Frank Herbert wrote that “Fear is the mind killer” in the original Dune book. Fear is what saps your strength, and keeps you from doing the things you must, or the things you want. Most people will say that things outside of themselves scare them, but the truth is, fear is rooted deep within.
It is your inner self that fears. Every fear that you have, isn’t caused by the thing that you fear. It is caused by that inner voice, telling you what it fears. Spiders, snakes, flying, heights, these are all things people may be afraid of. If it was the thing itself causing the fear, we would all fear them, but we don’t.
We fear the unknown. We fear what other people tell us to fear. We fear failure, and we even fear success. We humans fear a great many things. Not all of us fear the same things, but we all have fears. We shake a majority of our fears as we grow up. The bogeyman no longer holds any fear to us as adults, but as adults, we Him with other, more rational seeming bogeymen.
As adults, we fear losing our job, or losing our partner. We fear not having enough money to feed the family, or paying all the bills. On top of that, we have a constant news stream telling us to fear other things. The political right tells us to fear the left, and vice versa. Now both sides tell us to fear one religion or another, or all other religions that aren’t ours.
Fear paralyzes. Fear locks us into familiar, if unhappy ruts. It’s safe to remain with the familiar, the unknown can hurt us. But if we never do anything new or different, nothing will change. Fear is a weapon, for those who know how to use it. It can be used to make people willingly lock themselves up, mentally, emotionally, and even physically.
Currently, we see a group of religious radicals in the Middle East, using fear as a weapon. They aren’t the only ones, but they are in the public eye for now. This group, often mislabeled I.S.I.S. by the media, has shocked our cultural sensibilities. First, they killed innocents by beheading them not with a sword or axe, but with a simple knife. When we became desensitized to that, they started burning people alive, and the 24 hour news cycle tries to enhance that fear.
This group has now declared war on the ancient Gods of the land they occupy. They may find that the Old Gods aren’t as dead as they think they are.
Fears must be faced, and dealt with. One of the best ways to face your fears, is to make fun of it. As a child I remember being afraid of classic movie monsters, like Dracula, and Frankenstein. Then I saw Abbot & Costello meet them both on Saturday afternoon TV. I laughed, and laughed. I found afterward, those celluloid monsters no longer held any fear for me.
It is in this vein, that we here at Witchcraft Academy have produced a short video about the Islamic State. We hope you enjoy it, and perhaps after you’ve seen it, those fears will be diminished.
