• 𝕿𝖊𝖗 𝕸𝖆𝖝𝖎𝖒𝖆@programming.dev
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    8 hours ago

    You spot fake witches because they believe in magic instead of Magick. Being a witch is a spiritual practice, if curses actually worked the world would be very different (and way, way more fucked than it currently is)

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      2 hours ago

      I like the “headology,” or the idea that what people believe is what is real.

      “So people see you coming in the hat and the cloak and they know you’re a witch and that’s why your magic works?” said Esk.

      “That’s right,” said Granny. “It’s called headology.” She tapped her silver hair, which was drawn into a tight bun that could crack rocks.

      “But it’s not real!” Esk protested. “That’s not magic, it’s—it’s—”

      “Listen,” said Granny, “If you give someone a bottle of red jollop for their wind it may work, right, but if you want it to work for sure then you let their mind make it work for them. Tell ’em it’s moonbeams bottled in fairy wine or something. Mumble over it a bit. It’s the same with cursing.”

      Equal Rites, Terry Pratchett

      • doomcanoe@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        That’s a linguistics debate. Are all Christians fake christians just because the god they believe in is an imaginary friend? Or are they real christians because they actively believe in their imaginary friend?

        Or was your argument that the age of a belief lends creedence to it’s legitimacy regardless of its truth value?

        • QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works
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          2 hours ago

          It is a wholly constructed faith based partly on fragments of things that existed previously but with no input from those cultures so there’s no “authentic” Wiccan beliefs other than those from the 1950s.

          • doomcanoe@sh.itjust.works
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            17 minutes ago

            Sure, but that could be said about any belief system depending on when you start the clock.

            While I don’t personally believe in the authenticity of claims from any non-testable belief/faith/spiritual system, I do believe that any person who genuienly says they hold to one can fairly be called a member of that group.

            Be it Wiccans, Christians, Scientologists, Saitanists, or Jedi. Hence why I say this is a linguistics conversation. An “authentic Wiccan” dosen’t need our approval, nor is the validity of their beliefs relavent to them using the term to describe themselves.

        • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          I feel like the concept of magic doesn’t become any more credible if you use the archiac spelling “magick”, and differentiating between “spiritual” vs “supernatural” is splitting hairs. It’s close enough to the same exact thing that i don’t believe a person can call bullshit on one without calling bullshit on both. If brooms and cauldrens are fake then so is Beltane.

          • kassiopaea@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            20 minutes ago

            I think that you don’t think that there’s any meaningful difference between “spiritual” and "supernatural " then you’re missing the point.

            I used to be an atheist anti-christian skeptic type that didn’t understand my partner’s beliefs at all, because why have beliefs if you know they aren’t real? sugar_in_your_tea’s above quote from Equal Rites actually fits it really well.

            Your beliefs have an impact on how you act, and your acts have an impact on the world. Therefore I choose to live by a set of guiding principles and interact with the world in a way that fits what I want it to be like. The whole point is that you can only influence what you interact with, but also you never know what you’ll interact with.

            That said, I think that people who claim to be able to influence the lives of others without interacting with them directly are on ego trips.

            However, I also don’t think that anyone can say anything for certain, as we live in a universe driven by probability, where “spooky action at a distance” is an actual scientific phenomenon.

            tl;dr: Spiritual describes how people interact with the world but supernatural describes hypothetical (meta)physical phenomena.