Witches vary a good deal in their attitudes to other religious and occult paths, and even to Wiccan traditions other than their own. Some, regrettably, confuse juvenile rebellion with genuine judgement, and consequently damn everything and everybody Christian (or whatever the parental religion happened to be) indiscriminately. Others insist that theirs is the only true Wiccan path and that Gardnerians, Alexandrians, Seax-Wica or whatever are heretics.
But most are more constructive and accept the old occult maxim that all genuine religions (leaving aside the definition of ‘genuine’ for the moment) are different paths to the same truths, and that the choice of path should depend on the individual’s needs, stage of development, cultural environment and so on.
This maxim was universally accepted in the ancient world, before the onset of patriarchal monotheism. A priest of Poseidon visiting a temple of Amun-Ra, or a priestess of Isis visiting a temple of Juno, would be recognized as a colleague, serving the same ultimate Divinity through different symbols. Even the Roman Empire’s persecution of Jews and later of Christians was political, not theological; it would have tolerated these exotic religions quite happily, as it had dozens of others, if they had not rejected the mutual-tolerance system and claimed a rigid monopoly of truth, and based their violent or passive resistance to the Empire on that claim. Ruthless conqueror of peoples the Empire might be, but it did not attack alien gods or wage genocide against heretics, as the Jews had and the Christians (and the Empire when it became officially Christian) were later to do.
Paganism is essentially tolerant, and so are wise witches. They will fight bigotry or intolerance or religious persecution; they will criticize what they regard as warped applications of the religious spirit; they will certainly attack the hypocritical use of religious excuses to rationalize cruelty or greed, such as a dictator who wages war in the name of God, a terrorist who blows up religious opponents, or a guru who grows rich on his ‘spiritual’ charisma. But they will not attack a religion, or its followers, as such. If they do, they are no better than the witch-hunters.
Which brings us back to the question: what is a ‘genuine’ religion?
A genuine religion is one which uses its own set of symbols, its own mythology (whether recognized as mythology or not) and its own personal disciplines, to develop the individual mentally, spiritually and emotionally, and to put him or her in harmony with Divinity and its manifestations (mankind, Nature and the Cosmos as a whole). To which should be added that it must be followed willingly by the individual of his or her own free choice, and not forced upon anyone.
As organizations, it must be admitted that not all religions meet that definition adequately; some have offended grossly against it. But as symbolic systems, almost any of them can and do serve to achieve the aims of that definition for a sincere individual who feels in tune with its particular symbols.
In this time of spiritual revolution, it is vital for witches to recognize and act on this distinction, if they are to play a constructive part in that revolution.
For example, we can and do strongly criticize the Catholic hierarchy’s attitude to contraception, divorce, the ordination of women, Papal infallibility and many other subjects. On the other hand, we have found that many ordinary Catholics (including quite a few priests and nuns of our acquaintance) agree with us in private that in their approach to the Virgin Mary they are acknowledging the female aspect of divinity — i.e., the Goddess — however carefully official dogma tries to circumscribe and subordinate her; many of them have an innate magical sense and an intuitive understanding of the workings of psychic power; and Catholic folklore (whether in Celtic Ireland or Latin Spain) is inextricably bound up with pagan attitudes. When we first came to Holy Ireland, in 1976, we frankly expected to have a hard time as known witches; to our surprise, we were almost universally accepted and befriended as a natural part of the scenery. Catholic neighbours were apt to react vigorously if anyone from outside made derogatory remarks about ‘their’ witches. (Once Stewart was even asked to stand godfather to a Catholic friend’s new baby; while the compliment was properly appreciated, we and the priest together managed to persuade her that it might not be altogether diplomatic.) Yet we have never played down our own beliefs, our respect for our Catholic friends’ faith (even our admiration of some aspects of it) or our criticism of many of the Church’s official rulings and attitudes.
Similarly, while we deplore Islam’s male chauvinism, its proneness to sudden waves of dangerous fanaticism, and other shortcomings, travelling in Moslem countries has taught us respect for the average Moslem’s simple blend of earthiness and spirituality, and for the everyday practicality of much of Mohammed’s teaching; moreover, there is much in the thinking of such philosophers as the Sufis with which any Western occultist would feel in tune. As for the Jews, their intellectual and artistic contribution to the best of Western culture has been out of all proportion to their numbers; their non-proselytizing co-existence with other religions, and often that same earthy-spiritual balance, contrasts favourably with some of the less admirable features of Christendom; and they have bequeathed to us the goldmine of the Cabala.
But for most witches, their attitude to Christianity is the main problem, because it is in a Christian environment that most of the Craft as we know it, and as it is at present expanding, has to live and operate.
One of the stumbling-blocks, of course, is the Christians’ insistence that Jesus was God Incarnate; that the carpenter of Nazareth, the man who wavered over his destiny in the Garden of Gethsemane, was in fact the creator of the Cosmos. Even accepting the Gospels as a reasonably accurate account of his sayings, we cannot find that he ever claimed to be God. The claim seems to us to have been imposed on him later, and to be a distortion of his actual message (with which any witch or occultist would agree) that divinity resides in all of us. If it shone through him more brightly than through most other people in history, that is another matter.
The character of Jesus is such a loaded concept in the West, so charged with centuries of love, fanaticism, psychological projection, politics and distortion, that it is hard to discuss him dispassionately; but his bodhisattva nature must surely be beyond doubt. He even seems to hint at it himself in the Gospels as we have them ('Before Abraham was, I am'), and his disciples reported the popular belief ('Some say, Elias; and other say, that one of the old prophets is risen again').
As for his teachings, even the Gospels make it clear that he distinguished sharply between his exoteric preaching to the masses and his inner teaching to his chosen disciples. One interesting occult theory (see Dion Fortune, Aspects of Occultism, Chapter III) is that he left reincarnation out of his public teaching, because his message to the masses concentrated on the transformation of the Personality as the immediate step towards perfection, and the most they could grasp at the time; but that to his disciples he taught the inner truths of the reincarnating Individuality (as St Jerome implies).
What would be very fruitful would be for some well-informed occultist who is also a Biblical scholar to take all the available Gospels, official, apocryphal and Gnostic, without preconceptions and in the light of modern knowledge, to reassess their relative authenticity; to correct where possible, with an understanding of the politico-theological manoeuvrings of the Byzantine Empire, any early editing and censoring of the original texts; to correct mistranslations which were made in ignorance of the technical terms used by the Hebrew mystery schools, and thus by Jesus himself; and in this way to compile an anthology of the totality of Jesus’ probable actual teachings, both exoteric and esoteric.1 A task for a scholarly genius, or team of geniuses. But the overall picture which emerged might be startlingly different from the one on which official Christianity has been built.
It might even lend force to the feeling of many witches that a first-century Christian meeting must have had a family likeness to a twentieth-century witches’ esbat — love-feast, healing work, psychic training and all.
In trying to reach understanding with Christians who criticize the kind of work we set out to do, it is worth pointing out that Jesus told his followers to go forth and do just that: ‘Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils’ (Matthew x:8). Raising the dead may be beyond the capacity of most of us, but at least witches work hard at the other three (which may be summed up in modern terms as ‘Heal the physically and mentally ill'), while with a few honourable exceptions Christians seem to have abandoned psychic healing altogether and to have confined ‘casting out devils’ to a handful of licensed exorcists. (Casting out devils can mean actual exorcism or psychiatric work, which is mostly left to lay experts; witches and occultists are almost the only people who distinguish between entities attacking the psyche from outside, and disorders within the psyche itself, and try to tackle both — with specialized help if necessary.) We have found that quite a lot of sensible Christians pause and think again when we talk to them on these lines.
Like it or not, the Craft has a contribution to make in today’s world which often transcends the primary task of looking after its own; on this subject, more in Section XXVI — ‘In Tune with the Times’. And it will make it better if we do not treat as automatic enemies those whose paths are different but whose ultimate aims may be more like our own than we sometimes think. We do better by trying to understand them and by helping them to understand us.
We once took into our coven a young Christian who had been active as a lay missionary but who had lost heart and a great deal of his faith. We initiated him and trained him as a witch, and a very good witch he made. After a year, he told us that he wanted to go back to the Church; he said that our training had helped him to understand his own Christianity and cleared up the conflicts which had been paralysing him. We sent him on his way with our blessing, a transformed man, and he remained our friend.
Whenever we are tempted to react aggressively to someone who is on a different path from our own, we remember that young man — and remind ourselves that, although another path may be illumined by different symbols, it may be aligned on the same distant peak.