A Witch’s Rant, Part One
I’ve heard some compare our sorry-state spiritual smorgasbord these days to a circus. I would agree (except for that fact that I have a lot more respect for the circus than that.)
The prolonged state of spiritual famine in the modern West has spawned an embarrasing melee of profiteering mystics, snake oil healers, New Age dust bunnies, and bastard wooden televangelists with waterfront property in Malibu.
Yet, despite the thousand talking heads, the impulse to seek spiritual sustenance is as intrinsic as the drive to eat. Longing to heal, to deeply know ourselves and where we come from, to unite with the Great Mystery, to quest for a draught from the Holy Source, is part of our most basic human design.
Existing in a stunted spiritual body is no less painful than arrested physical development. It can (and does) result in the myriad of illnesses which plague us today.
No one can truly be healthy without a full range of expression. We are compelled to love and flex each part of ourselves, physically, intellectually emotionally, spiritually, alchemically.
This fundamental imperative in all human beings does not disappear simply by being bred in “America.” It seizes us despite piles of powdered doughnuts and digital devices devised to distract. We are destiny bound to fufill our multiple aspects, our ancestral bodies, our riots of interpenetrated layers of dieties, mosses and crystalline foxes.
So,
to disregard the makeshift offerings and metphysical huntings of the hungered masses as illegitimate due to the sheer scale of deprivation, robs even the stalest crust of bread from the mouth of a starving man.
Yes, there is good reason to critique the sorry state of the spiritual industrial complex. But I’ve said it before: witch hunting isn’t the cure.
Yes, people are going to be harmed in this brouhaha.
Yes, any seekers of teachers and healers best equip themselves a keen nose, a discerning eye, and a hefty sum of street smarts before setting sail into this wild rumpus.
Caveat Emptor. Buyer beware.
The horrifying spectacle of it is enough to make millions of us run headlong into the “safety” of atheism and Maoism and technocracy. The beckoning robotic arms of the Nanny State will take care of you, trust us!
Oh yeah, if only it weren’t for that montrously hypnotic corporate propaganda and her evil doppelganger, government subsidies.
Given this labyrinthine landscape, to tell people that there is no healing available beyond the rational modern medicine machine, that basically anything claiming to be healing is off limits due to “dangerous” fakery or appropriation, is to consign modern people to perpetual spiritual exile and condemnation.
But, the nothing-to-see-over-here ruse just happens to be conveniently good for bizness, as usual.
There waiting on the “road to reason” are Amazon and Apple, CNN and Pfizer, Dow and Syngenta, more than ready to fill (and sell) a billion empty maws with the latest plastic, silicon, and chemicals.
I’ll say it again, witch hunting is not a cure for the spiritual industrial complex.
Make no mistake. Witch hunting is still, and constantly underway, as anyone practicing an “unverifiable” healing modality is sacrificed upon the now infamous Pyres of Science, and tortured on the Twitter Rack, while the angry mob disperses back to their cubicles, safer now that they are rid of the charlatans and hustlers.
But is it really the two bit hucksters that are the danger, here? Is all this hate and fear justified while corporate pimps glide by in shirt and tie?
Is experimenting outside the borders of state licensure so egregious a crime that we should focus on ousting from their meager watering holes all the would-be healers and spiritual intrepids who somehow manage to brave the Deserts of Capitalism? Is it wise to target cultural experimentation while the excesses in extremis of the sanctioned rage on, and the giants only deepen their monopoly?
Once upon a time, there was a village………
I feel a story comin’ on, folks (to be continued in Part 2)
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