Witchcraft Works Contrary to the Western Religious Tradition
Before I can exorcise all the gook in my head that created this thesis, I have to define the Western Religious Tradition (WRT). To be simplistic, it is all of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. But the definition actually goes more deeply than that, because these faiths occupy a dominant position in the West. They influence the greater morality of our western society in a way that is largely unseen, or at least not very obvious. They all originated from the same concept that God made the material universe because he is a mega-powerful spirit-being. The material universe, as a creation, is separate from that which is spiritual. It is a difficult place we have to experience for a short time so that we can get the heck out of here - to a paradise - which is better than this material world here. This kind of eschatology spread throughout the Ancient Near East. Once a part of the faiths that originated there, it became incorporated into our deeper morality and eventually our legal syste...