Is it possible to embrace both the light and the dark? As and EXAMPLE - working with both The Morrigan AND The Dagda? Or others from one "side" or the other?
If so, how does one find a balance?
While I'm not entirely well-versed on what exactly the Morrigan and the Dagda are, I can add some of my own input. My spiritual/religious journey has been quite convoluted and messy, going from Christian to Atheist to many other things. I used to be hardcore into satanic philosophy and aesthetics but have recently begun recanting some of that for various personal reasons.
I can say that for myself and many others, you can certainly embrace both the light and the dark paths. In fact, I believe it is most harmonious and to some degree necessary. As for your question on balance, that is more a tricky thing to answer. I believe that balance can be a journey in some ways and everyone who seeks it will have to find it within themselves first, especially when embracing seemingly contradictory paths.
Re: Black White / Light Dark By: Spirit76 / Novice
Post # 3 May 07, 2024
I agree. Light and dark are not mutually exclusive things. -Especially- when trying to first consider what each of those things even are! Good, evil, light, dark, positive, negative, constructive, destructive, projective, absorbitive... They all seem to mean the same thing on the surface, but the closer you look the more you see a tangled weave of perspectives and connotations.
Good and evil can be defined by what we do to/for others. Positive/negative can be what we do to/for ourselves. Creation and destruction can be both literal and philosophical, and Both can be very good and helpful things or terrible and harmful things- depending on the purpose behind them. Or it could be entirely neutral and simply a natural function of the world. The cycles of nature come readily to mind.
So it is a conundrum of tangled grey areas where some singular concepts might be 'most often' truly positive and others might be 'most often' truly negative. But every single thing has a caveat, or special circumstance, or context where it could show that glimmer of its opposite within.
I guess if anything, it demonstrates Humanities ingenuity to create and justify any action we might take to be in our favor. Humans are powerful beings of manifestation and creative force. But it happens so constantly and so easily that we hardly realize what we are doing. And on the occasions that we do, we think so lowly of ourselves that we believe we couldn't possibly have done what we did. It -had- to be from some outside force, like a 'God' or 'luck' or 'divine intervention' or 'Karma'. Heaven's forbid it was little ol' perverse meat-sack me.
Yes, you can worth with light and dark energies. Magik, like life, is about balance. Too much of anything is unhealthy. Someone who focuses on the negative will refuse to see a positive outcome. Someone with a toxic positivity view will ignore any negative event. There are times when you need to look on the bright side, and times when you need to say a situation is awful. It is about finding the balance within these energies.
Furthermore, life if not a binary. Most situations are not that simplistic. You will find life is more of a grey scale with very little being all good or all bad. Classic morality questions in Witchcraft is love spells and curses. If someone harmed you, is it wrong to curse them? If you cast a love spell on your crush so they fall in love with you, is that wrong? There is nobody keeping score. Nobody from the Ministry of Magic will appear and ticket you for casting a certain spell. The only person you answer to is yourself, possibly your spiritual team if you made a contract with them. Otherwise, any good or bad karma you might experience is the result of the residual energy that lingers after you cast. Sometimes it is a backfire, but most of the time, you feel a certain way and that gut feeling charges the energy in your home and results in positive or negative results depending on how you feel.
As for specific deities to work with, you should be fine. If the mythology or culture would indicate they would not get along, then you might reconsider. When in doubt, ask the deities. I know plenty of Witches who work with contradicting forces and do not have a problem. It is just balancing commitments and keeping worship areas separate.