Many believe that witches worship Satan, the devil himself. Many times I’ve been looked at strangely when I say I’m a witch – my family has told me it’s better to say I’m an “energy therapist” or energy worker, but that’s only part of what I do. However, no one knows that as a teenager I challenged the devil himself and won.
Once upon a time…
Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved horror stories and movies. Vampires, ghosts, werewolves, mummies and other creatures were an addiction. He never missed an episode of Scooby Doo, he loved The Nightmare Before Christmas. He loved the dark arts.
Once upon a time, this was me as a child and teenager.
Once upon a time, I had nightmares every night.
I don’t remember if it was before or after my Ouija board incident, but there was a time when I always had nightmares. I had nightmares every night throughout my sophomore year of high school, and off and on for the years that followed. I still remember some because of the impression they left on me.
Devil and Dr. Faustus. Credit: Welcome Library.
I woke up every night so scared that I couldn’t sleep. My mother spoke to my grandmother and she gave her what I think was a small Quran, one of those books that looks more like a small box than anything else, so that I could have it on my bedside table .
I didn’t notice the change for a while, but one night it stuck in my mind. I woke up three times, heart pounding and in a cold sweat. Three times. In one night. I was desperate, so I grabbed that little book with both hands, so terrified I couldn’t even sit up on the bed, and in bad Arabic I asked the Muslim god to help me.
And something touched my neck.
I felt a cold finger touch the back of my neck, but I was lying on my back, my neck against the pillow. I let out a scream, crying. My parents tried to talk to me, but nothing calmed me down. When my mother asked me to say “in God’s name, there’s nothing here”, I couldn’t. I didn’t sleep all night.
On another occasion, when my mother and brother went to my hometown to visit the family, I was left alone with my father, may he rest in peace. That night I went to sleep when I suddenly froze. I could not enter the corridor to go to the room. It terrified me. I tried several times, but I couldn’t get past the door frame. I started shaking, crying and at one point my father asked me if I wanted to leave. And I said yes.
He drove one to two hours in the middle of the night because I couldn’t get in. And when I tried to sleep, already at my grandmother’s house, I was afraid to close my eyes. I was afraid to start imagining things and that scared me even more. It was a vicious cycle that I don’t know how I got out of.
I thought maybe it was the apartment that was haunted, that there was something there – but then why did I feel the same way? I had read that when this happened it was because it was the person and not the place that was haunted. Was I cursed then?
Once upon a time I was bored with everything.
One night I woke up again, fed up, tired, sick of everything that was happening. My life wasn’t the best and I wanted to change a lot of things – one of the reasons why I started studying magic. Then I remembered that I had read somewhere that witches did not believe in the devil. This was exactly the picture that sometimes appeared in my head.
I was horrified just thinking about it, but if the devil didn’t exist, then what was happening to me? I didn’t need to know the details right then, but I was able to find out.
With my heart in my throat and trembling, I told him that I would count to three for him to appear, but if I didn’t see him then, I wouldn’t believe that he wouldn’t exist for me. , that he would not be true.
I counted the seconds crying silently, afraid of what might happen. What if it did show up? What if I felt something? Or if I heard something? Or if something happened?
One, two, three seconds. I waited.
Nothing.
“You don’t exist,” I said, my voice shaking.
Nothing.
I took a deep breath.
I was like a god
Fountain of the Fallen Angel, Ricardo Bellver, Madrid, Spain [Wikimedia Commons, CC 2.5]
Obviously it wasn’t a miracle cure, but I don’t remember being bad after it. I should have fallen asleep quickly, exhausted from so much stress, but I will never forget that night. Satan was supposed to be the enemy of mankind, the definition of evil at its best. I had stayed with him for the first time and he did not appear. Did that mean I was more powerful than him? I’m not that powerful, but I wanted answers
Years later, talking to a writer friend who is also a witch, she told me that there are no gods in chaos magic. According to her, in chaos magic it is the witches who create the gods, and if they do not believe in them, then the gods do not exist.
I didn’t think so at the time, but some time later I did the sum. Two plus two is four. If I didn’t believe in Satan, then Satan wasn’t real, and if I did, then I made the rules again. I was like a god.
This got me thinking a lot more. What are the gods, if not human concepts and creations? We humans are the ones who give them names, faces, stories, attributes. Divine energy, to use the term my parents taught me, is in all cultures in different ways, but it is one.
By this I do not mean that there is a single all-powerful deity, but that although each culture has a different concept, regardless of the name, the rules, whether it is one or more, all have a divine figure to which respect is is paid. But it is the society that develops that figure, it is the society that determines how to give it the proper respect.
A man I once met in a pendulum workshop told us that he reasoned something as a teenager. “I told the priest that if I am a child of God, the Creator, then I am also a small creator. He said ‘go away and don’t wonder about the mysteries of the universe’.” He smiled as he said this, and I did too, because I agreed. I still do.
I won’t begin a long analysis of the social, political, cultural and philosophical elements that all of this implies, but going back to that traumatized teenager in his room who defied Satan, there must be some truth to it.
Years ago I read that “Satan’s greatest achievement is to make us believe he doesn’t exist.” I didn’t pay attention and I won’t because I refuse to live with that fear again. The only horns in my life are those of Pan, Krampus, and an ex-partner who cheated on me.
