Episode #2 | Destiny, Collectiveness & Choice

You can listen to the promo on Spotify at this link.

Transcript of the episode

Hello, beautiful witchynauts! If you are a feminist, a witch and a rebel, you’ve come to the right place.

Welcome to this podcast, where we explore philosophy, politics, esotericism and magic with a gender perspective! I promise you, you’re going to have a Witch Riot!

When I started thinking about this podcast and it was nothing more than a concept in my mind, I soon realised that this project’s audience would be very niche, because the information that I share is hard to swallow and not popular around many, especially in magical communities; but also because I knew some episodes would be more philosophical and logic-oriented and others would be more metaphysical and mystical and not everybody feels comfortable in both areas. My first episode was a good example of the philosophical type of content, but today, today we’re going full mystical mode.

After every publication that I do (whether it’s a podcast, an article or a video), I like to put myself in a sort of channelling state where I try to connect with the premisses previously proposed that I feel had more resistance to be understood or generated more rejection amongst the public, so I can address them even further. In my former episode of With Riot! one of the statements that had more resistance is that the universe does indeed make mistakes, and I think the reason for that resistance is that it directly challenges our faith in the existence of destiny.

Most of us in the esoteric world dislike the idea that there is no destiny, even me. Because to believe in magic is also to believe in forces greater than yourself, and I’m sorry to bring it to you: believing in magic (just like in any religious practice) is also a coping mechanism that makes us feel less disempowered and helpless from the many things we don’t have control over in the world. And this is why we don’t like the idea that there is no destiny, because if those forces of the universe don’t lean favourably towards us, then we feel even more hopeless and disempowered. However, this is the fantastic aspect of the mystery of magic and destiny, just because it works as a coping mechanism doesn’t mean it’s not real. It might be unverifiable, but that only means that is possible either way. And hey! I believe in facing challenges head-on, so to be able to accept that magic works as a coping mechanism doesn’t disempower us when meeting sceptical people, on the contrary, it empowers us if we rebuttal their diminishing comments by making them admit to the logical fact that just because one thing has one use, effect or power, that doesn’t mean that it can’t have another. So yeah, don’t be afraid of the accusations that those who have zero magical abilities throw at you, be smarter than that, and don’t get intimidated! Rebut! We’re not strong because we don’t have physical and psychological human needs, we’re strong because we understand that doesn’t make us less or at a disadvantage to anyone else. And that is how you really honour nature, its power and the essence that runs through us.

We usually get intimidated by scepticism because we have this idea that logic and magic are in opposition to each other, and so it’s impossible to defend magic with logical arguments, but I don’t think that’s true. I’m not going to immerse in-depth now about this topic but hopefully, during the many episodes in this podcast to come, I’ll be able to prove it to you. Some narratives are designed to make you feel you’re less entitled to partake in a philosophical debate from a magical standpoint, but those arguments have been validated by repetition, not by logic, and I hope I’ll be able to debunk them little by little in upcoming episodes.

Nevertheless, those who have a more logic-oriented mind have noticed that, just like it’s implausible that everybody was Cleopatra in their past life, it’s improbable that everybody’s destiny is to be the next Julius Caesar. This brings me to an important point, the one about the dangers of falling into megalomania when trying to conceptualize destiny.

Megalomania is a schizoid personality disorder that manifests in delusions of grandeur and entitlement. The word schizoide comes from the Greek “skhízō” which means “split” and it’s from this word that the word schizophrenia comes from because it’s trying to imply that those who are under that pathology have a split perception of reality. The reason I’m taking the time to explain the meaning of the word schizo is that being immersed in a system that has a focus on hyper-individuality unavoidably creates a division in perception where the collective and the individual now become two separate paths, they are split, and so it’s not surprising that the main way people understand destiny is on an individual level.

When I started my adult spiritual journey, after a prolonged period of agnosticism and mystical latency, I hated the idea of destiny. I come from a culture and family predominantly Christian and I could never feel my spiritual needs fully fulfilled by this religion. But there was definitely a narrative firmly embedded in our family of what being “good” and being “right” meant, and so when I started to recognize my true spiritual path I became very scared and had the idea that god (the Christian god) would punish me because witchcraft is evil and I was constantly reminded in very subtle ways that the destiny of people like me was to be punished or converted, therefore I hated the idea of destiny.

Later I understood that the word destiny was also abundantly used for world exploitation. There are many people, who like to justify their privileges with the narrative that they deserve what they have because it’s their destiny and that the people who are poor and spend their entire lives being exploited in abusive industries do so because it’s their destiny as well. This reminds me a lot of the story of Marie Antoinette, where she and her court acted with a privilege that was so irresponsible, unfair and harmful that finally that injustice in the form of an angry mob caught up with them. Then I wonder about the current people who also propose this destiny logic; if by collective will or change of the law, those privileges are taken away from them, would they also with the same determination assume those changes in their reality and privileges were written in the stars for them? There is an expropriation of the meaning and the destination of destiny by those who feel more entitled to privilege and have a reality that indulges them in that belief. So, you see? Destiny can also be manipulated to defend a state of social inertia.

It’s important to differentiate between reality, destiny and destination. Some people hope that if they really, really focus on happiness, fulfilment and wellness they will magically jump to a parallel reality where pain and injustice don’t exist anymore. They will magically make all poor and refugee people in the world disappear, and then there will only be them, those who knew how to focus on happiness and who really deserve to be in a different reality where everything is harmonious. But I’ve seen many of these people focus on happiness for the last ten years and nothing has changed, “Well, maybe that’s because they haven’t been focussing on happiness hard enough” -says the person who is still in this reality-, or maybe is because we have to stop believing that we, colonialist-descendent privileged people are the ones who have to teach exploited people how not to be exploited and improving their reality by teaching them how to fish positive thinking, (because you know that if you help them you’re actually giving them the already caught fish), and open to the possibility that is actually us who have to learn the importance of collective cooperation and the value of not leaving anyone behind.

Some people say that everything that happened so far is unchangeable and part of our destiny, and this brings me back to the excuse that privileged people use to justify injustice over and over again. It’s true, that everything that has happened can not be changed and anywhere our destiny takes us, will have the history we already built, forever unchanged, saying the best and the worst of us, but to say that our past is the only way our story could have happened, it’s a fallacy since it’s impossible to know without time travel.

Many years later my relationship with destiny changed when I started studying alchemy and more specifically the concept of Magnum Opus. Yes! Magnum Opus is conceptually an individual process and a journey towards creating the philosopher’s stone (which is a real thing, not only a mythological or Harry Potter thing). I feel like a brief description of the philosopher’s stone is in order here because I kind of dropped a bomb that might generate a lot of questions. The philosopher’s stone is said to be an element, instrument or tool (we don’t know, ask Nicolas Flamel -who was actually a real person- or Saint-German. Since both were rumoured to have found it), so it is sort of a stone that can turn any metal into gold. Fun fact, for those sceptical out there, Isaac Newton, the father of calculus along with Leibniz, and an almost mathematical god for many, spent the last years of his life looking for the philosopher’s stone. He was a firm believer in alchemy and he was mocked for having this passion by contemporary colleagues less relevant in history, science and the academic world.

But, what does it mean to be able to turn any metal into gold? The meaning will vary immensely depending on the approach you have towards alchemy, some people approach alchemy from a psychological and abstract perspective and some from a physical one. Needless to say, the ones that approach alchemy from a physical perspective are more keen to take the premise literally but they also have space for a symbolic interpretation. I’m more of a psychological kind of person however, I do have a secret (no so secret after this) wishful thinking that alchemy is not just psychological.

In my research, I stomped into a website more than fifteen years ago, with a name that has been long forgotten over the years, where they explained that gold, at the time many of these alchemical texts were written, was the most valuable metal in the world (a parameter that is no longer real since I believe there are a few other metals that are more valuable now); and so, to say that through alchemy you’ll be able to find an instrument, process or stone that will allow you, like Midas’ touch, to convert everything into gold, it might as well be a metaphor for having the ability to convert everything bad that happens to you into something good, even turn it into the most valuable thing in the world. I know this sounds a little bit like self-help brought to you from medieval times but the many instances of Magnum Opus (nigredo, albedo, citrinas and rubedo) have also been used for herbalism and as a system of steps or a structure that can be applied to many spiritual pursuits.

On this same website, they dedicated some time to addressing the concept of destiny, and they put special emphasis on the idea that we are a weave of destinies and that ultimately the Magnum Opus is not an individual process but a collective human one. That changed forever my understanding of destiny and my enmity with it. But I want to take the time to clarify that looking for or finding the philosopher's stone and managing to turn everything into gold or use everything that happens to you to get closer to your destiny, does not mean that everything that happens to you is part of your destiny, it means that you have the ability to use everything that happens to you to get closer to it.

Another aspect that immensely contributed to the understanding that destiny is collective is to question entitlement and what makes some more meritorious than others. I had a professor in college that I took a philosophy class with, his name was Alejandro Romero and I’ll be forever thankful for many things he taught in that class. One of them was this: Human beings will always have the question of what makes them deserve more than others and in different stages of political organizations and social paradigms the answer would be different. In feudalism, people who were born poor usually died poor and people who were born rich usually died rich, there was almost no social mobility, so the answer to that question was “because god wanted it so”. With the arrival of the bourgeoisie, society started to have way more social mobility so god could no longer answer the question of what makes some people deserving of more than others, but then something beautiful and terrible happened, they found another answer to that question and that answer was “because some work harder for it”. It’s easy to see how the overuse of that excuse can lead us into the reality we have right now, where we think the poor are poor because they don’t try hard enough and we refuse to see the system is wrong even if, while having two or three jobs we’re still unable to afford a house.

Also, I want to draw your attention to the fact that to say the exploited are poor because they don’t try enough, they are lazy or that it’s their fault because don’t demand better terms is the same kind of reasoning as saying that a woman was raped because of the skirt she was wearing, it’s placing the fault on the victim when we know the terms and conditions of payments and labour are set by the employer and not the employee. To say the fault is of the worker is to assume anyone in a privileged position would try to take advantage and dominate others, or even worse, that it’s not possible to grow your business or project without using those methods, and that is the most hopeless message you can send to the world.

In modern times both narratives (god and hard work) are used by those who are privileged depending on the convenience of a situation and very few are able to find the definitive answer, which is that there is none. There is no reason why we deserve more than others. If we try hard enough, we can become more skilled than others at some trade, clearly, but the right to have a full life and have our needs met in this world is not something that is earned by anyone, and certainly, people who work in illegal factories are living proof of this.

On the other hand, of course, you can beat the system and convince yourself and others that you deserve more, that’s what the 1% has been doing the entire time, they’ve been convincing themselves and us that they deserve more, but besides growing up in a Christian family I have to admit I grew up in a financially privileged family, not so much to be considered rich but we never lacked anything. Needless to say, many of the privileges I grew up with were justified with this same narrative that I mentioned before, so I know what is like to be on both sides of this story, to be on the hegemonic narrative of destiny and to have people making you believe that is your destiny not to deserve anything if you challenge that hegemony, so every time someone tells me “Well, that reality can change if you think positively” I feel uncomfortable because I deeply feel what injustice does to people and trying to change that reality just for me feels simply selfish. “It’s not your job to save everybody” I’ve heard that many times too and I only see inequality grow more and more by the indifference that premise holds in itself. But if destiny is not something that you look only for yourself but actually for everybody, then, our perspective and our understanding our our heart messages will change drastically. Our anger won’t be unjustified and something we have to repress, and in every need for change we won’t be alone.

Is it possible that our most glorious destiny might be to realize that it’s not our destiny to learn and grow from pain, dominance and error but it is to learn from collective happiness and collaboration and that this paradigm we’re currently in is the mistake since we nearly destroy the habitability of this world and our society by justifying injustice and pain? I’ll leave this question for another episode. For now, I’ll reinstate once again that I do believe that “the universe” aka us humans make mistakes. But I also believe that destiny exists and is collective, equalitarian and unavoidable, no matter how long it takes us and how dark it gets before dawn.

“And as we wind on down the road

Our shadows taller than our soul

There walks a lady we all know

Who shines white light and wants to show

How everything still turns to gold

And if you listen very hard

The tune will come to you at last

When all are one, and one is all

To be a rock and not to roll”

-Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin

So, one more time, you’ve entered the pungent caustic realm of my mind, my dear witchynauts. You might have liked what you heard or you might not but either way, if you’re wise, you’ll know to be respectful and if not, well, I’m a witch, do your own math.

Witch Riot! is created, edited and produced by Bruja Gualicha. No partial or total content of this episode should be reproduced without my expressed written consent.

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Thank you for sharing this time with me, witchynauts! See you when I see you, my dears.

Best premonitions to you all.