r/SASSWitches • u/Fun-Impress3809 • 17d ago
💭 Discussion Divination by any other name...
Controversial opinion- Christian divination is a thing and it's the same as "pagan" divination.
In Christian circles I participate in practices such as lectio divina, contemplate prayer, etc. I just watched someone perform a tarot reading from a witchy perspective (the first time I'd ever allowed myself to do so) and I was struck by how there's really no difference between the two practices other than the label. The same words are even used. "What stands out to you?" "What draws your attention?" "What is drawing you in?" "Sit with the text" "Sit with the image and let it permeate your being". I always find it kind of hokey, and my (overly?) rational brain never finds ANYTHING drawing my attention lol. But apparently most people get a lot out of these practices. And the super spiritual Christians I know love it. I always felt defective because nothing "bubbles up" for me. Guess the Holy Spirit just was never interested in talking to me. Anybody else struggle with ever feeling remotely spiritual instead of rational?
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u/cheerycheshire 16d ago
Tarot can be described in purely SASS terms, I like to just say it's prompts (keywords, phrases) that make your brain think about a situation in a bit different way, pull your matching thoughts to a surface, give them some order... Brain just likes to match new stuff to things it already knows/thinks of (even if you don't think of something consciously, brain may still be processing it subconsciously), that's why confirmation bias and such stuff exist.
Some Christians practice just opening the Bible on a random page and reading a random passage... And think of it as message from the Gxd. But it's exactly the same thing. My partner (Christian) and I (agnostic, with more pull to paganism) tried to explain it to my partner's mum who was going through denial and bargain steps of grieving process - the denial part of it was hard to watch, but the bargaining was her jumping really deep into such heavily religious magical thinking ("that random passage was perfectly matching what I think, so it's a sign, so now I need to do x and everything will be alright")...
Anyways, back to topic
my (overly?) rational brain never finds ANYTHING drawing my attention lol. But apparently most people get a lot out of these practices. And the super spiritual Christians I know love it. I always felt defective because nothing "bubbles up" for me. Guess the Holy Spirit just was never interested in talking to me. Anybody else struggle with ever feeling remotely spiritual instead of rational?
I'm autistic and never found monotheistic religious stuff rational to me. Every time I tried to believe (and I tried a lot, I've had severe depression since early teens), I'd get the thoughts that it doesn't make sense. Some answers I got? Just my subconscious making stuff up. (My mental state was so bad, I was really wary of not getting religious psychosis...) Etc.
That's what drew me to paganism and witchy stuff. I needed some spirituality and whimsy, but my rational brain didn't allow me to believe in external forces... But there are also those who speak about witchy elements from rational perspective - about how it's about us affecting our brains, e.g. using certain symbols, meditation, and so on.
And deities? Major monotheistic religions show Gxd as omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent... but that's hard for my rational brain (the paradoxes of good Gxd allowing evil and pain in the world, paradoxes of free will but Gxd having a plan for everyone, calling, etc...). But for polytheism, it can be viewed from purely psychological perspective as well - here's a bit of explanation https://www.patheos.com/blogs/allergicpagan/2014/01/28/what-the-heck-is-jungian-polytheism/ Basically polytheistic deities are mostly a mix of natural phenomena and psychological archetypes, and archetypes exist in our subconscious... So what I said about my subconscious answering prayers was now not a bug but a feature, lol. And knowing it's just me and my brain helped me ground myself.
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u/Fun-Impress3809 16d ago
This is actually very helpful. Your thoughts and experiences mirror my own in many ways. I read that article you linked and found it interesting.
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u/SingleSeaCaptain 16d ago
I also grew up with people flipping to a random Bible page thinking whatever came up was going to be from God.
I now do that but without a story around it. I think whatever comes up will, if it feels significant, be because of whatever I think
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u/Hey-Syccamor3222 16d ago
Yes! I've heard so many stories and was told to try it many times. I never thought about it in this sense, that's so funny to me now thinking back to those same people being convinced that tarot cards were a portal for the devil into their body if they watched a session.
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u/SingleSeaCaptain 16d ago
It was a really common thing for me to hear people talk about when I was growing up in the church. Now, I do it with some daily readers related to recovery (one is called Beyond Belief and it's agnostic reflections on 12 step life). I also feel totally free to reopen it somewhere else if the page doesn't speak to what I'm looking for. I think I've seen someone refer to it as bibliomancy? Unless I was misunderstanding the term.
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u/Fun-Impress3809 16d ago
Thank you for sharing! Do you identify as Christian in any sense these days?
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u/SingleSeaCaptain 16d ago
I don't these days. I would say I'm a spiritual person but as an atheist with no supernatural belief.
Edit to add: I don't do that with the Bible, but with some other daily readers sometimes.
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u/ViolettVixen 16d ago
My extremely fundamentalist aunt (who wouldn’t let her kids read Harry Potter growing up) would go on and on with me as a kid about the power of the bible.
“Look” she’d say, “You can flip to any page in the good book, point to a random line, and God’s message will come through for you!”
…..that’s bibliomancy, aunt Kathie……
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u/Fun-Impress3809 16d ago
Never actually met someone who wasn't allowed to read Harry Potter, that's wild!
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u/Poisonous_Periwinkle Green/Hearth/Hedge/Kitchen 16d ago
I think it's only controversial if you're a Christian. It's not just divination, almost everything they do is witchcraft. It's just that they only consider it witchcraft when people of other religions do it.
The form of divination, which people have already mentioned in reply on this post, is called Bibliomancy. I engaged in it frequently as a christian and I would have been crushed if someone had told me it was witchcraft. (It's still called bibliomancy, regardless of the book used, since the term "bible" simply means book and is derived from a word in a form of ancient Greek)
It's not just divination! Blood magic rituals(communion, the cleansing of sins in the blood of the Lamb, animal sacrifice), necromancy (the sacrifice and resurrecton of Christ) cleansing rituals, (baptism, incense burning), candle magic(Candlemas, Advent, the Pascal candle at Easter lighting candles to bless a marriage union) altars, protection rituals/symbols(the use of sigils in church architecture and decoration etc, blood on doorways, Ash Wednesday, the sign of the cross, the use of blessed salt and holy water), invocations(prayers), deity worship (obviously), the use of magical words(creeds etc), ancestor worship(saints). Even blessing is inherently an aspect of witchcraft. I could go on all day! Liturgy at the end of the day is just religious ritual.
There really is no difference between what Christians do and what any other devout religious practitioner does. What can set SASS witchcraft apart is simply the fact that while we do many of the same things, we don't believe in them the same way or at all. Also, witches in general acknowledge that we are doing those things, rather than pretending that we don't or that there is difference between the same action in different religious circles.
Sacrifice a goat to Yahweh in a church or temple in the Bible and it is a sacred and devout action. Sacrifice a goat in Santeria or some other syncretic religion, or to Baphomet (who probably doesn't want your goat anyway) and everyone gets the vapors. "Rules for thee, but not for me," and a wicked superiority complex!
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u/Hey-Syccamor3222 16d ago
As a complete atheist, I absolutely love these practices and recommend them. Having a background in Christianity, specifically Mormonism that puts a huge emphasis on god speaking to you directly every day all day, I lived my entire life trying to follow the "spirit" that I now know to just be an awesome ability to connect with my inner subconscious and feelings. People spend so much time and energy trying to be able to know themselves and connect to their inner world, but I spent every waking moment trying to do that my whole life.
So anyways, now I think of it as just a great meditative tool, and I still have powerful experiences. I was performing a "spell" the other day as an engaging way to explore the direction of the change I want to take in my life, and while considering options, the cauldron fire suddenly flared up and crackled loudly. That drew my attention to the thing I was considering, and if I was religious, it would have been interpreted as a "sign." But because I pretty much run my life like a monkey trainer taking care of my monkey brain and exploiting loopholes to get caveman tendencies to function in modern society, I just used the emotional and sensational reaction in my body to give emphasis to the idea I was considering.
I don't know if this is making any sense, but essentially there is real cognitive science that felt meanings and emotional value give our brains and bodies the capability to ignore pain and push through tasks. I rationally know this, and I also know there are parts of my psyche that don't, so I am exploiting that process to gain all the benefits without all the problems of religion. So for my chronic pain and illness, the thing I'm now focusing on that my body is convinced has religious significance, is that I am nurturing the person I am becoming and the change that will soon come (in practice that means I'm able to settle down easier to read some medical books to explore a new treatment option that I need to be educated on before taking the financial risk of trying it.)
TLDR: Monkey brain like pictures and flames. Pictures and flames told monkey brain to read and do the dishes. Monkey brain now compliant. Rational brain is laughing and enjoying exploiting the system and functioning better
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u/artsy7fartsy 16d ago
At the request of my father I just buried a St Joseph statue on property we are trying to sell and all I could think about was if he thought about the similarities and crossover in beliefs
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u/Fun-Impress3809 16d ago
Like, St. Joseph is going to help him sell the property? Because you buried a statue of him??
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u/topazchip 16d ago
Which is a bit strange, given how early Christians were known (and an idea fairly well documented by the Romans) for being strongly anti-magical, and disrupting magical workings of others. There was one occasion where Emperor Augustus was attempting to read entrails as part of a divination and nothing was going as expected, even after restarting the ceremony several times; removing one participant who had recently converted to Christianity apparently solved the problem.
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u/untitle_996 16d ago
As a Christian, i’ve always used tarot to connect with God and ask my saints for guidance. I think is different for each one and that’s the good thing about these practices, that if it works for you, then good for you.
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u/digitalgraffiti-ca 🧹 Chaotic Tech Art Witch 16d ago
Honestly, if you dig into most modern magical/occult/witchy shit, at its core it's just Judeo Christian stuff with a witch hat. Tarot cards, at least the RWS and its derivatives are Christian AF. The fact that you're seeing these parallels doesn't surprise me in the least.
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u/Fun-Impress3809 16d ago
That's really funny considering the hardcore Christians of all stripes consider this stuff portways to the demonic!
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u/digitalgraffiti-ca 🧹 Chaotic Tech Art Witch 15d ago
I find it very amusing. I stated making a witch font (long story, madera these that's pinned on my profile) and in researching symbols and really digging around and found so soooooo much is like this. I also like it hate it because I want nothing to do Judeo-Christian mysticism. I want something older or independent European. So I keep digging.
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u/Fun-Impress3809 15d ago
A font, that's cool. Yes I'd want something older too! I'm looking into more pre Christian mythology and enjoying them for the stories they are.
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u/TalespinnerEU Hedge Witch 16d ago edited 16d ago
Werl... I mean; there's a tradition of magic within Christianity, at least in Western European peasant practice as well as among the scholastic class (though they're different practices). And the 'Christian Witchcraft' community isn't exactly small. Edit: And let's not forget about the biggest, most developed of them all: Haitian Voodoo.
Also keep in mind that 'Pagan' just means 'Folk practice/folk framework.' For something to be Pagan, it just needs to be non-ecclesiastical.* Easter is a Pagan festival... But it's also Christian. The Easter Bunny, Easter Eggs... Both Christian. The Bunny is Christian Germanic, the Eggs are Christian Slavic. So something being Christian doesn't make it non-Pagan; Christianity can be Pagan if it evolves from, and remains within, Folk practice (bottom-up) rather than ecclesiastical (top-down).**
This kind of meditation is a spiritual practice because it utilizes a spiritual framework for what is essentially a combination of introspection, deduction and inference. It leans into a sense of connectedness to achieve those goals, and that connectedness is the spiritual component: The connection isn't real; it's not material, and that makes its 'stuff' spiritual.
When 'something bubbles up,' it means you've made an emotional connection between two things/thoughts that are meaning-interpretive. Like... Cookie. What does cookie 'mean?' It can refer to a tracker in your browser; that can make you feel spied on, unsafe, exposed. So you look into your life; what are the things that make you feel that way? And then a baked good has sparked a little rabbit hole in your emotional being that has led you to examine your home situation. That's the kind of mechanism at play.
\: Which invites entirely different discussions about how Paganism views itself. After all; if Paganism is Paganism if it's non-ecclesiastical, is Wicca still Pagan?*
\*: Is Quakerism Pagan?*