Are you just starting out in witchcraft and freaking out about how science fits into all of it?
Are you worried that you’ll have to give up your belief in evolution and physics just to fit in with all the other witches?
I struggled myself with this; as a biological science major in school, with aspirations of being a veterinarian, how could I ever justify, even to myself, my belief in witchcraft and magic. How was I supposed to explain to my (eventual) children that I was a doctor and a witch (ha, a witch doctor)?
Well fear no more fellow witchling. Because I have some great news for you.
You can do whatever you want.
Witchcraft is literally without rules. There’s no one way of doing anything.
But how do you reconcile your scientific beliefs with your newfound spiritual beliefs?
Well…
Witchcraft and science overlap in multitudinous ways.
For both disciplines, you have to conduct research. You should look deeper at every claim you come across, whether it’s crystals or the use of new pesticides on corn crops.
Both disciplines rely on building on the knowledge that came before. For example, we’ve been building on how solar energy can be used for decades now. Similarly, witches have been building on the knowledge of the past in areas of horticulture, psychology, and spirituality. Both use claims from the past and investigate how to either dispel or improve on previous research.
Both disciplines keep records in some way. Most sciences rely on mathematics for their record keeping, whereas witchcraft journals about personal experiences. However, both are necessary to understand fully whether something was repeatable and testable.
So it should be easy to reconcile scientific beliefs with witchcraft because both have the same underlying purpose; understanding the universe and our place in it.
But I can hear you saying, ‘how can these make sense? How do these fit together?’
So think of witchcraft as a new form of science. Think of it as a melding of psychology and biology in an attempt to understand things we have yet to fully study. Think of spells and spell work as testing psychological boundaries and you are the Guinea pig, testing how best to help yourself and others. Think of the aspects of appreciating nature as biology and geology and you are simply documenting your experience in the world for future scientists/witches to use and grow from. Think of studying the celestial bodies as what it is, astrology, a real discipline of science.
There’s no real reason to segregate witchcraft and science, especially since witchcraft was a precursor to science.
So moral of my story is, that sometimes you have to put all the questions into a different science machine to get some kind of answer. While we as a society may have a vast understanding of how the planets work and how rain falls and why the sky is blue and why trees grow, there are still so many questions we as a species have about our world; like, how can I find happiness in the darkest times? Where can I find peace with the passing of a loved one? What can I do to help someone when I feel utterly lost and powerless?
And if you look at witchcraft with a critical eye, you can see that many aspects of witchcraft are even currently being studied by science to see why it works; things like mindfulness, meditation, manifesting (fake it till you make it), homeopathic options for illness treatment (lavender anyone?), and even just the psychology behind putting your belief that something will work (commonly called the placebo in an experiment, where you believe in something to a degree where your brain actually believes it can work). And that’s not even counting all the disciplines that have grown from witchcraft practice; baking, home-brewing (what hipsters every where are going crazy over), horticulture, astronomy, psychology, midwifery, natural medicine techinques that actually have some scientific proofs (cold-compression on swelling, the effects a cup of tea can have on your mood, aromatherapy to help calm and relax, color psychology, the effects of the outdoors and sunlight on your mood) (not you, anti-vaxxing bullshit.).
So while witchcraft may seem scary and mystical, just remember that so much of what is revered in witchcraft has become sciences and disciplines of their own and have scientific backing. So there’s no reason to ditch one set of beliefs for another.