Witches Today

Saw this in the news:

A coven of New York witches is holding a public ceremony next week to cast a hex on Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in what Tucker Carlson described as the latest left-wing effort to stop his rise to the high court.

“Liberal Sherpa” Cathy Areu said the hexing will take place in Brooklyn, and that it will include an optional $10 donation to take part.

Carlson said part of the proceeds will go to Planned Parenthood, to “fund their own human sacrifice rituals.”

In other news, Representative Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic Senate nominee in Arizona, invited a group of pagan witches to an anti-war rally in the early 2000s.

Hmm. So this is the face of the Democrat Party these days, eh?

Let us turn to the wisest of the wiseacres, Supreme Leader of the Multiverse, His Glabrousity, Andrew Klavan, for his comment:

Witches will be gathering in Brooklyn, New York this weekend to attempt to cast a spell on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. I could not possibly have made that up. The witches will gather at Catland Books, which says it is Brooklyn’s premiere occult bookshop and spiritual community space, so if you find yourself in one of Brooklyn’s lesser occult bookshops and spiritual community spaces then you’ve come to the wrong spiritual community space.

The invitation on Catland’s Facebook page reads (this is a real quote): “Please join us for a public hex on Brett Kavanaugh, upon all rapists and the patriarchy at large which emboldens, rewards and protects them. Kavanaugh will be the focal point, but by no means the only target, so bring your rage and all of the axes you’ve got to grind.”

Now clearly, witches casting spells on a conservative justice is very politically appropriate since nothing says leftism like bizarre superstition mixed with rage and hideous-looking green-skinned women with warty noses grinding their axes. In fact, I think the actual dictionary definition of leftism might be “superstition, rage and hideous-looking women grinding axes.”

According to the invitation, the hexing will feature a ceremony in which Nancy Pelosi and two other hideous crones dance around a boiling brew in a huge black kettle, singing, “Double, double, we’re in trouble, Obama’s policies are rubble. Eye of Newt and toe of Mitch…” Unfortunately, I can’t think of a rhyme for Mitch that fits Pelosi so I’ll leave it there.

Anyway, the invitation says there’ll also be a second ritual afterward called — again this is real — “The Rites of the Scorned One,” so I guess Hillary Clinton will be on hand as well.

The witches say they are hoping a ceremony of malevolent females intoning useless nonsense in service to the Evil One will attract everyone who still believes in the Democrat party — namely malevolent females intoning useless nonsense in service to the Evil One.

I am reminded of an ironic anecdote from my recent past.

A few years back, at around the time of the Sad Puppies kerfuffle, my editor Vox Day shared a podcast with SF SJW activist codenamed Camestros Felapton, where they both reviewed a favorite book suggested by the other. As one might expect between Antichristian and Christian, each loathed the book suggested by the other.

An aside:

The codename Camestros Felapton is a peculiar one, since it is two mnemonic terms for syllogisms that are weaker in conclusion than need be. A syllogism in Camestros (AEO-4) for example, would be: All horses have hooves. No humans have hooves. Therefore Some humans are not horses. Whereas from the premises to conclude that no humans are horses would also be valid. Likewise, Felapton (EAO-3) No flowers are animals. All flowers are plants. Therefore Some plants are not animals.

Camestros also requires existential import of the minor term, and Felapton of the middle term, in order for the conclusion not to be what is called a vacuous truth. It true, for example, that if all horses are hornless and no unicorns are hornless, therefore some unicorns are not horses, but since unicorns do not exist, it is true by definition only. Whether anything in reality fits the definition is another question.

I am not sure if any inner meaning or Freudian slip is meant to be read into this selection of self identification. Perhaps the name means to imply that logic is at times weak and vacuous. Perhaps it means to imply the man thus named is. I refuse to speculate, and am not curious enough to ask.

End of aside. Back to the anecdote.

In this case the book suggested by my editor was one of mine: ONE BRIGHT STAR TO GUIDE THEM.

Camestros Felapton, as a critic, made a remarkably poor showing. Instead of critiquing any of the several weaknesses of the book, he scoffed at one satirical line, in which a Warlock, who was also a college professor, in order to please the dark powers he served, proffered the corpse of an aborted baby, his own bastard child fathered on a freshman student of his.

Camestros Felapton boasted that he was a practicing occultist, and said that no real occultists use the corpses of the unborn in any rituals; therefore the author’s research was unskilled, his authenticity called into question, his partisanship pellucid, and all suspension of disbelief shattered. This ruined the book for him. How could anyone, anywhere, make fun of the sacred practice of abortion?!

The problem with this line of argument is that it recoils on itself. In Thai occult tradition, the corpse of an unborn child used in a ritual is called kuman thong and in Greek, a bephos.

Here is a mention of such a thing in an account from 197 A.D. The testimony is from one Gemellus Horion, a landowner whose neighbors were stealing his harvests.

“[Julius] again trespassed with his wife and a certain Zenas, holding a brephos (fetus), intending to surround my cultivator with malice so that he would abandon his labor after having harvested . . . Again, in the same manner, they threw the same brephos toward me, intending to surround me also with malice. . . Julius, after he had gathered in the remaining crops from the fields, took the brephos away to his house (PMich VI 423-424, lines 12-14, 16-18, 20-21, as translated by Frankfurter 2006:41).

Yes, the Egyptian warlock was using an aborted baby as a weapon to surround the Roman landowner with malice, so he complained to the Praefect Quintus Amelius Saturninus, and sued the wight in court.

Practicing occultist or no, it is sad when the warlock knows less about his own traditions and history than a science fiction writer doing research in order to add an atmosphere of authenticity for a book of make-believe.

So, by its own logic, if a writer is disqualified because his research is inadequate, then so too is the critic who criticizes the writer.

That was the only fault he voiced with the book: but that was enough, for him, to condemn it utterly.

I notice that Christians tend to be able to appreciate and even admire various worldly and pagan things with no problem. They are in the world but not of the world, and their tastes follow suit. I notice that the worldly and the pagan seem not to have a similar flexibility of taste. Whatever is not fully supportive of each of their ever changing roster of sacred dogmas is not only condemned, but unworthy of any acknowledgement of any kind. So witches cannot read fairy stories with pleasure.

My conclusion is that Witchcraft robs life of its magic.

I have many Witch friends. My best man at my wedding was a Witch. I know of not one of them who is not in favor of Roe v Wade. Those of you familiar with wiccans, asatru, neopagans and whatnot — is your experience the same as mine? All the witches I know favor abortion. All the Christian I know are against it, except, of course, for Christians who vote Democrat, otherwise known as Pharisees.