I have this friend, N, that has recently started believing things very out of the ordinary. He said that he’s been getting into paganism and studying runes and candles. I told him that was very interesting, it sounded like a fun time and a good hobby to have. N let me know that it wasn’t just a hobby, but that it had a function and purpose, a sort of witchcraft.
I come from an academic background; it doesn’t seem healthy to me to actually believe and try to practice witchcraft, not because it might be real, but because of the mental health associations with it. So I told my concerns to N but he brushed them off, saying that people have the right to believe in what they want. I respect that, but I do not want N to fall into delusion. I let him know, as respectful as I could, that believing in witchcraft does not make it real and that it wasn’t healthy to believe otherwise. He got really bothered when I told him he should talk to his therapist about this stuff. N has a history of mental health issues and was in a deeply abusive relationship for a few years which cause him a lot of grief. I was accused of being rude and trying to impose my beliefs. His last message to me was him asking me to stop and that anyone has a right to believe what they want.
I cherish N a lot as a friend, I do not wish them any harm. I respect that anyone has a right to believe what they want, but I really don’t think this is healthy for my friend. Is there any way I can help him? Is the best way forward to just stop and let him be?
I practice witchcraft, and while there are a few branches that lead to woo-woo I don’t see how it’s incompatible with science. The existence of the divine is not something that can be proven or disproven, and even if deities are thought constructs they can still provide some insight and comfort. This could actually be GOOD for your friend’s mental health, as it was for mine. I was raised in a traditional Christian environment, and witchcraft helped me shed some of the fear, guilt and self-hatred that resulted from that in a way that simply trying to discard the beliefs would not have.
I’m going to push back on this a bit.
No, you can’t disprove the existence of deity, because you can’t technically disprove anything. On the other hand, there’s no evidence that points to a divine that couldn’t be more easily explained by some other mechanism. This gets into Occam’s Razor territory; the lack of deity is more likely than the existence of deity, simply because it’s an answer that requires the least unsupported, new evidence to arrive at.
OTOH, I think that people have evolved in such a way that beliefs like this are easy to fall into, and are comforting in a deeply instinctual way, even if they aren’t factually correct. We are biological organisms, and our biological nature makes it impossible for us to perceive the universe as it ‘really’ is, but only through the lens of our own existence. We’re biologically programmed, through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, to see things and patterns that aren’t there, since missing patterns that are there is more likely to get us killed. Thus, religion.
Fair enough.
Thing is, there is nothing to suggest that individual spirituality is bad for mental health. On the contrary, it’s often something that balances a person. I can’t argue that Big-R religion is always a positive, because we all know what organized churches and cults end up doing, but some people are inclined to put their faith in bad actors and manipulators outside the church too. With witchcraft, you’re your own priest at least so it’s not like this guy is falling into a cult. He’s exploring some ideas that a lot of people have found helpful.
I think by trying to prove or disprove supernatural stuff, you’re completely missing the point of how witchcraft can help your friend.
All forms of magic require discipline and consistency. Almost all schools of thought will have you meditate on the daily, cut down on toxic habits, exercise, eat healthy etc… Even as a hobby it is pretty strict and requires some focus which is never a bad thing especially for people with mental health issues.
The existence or non-existence of deities and spirits and fairies is immaterial to the benefits of the “Great Work” in all of its form. You have people with a 100% neurological psycho-social interpretation of ritualistics. You have people who 100% believe they are talking to their Holy Guardian Angel. All benefit equally. Hell, in the 70s you even had acidheads who communicated with Cthulhu or Elrond ! It’s all flavouring and very much not the point of witchcraft.
Right, I’m not arguing that belief is inherently bad, per se. I think that the external structure of a religion can provide a lot of direct, tangible benefits that can’t be readily had in other ways.
On the other hand, a sincere belief in supernatural effects is not something that can be supported by the existing evidence.
I am sorry for being blunt, but this is nonsensical. The existence of the divine would be absolutely trivial to prove if it existed. Break any well understood law of physics under rigorous observation and you will have international attention and change the way we view the world. Strangely enough, nobody has been able to demonstrate that yet.
And you don’t need to disprove something that has not been proven. Burden of proof is a very basic scientific concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot is an old commonly used analogy to provide some perspective on this topic.
The guy above handled this better.