To ask if you believe in witchcraft?

[superstarheartbreaker]

My exes mum was known as a " White Witch". In other words she was very into woo and practiced as a Chrystal healer, could sense energy, was psychic and was into all the new age bull shit. Vegan etc , etc.

I think a large amount of this is bullshit however there are a few incidents which made me think. One involved her son. He was v abusive and when we split up I felt very low. At the time she was thousands of miles away in the USA. She phoned me up in ters ( she had no idea we gad split up) and told me she knew how low I felt and tha I should hang on in there ( I felt suicidal) she said she could feel my pain. Wierd as last time we met I fine.

I don't agree with the way she raised my ex ( brought him weed for his bday etc) and a lot of what she believed in ( and how she enforced those beliefs) was questionable but I do think there was something a bit strange about her. ( my dad who is the straightest man on the planet even thought she'd put some kind of spell on me at one point -- although that was probably due more to her abusive son.)

My own feeling is that Wicca has some power but that any attempt to manipulate nature to ones own ends is not to be trusted.

Am I barmy???!!!

Prove it exists and works and I'll believe in it. Same goes for all religion, alternative therapies, Scotland, aliens, that Tom Cruise thing, etc.

I believe there is a lot more going on in this world then we fully understand.

I've had super natural experiences myself which I can't explain. I prefer not to write something off entirely until it can be proved that it is impossible.

I do tarot cards, and if I was a bit skeptical when I started (when I was 14) I'm a believer now.

Tiggy, I believe Scotland does exist!

... but, Stripey, "I can't explain" does not equal "supernatural".

I wouldn't say there was a fear attached to witchcraft, not that I've encountered, people who I've known to dabble in witchcraft just come across as a little eccentric and certainly nothing harmful. I guess you might feel worried by it if you too believed in wooey things though. If you can accept your own belief system without evidence you can't dismiss someone's else's if they have the same level of evidence can you.

I have had "physic" experiences, along with my mum and sister. Oh dear Lord the three of us together, can be most annoying when you don't want the others to know something. No idea if there is an element of cold reading or extra sensitivity, but it's deliberately that way words etc just suddenly pop into your mind. Knowing the exact time my grandad died doesn't fit that category. Some brains seem way more open than others. Not something that can be turned or off (otherwise damn it I would be claiming that prize) just something that happens.

Happens more often if I'm using tarot cards. When you have the same cards appearing in a spread in the same place two or three times in a row despite thoroughly shuffling and cutting the cards it does feel somewhat woo.

I think a lot of what is historically magic is explainable. Maybe some of the woo stuff now will be science in the future. Not sure I care, it's all magic to me whether it's explained or not

Sorry should read its not deliberately that way

Following on from Coffee's post above ... I do think we might one day discover - scientifically - that inherited memory exists (more than the limited version implied by evolutionary theory) and that emotional connections can transcend physical distance. For now I'm just saying I think those phenomena might be real in some cases, and they might have physical explanations.

Nothing can persuade me that dead people interact with the living in real time, that one can control external events other than by the usual methods, or that any form of spiritual entity acts upon our lives.

6 million women were not murdered on the grounds of witchcraft in Britain. There weren't 6 million people total in Britain at that time.

Off point but it is a wild exaggeration.

Just backtracking on 'emotional connections'. I actually mean genetic connections: people whose bodies might contain one another's cells.

Alis, I've been trying really hard not to post that

It was making my eye twitch Garlic .

As far as witchcraft etc goes, I believe it about as much as I believe in any other religion, that is not at all. It doesn't sound any more fantastical to me than the others either mind.

No, they all boil down to the same set of principles really. But it's unwise to say that in the presence of the faith-full ...

Police Departments very commonly call psychics to find murdered people and they are also right many times.

Most Police Departments deny this, but say that time-wasters turn up with fanciful ideas sometimes.

Every such case I've heard of turned out to be completely invented or based on a guess. Does anyone know of a proven case? Had any case actually been solved by psychics it would be world news and change everything.

It's the same for all miracles.

If every time someone goes missing you say "I bet they drowned" then you will probably be right eventually.

I believe in most things woo. I don't associate being Wiccan or any type of paganism with being woo though.

I wonder OP, if you feel you can could you tell us a little more about your MIL? Or about why your father felt you were being controlled by her?

There is a very strange case from the 20s: Eric Tombe.

He was murdered by Ernest Dyer and his body concealed.
Shortly afterwards, his mother began to dream that he was dead and identified where his body was buried. She never met Dyer and never even knew he existed. Dyer used Tombe's identity so, at that time, no-one even knew he was dead.

Just to humour her - and shut her up! - the police searched. They found his body where she said it would be.
His father was a vicar, by the way, and his mother a respectable vicar's wife.

I'm surprised that she had never met Dyer and never even knew he existed since apparently Eric Gordon Tombe and Ernest Dyer were joint owners of the business/property where his body was found.

And if they didn't know about the property how did they know to direct the police there?

Just been looking at old papers from the time and I don't see any mention of the dream in those. The father seems to have got involved when he got a look at letters written to the bank by his son. Sounds like the bank showed them to everyone, but maybe it was different back then.

Later sources mention the dream and one says it was his father who "began to see a disfigured ghost of his son in a dream that pointed to the well on then property"

Dyer was shot in a struggle with police, but one source says a ghostly force made him turn the gun on himself.

Stories just grow.

"Do the police use psychics"

Jinns are scary! At least, on Supernatural they were.

BOB - useful link.

Although no doubt there'll be at least one poster suggesting that well, of course the police HAVE to deny using psychics but those in the know, know different......

I found a pile of chicken feathers and bloody organs, ribbon and incense on my doorstep. I knew what it was.

I swept it up and chucked it in the bin. My neighbours were

Nothing bad happened.