So now I can admit that the distinction I made was intended to illustrate the importance of not giving up The Now for The Future, or giving up The Future for The Now (as in wrecking the planet for immediate conveniences). And, vague or arbitrary may it be, I like the distinction because it distances my spiritual beliefs from much of what’s practiced in the world today.

You’re right again - cultures and religions support each other, and the question of which supports which a chicken or egg question. Why did Israel bomb Lebanon today? Which nation is at fault?

I can’t get overly excited about the question, because I have neither philosophical nor political dog in the fight. My sacred belief system is Western and rooted in the folk beliefs of my early American and European ancestors. My politics are non-existent because I’m a primitivist.

So to me those bombs are all just racket caused by the ever-deadly Civilization Game.

Perhaps it’s simply that anthropology background peaking through again, but to my mind, religion is part of culture, and culture is a system. Religion helps reinforce that system. If your culture is dedicated to consuming the world, your religion will reinforce that; and if your culture is dedicated to living as part of your ecosystem, your religion will reinforce that. I don’t think in terms of good or bad nearly so much as workable and unworkable. When it comes to religion, I’m more concerned with those religions that foster egalitarian communities.

But I also see religions as very, very broad. You say, “Religions are dangerous because they teach that it’s alright if things are a mess right now – all that matters is that we stick to the system so that we can get to that future goal.” Well, the problem I see with that is that there are so many religions with no notion of an afterlife. The Egyptians had an afterlife, but it was a communal afterlife, not a personal one–if your pharoah made it, your whole generation did, otherwise no. Judaism had Sheol until the Maccabee revolt, and even after that the idea of the afterlife was controversial until the Pharisees eventually won out (by virtue of not having been totally wiped out by the Romans, unlike their rivals, the Sadducees). There are, of course, other examples.

My point isn’t that you’re wrong; I agree with much of what you’re saying. I’m just pointing out that there’s already a huge amount of diversity under the “religion” umbrella, so it probably makes more sense to think of it as a part of a culture, determined not based on whether or not it is or isn’t a religion, but what kind of culture it’s enmeshed in.

Agriculture is the systemization of getting something to eat. It is based on fear – fear of drought, flood, and sundry acts of Nature. Religion is the systemization of getting something spiritual to eat – fear of damnation, a crappy incarnation, or the like.

Christianity, Asatru, Wicca, Islam, Buddhism, and Gnosticism are religious systems. They are systems for achieving a level of spiritual attainment better than the norm. Using “X� you can overcome “Y�, where X = the religion and Y= death, damnation, endless incarnations, etc. If you do this now, you get a reward later. Heaven, Nirvana, the Summerland, and so on.

A primitivist says, “Why should I go working myself to death in the field when there is plenty of food all around?� A follower of Mother Culture says, “Working a 50 hour week is a small sacrifice to have no worries for where my next meal is coming from.� Likewise a member of X religion says, “saying my Hail Mary’s or doing my meditation, or taking my pilgrimage, or honoring my Wiccan Rede is a small sacrifice to be sure that I’ll never have to worry about my spiritual future.�

The modern Nature Religions, NeoPagan Religions, and the various forms of Neo-Shamanism have more in common with a Disney movie than with Nature. Nature is as cold as she is warm. She kills and she cures. Being a primitivist, and a witch, is about accepting what is, not creating a false image of Nature to bow down before.

Thoreau had a real insight when he said in Walden,

“But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb.�

Thoreau, the vegetarian demi-god of many unrealistic modern folks, had about as much right as he had wrong, but at least he had the courage to face Nature more directly than most (including me). A few more Christians (and Pagans!) with his attributes wouldn’t hurt this world much.

There are hardly any sacred belief systems left because Civilization teaches that everything must be systematized. Once the culture in which the sacred belief system is brought into the fold of Civilization, and its people have been taught to play the Civilization Game, they begin systematizing everything, including their sacred beliefs, and Voilá!

Religion.

Religions are dangerous because they teach that it’s alright if things are a mess right now – all that matters is that we stick to the system so that we can get to that future goal. I think there’s something to that effect in Ishmael, but I don’t have a copy handy to prove it.

Witchcraft is a sacred belief system, not a religion. It’s about acceptance and lack of fear. There is nothing to attain, no higher spiritual levels, no incarnations. There is an afterlife, but regardless of how you live or what you do, everyone goes into the same darkness. Hitler and Mother Theresa are hanging out together. Now is what matters.

So what’s the point of witchcraft if there’s nothing to attain? It’s a practical problem-solving skill set. Plants, animals, rocks and spirits become your helping familiars. You can heal yourself and others, draw answers to troubling problems from within yourself, from a deck of cards, or from the even from the spirits of the dead. It’s about doing something now, not sacrificing for the future. A witch might make a material sacrifice in the hopes of desirable outcome of some kind, or to show thanks, but even then it is about practical solutions to real problems today.

Yes, you’re right. Witchcraft is a reconstruction. And it shouldn’t be based on a fantasy view of Nature or on a promise of the future that distances us from responsibility for what is going on right now.

Thanks for listening.

As for religion, I’ve heard such distinctions before, but I think they largely mistake our religions for all religions. What you classify as a “sacred belief” would describe Gnosticism and most of Buddhism, for instance, but nobody thinks those somehow aren’t religions. I see “religion” as a very broad category, encompassing both of those. I wouldn’t call shamanism “backward looking, a reliance on books” (particularly since it’s usually in oral, rather than literate cultures), but actual shamanic cultures insist that their beliefs are religions. I think our prejuidice against the term is ethnocentric; we’ve expanded the (generally nasty) things about the religions of our society to be true of religion in general, and when we encounter other religions that don’t share those nasty traits, we think we’re dealing with something else. If this were really the case, “organized religion” and “hierarchical religion” would be redundant.

As far as witchcraft, I’m sure it preserves more shamanism than most other traditions, but even it has been through a lot. Like more established religions, it sees through the glass darkly. I’m also not convinced that modern witchcraft has any historical continuity to even medieval witchcraft. It can be a very soul-stirring attempt, I’m sure, but I think it needs more mindfulness of the fact that it is a reconstruction, rather than a continuous heritage.

This is an excellent article on this very topic I was reading just the other day, that I very much agree with: “Ecospirituality – An Imaginal Approach.”

Or do you mean modern, neopagan practices, like Wicca? I find such things mainly to be puerile, adolescent and shallow mimicry of fantasy stereotypes that are almost entirely lacking in historical or philosophical depth. With only a few exceptions, Wiccans are simply angsty teens looking for a way to “shock” mommy and daddy. I fail to see the need for any comment beyond that.”

You reduced witchcraft to two vague subtypes: traditional and Wicca, and there are far more than that. I wouldn’t call myself a Trad witch or a Wiccan (see the post on my blog called “What is Wicca”), so I’m not offended by that portion of your post. For want of a better term, I would have to call myself a Hedgewitch (but not of Rae Beth’s Wiccan clan!).

Witchcraft is a sacred belief system, probably shamanic in origin, with roots in the West rather than the East. The definitive scholarly work on the subject is “Ecstasies: Deciphering The Witch’s Sabbath” by Carlo Ginzburg, which I highly recommend.

Which leads into my next point. Don’t you think that much of human history is the story of Eastern religions, hand-in-hand with Eastern economics (ie, agriculture), marching across the planet? Seems to me a little primitivism and a philosophical look westward toward witchcraft (not Wicca, which is just another repackaging of Eastern thought) might be a nice change.

You missed the gist of my distinction between sacred belief and religion. Religion is essentially backward looking, a reliance on books; sacred belief is an exploration, an evolving belief based a dialogue with the supernatural.

My impression is that you are working very hard to find a kernal of something primitive, sacred, or shamanistic in Christianity. Sure, it’s there, and I applaud those who do for the effort and the reward. But for me, Christianity is the fossilized remains of a flower, and rather than try and make it come alive again, I’d rather go and smell the ones that are alive today.

I really enjoy reading your blog, and I had hoped for more thoughful comments on the subject of witchcraft as related to shamanism.

Sorry it took so long to get back here, but I spend a fair amount of time off the grid.

I wouldn’t get too excited about using either the old or new testament as either a factual or moral basis for action. These books were not written by devine inspiration. They were written by scribes and priests for the purposes of control of the flock through fear. The god described is angry, jealous, can be bargained with, changes his mind, prescibes bizarre rituals, condones and sometimes orders mass murder, rape, and enslavement…if the guy were human, we’d send him to a shrink or try him as a war criminal.

I don’t think that’s a fair characterization at all. I’ve written about my thoughts on the Christian Bible previously: “Betraying the Son of Man,” “A Very Different Bible,” and “So Let It Be Written.” Your interpretation is common among naive commentators who took modern fundamentalist distortions at face value and do not take the time to understand the texts in their proper historical context. I’ve noticed definite phases Westerners go through with regard to Christiaity:

1. Blind obedience to modern interpretations that have only arisen in the past century or two.
2. Superficial historical examination leading to resentment at having been “conned” and a wholesale rejection of Christianity in toto.
3. Further historical examination yielding a great philosophical depth, often with radical re-interpretations which ultimately cleave more closely to their original intentions and historical contexts, with an appreciation of Judaism and Christianity as mature and respectable religious traditions.

If there is another step beyond that, I don’t know it, since I’ve only gotten so far as the third one. Your characterization is typical of those stuck at #2. Many more people, of course, are stuck forever at #1, but I’ve never known someone at #3 who did not first pass through the first two.

These organized religions as they are practiced now, have little to do with Shamanism.

That is certain, but by the same token, shamanism is where they ultimately derive.

I was a little disappointed that you didn’t explore witchcraft.

In which sense? Traditional magical practices? Those are often quite blatantly shamanic–the sorcerer or witch is usually the shaman using his power to harm, rather than heal. The shaman is almost always both, simultaneously.

Or do you mean modern, neopagan practices, like Wicca? I find such things mainly to be puerile, adolescent and shallow mimicry of fantasy stereotypes that are almost entirely lacking in historical or philosophical depth. With only a few exceptions, Wiccans are simply angsty teens looking for a way to “shock” mommy and daddy. I fail to see the need for any comment beyond that.

Zerzan is suspicious of religions, and rightly so, because they are what Civilization does to sacred belief systems, and everybody knows that religions support and are supported by Civilization.

Doesn’t everyone know that eating supports, and is supported by, civilization? Or that social organizations support, and are supported by, civilization? Civilization is a type of culture, and culture is a holistic, adaptive system. Any religion serves to support its culture, just like subsistence technology, social organization, kinship systems, and everything else in that culture. If your culture is organized along lines of domination, control and exploitation, like a civilization, then your religions, like your subsistence technology, social organization, kinship systems, and everything else in your culture, will support that. If your culture is organized on principles of rhizome, egalitarianism, and sharing, then your religions, like your subsistence technology, social organization, kinship systems, and everything else in that culture, will support that. I find the distinction between “religion” as an inherently hierarchical institution, from “spirituality” to be a very meaningless distinction. Native cultures have no shame in referring to their religions. I think it is quite fallacious and pompous for us to define “religion” as “our religions.” Religion always supports your culture–if your culture is violent and exploitative, your religion will support violence and exploitation, and if your culture is egalitarian and open, your religion will support egalitarianism and openness. It’s really as simply as that.