violet-catmint asked: Is it possible to believe and 'trust' in spirits, but at the same time fear if you feel them? I'm often afraid to come into contact with a ghost, but at the same time I consider ghosts to just be a different form of spirit, but the few times I believe I *have* felt a spirit, I didn't 'feel' afraid, but I felt like I should have been.
Anything is possible! To your specific question, though, I’d say yes - and would venture to say that such a paradoxical relationship with spirits is actually quite commonplace. It’s easy to assume the worst when it comes to things we’re uncomfortable or unfamiliar with, and despite a belief in spirits and deities, actual contact can frighten people who are unaccustomed to it. The important thing to remember is that we have a say in what kind of spirit contact we experience. If you experience unwanted contact, you can tell the spirit to leave you alone. However, one wonders what magical practitioners expect - when delving into the occult and magic, you are in a way opening yourself to spirit contact; when we do this kind of work, what do we expect but spirit contact? Ghosts are definitely just a different kind of spirit - they are the spirits of deceased humans. Really they aren’t very different from plant spirits or animal spirits or deities in how we can understand and interact with them.
Why ‘should’ a person be afraid of a spirit, just due to their spirit-ness, not due to any negative feelings from that spirit? Obviously there are some nasty spirits out there, but I do feel that we are culturally conditioned in the post-industrial intellectual Western world to fear that which we don’t understand. In other societies, the unknown and the unseen are a part of everyday life, not something to be feared just because we don’t ‘get’ it. I’m happy that you weren’t scared, that’s awesome! Ghosts aren’t inherently scary, IMO. They can be - just like there can be scary humans - but their nature is not dictated by their form.
Hope all’s well!
xo
