Monday, November 3, 2008

Ceremonial Magick vs Craft

When reading through various blogs and records of rituals I am struck by how many rites of simple witchcraft and folk magick get to be called "Ceremonial Magick" because they are preceeded by an LBRP and a BRH. 

Draw a few geometric shapes in the corners of your bedroom and suddenly its not a spell, its a working

3 comments:

WitchDoctorJoe said...

YES!!! YES!!! YES!!! I agree profusely!!! I don't think K/Cabala is Witchcraft. I think you can mix and match them, BUT I identify "WitchCraft" and "Ceremonial Magick" as two separate things.

I am sick of 101 *WitchCrap* books that are full of Cabala, what they as authors lack in substance they make up for with LBRPs, which is not Celtic or European Witchcraft.

That's not to say you can't get from A to B in a Toyota with a Ford engine.

corvusbrachyrhynchos said...

I'm all for mixing and matching... so long as it works.

That being said, I am also equally in favor of proper definitions.

I used to always find it interesting when someone would try to "rebrand" a ritual, and then pretend to have no previous knowledge, or worse - misrepresent the facts to support their claim. I used to see many suspect magick "inventions."

Some are fairly serious attempts to covert a ritual for expanded use:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos025.htm

While others are just hysterical:
http://www.spiralnature.com/magick/rituals/elvispent.html

Robert said...

Well, I am trained as a ceremonial magician. So, I would naturally call most of what I do ceremonial magick. However, I am working to add more natural magick into the mix and I want to learn more about that.

However, I do a ceremony to create a spell and have it 'on call' for lack of a better term. Calling that spell is no longer ceremonial. There is no ceremony at all besides a word and/or gesture.