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I spent some time today re-writing this article. I was surprised we had an okay article on Black magic but nothing on white magic other than a disambig. So I moved the disambig and have created an article instead. Stalwart11114:59, 20 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This article seems to take a pagan point of view. It is written like a religious article would be and uses the tone of one. This is inconsistent with POV and other articles. - AH (talk) 07:37, 5 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The notion of black magic being for evil purpose, is only as recent as monotheism. We note Jung kept black books for his magical experiments, and he kept a red book for the same purpose. But he did not make these practices public. He was doing what his forbears did. His germanic forbears, the egalitarian shamanistic nature-based Old Norse Viking, kept black books of magical spells and a red book of magical spells. Neither were kept for any evil purpose. Shamanistic societies were always egalitarian and nature based. They had no concept of sin. The concept of sin is strictly for social control. That goes against what we feel is common sense. Not if you study the nature-based world that existed before agriculture. Then we see that the evidence shows they had no war or inequality. Nature based socieites did not relate to notions of evil. It was not until the advent of husbandry of animals and women that any notion of sin was born. When you say certain land is "yours", and you enslave others, you need to invent a god that looks like you to give you the spiritual authority to justify all that. When you engage in husbandry of animals and women you need to be able to justify it by a claim of moral superiority. Or brute force. Agriculture is when brute force, and an idea of social superiority, first emerge. Monotheism helps you justify your dominion over other human beings and nature itself. Monotheists invented sin. Monotheism was a form of social control which sprang from husbandry of animals and women. When you suddenly make women unequal, and enslave them, and isolate them after the proper ownersip rites, and tell them they have to tame their sexuality to serve only the master, you really do need to invent a tiny little ruling god that looks like you in order to enforce such outrageous social demands. And you get even more power if you outlaw nature-based healing and burn those folk as witches. The monotheists said they (and only they) could give you access to god; and that if you used nature to find god within then you were a sinner. And evil. Then black books became the mark of the devil. Sin was created by monotheists. It is sinful to find god within. The interpretation of nature-based magic as evil, is a very recent concept arriving with only with the monotheist. It arrived when monotheists claimed god is without, not within. Those are my comments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.126.44.104 (talk) 20:57, 27 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Monotheism is millennia old, that isn't a recent development, just say Christianity if you want to. Anyway even Christianity had centuries where it tolerated "natural magic", so again this feels heavily biased. 75.148.15.217 (talk) 05:54, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also to note, the concept of sin, or "mine and yours" and of all things a patriarchy isnt also of monotheistic origin, Im not sure how or where you got that but even as far back as the Mesopotamians, who had hundreds of gods, had the concept of sin and reconciliation between persons and the gods. ALso good lord at least try to seem unbiased, you just devolved into a rant about how "monotheism" (Lets be real, Christianity) is essentially the causes of all troubles for magic. Again I'm not sure where you got this but i would hope better from this site of all places. Its damn childish. 75.148.15.217 (talk) 06:39, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]