Suffolk Witchcraft Training

What is a myth? The British moral philosopher Mary Midgley said of myth that, “they are not lies, but thought patterns that shape our thinking”. They are the facts of the mind made manifest in the fiction of matter. Myths have been described as a collective psychology: myth is other people’s religion and as Campbell said myth is misinterpreted religion. If we were to look at a dictionary, it might say that myths are stories about Gods? But that begs the question what a...

The Craft operates through the medium of mythology and symbols. One way of approaching the experience of the divine and the numinous is through symbols. The meaning of symbols is mysterious as there is as yet no accepted theory of meaning.

According to the British Philosopher Paul Grice it is easy to see how what he called natural meaning gets its meaning. Natural meaning is causally connected, for example tracks in the snow means a fox passed this way as they were caused...

Individuation is a central process to the Craft as it is in all mystery traditions. It is the path of initiation, and of self knowledge which leads to the experience of the mysteries and as such is important to understand. Above the temple of the Delphi Oracle was inscribed the legend, “know thyself”. In the mystery traditions to know yourself is to know God, as the Hermetic Maxim says, “that which is below is the same as that which is above and that which is within is th...

One of the laws of magic is the law of knowledge and its sub law is the law if self knowledge. According to the mystic Everlyn Underhill, self knowledge is also a necessary process in mysticism.  To know yourself is to know God.  We need to have a realistic view of who we are, we need to know ourselves warts and all. In this session we shall be examining the Jungian concept of the shadow. We shall be discussing what it is, why it is beneficial to explore its secrets, and how to d...

Evil revisited

It is not just Witches who argue that the use of the word evil is not helpful. The developmental psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen in his book ‘Zero Degrees of Empathy’ argued that ‘evil’ behaviour can be associated with the lack of development of the empathy centres within the brain. Empathy is a relatively new word which comes from German and literally mean...

Witchcraft works best in small intimate groups where people know and like each other. These small groups are called covens and by their very nature they are hard to get into. Ronald Hutton (1999) said that genuine Witches’ covens are like lobster pots in reverse. They are hard to get into but easy to get out of. In this session we examined what a coven is, the expectation a coven has of its members and the pros and cons of joining one. Afterwards we discussed the roles of the coven...