Witchbots and the almighty pagan dollar

Do you believe the stuff they'll peddle to the unsuspecting consumer?  

It was bad enough years ago when there were a lot of "repeats" by authors sharing a lot of the same info in a new dress and calling it the latest Witchcraft incarnation.

Now, just like robocalls, spammed phishing emails and bots in every chat room trying to snake-oil sales pitch you into buying into a fad, commercialized, trendy version of whatever it is you just google-searched....  

The asshole marketing folks are ghost-writing regurgitated witchcraft literature and making it available on the bargain-basement cheap.  

They're using fake names, usually with the unobtrusive "Lisa" plus a surname that sounds like they're a relative of a legit, well-recognized and well-respected pagan author, witchcraft old-guard leader or occult visionary.  

It's almost a given that this is so that their garbage gets more hits in the Google and Amazon search engines when you type in said REAL author/leader/occultist name, tempting you to believe into the associated fictional and bot-generated product reviews.  Yessir, step right up and BUY! BUY! BUY! your way into spiritual greatness in timing faster than your average Prime delivery truck.

The saddest part is that the unwary seekers out there will fall for this crazy bait and think that they're getting a good deal.  

They can well-afford 10 of these instant generated bogus books for the price and effort of tracking down just one book by a reputable author, whose labor of love and experiential wisdom will be overlooked in the avalanche of BS bot books.

This all sounds so familiar...          ((queue wayback machine sound effect))

Golly gee, why should I spend the time and effort to find a teacher?  And then have to wait a year-and-a-day or more to learn 'the good stuff' when I can just send in my cashiers check (or now just whip out my credit card for an ongoing Patreon subscription) and buy online classes with someone who sounds legit and has good lighting on their YouTube vids? 

Because, my darlings, caveat emptor.  Those old sayings about "you get what you pay for" and "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is"....those apply here too.   

Just as you'd thoroughly investigate a potential in-person teacher to see what their background is, how much training they've had and from what level of expertise and experience they're coming from, DO THIS WITH WHO YOU READ TOO.

Isn't it better to have spent your time reading material from a diligently researched and well-practiced source than from someone who just ((POOF!)) arrived on the scene a few weeks ago with no background check available into their credentials?  Don't be duped by these books conveniently bearing a name that sounds a lot like someone who DOES deserve respect and who HAS really been afforded respect in their field.

Riding coattails of real witches when you're just an advertising jockey who is trying to beat the numbers game in book sales, all the while not truly caring about your target audience...that's what is really....uh, bogus.

Read, Think.....DO!

There's this terrific quote by Albert Einstein:  "Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking," and I think this applies to the dilemma of those working out the beginnings of their own Craft practice.

It is far too easy to get caught up in reading under the guise of research and the quest to find "the right way" to do things, so much so, that one becomes enmired in book-learnin' and doesn't ever get off his/her keester to actual perform and try to experience anything.

The funny thing about the Craft, Druidry and other such forms of paganism, is that the activity and participation was once taught wholly without benefit of books. 

You had to DO IT to GET IT. 

And in most cases, you were either shown how by a relative or mentor, or you just went out and figured things out by trial-and-error.


Which is great for learning sympathetic magic....not so great for herbalism, particularly if you don't know what may be poisonous or cause ill-effects for the practitioner!

I guess that's why I liked learning in a systematic way via a tradition:  there was already some tried-and-true methods outlined for me to use, where I could experience and draw my own conclusions....but I also wouldn't get gobsmacked by shizzle that my covenmates and uplines weren't already on standby to help me through or give me pointers about how to deal with afterward.

Kinda like training wheels, really.  You get to learn, but you also have a smaller likely hood of injury.

Still, getting one's nose out of the books and going out into the outer wilds or inner spaces is the best way to test your meddle.  So what if you've read that X+Y = Z.  If you don't do it for yourself, you're just puppeting along with something YOU personally don't know is fact.