Magick and the Occult Had Beginnings Before Christianity

Male focused religions came AFTER female based religions

The Roots

The history of occultism begins during the earliest times of the history of man. The oldest form of occult knowledge is found in the form of nature-based ritual magic. The belief of this magick is the understanding that like effects like.

The uses of icons, figures, and ‘dolls’ is an ancient form of the type of magick. VouDou is the more popularly understood form of this magick. It uses dolls and figures to inact the magick energy. The most common use of magick is the creation of a likeness, a doll. Anything done to this doll effects the person or animal for whom the doll is fashioned. Small wooden dolls, apparently used for this purpose have been found in the caves of Cro-Magnon Man. This dates known origin prior to 10,000 C.E.

The use of icons in magickal rituals can be found in ALL ancient religious practices. Celtic Ireland, Africa, India, Native American, England, Russia, and so forth.

The Shaman

Primitive peoples began the belief that there were forces of nature unsee by the average man. Over time, specially selected people (usually women, and later men) were considered to be spiritually connected to these energies. These people were called Shamans. They had the ability to travel to unseen worlds, retrieve information, communicate with animals and spirits.  In Melanesia, the force is called mana, in Mexico and Central America it is called nagual; in Peru it is called huaca; among the North American Indians it is called orenda. Some African tribes call the force ngai and some Australian tribes call it boolya. There are nuances of meaning but the term is roughly translated as “spirit-force” and the Shaman was the one individual in each gathering or tribe best suited to understand and operate this force.

The Great Mother Religions

Ancient peoples saw the act of childbirth as sacred and holy. Therefor, woman were considered to be directly connected to the Goddess. The Goddess was the bringer of life adn the all powerful creator.

The Great Mother was the personification of the procreative powers of nature. In ancient times, women were considered sacred; holy beyond man. Women were thought to be the receptacles of the Great Mother’s Gift and because the gift of life was bestowed upon them, they were held in both awe and fear. Nature, the Great Mother, was recognized as the deliverer of life and death, thus the worship of nature is the most ancient of beliefs.

Occultism

The word occult comes from Latin occultus (hidden), referring to the ‘knowledge of the secret’ or ‘knowledge of the hidden’ and often meaning ‘knowledge of the supernatural’, as opposed to ‘knowledge of the visible’ or ‘knowledge of the measurable’, usually referred to as science. The modern term’s meaning is often imprecisely translated and used as a term for ’secret knowledge’ or ‘hidden knowledge’, in the sense of meaning ‘knowledge meant only for certain people’ or ‘knowledge that must be kept hidden’.

Occultism has three basic tenets:

1) man is in the process of evolving to higher spiritual states of being;

2) the cosmos is energy;

3) there are hierarchies of intelligence above and below human intelligence, which control or influence the cosmos for good and evil, as human intelligence, of course, in its own right also does.

NEOPAGANISM

Most neopagans believe that witchcraft should be used for good, and eschew any evil usages (See the Wiccan Rede and the Rule of Three (Wiccan). Their belief is sometimes very similar to the belief of Christians in prayer, that the Divine will acknowledge and grant answers to a ritual given in a Deity’s name. Some subscribe to the idea that all of reality is at some level interconnected, forming a single universal ’self’ or ‘oneness’, and that by becoming conscious of this connection people can directly influence things around them.

African Witchcraft

Africans have a wide range of views of traditional religions. African Christians typically accept Christian dogma as do their counterparts in Latin America and Asia. The term witch doctor, often attributed to African inyanga, has been misconstrued to mean “a healer who uses witchcraft” rather than its original meaning of “one who diagnoses and cures maladies caused by witches”.