You Don’t Have To Believe in Everything Magic.

will-o-the-witch:

In fact, you probably shouldn’t.

When most of us enter the craft, we step into a new world where suddenly so much we thought was impossible is now alive and at our fingertips. We have to keep our ingrained skepticism at bay and reshape what we believe, and for a while we resign ourselves to just believing in everything.

I think that’s a dangerous place to stay in, though. It’s a mindset that stops us from really believing firmly in anything because we opt instead for the easier “I guess so.” It provides no structure for defending what we believe in. It leaves room for wishful thinking to be accepted as fact without analysis. It also leaves the door wide open for extremism and toxic misinformation to just be accepted without question. (Example, the love-and-light woman who inspired me to write this believed that other people’s “bad vibes” were directly and very literally carcinogenic. She also couldn’t seem to register why actual cancer survivors and their loved ones were so upset with her.)

There are people who push themselves past their limits because someone told them they could easily do the impossible if they just tried a little harder. “Magic spells” that encourage repeated self-harm for the promise of physical wings. People that abandon accessible medical care for alternative methods they learned online, while the illness worsens. Self-delusion is still absolutely possible, even if the line has moved.  Finding that line is important.  

It actually strengthens your craft to have firm boundaries on what you believe. That doesn’t give you the right to harass someone over harmless things (because everyone agreeing isn’t the goal) but having beliefs with a foundation is important. It requires you to understand what you believe and why you believe it, what you do and don’t accept, where your values lie, you get the idea. As you gain more experience and information, those boundaries can move and adjust. Maybe X doesn’t work after all, or you didn’t give Y the chance it deserved. And if you can back up why you think that, all of the power to you.