The Folly of Witchcraft

So I was on a forum populated mostly by self taught magicians and intuitive spiritualists this morning and came across a post with a one word title: Qlipphoth.

For those of you who don't know Qlipphoth is a Qabbalistic concept usually held as a reverse of the Sephirot, the Fruit on the Tree of Life & Knowledge. It's not of course. The reverse I mean. Qlipphoth isn't the reverse of the Sephirot, it's the inversion. What's the difference? Reversals happen along the natural tract. The reversal itself might be unnatural but a reversal's progression is the same way it got to it's current state. An inversion on the other hand turns a thing inside out. Walking backwards is a reversal, bending your knees to face the back is an inversion.

Back to the story.

This person wanted to know what other's thought of her curiosity about Qlipphothic magic as she considered it to be a legitimate and completely wholesome field of study. "Balancing the Light with the Dark" as it were. Really? Really. You don't achieve balance by balancing your balance with imbalance.

This bares mention here though for two reasons; first I see this attitude all the time among young African and African Diasporan Occultists and second (most importantly in my opinion) we have a word for Qlipphothic magic in Ewegbe. We call it Azetɔ, and it is what we mean when use the word "witchcraft".

Azetɔ achieve their power by flaying their own souls, mining their hearts for pain so great it transforms them into twisted caricatures of themselves. There's no mortification. No transcendence. Greater power is found in deeper depravity, so it becomes a race to the bottom. Ignorant existence, unawareness, is the balance between being and not being.

And let's be clear here, there is light and beauty in Azetɔ just as there is darkness and horror in Vodou. But Azetɔ's light burns your eyes out of your head, it's beauty attracts you to disease and rot. Conversely, Vodou's darkness offers respite from awareness and hones intuition while it's horrors cultivate courage, fortitude, and discernment.

Spiritual development incurs great personal risk no matter how you seek it, but Azeto isn't a path of personal growth but inversion. There's no good way to be turned inside out.