Taoism, via the I Ching, offers a very powerful divinatory system, of course, but it’s much wider than that.  If I were to venture an opinion on how Taoism differs from its offspring, Zen Buddhism, it would be to say that Taoism is more implicitly accepting of the duality inherent in life and the resulting cycles in nature.

Zen focuses on meditation and enlightenment, and nothing else.  It is about emptiness.  Taoism, I think, embraces that emptiness (and I mean emptiness in the Buddhist sense of no-self, of inner void and tranquillity), but is far more accepting of the processes of life.  The universe brings particles into being in pairs; a proton and an anti-proton, for example, and they annihilate in pairs and form other particles, and so matter and energy come into being and play.  And eventually worlds form, and so do birds, trees, people, in a vast array of patterns, colours, shapes and varieties. 

The Hindus call this Lila, the play of the gods.  William Blake, the poet who was also reportedly a Druid Grand Master,  said “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.” The infinite plays by making finite patterns, of which we are only one.

Understanding that may give us a view of witchcraft as a spiritual path, one which is in harmony with Nature, which understands the ultimate non-duality of things and yet embraces the Universe as divine and feminine, and experiences the unity underlying things.  (And this is what this site is going to try to portray.)

This may give us an antidote to a society which, after a few years of vibrant feminist activism, seems to be sinking into an increasingly ugly misogyny and tolerance of patriarchy, as well as a narcissistic and poisonous focus on the individual which, I’m sorry to say, seems to be aided and abetted by New Age spirituality, which is becoming increasingly vapid and irrelevant; a form of Spirituality Lite for a generation which has abandoned compassion and community in favour of instant gratification, and technology instead of real communication (I plead guilty here; I do love my gadgets!) 

It’s an antidote which is badly needed in a world which seems determined to rush to its own destruction.

Mystical traditions in almost all religions have emphasised the need to let go of ego.  In Christianity this has often been misinterpreted as some sort of grovelling humility; in other religions as what the catholics would call the sin of excessive self-mortification; but it is perhaps best expressed as simply letting go of self-importance and a grim clutching to personal identity, destiny and individuality.

If we experience little glimpses of the inner space that comes with non-ego, we realise that ego is a burden and that putting it down is a relief.  Questions of afterlife and reincarnation then seem ridiculous; who would want an afterlife as themselves when they could just dissolve into everything?  It’s like staying in a stuffy woollen suit on a hot day when you could just strip off and dive into a cool pond of water.

And so perhaps the tao of the Witch is to learn to dance on the cusp of the void, on the crystalline pinpoint, to play with the edge of enlightenment without dissolving fully.  And to love Nature.

The notion of an endlessly loving, kind and compassionate god, a god which is essentially personal, is extremely prevalent.  But it is a human projection, and has much more to do with our enduring need to find the perfect parent than with anything we might be able to say about god.  God, far from being compassionate and loving, is nothing of the sort, and the word “god” has so many confusing connotations that it might be better to dispense with it altogether.

Spinoza described god as a “world-force”, Tillich as the “ground of being”, Jed McKenna as “an infinite pitiless void”.  These are all much closer to the truth.  Tolle points out in A New Earth that love implies duality and that god, being non-dual, cannot, therefore, be love.

Most enlightenment teachings will tell you, correctly, that the nature of god, reality, the Original Subtle Essence or whatever you want to call it, cannot possibly be defined in human terms.  Attempts at description focus on what god is not, on creating an awareness of absence, emptiness, void, which may bring us a little closer to the truth.  (Attempting to describe the indescribable has nevertheless spawned a remarkably large and healthy publishing industry, but that’s another story!)

Then why on earth is there so much emphasis on the god is Love motif in religious thought, particularly Christian thought?

Beliefs about god (which have nothing to do with truth) may simply be part of our illusions and defences, aspects of collective ego which we have enshrined as “truth” because of the comfort and security they bring us.

But love and compassion may also be our human response to the void, the infinite.

Compassion tends to open us.  It’s what the Buddhists call “relative boddhichitta”.  It has a beneficial effect on our ability to calm down, think a bit less, and experience our own emptiness.  It’s probably this effect rather than any intrinsic “spiritual” value which has led to love, compassion and forgiveness gaining their New Age notoriety as positive emotions, while anger, hate, envy and all the other usual suspects are labelled negative.

These labels are not helpful.  All they do is entice us into self-criticism, or alternatively, lofty delusions such as “I’ve gone beyond anger” (this was once said to me through clenched teeth by a very large and evangelical New Ager!).

Perhaps it would be more useful to tag them as easy and difficult, or light and heavy, if we must label them at all. But that’s an aside.

Compassion also tends to make us feel more connected to others and to the wider cosmos.  It loosens up our boundaries and makes us feel part of a wider whole.  This is great, and makes us feel more spiritual, but it’s not the same as emptiness, which is impersonal.  So compassion can also be an illusion and an attachment.

Compassion can thus also be a makyo, a red herring, something very pretty which keeps us stuck in the same place, busy being compassionate.  It can become part of our identity.

Love is much the same, particularly in its agape manifestation.  It opens us, it loosens the ties of ego, it makes us less afraid, and it can also delude us into thinking that we have reached some spiritual goal when in fact all we have done is connected a bit.  It isn’t equivalent to god, and in fact god defined in any conventional way simply does not exist.

When we encounter void, absence, emptiness, then we may begin to understand the proscriptions against attempting to say the name of god.