Welcome to Gaia! ::

I ran into a thread the other day, that basically stated that it was hoping to address specific witchcrafts using a Q&A Method. But the questions were (summed down because I don't believe in wordiness):

1) What type of magic do you practice? (Ignores those that don't state they "practice" magic)
2) What god structure do you believe in?
3) Eclectic or Trad based?
4) Solitary or Other?
5) Moral Code/Standard?
6) What your partner believes in?
7) Where you live?
cool Are you artsy or do martial arts?

My remark to these questions is that they aren't specific nor do they even revolve around anything within a practice or a path. The first 5 maybe - in a round about this is what everyone asks, but doesn't lead into the specifics of witchcraft or a practice.

I'm wondering though, now, what would people be curious to find out about others practices?

Me?

1) How you form your circle (meaning, from pre to post circle).
2) How you use the tools (diagrams, vids, and instructions) within a spell; if you use them.
3) When are spells done? (Open ended; what ever that was interpreted as).
4) How do you deal with spirits?
5) How you deal with certain spell structures?
6) Spell Formats; in general.
7) Divination bases.

^- These are questions that I would associate with a level of attempt to "show" the different kinds of witches out there.

What other questions would you think would help establish differences and allow for a deeper conversation than a cm of water?

Ok. And that would be a perfectly valid answer to my first question.

Now, can you offer any other questions that might be better suited?

Hmmm?

Let's start with this: I did not intend to be offensive. If I was, back off for the love of all secularism in the house, and I apologize.

Now, that being said, this isn't a Q&A session (obviously); and it wouldn't be. This is not the intention of this thread. The intention is however, to ask what would be better questions to ask or questions that you (as a practicer) would like to see asked or would like to BE asked. Those would be mine specifically for me to ask and for me to be asked.

It's helpful to suggest (to me at least) what other type of questions than your standard: "Oh what's a witch? Oh what's a unicorn? Oh what's this hanging from my left cheek?" Which can cause confusion ("what's a witch" leads to "Well I'm not under your definition, lalallalallaaahhhha" and "So that's what you think witches are?! HA! Lalallaahhhh") - though I'd probably (if I were making a Q&A thread ) ask them to be specific in the first half of their post to post some of the more generalities like:

Hey, my name is DF. (Hi DF) I'm a secular witch, who uses a combination of ritual (as in repetitive motions or events) and folk magic. A witch is someone who practices witchcraft. Da-da-da-da, then move on into the specifics of questions as listed here.

I'm tired of re-saying the same thing because it's boring. I don't wanna argue over semantics for twenty pages (I've done that enough on PS, 6 threads and counting. Full. to. the tilt.). Nor would I be interested in arguing over "well I don't do circles - blah blah blah." Ok. Then either skip over the question or say that, it works for me. Am I stopping you? No, of course not. That would be rude of me.

I'm not trying to define what witchcraft is by asking questions that may not fit your [general] specific branch (thus excluding you by accident rather than design) - and to assume so is your fault, not mine. You may have questions (that you'd like to be asked/ask) that may exclude my specific practice. It happens, so again, this point of this thread is to help see what would be BETTER, specific questions.

My point is that I'm trying to figure out what are better questions rather than generalities or trying to make all my questions FIT for every single stinking witchcraft - effort in futility and completely distracts from my original purpose (it's the antithesis of my purpose to be honest). However, I'm glad you critiqued them, but at the same time I think it's rather silly that you'd rather not have a discussion where you can answer a question with "I don't" and move on, or explain why you don't and move on because the question doesn't pin point one practice out of your entire tradition.

Edit:

Also formatting would be nice. What kind of format would be good to ask questions.

Grouping certain types of questions together might be more helpful than just randomly throwing out questions as I did in the example/op.

Zyzza,

I like your general questions (and explanations of why those specific questions) much better than my own.

While I agree the typing (as well as the stereo kind) is bad, I still would want to see technique discussions -leading into why are we discussing circles. So that's where I was headed with that.

a better question would be "Do you use a magic circle, and if you do, how do you form it?"