Silent
Silent provides the tools for seekers to recognize their path and enables self-reliance for spiritual and magickal growth.
Seekers gain insight from his work and find their inner calm from his ability to listen and help others reflect.
Keeping Silent
Silent • September 4, 2022
Start Here: Lessons of a Pagan Lifestyle
Since the name of this site is To Keep Silent, it is appropriate that the first new blog entry is an explanation.
To Keep Silent is one of the four corners of the Witches Pyramid. The phrases are To Know, To Will, To Dare, and To Keep Silent. They are engraved on The Sphinx and were first brought to magickal practice by Eliphas Levi. Levi published his two-volume philosophy “Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual” in 1854 and 1856.
The Witches’ Pyramid is a magickal philosophy that predates what we think of as modern witchcraft.
I will leave my review of the source material for another time. The lesson of silence is considered the final pillar of the four corners of the pyramid. It is the only one that inherently involves others. You take on a great responsibility when you choose to not remain silent. Over time we will explore many aspects of silence.
The blog studies silence and its special meaning and place in my worldview. It provides principles by which I live my life; it is a form of meditation I practice (also called Stillness meditation) and is part of my craft name.TKS is sharing knowledge, everyday experiences, and a life lived with the sacred.
Sharing knowledge is good; sharing truths is better. Perspective and self-mastery teach you what, when, and where to share something. This is a highly nuanced and contextual discussion. If you know something eventful will happen, is it your place to tell someone? Is it right for you to interfere with their Path and potentially commingle yours with theirs? If you do, what will they lose (or gain) if you do?
"Silence Tells Me Everything"
What does “To Keep Silent” mean?
The site is the lessons of silence and using them as a witch and/or Pagan in the modern world. The study of silence is knowing when to share and how to share. It is the understanding of your actions (spoken and actions) on the world around you. It may seem counter-intuitive to name a place of knowledge sharing “Silence,” but this is the journey we will embark on together. Whatever your personal belief system(s), may you find lessons of value to you.
To Keep Silent is the pinnacle of mindfulness. It means knowing when and at what pace to say something. The “when” may be near, far, or never. You choose to speak when specific actions or events come to pass. It is conceivably never. It is highly contextual, based on whom you share or the situation.
Silence is a time for reflection, active listening (within and without), stillness, and withholding speech. It is a powerful tool for the witch. Alone with your own thoughts and the universe. How often do you sit in silence? With no distractions? When was the last time you spent an afternoon or 24-hours in complete silence? No communication with another person, no computer, no cell phone, or outside contact? When was the last time you spent two hours in silence?
Many find a few hours alone with our own thoughts a challenging experience in the modern world.
This is my journey and life as a witch and Pagan. Even though I have deep roots in historical practices, my practice and methods are modern and ever-evolving. We will see magick is a sacred science. Like any good science, it continues to evolve. It has repeatable and established methods and practices. For the readers new to occultism in any form, you will find the practitioners are rabidly curious creatures. We question everything, even our gods. Really.
Modern witchcraft is often conflated with Wicca. The first is a set of practices; the other is a religion. One may be a secular witch or have elements of many faiths threaded into their practices. Witchcraft is just that, a craft. It is not recognized by most governments as a religious practice, which is a benefit for those of us living in the United States. Wicca is a reconstructionist Pagan faith invented by Gerald Gardner in the 1950s. It has many offshoots.
If you have nothing to hide…
Then why remain silent or keep things hidden? This is an argument against any sort of personal privacy. Privacy, personal or otherwise, is highly nuanced and contextual. “Can I see your credit card bills from last year?” “Will you provide me a list of everyone you met last summer?”
In the occult world, there are practical concerns.
Legal and Personal Liberties
Many countries had their anti-witchcraft laws on the books until recently. Canada’s witchcraft laws were not repealed until 2018. It was illegal to pretend to be a witch under section 365 of Canada’s Criminal Code. It was ostensibly used to prevent people from taking advantage of others by offering manipulative services. However, that’s what anti-fraud laws do, and quite well. Anti-witchcraft laws were a way to target segments of the population. I’m not picking on Canada per se, but as a regular business visitor, I always had concerns when crossing the border.
Religious privilege is genuine. Many countries make strong claims of religious neutrality, but a quick look at the official holidays, laws, and everyday opinions will rid you of that belief. In addition, hate directed toward Muslims in the US by the government’s highest-ranking officials tells a painful story. Does your region pass these tests?
- It is unlikely I will be judged by the actions of other members of my faith.
- If I hold a fundraiser for my faith, will it be seen as supporting terrorism?
- Politicians or regulators can cite my faith as a reason for making a decision without it being seen as extremist or dangerous behavior.
Please see 30+ Examples of Christian Privileges, a widely quoted source by universities and social justice sites, for additional examples.
Personal Reasons
You are not required to be out of the broom closet. There are many reasons one may choose to keep lifestyle and practices private. However, you have agency, and only you can decide when it is right for you.
It was a very long time before I came out as a Pagan. As a businessperson, I had concerns about employers, professional partners, and the community. Unfortunately, popular media has not been kind to the magickal community.
Today, I share education on coming out of the broom closet. Contact me if you are interested in having me speak to your group or business.
Mystery Schools, Religions, and Esoteric Practices
When magick is performed, the intention is to affect change. It is an effort of training, focused will, and attention like any other skill or craft. We don’t let six-year old’s climb into 60-ton earthmovers and hope for the best. The same is valid with spellcraft. There is a learning process, discipline, and study.
When silence is referenced in esoteric or occult practices, it conjures images of secret societies and rituals shrouded in mystery and raises concerns. Popular media and shows such as “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” are meant to evoke a response in audiences. So if it’s kept silent, it must be… titillating or edgy. Right?
Some practices and religions require initiation. This is a historical and contextual precedent for this.
Some of these are called Mystery Schools. Perhaps the most well-known is the Eleusinian Mysteries, which is how Persephone came to be and her descent into the Underworld. The religious pilgrimage to an actual city (Eleusis) was practiced for almost two thousand years. There are recreations unto this day.
Mystery means a learned set of secrets based on shared contemplation, inspection, and discussion. It is the same discipline as a Zen koan and shared gnosis in many ways. A koan readies the mind for intuitive leaps outside of the analytical and ego. The most famous koan is probably, “What is the sound of one hand clapping? A butterfly.”
I just threw a lot of, probably, unfamiliar terms at you. I promise we’ll explore them in future writing.
Final Thoughts
If you are looking for similarities between this belief system and your own, I thank you for an open mind. You will indeed find some. However, just because you found a few common threads in the garment, they are not the same. Witchcraft and Pagan beliefs are systems unto themselves. They do not need to, nor will they end up in the same place as yours. The laws of Nature follow their own rhythm and course. They are not capricious or part of a sky father’s punishment system.
May you find your own Path and journey with me on mine as your summum bonum.
Onward.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This week the day and night stand equal for a moment — then the dark begins to win, and so does the question of what you actually belong to.
The FDA is spending an afternoon on the future of psychedelic medicine — the harder question, what to do with what you saw, isn't on the agenda.
New research on AI companionship raises an old, unglamorous question about which voices deserve our trust. Back in early August, researchers at Stanford published something quietly damning. They studied more than a thousand adults who talk to AI companions on Character.AI, and, for a smaller group, actually read the conversations themselves — nearly half a million messages, donated for analysis. The people who leaned on the chatbot hardest, who disclosed the most, who called it a friend or a partner, were not the ones who felt better. They were the ones with the smallest circles of people in their actual lives, and the ones most likely to end up feeling worse. This week, a psychotherapist put the finding more bluntly than any journal abstract would allow, telling a reporter that human beings cannot have a genuine relationship with an AI. Not won't. Can't. I want to sit with that word "can't," because it is doing more theological work than its author probably intended. The Oldest Kind of Listening Every tradition I have spent real time inside — Pagan, Heathen, the Judaism I grew up in before I grew out of it — assumes that some voices deserve more trust than others, and that telling them apart is a skill, not a given. The Hávamál, that blunt old Norse book of household counsel, spends stanza after stanza warning against handing someone your whole mind before you have tested them: watch how a person behaves under some strain, it counsels, before you decide what their friendship is worth. That isn't cynicism. It's discernment — the discipline of asking what a voice actually is before you let it tell you who you are. An AI companion never fails that test, because it was never built to be tested. It has no bad day to reveal it. It does not get tired of you, contradict you out of its own need, or risk anything by staying. That isn't intimacy. It's a smooth surface with nothing underneath to discover — comfort without the friction that would ever prove it real. What the Study Actually Found, and Didn't To be fair to the research, it did not find that AI companionship is worthless, or that everyone who uses one is in trouble. It found something narrower and more useful: the people most likely to be harmed were already isolated, already leaning hardest, already treating the chatbot as a substitute rather than a supplement. The researchers themselves reached for a food metaphor — the comparison one summary used was "social junk food." It satisfies a real hunger, briefly, in a way that can make the deeper hunger harder to notice. That distinction matters, and it isn't mine to blur into something tidier. This is not a clinical finding about any one person's mental health, and if you're using an AI companion and wondering whether you're in trouble, that's a conversation for a therapist, not a blog post. What I can speak to is the older question sitting underneath the study — not whether the voice is helpful, but whether you have quietly stopped asking. The Uncomfortable Question So here is the question, and I am not going to answer it for you: what have you been listening to lately because it was easier than listening to something that might actually disagree with you? It doesn't have to be a chatbot. It can be a version of a friend you've stopped really talking to, a teacher whose books you've read but whose challenge you've never let land, a version of God who conveniently wants exactly what you already wanted. The AI companion is only the newest and most efficient shape this problem has ever taken. It is easier to notice in a machine because the machine is honest about what it's doing. The rest of us have gotten very good at hiding it. A Practice Pick one voice you've been trusting easily lately — a person, a habit, an app, a feed you check first thing. Ask it plainly: when was the last time you told me something I didn't want to hear? If you can't answer, sit with that. Don't rush to fix it tonight. Just notice, honestly, which of your voices have never once cost you anything to listen to. Hekate keeps her post at the crossroads for a reason no myth fully explains. She doesn't walk the road for you, and she doesn't tell you which fork to take. She just holds the torch up so you can see there's more than one way to go, and so the choosing happens in the light instead of the dark, where the easiest voice always sounds like the right one. That's the whole of it. Not an answer. A little more light at the fork, and the old, unglamorous work of choosing while you can still see. Closing Reflection Name one voice you've been trusting easily — a person, a habit, an app. Ask it plainly: when did you last tell me something I didn't want to hear? Whatever the answer, don't rush to fix it tonight. Just notice, honestly, which of your voices have never once cost you anything to listen to.