A Quick and Easy Modern Witch's Renunciation Ritual
1 Bible - Old and New Testaments together preferred, but the one that best fits your religious upbringing/former faith will probably do best. If you have no particular upbringing in Christianity then any Bible will do, with the King James Version being the most commonly quoted and, for our money, the best version to use by default. If you’re from a non-Christian faith background, you may want to try another religious text from that faith. However, this is NOT about renouncing your CURRENT FAITH in favor of witchcraft as a new religion, so read the whole ritual before choosing a book. Whatever book you choose, get a generic copy–do not use a sentimental one. (But now that I’ve listed that you need a Bible, I’ve probably got all y'all’s attention, because you’re like, oh no/OH YES, what is Felix gonna make us do with/to a Bible???)
Fire - Any means of lighting something on fire precisely, from candle to match to Zippo, that aids in protecting yourself and your possessions from lighting on fire by accident.
Lots of common sense - To be used with the above!!! Please pick an area that is suitable for fire usage! And check for smoke detectors beforehand lol.
Tongs - like barbecue tongs or tongs for holding incense charcoal while you light it. (Yes, yes, we’re going to be burning some Bible here in this ritual tonight, just get over it.) If you think gloves and other protective equipment are necessary, don them.
Rip a page out of the Bible. This should be a page with real Bible text on it, not the Table of Contents. Which page is not going to influence the results, but if you find satisfaction in picking a specific page, or maybe two pages, go ahead. It should only be one or two pages for the purposes of this ritual. (If you want to light the rest of the Bible on fire later for your own catharsis, that’s something you can schedule on your events calendar.)
Grip the page with tongs in a location that is fireproof or fire-safe.
Light that fucker on fire and watch it burn.
Start to notice how you feel and how the world looks around you.
How it works and what is happening:
Renunciation is an act where you declare that something is not part of you or your identity, and does not form the basis of your worldviews. Anyone can renounce, it’s not a witch-only ritual or a way to become a witch. Rather, it is and has been a common and traditional way for people to enter the path of witchcraft and exit the path of societally-imposed dogmatic shame at the same time. We propose that the exit from said path is the real benefit here–the increase of awareness of our witchcraft comes as a nice side bonus. If you have another magic you perform, or a faith sorcery you practice, it will likely equally benefit.
Burning one page from a Bible accomplishes this quickly because the Bible is held up on this planet as the living word of God. Infallible, divine, precious, potent, sometimes wrathful. This view cannot exist in the same brain that rips a page out of the Bible, because that brain knows that it is only a book. This is why the ritual is the burning of one page–you must acknowledge that it is mere wood pulp, stitches and glue, ink instead of blood, nothing that’s alive, just a manmade artifice, something that can be written down, like all books in every library everywhere. And one can know this, but until one tears the paper out–
–and admits that one will need to check the internet for what that verse says if they need to look it up later, or that they might have to buy another Bible copy later if they’re doing studies of it, or that they will probably have to keep this copy out of view from those who don’t understand why you’d rip a page out of THE BIBLE of all books–
–then one has not entered a world where they have ignored all those cautions and hesitancies and gone through with a simple act. As long as something is holding you back from a simple act, that thing is exerting power over you.
There are so many assumptions that come from the Bible, assumptions that are often hard to challenge. Assumptions about why we die, what our history is, how old our world is and how it was created. Assumptions about whether we even deserve forgiveness and redemption. A curtain of shame for questioning the assumptions. It is that curtain that we burn away when we burn the page. It is the declaration that the Word of God is not this book, because it is, and has never been anything more than, just a book.
After that declaration, you can speak your own godwords.
theartofmadeline
romaincrisis
discoholicmusic
origamiaround
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
kaledo-art
areudirty
dededos
gummygunk
