The term “antinomian” can be etymologized as having entered English in the 17th century. “Anti-“ obviously means “against.” “Nómos” is Greek for “law.” So antinomian, as a noun, means someone or something that goes against established law. The popular definition is: “a person who maintains that Christians, by virtue of divine grace, are freed not only from biblical law and church-prescribed behavioral norms, but also from all moral law.”
But there is another,
less common occult definition. Stephen
Flowers, in Lords of the Left-Hand Path, uses the term “antinomian” more
broadly to indicate not only opposition to the so-called “laws of God,” but
against the “mechanical / organic universe, and especially irrational
psychological or social compulsion, convention or habit.” In this usage, “antinomian” is anything that
goes against conventional thought and behavior.
To be an antinomian is to be a non-conformist.
Witchcraft, at its
best, in its most dangerous and potent expressions, is exactly this. Peter Grey argues, in “Rewilding
Witchcraft,” that
[W]itchcraft is quintessentially wild,
ambivalent, ambiguous, queer. It is not something that can be socialised,
standing as it does in that liminal space between the seen and unseen worlds.
Spatially the realm of witchcraft is the hedge, the crossroads, the dreaming point
where the worlds of men and of spirits parley through the penetrated body of
someone who is outside of the normal rules of culture.
Embodying this is
harder than subscribing to new-age, commodified, modern witchcraft, which,
according to Grey, in its desire to “harm none,” has become essentially
harmless and defanged.
This seems especially
true in online witchcraft communities, where the tidy comforting maps provided
by the Internet are commonly mistaken for actual territory in a very Baudrillardian
sense—the ubiquitous “desert of the real.” How many of us, for example, think that
astrology actually corresponds to what’s going on physically with the stars and
planets instead of being an oracular interpretation of what those things have
come to symbolize? How many of us think
the neopagan sabbats celebrated on the Wheel of the Year actually represent
physical moments of the turning of the seasons instead of culturally contextual
interpretations? Too many.
And how many of us
mindlessly repeat political slogans, marketing clickbait, phrases from social
justice “discourse,” and catchy meme punchlines without knowing why or how
those statements came into being or how they are evolving? Too many of us are afraid to stand out, to be
dangerous, to show that we have sharp fangs.
Instead, we’re hungry for attention, inclusion, validation, being told
it’s all going to be okay, being patted on the head and given a warm spot by
the fire at the expense of our self-determination.
Too many of us are
starkly terrified of being ostracized, called out, or cancelled when our place
of comfort should already be living on the edge. We were made to be cast out, to don
the terrifying mask of Azazel the Scapegoat so the tribe might be healed;
though, it is ironic that, by virtue of our function as Other, we can never be
fully accepted by respectable members of society.
As Christine Grace
puts it in The Witch at the Forest’s Edge, “We are, each of us, the
witch at the forest’s edge. We are always at the edge of something, one foot
here and one foot there. We step over and back, over and back, ever riding the
hedge.” These are craft expressions for
existing in liminal
space, an area “east
of sun and west of moon” in a place that is not a place and a time that is
not a time. It is the place of the outsider,
the village witch, the forest hermit, the alien, the foreigner, the
spirit-touched outcast, who has powers partly by virtue of the fact that she
can never be part of conformist culture.
It is painful to be
the outsider. Don Webb, in Uncle
Setnakt’s Essential Guide to the Left Hand Path, explains:
The forces that oppose the will are habits
of blind obedience to external symbols and signals. The LHP initiate begins his
or her quest not only by rejecting sentimental attachments to cultural norms,
which most non-thinking people call “good,” but by actively making fun of such attachments
in Symbolic ways such as a Black Mass, a Black Seder, eating beef (if raised Hindu),
and so forth. This antinomian stance is no different than the stances above,
but it draws the most fire from the public, because it is a reminder to the
sleepers that they could awaken, and such reminders are always painful. For
those of us along the LHP, we often forget how painful the light was to our
eyes when we first left the cave.
Making your own path
through the darkness is dangerous and stressful. It’s easier, at least in the short term, to
just do what you’re told. Some of us
find that impossible. Others pay lip
service to the aesthetics of rebellion while very carefully offending no one,
challenging nothing, and complying instantly with dominant trends.
Overall, taking an
antinomian stance against conformity, mass consciousness, trendiness, and
social pressure is very hard. It
is the Way of the Transgressor, the way of the storm god, filled with strife
and struggle. Its benefits are equally
great—so great that once you set foot on that path, you may find yourself
unwilling to ever bend the knee. But you
might not be that brave.
You may identify as a
“comfort witch,” a “cozy witch,” terrified of conflict, listening carefully for
the bell that summons you to obedience as a tame consumer, a spiritual
materialist. And you’ll go quietly with
a frozen, nonthreatening smile. You’ll
write about it in your gratitude journal and maybe refer to yourself as
“awkward” or as “a baby witch,” infantilizing and negating your own power
before others have a chance to do it for you.
And you’ll certainly tell online strangers that you’re a witch, but you
won’t be anything of the sort.