Feminist Witches: The Thirst For Power

[kimberlysteele]

The meme above popped up on social media a few weeks ago, and like many pictures, it is worth at least a thousand words. I wasn’t able to find the artist for proper accreditation. My apologies in advance if this is your artistic creation — the first place I saw it co-opted without any discernible permission was Facebook.

As I’ve said, this meme packs a few tons of baggage. First and foremost, it reveals the transparent longing of feminist women for power. It also reveals how profoundly naive they are to the concept of blowback.

I have a natural talent for cursing that I no longer use. This talent was remarkable enough that I used to feel I was powerful because of it, and I suppose in a way I was powerful. I don’t curse anymore because cursing is a Faustian bargain. To be good at curses, you must dwell on the plane of curses.

Trigger Happy, Trigger Sad

A feminist ex-friend of mine became triggered when I mentioned that quote from Faust that John Michael Greer often drops in the context of dwelling on the lower astral plane. Let me give you a little backstory. My ex-friend, a long-time vegan, has been obsessed with Donald Trump since 2015, when he began to present a palpable threat to Hillary Clinton’s ascension to the presidency. She fancies herself a born witch, whatever that means, despite being technically atheist. Many of my vegan feminist ex-friends fancy themselves as witches, despite a near complete ignorance of magic. For them, they are witches because they say so and occasionally costume themselves in a manner that suggests sitcom, nose-wiggling witchcraft. My ex-friend had posted her umpteenth Trump-deranged rant, but this time it was wishing disease and death on Trump and his family. I responded (responding was my first mistake, never engage a TDS sufferer) with this quote from Mephistopheles:

“Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.”

My ex-friend is an anxious person. She does not sleep well if she sleeps at all. She is one of the kindest and most hardworking people you’ll ever meet as long as you aren’t Donald Trump or one of his supporters. Before the advent of Donald Trump as president, she was easily able to keep a level head.

Now she posts about Trump approximately eight to twelve times a day. Nobody needs to send her a demon. She is already infested with them. Perhaps, like me, she has the uncanny power to curse. Her curses may not be working on Trump himself, but that malevolent energy lands somewhere. Curses, contrary to what atheists believe, do not occur in a vacuum. What she has failed to understand is that she probably has hexed a Trump supporter successfully even though she could not get to Trump himself. I’m nearly certain that in flyover country or perhaps in her own neighborhood, a Trump supporter has received a chunk of what she wished on Trump and all of his supporters. Perhaps the recipient was the young man at the now-defunct car dealership on Auto Row in the town where I work who is scrambling to make ends meet, his debts closing in around him like the jaws of a trap. Perhaps it was the woman who died alone of cancer in a nursing home in April of this year, unable to see her children and grandchildren during her last moments because of COVID lockdown. Perhaps it was the eighteen year old kid who died in a car accident Saturday on Route 38. They were all Trump supporters, so surely they deserved it, right?

I understand the foul place where she lives because I used to live there too. There’s no getting out of it unless you:

A. Understand that wishing harm on others has dire consequences for you and the people around you.
B. Solemnly resolve not to do that anymore.

Shamanic Shysters™ Inc.

My ex-friend is at least not so tacky as to label herself as a shaman after taking a few online courses. She does not go the full monty like some by prancing around making sigils to hex Trump. Imagine the actual shamans of North America’s past rolling in their burial mounds if they could see the for-profit workshop shysters pushing a two day Shamanic Dreamwork™ course on gullible rich housewives! The idea of becoming an "accredited" shaman in two days would not be nearly as offensive if these weren’t the same desperately affluent people throwing hexes at Trump and his supporters. I wrote a song once that asks “Why do you hurt when we all want to heal?” Did I miss a memo or are shamans supposed to be healers, whether we are talking about shamans past or shamans present?

Like Mickey Mouse in Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice, an amateur hour atheist witch might have some beginner’s luck, but it is not without blowback. I don’t think it is a coincidence that every leftist I used to pal around with is a barely-hidden smoking crater of depression, anxiety, and anger. Directing that anger at Donald Trump feels good to them, but it has time and time again proven to be an exercise in pointlessness. Trump would be on the brink of being deposed like Jimmy Carter was in 1979 if only the Left had built upon their few remaining strengths instead of throwing their force into nastiness, spite, and literal black magic rituals.

They see themselves as reserves of deadly power and technically they could be correct. Their bad intentions most likely reach the less fortunate Trump supporters by way of synchronicity and karma. Unbeknownst to them, they bring the same bad intentions to themselves and their networks. Meanwhile, they remain serenely convinced by their delusions of grandeur and impenetrable, obtuse classism. They are too cowardly to assess their own weaknesses and would prefer a Maoist genocide to looking honestly at their own privileges. I used to be good friends with these people and now I back away from them in hopes they have forgotten I exist.

Special Just Like Everyone Else

Would-be shamans and witches see themselves as unique but nowadays, they are as ubiquitous as strip malls and bad drivers.  You can identify them by their sense of self-importance.  They are the ones who claim to be empaths and sensitives.  (There is nothing empathic or sensitive about throwing your bad intentions at someone who disagrees with you.)  As for their uniqueness, they dutifully and consciously parrot the talking points put forth by CNN and the New York Times.  They are unable to tear themselves away from Facebook and Twitter despite the increasing irrelevance of both.  Cancelling the cable TV subscription has never crossed their minds.  Their inner dialogues have been overtaken by lush fantasies about Donald Trump experiencing misfortune.  They are completely blind when misfortune arrives on their doorstep -- their atheism convinces them of their own innocence in matters of spirit.  Yet ignorance of the law excuses no one...besides, aren't they the ones always talking a blue streak about justice?

Protecting Oneself

We are not living in easy times, and that is why I believe it is an excellent idea to protect oneself.  I'm not talking about insurance, not because I don't recommend it but because I have no expertise in the field.  I am talking about magic.  Every human being on the planet right now is being targeted by malevolent magic.  If you have not been targeted directly by another human's bad intentions (unlikely), you have likely been targeted indirectly via a smartphone, a magazine, or the hypnotizing force of the television.  In this age of impotent religions that have discarded the best parts of their ancient routines and rituals for New Age nonsense and mind-emptying Eastern belly button contemplation, you have to take daily measures to shield yourself from the onslaught of psychic crap everyone is neck deep in right now.  I am suggesting that everyone over the age of puberty reading this takes up a daily Sphere of Protection or other form of magical banishing ritual, and if you aren't suited to magic, to take up daily prayer to one or more patron gods.  I am also suggesting that every person of every age learns discursive meditation, another everyday practice.  

The best way of fighting the hexers and the cursers is not to go medieval on them and round them up Inquisition style to put on the rack or in the iron maiden.  That approach has been tried before and proof abounds of its ineffectiveness.  To defeat those who are mired in their own bad intentions, we must fix our own intentions first.  When we become completely unlike them, we become unassailable.  The Sphere of Protection can help with that; so can prayer.  To combat their thoughtlessness, we become thoughtful via discursive meditation.  We defeat their inability to discriminate by setting sensible limits for ourselves.  They are determined to fall to the babbling, torturous, depraved, idiot realm of the demonic, so we must be determined to rise to greater realms of complexity, coherence, and beauty that are possible for the human mind and soul.  

Comments

Shaaa, man. (picture with Keanu accent)

[hearthspirit]

My favourite part about the shaman-over-a-weekend narrative is like... have these people read the literature on this? Shamanic initiation is a truly horrifying near death experience, where you get to watch your own mind turn inside out, and it doesn't happen any other way. And then you get to be exiled to the edge of the village to be feared and revered. I don't think many people who didn't have to actually chose that path. And any that did seek it out in a quest, were definitely scary people with terrifying lust for power. Not to be confused with spirit dancers looking to get a good-seal-hunter spirit, or whatever...

The amount of power a person can draw down seems to be == the amount of pain they endured to get it. So I am hoping they aren't really able to send out any energy, they're just damp powder, singeing themselves :-(

Re: Shaaa, man. (picture with Keanu accent)

[kimberlysteele]

They sprint where angels fear to tread, that's for sure. They are far from the only group of salary-drawing executive types looking to profit off of wannabe shamans. There were dozens if not hundreds of "shaman in a weekend" groups. You have to wonder if they genuinely believe in the forces they are invoking -- how could they possibly and not fear retribution? Especially since they are seeking to profit from the mystique of gods of Native American people. These are the same people their own ancestors drove off of their homelands... Sheesh. I mean it's one thing to act like a prick with the Greek pantheon. For instance, I believe I've talked to more than one of the Greek gods. If I was a stupid prick, I could set up a workshop at some remote cabin, charge gullible people five grand for two days of watching me preen in a toga while I pretend I'm channeling Persephone. I would be rich overnight. And later I would rightly expect to be involved in an unfortunate accident. If I was extremely lucky, this accident or series of great misfortunes would wait until my next life. But that's with the Greek pantheon. They're doing it with a pantheon that isn't friendly to them in the first place, pissing off a whole diaspora that wants a green light to come gunning for them and their children.

Re: Shaaa, man. (picture with Keanu accent)

[hearthspirit]

Ay Yi yi. I hadn't even thought about that part. Ye gods. You're right...

Good thing they had another vegan as a mole on the inside to report back to headquarters.

Re: Shaaa, man. (picture with Keanu accent)

[kimberlysteele]

They're fine with randomly pissing off gods they don't wholeheartedly believe in, so I highly doubt any Core Shaman™ reading this will have the good sense to stop abusing the various gods of the Ojibwe, Navajo, Cree, etc. for fun and profit.

[lincoln_lynx]

A natural born atheist witch..

Thankfully I was drinking no beverage.

[kimberlysteele]

I swear that she and others on the left are trying to revive "witch" as a pejorative term by making it synonymous with their own state of astral toxicity!

[lincoln_lynx]

You know, that's not far-fetched in the least, considering many witches call themselves that so they can be Otherized.

[kimberlysteele]

They want to feel their ancestors were persecuted in the "Burning Times". Or at least they used to. Nowadays you can't get any social justice credits for having a great-great-great grandmother who got torched in Salem because she most likely sported the wrong skin color: white.

[methylethyl]

Nobody wants to be Glinda. It was her sister who did all the cool flying and fire effects.

Born witches

[(Anonymous)]

"She fancies herself a born witch, whatever that means..."

In my experience this means that she likely has undiagnosed borderline personality disorder and no friends due to a lack of social skills.

This witch craze is just the latest chapter in the "Every woman is a goddess" entitlement story among a certain class of Western women.

Meanwhile they are entirely silent on the plight of women who have their clitorises removed or are stoned in Islamic countries, or the women accused of witchcraft and burned alive in African countries, or the girl children in third world countries who make their yoga pants and cheap tie dye t shirts with those empowering feminist logos for pennies on the dollar.

Because what the frack do those women matter unless they're trending on Twitter and present an opportunity to the Yasss slay queens to virtue signal with some choice selfies.

Re: Born witches

[kimberlysteele]

She has tons of friends, actually. I don't think she was borderline before the Trump nonsense. I think in her case, TDS is a result of demonic obsession. She is not absolved, of course, for allowing the obsession to find a home in her.

As for the "every woman is a goddess" schtick, yes, it's one of those pendulum swings in a terrible direction. It used to be that women felt doomed to their roles of housewife and mother and now they're not considered good enough if housewife and mother are their sole occupations. Either way, this culture has spent a LONG time denigrating the roles of housewife and mother and refusing to contemplate the grave importance of homemaking and motherhood, one way or the other.

The women who dressed up as Maggie Atwood's handmaids in 2016 irked me to no end. I wanted to troll them with messages like "In what hellhole was your costume made? Zhejiang province? Goa?" I could have understood if they were trying to draw attention to the plight of women in certain Islamic states -- those are the women Atwood based her story on! No matter how much they are hit over the head with their own hypocrisy, they don't get it. Like the women in college who march around crying about how racially or sexually oppressed they are... um, you're in co-ed college! Think about it!

Re: Born witches

[(Anonymous)]

Was it Christina Hoff Somers who said that if the statistics are true then a woman is less likely to be raped in a Congolese rape camp than a US college campus? I wish I'd saved this quote when I heard it back during the rolling stone debacle.

[jpc_w]

Apropos of nothing, before I started learning Western magic I was briefly in the orbit of "neo-shamanism".

On one podcast*, it mentioned "initiatory spirits" would frequently teach harmful magic first, and those who took that path became sorcerers. Only those that resisted the temptation of using the gifts maliciously got useful shamanic training from the spirits.

[*]Why Shamanism Now, which was a good podcast before the Orange Man came.

[kimberlysteele]

I'll give it a listen if I have time. I know a lot of spiritual people who were worthy of my listening ears before Trump came and drove them mad.

[jpc_w]

The specific show about shamanism vs sorcery* is Shamanism and Unconscious Sorcery.

[*]In my case, I was told by spirits that I was meant to do magic, and not practice as a shaman. IMO magic completes the trinary between her definitions of shamanism and sorcery.

Blowback

[(Anonymous)]

Two separate thoughts

The works of Chalmers Johnson show the consequences of engaging in deliberately evil action. The author of the actions eventually suffers a moral breakdown. "Nemisis, the goddess of retribution, waits impatiently for her appointment with us"

Those people who wish ill upon the American President, now that he has been diagnosed with Covid-19, should read your article and be reminded of the old folk wisdom: what goes around comes around

RaymondR

[(Anonymous)]

You might enjoy this

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/caution-low-flying-black-swans/

RaymondR

[kimberlysteele]

"Laid-off airline pilots, hair stylists, and insurance adjusters are probably not interested in critical race theory, gender dysphoria, re-imagining law enforcement, able-ism, and the travails of the “neuro-diverse” (the latest term-of-art for the mentally ill). They may also catch a whiff of yet deeper economic calamity in the Democrats’ relish for more lockdowns, and even in the promised “universal basic income” schemes that would pay the able-bodied to not work."

This is why I'll always love Kunstler, he says it so well and he makes me laugh while he does it.

One of the reasons Millennials and Xers are pushing so hard to keep civilization on lockdown is because their college loan payments are currently suspended. The second the Nothingburger Flu is declared over, all those Payment Due robocalls start happening again.

[methylethyl]

Hadn't even thought about it from a loans perspective (not having any)-- that makes a lot of sense!

[(Anonymous)]

There are people on r/witchesvspatriarchy being very gleeful about Trump having COVID. Numerous people are discussing how they 'hexed' Trump. Do you think their magic worked or is it a coincidence? I can only imagine the blow back they will get.

[kimberlysteele]

Since Covid is a nothingburger for the most part, I don't expect Trump or his wife to get anything out of the next couple of weeks but some much-needed quiet time and relaxation. When my own ex-friends were wishing a COVID death on Trump and his family, I knew that would blow back. Meaning, they will be the ones who find themselves with a case of chronic, violent diarrhea or a nagging cough, or worse, it will happen to their spouses and children. I don't associate with my ex-friends anymore because their bad luck is absolutely contagious. Just as I don't hang around with my ex-friend from high school who gradually got into heroin, I don't want to be around people who casually endanger themselves. Curses are like hand grenades. You don't need precise aim to do a lot of damage, and when one is lobbed back in your direction, you'd better get as far away as possible. Nevertheless, back when I cursed, I was so oddly talented at it that I could aim it like a cruise missile.

They don't understand what the blowback is when it hits them in the face. The obvious one was when they said Believe All Women in light of Trump's kitty-grabbing locker room talk and then Biden forcing his fingers inside poor Tara Reid surfaced as an answer. Usually blowback is less obvious. For instance, I cannot name one of my leftist ex-friends who isn't going through one or more worsening problems off this list:

-Severe depression
-Anxiety
-Chronic fatigue
-Adult acne
-Chronic inflammation
-Chronic overeating
-Obsessions and compulsions
-Thoughts of suicide

In other words, they are each astral cesspools unto themselves. I wish for them to be blessed, but I won't be getting anywhere near them unless they manage to snap out of it, not even online.

[methylethyl]

I keep a casual finger on the pulse of the Q crowd, and they seem to think it is something hugely strategically significant. All "ten days of darkness" and "Is this IT?" Waiting to see if there's anything to it. But you know, Q all but guaranteed the arrest of HRC back in 2017. I don't put a lot of stock in it.

Curious to see if anything goes down, though. Or if it's just another promise that something big is going down, and "Trump's got this" and more importantly "stay at home, trust us, and don't do anything to screw this up, like go out and protest, or call up the militia..."

If Q is just a ploy to keep the right-paranoid-activist element politically engaged (voting) but quiet (not out in the streets)... I don't like what happens when they start to realize they've been had. But if they didn't see the light in 2017, maybe it'll keep working forever... being a keyboard warrior is a lot less risky than taking to the streets.

[(Anonymous)]

"...I don't want to be around people who casually endanger themselves."

This is why I finally totally separated from the liberal church I used to attend. Their headquarters had moved so far over into progressive woke territory that I found it increasingly uncomfortable to attend. Locally, there were some people who weren't that bad, but others were drinking the Kool Aid. I had already stopped attending a few years ago soon after the minister yelled at a woman (in a church service!) for using an inappropriate word during sharing time, which certainly could have been handled in another way. This year I finally had them drop me from all their mailing lists, as I didn't want any type of connection resulting in their blow back splashing over on me. There were some neo-pagans/witches (I'm not sure what term they would call themselves) who attended, and I don't know if there was any cursing and hexing going on, but even if not, I had already decided that it was no longer the place for me.

Joy Marie

[(Anonymous)]

I was wondering if anyone would claim their hexes gave Trump COVID 19. I hope they're not making things worse for themselves by continuing the cursing in an attempt to take him totally out. That would not just create more blow back for them, but heap even more chaos and disorder on society.

Joy Marie

[kimberlysteele]

They're doing it. They believe they caused Trump's illness and were cheering it on the WitchesVsPatriarchy thread on Reddit. The joke is on them because COVID is and always was a nothingburger. Donald and Melania are enjoying a doctor-mandated respite at Walter Reed -- is it so bad to be diagnosed with a touch of the flu while under the best care money can buy? When I was a kid, I would often play up a mild case of the sniffles or cough so I could stay home from school for the day, sleep in, and generally give myself some much-needed rest and relaxation with the extra bonus of attention from mom.

Meanwhile, all the trouble they wish on Trump and his family flies back their way as they sit at home, hiding in the basement except for masked trips upstairs to collect the grocery, Amazon, or pizza delivery, stewing in their own hateful juices.

We've got one month until the election, so expect to see them completely lose touch with reality within the next few weeks. I would not be surprised to see them rolling around in literal trash heaps and setting themselves on fire while chewing chunks of their own excrement by November 3.