{"id":20473,"date":"2022-10-25T10:21:14","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T23:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mbsfestival.com.au\/?p=20473"},"modified":"2022-10-25T10:21:14","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T23:21:14","slug":"spirituality-witchcraft-and-battling-the-stigma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mbsfestival.com.au\/sydney\/blog\/spirituality-witchcraft-and-battling-the-stigma","title":{"rendered":"Spirituality, Witchcraft and Battling the Stigma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For many years I found myself struggling. Struggling with life, struggling to find who I was, struggling to find where I fit in.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t until recent years when I discovered spirituality and witchcraft, and the deep personal growth that came along with it. However, when I found witchcraft, I also found a prejudice from friends and family to go along with it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When you say \u201cWitchcraft\u201d most people go straight to black magic, satan worship, demons and all things dark and spooky. People look at you like you\u2019re whacky and loony. These clearly aren\u2019t regarded very well. I found myself staying in the broom closet for many years because of this, until I started becoming more comfortable in my own skin.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Witchcraft helped me in becoming my truest, most understanding self, my most reflective, and most carefree self. After years of deep depression, miserable relationships, and continuously losing myself into what society wanted from me, Witchcraft was there to assist me with shadow work, to look into myself and find a way of life that made me feel happy, independent, and free.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I am a huge believer in being able to celebrate differences, acknowledging and fighting for equal rights of all races, sexualities, genders, ethnicities and more. For me, Witchcraft gave me a space where I was confident and brave enough to be my true self and embrace my sexual identity. Without one, I would not have been able to find it within myself to be the other.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I found the spiritual and witch community to be a place of inclusion and acceptance. This was truely something to believe in, something to fight for and for the first time, I had people within the community who understood what it was like to not fit in. People who were like me.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so I started fighting. I started educating. And so far, it has been small. But it won\u2019t remain small forever.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Witchcraft is not something to be scared of. It is something to celebrate. It is a safe space for every single one of us, to embrace and accept our own power, and who we are. Witchcraft can be whatever you want it to be, and it is whatever you make it. Witchcraft is believing in yourself, it is helping others, it is loving yourself and loving others.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so I will continue to fight, I will continue to educate, and together we will continue to break the stigma of witchcraft.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So mote it be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For many years I found myself struggling. Struggling with life, struggling to find who I was, struggling to find where I fit in. &nbsp; It wasn\u2019t until recent years when I discovered spirituality and witchcraft, and the deep personal growth that came along with it. However, when I found witchcraft, I also found a prejudice [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spiritual-realm-predictions"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Spirituality, Witchcraft and Battling the Stigma - MindBodySpirit Festival Sydney<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mbsfestival.com.au\/sydney\/spirituality-witchcraft-and-battling-the-stigma\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spirituality, Witchcraft and Battling the Stigma - MindBodySpirit Festival Sydney\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For many years I found myself struggling. 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