Son Of An Umbran Witch

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my witchcraft practice lately. Namely in how I don’t really find a lot of other witches who follow my particular style of practice. I’m always inspired by other witches, but it does come with a lot of concern in just how different I tend to take the methods of those witches.

And with Bayonetta 3 FINALLY getting another trailer I’ve been thinking even more of the stories and characters who inspired me to get back into witchcraft in the first place. Bayonetta is the namesake of this blog, in that she inspired me to embrace witchcraft almost more than any other influence. She is the mother of my practice, therefor I am the Son of an Umbran Witch.

And I want to give more detail about how I am inspired by her and what my daily practice actually entails. Both to see if I can find other like minded witches and maybe have (hopefully peaceful) discussions with witches with viewpoints different from my own. And to start I need to give a bit of my personal history and how exactly I came to be Son of an Umbran Witch.

TW: Homophobia, Religious Abuse.

I was raised more or less in a Christian home. Neither of my parents are really too deep into Christianity. They both are very light practicing, my mother admitting to be more agnostic, and my father a bit more conservative in his views but still opened to me developing my own beliefs. When I was in middle school I was severely bullied. Mostly for being noticeably queer, and “not like other boys”. And a LOT of hateful Christian rhetoric was thrown my way. “You’re gonna burn in Hell.” “God hates you.” That kind of diarrhea of the mouth.

TW Safe past this point.

Eventually I just came to the sort of broad conclusions “wow Christians are jerks (to put in mildly) I’m not gonna be one.” And from there I did a lot of religious experimenting because despite my parents soft approach to religion I still had this idea that a religion was something you “had” to have. So I was a Buddhist for a little bit, even though I really didn’t know what that meant at the time. I was a LaVeyan Satanist for a bit, and then eventual some form of eclectic neo pagan. And I was this for a long time at least a couple of years. I bought books, tools, all these other pieces of witchy items. But I started to feel disconnected from some of the ideas as I grew a little older. The concept of the various deities in that practice, and bunch of the other supernatural elements started to just not mesh well with me.

Eventually I decided I was an atheist once that concept had been introduced to me. When I was young, I didn’t know you could just not believe in any kind of God or supernatural force in charge of the universe. I watched a lot of Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and other popular atheistic speakers. I was still pretty angry about the trauma and abuse I had experienced at the hands of my Christian bullies, so I was very much an angry atheist at the time. Very much a “tear down the churches and replace them with something actually useful” kind of atheist.

And while I still have a LOT of issues with Christian doctrine, I have mellowed out in my approach to other people’s religious beliefs. To kind of put it in a very broad sense, so long as your beliefs don’t inspire you to hurt anyone, I don’t take much issue. I can only hope people with religion in their lives find some peace in it and that, if not inspire them to be their best selves, at least encourages to live a life where they don’t actively seek to harm other innocent people.

So, I’ve been a self-Identified atheist since, I want to say, 2011 if not earlier. And I kind of put all the witch memorabilia away. Especially when I family started to move around after I finished high school. Fast forward to about two years ago. We finally find a home my family is happy with, and we start to pull out boxes that have been in storage for years at this point. And I pull out all my old witchy stuff, my books especially and even a few old tarot decks. And I come across some of my satanic items I had collected as well and I pick them up and go to myself

“Oh yeah I called myself a Satanist for a little bit… There are people who actually do that, what’s up with those people?”

And out of intellectual curiosity I started looking into what do Satanist actually believe, and I came across not just more intel about LaVeyan Satanism, but for the first time I was introduced to The Satanic Temple. And I just kind of unexpectedly fell in love with this organization’s ideals and aesthetics and the way they had constructed this belief system. This belief system surrounding Satan not as a literal figure and actual being, but as a symbol of righteous rebellion, of embracing bodily autonomy, and embracing logical thought over supernatural dogma.

So I started listening to podcasts, and even chatting in some forums. I still Love Black Mass Appeal if you’re looking for a podcast that goes into a lot of what modern Satanism is about. But I wasn’t really ready to bite the satanic bullet yet.

Cut to little later, and I am playing back-to-back my girl Bayonetta and another huge inspiration for my craft Persona 5. And these are both games that just really inspired me because there are a lot of Satanic themes and ideas here. Persona 5 even more blatantly so but I’ll save that for another post. But Bayonetta was so immersed in that witchy vibe, including so many aspects of her drawing from real witchcraft and I just kept finding myself being drawn to those aspects of her. Even though I was such a skeptic I still find myself being drawn to witchcraft as a practice. There was just a part of me telling me this is something I should be doing. So I started to combine what I learned from TST with it’s use of atheistic ritual and religion and combine that with my interest in witchcraft to begin my own practice.

To finally get to the final point of that lead up, I would call myself am Atheistic Satanic Witch. I have also heard the term and resonate with the term Mind Witch. I want to draw emphasis to the “Atheistic” part of that first because I need to establish earlier on that I don’t actually believe in the supernatural. I don’t believe in “magic” the way a lot of non-witch people think of it, and even not in the same way a lot of other witches do. This is where the Mind Witch comes in.

This video actually goes into a good bit of what I use in my practice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7SDKBbQrxo

I believe in the power of ritual practice and setting of intention to change and affect my own cognitive state, and how I perceive the world. I know that might be confusing, so I’ll try to give an example. Suppose one day I’m feeling awfully depressed. Nothing even needs to be going on I’ll just get mild depressive episodes from time to time. When this happens, I’ll often do a ritual; it may consist of lighting candles, cooking a meal with certain herbs, or even just eating a piece of food a certain color. I tell myself through this ritual I am expelling my depression and drawing forth my true self. And it works I would say almost 95% of the time. Skeptics might call that the placebo effect, but regardless, it still helps me and I feel more powerful and in control when I call that magic and ritual over any thing else. Do I think some actually supernatural force is expelling my depression? No, not really. But these rituals give me the power to do that by myself.

I want to start sharing more of my personal perspective and experiences practicing witchcraft and how a lot of the media and stories I love, like Bayonetta, have influenced my approach to certain practices. When I started this blog, I didn’t think I would invest too much into it. But I’ve had it for a while now and I’m still sharing other people’s content regularly, so I want to start producing more of my own. And this was the best idea I had for a blog that is supposed to be at its heart about the inspirations for my craft.

Look forward to witchy tips, Satanic ritual practice, and of course best witch mama Bayonetta.

Until then, stay gay and stay magickal. Ave Satanas.