The Siddhis

aspects of witchcraft have survived in part, much of the original material surrounding witchcraft has also been lost to the fires of the Inquisition.

Despite all that was lost to this unholy war on witches, the people who stepped out of the broom closet and into the public eye in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were not without their resources. By turning to Eastern spiritual traditions and practices like yoga in order to augment what remained of Western occultism, witches (and other occultists) were able to regain some of what was lost in the West with an unbroken line of accumulated wisdom from the East.

Though the concept of combining witchcraft and yoga may seem revolutionary to some people reading this book, the truth is that witchcraft and yoga have been yoked together for well over a century. As early as 1875, the Theosophists were turning to Buddhism and yoga for inspiration.1 In the early twentieth century, Aleister Crowley compared the classical elements of the West to the practice of yoga. In his Eight Lectures on Yoga, Crowley said, “Fire represents the yogi, and water the object of his meditation.”2 Meditation’s fluid nature might account for why it is often so hard for new students to gain traction in their practices. Think about that age-old metaphor of trying to hold water in your hand. If you struggle and try to grip the water, you’ll displace it, sloshing water this way and that. However, if you cup your hand and hold real still, you’ll be able to hold on to the small amount of water that fits within your cupped palm. Meditation, like gripping water, can definitely be an exercise in frustration when starting out. Crowley’s comparison seems appropriate.

Meditation is not the only thing that Western occultists have borrowed from the practice of yoga. Even the chakras themselves were not originally part of any Western magickal practice. Those colorful whirling vortexes of energy came directly out of the yoga tradition. Though the Upanishads talk about them as psychic centers and they play a more prominent role in tantra, they are first mentioned in the Vedas. There are

1. Debra Diamond, ed., Yoga: The Art of Transformation (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2013), 97. 2. Aleister Crowley, Eight Lectures on Yoga (Las Vegas: New Falcon Publications, 1992), 48.

at least twenty-nine direct references to the chakras in the Rig Veda.

3 They were added into the witch’s concept of energetic anatomy to supplement a still-unknown missing piece of information that was stolen from witches by Christianity in the last two thousand years. There is still so much more wisdom for witches to glean simply by practicing yoga alongside their witchcraft.

History of Yoga According to Mark Stephens in his book Teaching Yoga, “What we know of the origins and development of yoga comes to us from a variety of sources, including ancient texts, oral transmission through certain yogic or spiritual lineages, iconography, dances, and songs…the earliest known writings on yoga are found in ancient Hindu spiritual texts known as the Vedas.”4

Some accounts of the Vedas date them as being nearly twenty-five hundred to three thousand years old. Though they are often thought to be the original written source material for yoga, the Vedas mostly discuss meditation through the practice of mantras. The actual practice that we identify as yoga didn’t get thoroughly explained until the Upanishads were written down in the first millennium BCE. The Bhagavad Gita, being the most famous of the Upanishads, helps the reader find inner peace and bliss by connecting with Divinity.

It is in the Upanishads where the Hindu religious philosophy that influenced much of yoga was written down. Within these later texts, we find a discussion of the universal spirit, Brahman, and a distinct individual soul, Atman, discussed in depth. The Upanishads also talk about subtle body anatomy and the life force energy, prana, that permeates all things. Considering how much of this material has worked its way into modern witchcraft almost verbatim, it might not be too far a stretch to say that these texts could be seen to be just as sacred to modern witches as they are to Hinduism.

3. “Chakras within the Vedas: Stopping Scholarly Distortion of Vedic Texts,” Hindu Human Rights Worldwide, July 13, 2020, https://www.hinduhumanrights.info/chakras-within-the-vedas-stopping-scholarly -distortion-of-vedic-teachings/. 4. Mark Stephens, Teaching Yoga: Essential Foundations and Techniques (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic

Books, 2010), 1–2.

As foundational to understanding the metaphysical wisdom of yoga as the Vedas and the Upanishads undoubtedly are, many modern yoga students and teachers have never read them. That is not the case with Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, however. The yoga sutras—or just sutras, as they are sometimes called—are nearly ubiquitous in the modern Western yoga community. The sutras are a brief, but powerful, 196 aphorisms, which were written down sometime between 500 and 400 BCE. Some of the Upanishads were written after Patanjali put pen to paper, and his work certainly influenced them. In this text, Patanjali asks, “What is yoga?” His answer is both elegant and powerful. The famous sage discusses how practicing yoga can calm the mind and reveal the nature of one’s True Self through the blissful state of samadhi.

Another World Tree Yoga is often compared to a tree. As a witch, I have always appreciated this metaphor, because it, more than anything else, seems to unite the two distinct paths so elegantly. The World Tree is often associated with various branches of witchcraft, and many witches have magickal practices that include making pacts with trees.

Yoga is seen to have roots, a trunk, branches, blossoms, and fruit, just like a tree. In his commentary on Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, B. K. S. Iyengar expounds on this beautiful imagery. He talks about how the eight branches of yoga could be seen as a tree.5 Here is a paraphrasing of his metaphor:

1. Yama, or ethical behavior, is like the roots of the tree. 2. Niyama, or personal observances, function as the trunk, providing stability and structure to a yoga practice. 3. Asanas, or the physical postures, are the branches, which move and flow with the breeze.

4. Pratyahara, or internal focus, is the bark that provides a barrier between the internal workings of the tree and the external elements. 5. Dharana, or focused internal concentration, is represented by the tree’s sap.

5. B. K. S. Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (United Kingdom: HarperCollins UK, 2002).

6. Pranayama, or the breath, is represented by the leaves of the tree. 7. Dhyana, or becoming one in body, breath, and mind, is seen as the flower of whole consciousness.

8. Samadhi, or pure bliss, is represented by the fruit.

To add witchcraft into this beautiful metaphor and combine the two paths in a unique way that still honors the individual beauty of each, it might be appropriate for witches who wish to add yoga into their magickal practices to think of witchcraft as the primordial soil that nurtures the roots of this wonderful tree. Though this association may seem a bit odd given that I just finished discussing how modern witchcraft has been augmented by yogic wisdom, it shouldn’t trip the reader up too much.

The history of witchcraft as an archetypal concept is just as ancient as yoga. Stonehenge, a site sacred to many modern witches because of its possible connection to the Druids and its role as a possible sacred space in historic Pagan spiritual practices, is from the same period that the Vedas were written down in. It was built around 3000 BCE. There are also remnants of shrines, tools, and cave paintings that strongly suggest some practice similar to what we might call witchcraft existed as far back in history as 50,000 BCE.

How to Use This Book As the title of this book suggests, yoga can be used to enhance witchcraft, but witchcraft can also be used to enhance a yoga practice as well. However true those statements are, this book is not meant to unite the two distinct paths into something new, making “yoga witches” or something else of the sort. That would only disrespect the integrity of both systems, which are whole and beautiful in their own right.

Rather, this book seeks to explain universal occult truths by comparing the similarities between two distinct traditions. Yoga and witchcraft are more like complementary sister traditions that can enhance each other. By adding witchcraft to yoga, yogis progress more quickly on their paths. By adding yoga to witchcraft, witches develop their psychic powers more efficiently, which, ultimately, deepens their spiritual experiences in witchcraft.

While reading through the pages of this book, consider reading each chapter in its entirety before doing the exercises within it. That way the full scope of the connection between yoga and witchcraft is understood and you can better apply that knowledge to the exercises. In this way, you will progress much more quickly and be able to adapt the material to your own personal magickal practice. Blessed be and namaste.

1

EAST MEETS WEST

Most people in the West today think of yoga as being exclusively about exercise. It’s not. As Iyengar’s tree metaphor shows, the asanas are just one small part of the overarching tradition that is yoga. The occult aspects of this ancient spiritual practice actually dwarf the physical sequences.

The benefits of yoga for solitary witches cannot be overstated. Yoga actually provides the solitary practitioner with the same depth and breadth of psychic training, which was, until very recently, reserved almost exclusively for coven-based, initiatory witchcraft. Coven-based witches in initiatory traditions have the benefit of learning from the successes and failures of the witches who have come before them in their lineage. They can streamline their progress along the Path of the Wise (another name for witchcraft) and develop their psychic potential so much more quickly and easily because of that initiatory connection. Unfortunately, solitary witches rarely have that same benefit.

I should know. My own witchcraft practice has been both solitary and coven-based at different points in my life, and yoga has been a great boon to me during both phases of my own magickal development. As a young adult, I spent much of my time in bookstores thumbing through the books on witchcraft and the occult, trying to decide which