experiences
have taken you far enough along the trail that you realise what you believed yesterday was only a half or quarter truth and simply a step toward a
further goal, and then you can laugh the at folly of your youth (in mind), and share it with others without it becoming less important when it
shouldn't.
I hope that made sense.
Of course in the past "keep silent" also was followed with "or be burned alive, drawn and quartered, drowned, or hanged by religious
fanactics".
Nice set of links there!
----
Also to the poster about Salem, WTF does that have anything at all to do with Wicca?
I've heard this over and over from witch-wannabees "oh I go to salem", in your case, living 20 miles away.
20 Miles or 200,000 miles makes no difference.
There is nothing important about Salem in terms of witchcraft, magick, or wicca other than
the fact that innocent people were imprisoned and murdered there by ergot infected religious fanatics calling these innocent people "witches",
when
in fact they were not witches at all.
Was a four year old child a witch or a bed ridden old woman, how about an infant?
Now the people of Salem, including the witches who live and work there exploit that tragedy,
often
for personal profit. Profit is exactly the reason of the Inquistion and European witch hunts and most likely the Salem witch trials in
the first place, ie, the accuser got 1/3 of the land, the church got 1/3 of the land, and the judge got 1/3 of the land of the accused "witch".
Its disgusting, really.
Just needed to clear that up, since this ridiculous connection keeps rearing its ugly head and ticking me off.
[edit on 29-3-2006 by Legalizer]
[edit on 29-3-2006 by Legalizer]
[edit on 29-3-2006 by Legalizer]
[edit on 29-3-2006 by Legalizer]
) and more. However the people that are a part of commercialisation and exploitation usually are people who give to much value to mundane
aspects of life and it shows me they don't know what they are on about. Making profit isn't a bad thing by all means, but the way it is done is
just 
