The Responsibility of the Witch in the Modern World
Author: wolf witch
In ancient times, the person most gifted in reading nature’s sign and in maintaining the health and well-being of the tribe became, essentially, the wise one or witch of that tribe. Through the periodic exchange of information with others of such kind and the constant study of herbs, natural phenomena, and basic human nature, such individuals gained an encyclopedic knowledge that vastly raised the survivability of the tribe existing in a harsh environment, providing an important barrier against human extinction.
Witches took responsibility for healing the sick, predicting the weather, determining the best times for planting and harvest, animal husbandry, finding the best places to live, and generally developing the circumstances under which a community could flourish. Lately, tremendous academic effort goes into delineating shamanism from witchcraft, and those individuals intent on proper nomenclature deny one in favor of another, but reality removes any doubt that function within a society belies any title. That the individual with a demonstrated talent for providing the tribe with information and service outside the practical efforts of hunting and gathering had significant value deserving of some distinction from the average person is all that mattered.
The progression of human development over time reduced the apparent need for these talented people, and the final blow to their overt existence came with the rise of organized religion and its dread of any source of spiritual power other than its own as an influence upon humanity. Culminating in the “burning times”, the position of village wise one was erased throughout most of the civilized world. The very capabilities that gave them note resulted in their demise, and the fact that the deaths of ten ordinary folk for every witch (counting those people accused of heresy and other such nefarious crimes among the ten) mattered little to an organization bent on control of human destiny in the name of its particular god.
One terrible consequence of those persecutions was the abandonment by the truly wise of humanity to its own devices. Spurned and burned, tortured and cursed, those who once directed the fate of entire communities retired almost completely from any participation in society, in part driven away by fear and, once the burning times ended, kept distant by the conviction that Man was no longer in need of their talents.
Currently a new openness and the removal of oppression from significant portions of modern society is allowing paganism to flourish and has removed most of the dangers associated with being publicly acknowledged as being a witch.
Unfortunately, the new witch is more dedicated to personal spiritual development that to helping humanity to survive in these trying times. There can be no faulting found for witches taking this direction. Hundreds of years of repression coupled with the present crop of very vocal fundamentalists determined to link the Craft to whatever devil they happen to fear go a long way toward pushing the average solitary practitioner back into the closet.
Exclusivity has always been a part of the Craft as well, so the IT revolution that has opened communications globally to anyone who can work a keyboard has actually increased the closed tribal nature of people within the Craft birthing a tremendous number of web sites each proclaiming itself and its owners the one true way to achieve whatever spiritual goal one desires. Forums are full of backbiting based on everything from the “true” names of the gods to the simple linguistics of “Wicca” and “witch”.
Considering that we live in a time when the errant acts of man, whether they be the push of a little red button launching a nuclear nightmare or the endless denuding of the planet to strip its resources at the expense of the very environment that sustains human life, witches have far more important matters at hand than debating what name best applies to the craft of the wise.
Not all of us are equipped to dedicate resources to organizations designed to provide help to those who are in need, but each of us can write to those in government responsible for the allocation of such resources. Our most valuable asset has always been our ability to persuade those responsible for some aspect of human existence to follow the wise way as determined by our talents for divination, conversing with the Otherworld, and understanding the special needs of nature as it applies to human existence. We are more than a lobbying group and much more than a political party.
We carry a tradition of aiding in the survival of humanity, and we cannot abandon that responsibility now or ever if we intend to live up to our calling.
Some of us have very little free time, but each of us can buy an extra can of food for the collection bin at the supermarket door.
All of us can ask those who have what others need to donate what may be no longer needed there to someplace where the need is great. One country in Africa has only a single working dialysis machine. A letter to major hospitals and regional dialysis centers asking them to donate replaced machines that still have a working life takes minutes, and email makes the whole process faster, it will cover more ground than any old fashioned conventional mail-out.
Many witches are already involved in charitable programs and deserve the highest accolade for understanding our real, historic place in society, but there are still a great number who are not involved and must become so if humanity is ever to find its true calling as a unified species dedicated to the well-being of each member of the species and the preservation of our greatest treasure, the planet upon which we rely for our survival.
The tribe is no longer a few isolated individuals in a tiny ecosystem. We are globally united, a genuine tribe of Man. The responsibility of the wise one is no longer the survival of a handful but of entirety of humanity.
We, as witches, must accept this responsibility, fir it is the single most essential element to our spiritual development and maturity.
Witches Of The Craft® 
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