Many believe that Witches worship Satan, the devil himself. Many times I have been looked at strangely when I say that I’m a Witch – my family has told me that it’s better to say that I’m “an energetic therapist” or that I work with energies, 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 dark art.
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 for my entire second year of middle school, and on and off for the years that followed. I still remember some because of the impression they left on me.
The Devil and Dr. Faustus. Credit: Wellcome Library.
I woke up every night so scared I couldn’t go back to sleep. My mother talked to my grandmother, and she gave her what I think was a tiny Koran, one of those books that looks more like a little box than anything else, so that I would have it on my bedside table.
I didn’t notice a difference for a while, but one night it stuck in my mind. I woke up three times, heart pounding and sweating cold. Three times. In one night. I was desperate, so I grabbed that little book with both hands, so terrified that I couldn’t even sit up in bed, and with a lousy 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 mom asked me to say “in the name of God, there’s nothing here,” I couldn’t. I didn’t sleep again all night.
On another occasion, when my mom and brother went to my hometown to visit family, I was left alone with my dad, may he rest in peace. That night I went to sleep when suddenly I froze. I couldn’t get into the hallway to go to the room. It terrified me. I tried several times, but I didn’t get past the door frame. I started shaking, crying, and at some point my dad asked me if I wanted to leave. And I said yes.
He drove between one and 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 terrified to close my eyes. I was afraid of starting to imagine things, and that scared me even more. It was a vicious circle 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 that 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 sick of everything.
One night I woke up again, fed up, tired, sick of everything that was going on. My life was not the best, and I wanted to change many things – one of the reasons why I started studying Witchcraft. Then I remembered having read somewhere that Witches did not believe in the devil. That was precisely the figure that sometimes appeared in my head.
I was terrified just thinking about it, but if the devil didn’t exist, then what was happening to me? Right then I didn’t need to know the details, but I could find out.
With my heart in my throat and feeling chills, 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 in him, that he wouldn’t exist for me, that he wouldn’t be real.
I counted the seconds, crying silently, afraid of what might happen. What if he showed 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 trembling.
Nothing.
I took a deep breath.
I was like a god
Fuente del Ángel Caído (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 feeling bad after that. I must have fallen asleep soon after, exhausted from so much stress, but I never forget that night. Satan was supposed to be the enemy of humanity, the definition of evil at its finest. I had stood up to him for the first time, and he didn’t show up. Did it mean that I was more powerful than him? I’m not that potent, 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 don’t believe in them then the gods don’t exist.
I didn’t think about it 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 believed, then I still made the rules. I was like a god.
That 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.
With 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, if it is one or more, they all have a divine figure to whom respect is paid. But it is society that develops that figure, it is society that determines how to pay it due respect.
A man I met once at a pendulum workshop said to us that he reasoned something as a teenager. “I told the priest that, if I’m a child of God, the Creator, then I’m also a little creator. He said ‘get away from and stop wondering about the mysteries of the universe.’” He smiled as he said this, and I did too, because I agreed. I still do.
I’m not going to start a long analysis of the social, political, cultural, and philosophical elements that all this implies, but going back to that traumatized teenager in his room who challenged Satan, there has to be some truth in it.
Years ago I read that “Satan’s greatest achievement is to make us believe that he does not exist.” I didn’t pay attention to it, 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 those of an ex-partner who was unfaithful to me.
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