Veneficia

A Latin word that translates to the poisonous female

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They just forgot to point out that this is a renewed Latin distorted by a gender and cultural ethos that drew its blood from the Roman Empire. According to historians, the root of the word comes from pre-Christian Italy, and developed from the word - farmakis. A word describing an apothecary witch who works with poisons and potions and not a woman who poisons

The venifica of Rome operated in the service of the monarchy and the ruler compared to the Italian venifica which operated in an independent and anarchic service

Which brings me to write about another twisted business - when witches turn on each other. An unsurprising matter considering the collective shadow of our national community. Sorcery does not include dogma. There are different types of wizards just like there are different types of people. But some claim it, and try to define it according to their moral codes, and everything outside of that is different

It's ironic

We are the others

The pagan community around the world is like a cracked bucket. Leaders who declare themselves as such, harm the community through ignorance and sometimes through ego, and when those people speak they are burned at the proverbial stake

We are all capable of terrible and beautiful things at the same time and people who don't take responsibility, people who deny their shadows, often have two faces

I'm not a psychologist, counselor or health practitioner, I'm just a witch who deals with my demons every day. And this year I had to deal with many

Death after plant death caused me to take a break from ghost work to deal with the dark night of my soul that I thought would never end.

But then the first inoxia of the season bloomed, and an endless night broke with the beautiful white petals of the queen of dreams, the underworld, and death, and I felt that I could return to spirits and live again

I never felt that I fit in a certain place in the pagan community, I find the politics and toxicity of such communities overwhelming and painful. I have always been a solitary practitioner, and for most of my practice a hermetic nun. It didn't stop me from calling myself a pagan and finding kinship with other witches

With so many people trying to claim a piece of the pie as leaders and saviors, we stand to lose far more than we gain. We as a community do not need or want a central authority that will look up to us or that we will bow to it. An experience that can be seen a lot in the circles of plants in Israel and around the world

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No one owns the word "witchcraft". A word that has been interpreted many times by many people in many places, and in the same way that I called myself a night shadow, I called myself a witch, and I understood the ambivalence, ambiguity and curvature of this meaning

Baba Yaga does not apologize for eating some and giving the fire to others and I will not apologize for knowing light and dark, and being both. None of the gods I've loved and known is just one thing, none of them is always moral, and none of them is perfect love and perfect trust

My understanding of the gods and witches, and indeed even the poisonous plants were informed by difficult experiences. Experiences that almost killed me in the most literal sense

In my post on esoteric herbalism, and a handful of other posts, I wrote about the poison path. But writing about it is only a small spark of the story. The main branch is to walk through the consuming fires of the hellfire of the intoxicating plants in the garden, to get to know closely the fleet of demons of Detura that exalt my personal total in front of the shadow and demons that already exist in me anyway

The shadow is not just some psychological concept, but something I understand as the other self, the creature in me, the part of me that all lives in instinct and reaction. It's the gut reaction, the one that comes out when I'm angry, and one that tells me it's okay to be in the company of the devil, because this inner being is one too

When I called Satan for the first time, there was nothing that could describe the freedom and rebellion I felt. The Jewish God and all his priests had no power, and neither did the witches who deny Satan at every turn

It was released, and I no longer felt allegiance to ideologies set by those who wanted to impose their morals on others

Witches' Sabbath , 1821–1823, Goya

I don't worship Satan as a god, he doesn't need worship, he doesn't need praise. He is his own master, and he has given us the ability to be the same. It is the gift of the apple that the serpent gave to Eve, it is the gift of fire from Prometheus to mankind, and it is the power of all the fire-stealing Trixtrix that I have loved and known since I started on this path

Those who ignore the trick.stream but still stay with poison, may get hurt and hurt others

The shadows of the night, a family of trickster sisters, and their popular names betray them - devil's cherries, devil's grass, devil's eye, devil's apples, these names were not given out of ignorance. The writer Pendel classifies them as daimonica plants. Even Brugmancia, the true angel of the field, is known to be a highly concentrated devil. Isn't Lucifer the embodiment of both?

If you walk this path with an iota of integrity, you will come face to face with monsters you have created. This is as true of the poison witch or the venaphic as it is of the psychonaut, as they assume a journey into the underworld or into the psyche depending on our perspective. This is especially true with night plants. And if you are not ready to make friends with little demons and devils, it will be especially difficult for you to progress on this path

These are bivalent spirits with two meanings, which play both sides of the coin. With a root that springs from the springs of hell and branches that blossom in the paradise of my mind

With each of these spirits, it is necessary to take off the masks and walk deeper and deeper into the underworld. From these pits of hell great witches are born. Ask Persephone

John William Waterhouse - Magic Circle

There are really good reasons why not to go the poison route. And there is a reason I warn against it. It's dangerous, and if you're not strong enough mentally you're going to hurt yourself and others. This isn't some shiny new way to learn magic. And sometimes, there is reason to step back and walk away and say no to these allies and those who want to learn them

If we focus on the dark or the light for too long, in any given context, we lose ourselves to them or to the other and the results are harmful.

Witchcraft, and by that I mean the realm of daemonics, is the powerful face we show to this world. This is the ruthless way

A good example of such a spell is the Solanis, a family of healers as well as kills

The shadows of the night allow us to fight poison with poison. There is no way to separate the powers and there is no need to cut us off from our rights to exercise them

So don't forget, we are witches and not white knights. I do as much kind and compassionate work as I can in this world, and I will not force myself to live by another idealism. Paganism is not shamanism and I will not pretend that witchcraft and the devil have nothing to do with each other

Maybe I don't agree with your witchcraft methods, ideals or practices, and maybe some of you don't agree with mine. It doesn't make you or me any less of a witch and it doesn't make either of us better. We all have our burdens to carry and sometimes these burdens bear fruit for the world